The Keeper (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 8)

by JL Bryan

  "I don't want to desert her, either,” I said. “Maybe we should move our camp out here for tonight."

  "You guys need help in there?" Hayden asked. I jumped—I almost forgot he was listening.

  "Did you hear the situation upstairs?" Stacey asked him.

  "Yeah, and I made some popcorn while I watched. Seriously, we have a Mr. Corny popper out here, did you know that? In the appliance cabinet. Installed it myself. It's the best brand, almost every kernel gets popped, yet without burning the early poppers. The secret is their patented temperature-curve process—"

  "Thanks for the details," I said.

  "—butter and garlic salt injection, you should come out and try it," he said. "Anybody. I'm getting lonely here."

  "I think you'll live through the night, Hayden," I said.

  "Don't say that! That's like jinxing somebody to die horribly."

  Stacey and I walked along the outdoor hallway. Power was still out, so we had to find our way by flashlight. Rain poured down the glass walls outside. It was more than a little spooky—anyone or anything could have jumped out at us from either side. The glass might have been thick, even bulletproof, but unless it was thickly leaded, it wasn't much of an obstacle for a vengeful spirit.

  I kept imagining the ghost that the young girl had described—bloated, pale, green around the edges, dripping with seaweed—suddenly appearing against the dark glass on one side or the other, her dead face and dark eye sockets pressing against it, looking in at us, grabbing for us with clammy hands.

  I jabbed my light left and right, expecting something to leap out of the dark at us. My heart was pounding. I couldn't see any activity, but it certainly felt like there were ghosts out there in the storm.

  A sheet of lightning turned the outdoors to daytime for a second.

  Rain pounded into the gardens outside the glass wall. Most of the beach was buried under churning, dark water now. Murky waves crashed against the lighthouse, the highest waves burying half the exterior staircase under foamy, thrashing water.

  I glimpsed, during that brief moment, a white figure at the railing near the top of the tower. Though she was distant, she was also, somehow, the clearest I'd ever seen her, white dress trailing and whipping in the storm winds, as did her long hair, a blond so light it was almost a shade of white. I had the impression of a tall, strong woman, not somebody you'd go picking a fight with if you could avoid it.

  Then the lightning was gone and the world was plunged into midnight darkness again, all trace of the stars and moon blotted out by the heavy clouds.

  "Did you see that?" I whispered.

  "I know!" Stacey said. "Huge lightning, and it looked close—"

  Thunder shuddered the walls around us. The ground itself seemed to bounce and roll beneath our feet, as if we were momentarily onboard a ship on a choppy sea. I lost my balance, but Stacey caught me and kept me upright.

  "You feeling okay? Do you need...smelling salts or something? Tabasco sauce?"

  "Why would I need...I'm fine." I straightened up, pulling away from her. "Just lost my balance."

  "I noticed that part."

  We finally reached the little caretaker's bungalow at the end of the hallway. It lacked electricity, too. The simple loss of power, forcing us to paw our way through with flashlights, can give a place a different, eerie character, the feeling of having been abandoned in response to some unknown horror, or maybe depopulated by it.

  I was on edge, waiting for something to come out of the dark bedroom and grab us while we gathered up our assorted screens.

  With our arms full of laptop and tablet cases, we had to holster our tactical flashlights and depend on smaller lights clipped to our belts. They were good enough for finding your way when your hands were full, but feeble compared to our regular lights, not much of a weapon against any troublesome ghosts.

  We walked back through the glass hallway. Bolts of lightning cracked the sky again and again. The storm showed no sign of slacking.

  Soon the glow of several small screens lit the enormous glass-walled living room. Stacey sat on the enormous couch, headphones on, listening and watching.

  I stood by the glass wall, watching the dark waves hammer the tower. It was easy to imagine furious spirits just under the surface now, as the water roiled and lashed the lighthouse as though driven by the anger of some primitive sea god. I could almost imagine the spirits of the deep trying to reach the pale ghost inside, the one that might well be Matty Verish, trying to tend the light as she'd done for so many years during her life.

