by Bryan, JL
The door opened onto a dark, silent front hall.
Then a high-pitched wail shrieked from somewhere inside the house.
“Burglar alarm!” Stacey clapped her hands over her ears. “Ouch.”
A light switched on somewhere inside. Darika descended the stairs, wrapped in a silk robe, her long black hair loose and flowing to her shoulders. When she saw us at the door, she scowled and raised a tiny remote control in her hand. The alarm ended with a bloop.
“What is happening?” Darika hissed, her face a mask of fury.
“We heard a woman screaming in the woods,” I said. “We wanted to make sure you weren’t in danger.”
“Why would I be out in the woods in the middle of the night?” Darika asked. “Unless it was one of Wyatt’s mandatory team-bonding exercises out in Big Sur. How did you get into my house?”
“I, uh, picked the lock.” I held up my picks sheepishly, and she scowled. I became acutely aware of how dirty and scraped-up we appeared.
“If I’m locked inside my house, shouldn’t that tell you I’m probably safe?” she asked.
“We didn’t want to make assumptions, given the reports of injured workers—”
A deafening siren made it pointless for me to speak any further.
Gary’s long black golf cart came flying up the road flashing rows of blinding blue police lights.
“You called Gary?” Darika asked, grimacing at the searing lights and shading her eyes with her hand.
“Just in case,” I said.
“It was a seriously freaky scream, and we heard it a few times,” Stacey said.
“We were concerned about another Ernesto situation,” I said.
“What’s the trouble?” Gary hopped out, one hand on a bright yellow TASER holstered on a camouflage tactical vest, which he wore over a bright yellow shirt polka-dotted with parrots like he'd been on his way to a Jimmy Buffett show. He tossed his head to fling away some long strands of hair that had drooped off his bald spot and into his eyes.
“Right now, it’s those lights!” Darika shouted before he got too close. “