  If that was her intent, she was sadly failing. The lighthouse was no brighter tonight than it had been for the past century. It was a good thing ships no longer relied upon it, especially with this kind of fierce weather.

  "The storm's going to get worse over the next few days," I said.

  "Huh?" Stacey lifted one a headphone away from her ear.

  "We should move on the magician ghost tomorrow," I said. "It's Sunday. Jacob will be off work, and maybe he'll come with us. The heavy rainfall will give us some cover so we can sneak into the theater during the daytime, when the ghosts aren't so strong."

  "That's not a bad idea. I definitely don't want to be facing Scary Houdini when he's at the height of his powers," Stacey said. "Something tells me that magician ghost might still have a few tricks up his sleeve."

  "Aldous the Mysterious," I said. "Lucas Babbage. Knowing his name is probably the biggest advantage we're going to get. And maybe the poster advertising his show."

  "All righty. I'll text Jacob about it, ask him if he minds helping us catch a serial-killer magician ghost tomorrow. If he's not too busy."

  "I'll let Calvin know."

  "I assume you have a plan for this?" Stacey said. "Something more than 'go climb into the theater attic and grab him by the cape'?"

  "I do," I said.

  Then I began to lay it out for her.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was still raining buckets by the time we headed to the Corinthian theater on Sunday morning. The cloud cover was so thick that it almost felt like night, and the streetlamps had turned on in response to the dimness.

  The four of us had met for breakfast at Henry's Restaurant, just three blocks from the theater, and talked it over. Calvin would stay in the van, watching and listening to live feeds from the gear we'd already set up inside. This would hopefully protect against any other nasties who wanted to sneak up behind us while we focused on the big bad guy upstairs.

  We'd headed to a hardware store, then a couple of secondhand stores, where we'd purchased the items we needed for our trap.

  Out in the parking lot of the last thrift store—located in a half-empty strip mall, next to a tobacco accessory store and a bail bond place—we assembled the new materials while rain pelted the roof of the van and blurred the windows, creating a little privacy for us. It seemed safer to work there rather than the alley behind the theater where we planned to trespass.

  "So we're going to carry mirrors up through that hole in the ceiling?" Jacob asked. "Is that right? I just want to make sure I'm totally clear on that part of the plan."

  "Aldous the Mysterious behaves a bit like a catoptric ghost," I said. "Mirror-based. When the club was open, women felt like someone was watching them through the bathroom mirrors. They'd see his face sometimes. When he first attacked me, I was looking into the mirror on his cabinet."

  "Okay," Jacob said. "So why not smash the mirror on his cabinet, then burn the rest?"

  "That would have unpredictable results," Calvin said. His wheelchair was parked on one side of the van, which had a retractable ramp for him. "There's some chance it would banish the entity forever. There's also a chance he'll be free to wander, to stalk the streets, free to inflict more harm."

  "So instead we set up this Rube Goldberg situation and hope it works," Jacob said.

  "We're trying to do a classic mirror-ghost trap, but with live bait, and some protection for the bait," I said. "For me
, since I'm the bait. So I'd like to have a couple of layers between me and Scary Houdini, since I really didn't enjoy the way he grabbed me last time." I shuddered, thinking of his hyper-long articulated fingers, wrapping around me like the legs of a giant crab.

  "I have doubts, too," Stacey said. She was stringing a mesh of copper across the front of a standalone, full-length mirror, currently lying on its back on the floor of the van. "But not any better suggestions, so what can I say?"

  "That's the spirit," I said.

  We prepped the mirrors as much as we could, though the final wiring would have to take place upstairs, on the highest floor of the theater, where the magician's cabinet was located.

  Then we drove back downtown. It was mid-morning, and we were running behind schedule. Most of the businesses on Broughton Street, where the old Corinthian sat, didn't open until the afternoon. The city was relatively sleepy on Sunday mornings, anyway, and adding a potent downpour didn't encourage anybody to come out.

  We wanted to get in and out of the theater before noon. Churches would let out, Broughton Street would wake up, the businesses would open their doors, and a van full of burglars was more likely to be noticed. The weather was expected to clear up for a while during the afternoon, too, and we certainly wanted to be gone before that happened.

  "Jacob, tell me again, before we have to face him," I said. I was driving, Jacob riding shotgun, Stacey in the back putting the finishing touches on our mirror trap. "Explain how you did that psychic scream last time."

  "Well, do you have to call it a 'psychic scream'?" he asked. "Can't we call it something more like 'psychic force blast' or 'psychic power attack'?"

  "What, you don't think 'scream' is manly enough?" Stacey asked from the back.

  "Okay, your psychic projection of amazingly huge impressive power," I said.

  "You sort of...concentrate your most powerful emotions," he said. "Fear, anger...you know, whatever feelings are strongest. Imagine digging deep inside yourself, scooping all that out, completely emptying yourself, and flinging it at the target. If you do it right, though, you really only get one chance. It's hard to totally drain yourself a second time, at least until you get a day or two to recharge, maybe more.”

  "Good to know," I said. "And here we are."

  I parked the van behind the theater. Torrents of rain still pounded down, and a narrow but deep river ran down the center of the uneven alleyway.

  Calvin did a last-minute inspection of our new gear, shaking his head and frowning. "These aren't the best materials...really we should spend more time preparing the configuration, testing..."

  "But we don't have that much time," I said. "We need to secure this location. You didn't see through the magician's eyes like I did, or feel his thoughts and memories...” I shuddered. “Plus, there's our client. Alyssa's flying in as soon as the weather breaks, and the presence of all those family members during a major storm...that could really bring up all the ghosts. Once Alyssa's back, we'll have to stay focused on her case until the end."

  "And you feel safe leaving...the sister..." Jacob tried to remember.

  "Tammy," Stacey said.

  "Leaving the sister and her kids alone in that house?" Jacob asked.

  "Hayden's with them," Stacey said.

  "And?"

  "He is, at least technically, a trained ghost hunter," I said. "They'll be okay for a few daylight hours."

  "Yeah, the bad things mostly come out at night around the lighthouse," Stacey said. "Mostly."

  "That's enough sitting around chatting," I said. "Get ready to carry those mirrors in."

  I took a breath and stepped out into the downpour, to once again unlock the backstage door to the abandoned theater and disable the burglar alarm.

  The rain made it a big trick to carry in tall, slippery mirrors laced with bare copper wiring. We had to remove our rain jackets and wipe everything dry to avoid a dangerous electrical situation later. Well, more dangerous than the one we were already setting up for ourselves, which I'm sure was pretty far from OSHA-approved, with the huge batteries powering copper mesh on two of the mirrors.

  We brought in a stepladder to make it more feasible to access the hole in the projection booth, which led into the attic full of old sets. Once upon a time, they'd been lowered to the stage by means of ropes and pulleys. It was odds and ends, mostly bits of Greek columns and generic castles that could have been reused countless times.

  I tossed a heavy red curtain over the mirror on Aldous the Mysterious's tall purple cabinet and hammered it into place with tacks. I didn't want the magician popping up in the mirror before we were ready for him. He didn't strictly need the mirror to sneak up on me, but it seemed to be his base of operations, and therefore prudent to cover it up for a minute while we worked.

  We faced the largest of the full-length, free-standing mirrors toward the now-concealed mirror on the cabinet. A lattice of copper wiring over the pane waited to be switched on, hopefully catching the ghost inside the mirror, trapping him away from his cabinet.

  We tilted it just slightly, angling it toward the other full-length mirror, with its own wire mesh. When Aldous showed up and Stacey threw the switch, both of the first two mirrors would be turned into electrified mirror-ghost traps. If one didn't catch him, hopefully the other would.

  As an extra precaution, I stood before yet another mirror, creating three mirrors of separation between me and the magician's.

  If the magician grabbed me from the mirror in his cabinet, he'd actually be grabbing at a reflection of a reflection of a reflection. Hopefully this would make him extend his energy out into the mirror that we'd prepared with cage mesh, but still insulate me from direct contact.

  Stacey and I each held a remote capable of charging the mesh with electricity, creating an energy net to trap the magician.

  Once these three mirrors were set up, Stacey and Jacob hid themselves out of sight behind a flat Conestoga wagon.

  "We are go," I whispered to Calvin, over my headset.

  "I don't see any sign of nasty surprises ahead," he said. "It's quiet as Sunday morning in there."

  "Probably because it is Sunday morning." I lit a few candles we'd brought, scattering them for a little atmosphere, and to offer as energy treats for hungry ghosts. I extinguished my flashlight, so there was no electric light at all. Rain pounded the roof above, and thunder rumbled. "Okay," I said, to nobody and everybody.

  I approached the magician's cabinet. I took a deep breath, thinking of how strong his grip had been, his fingers long and inescapable.

  But I wasn't here to be a victim this time. I knew his name, and I was ready for him.

  Hopefully.

  I pulled away the curtain I'd tacked over the mirror and threw it aside.

  Within the dark glass, I saw myself, illuminated here and there by tongues of candle flame. My long-sleeved turtleneck, jeans, and boots kept most of my body covered—not that cloth had been much of an obstacle to his intrusive touch last time.

  My dark hair was pulled back from my face. I wasn't wearing my glasses. I try not to when in those situations where a psychokinetic ghost could smash them and fill my eyes with broken glass. They're mostly for reading, anyway.

  In my hands, I repeatedly cut a deck of cards, making shuffling and flipping sounds with them. It was meant to help attract the attention of the magician ghost, but it also gave me something to do with my busy, nervous fingers while I waited for him to show up.

  I regarded my reflection quietly. I'm not a huge fan of looking at myself, especially in pictures and videos, but that's hard to avoid when you're stuck staring into a mirror.

  Something moved within the cabinet. It wasn't much. Just a scrape. Then a thump. I remembered the phantasm I'd seen in there before, the rotten rabbit hidden inside the top hat, kicking its bony legs, and felt a moment of revulsion.

  I glanced over there, but there was no sign of movement, no further sound. The mildewed black curtain built into one side of the phone-b
ooth-sized cabinet remained perfectly still, with no hint that anything stirred within.

  That didn't stop me from feeling a crawling sensation all over my skin, like weird, cold bugs infested my clothes.

  When I looked back at the mirror in front of me, I saw him standing just behind me.

  Aldous the Mysterious looked as crisp and dapper as ever, crimson band bright around his top hat, collars starched, white gloves spotless, red-lined black cape flashing behind him as he moved.

  His face became visible, illuminating in flickering red candlelit, his mustache and pointy chin beard waxed, his face prepared for the stage with heavy black eyeliner around the eyes and white pancake makeup just about everywhere else. He smiled at me, his dark eyes seeming to smolder in the darkness.

  I raised my finger to press the remote and activate the electrical grids on the other two mirrors, hopefully catching Aldous's soul along with his reflection inside one of them.

  I wasn't fast enough.

  He reached out through the mirror—not grabbing me by my reflection as he'd done before, but actually reaching out of the old full-length mirror standing in front of me.

  He seized my arm just before I could press the button, and his fingers felt like cold steel sheathed in white linen, just as I remembered.

  Then he snapped me forward with incredible speed, lifting me off my feet as he dragged me forward.

  I flew toward the mirror, toward his theatrically wide grin and crazed eyes.

  All I could do was turn my head, close my eyes, and brace myself for impact. My face would be filled with shards of broken glass. I grabbed the frame of the mirror with my free arm, but I couldn't stop my momentum.

  Yet the smashing, bloody impact never came. I passed through the mirror as if it were an open doorway, and I landed in a dark place on the other side.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The floor where I landed was hard, made of uneven boards. The smell of rotten meat seemed to permeate the air, a common sign of a bad ghost.

  The air alone told me I was in a different place—it was suddenly thick, suffocating, difficult to breathe even on top of the awful smell.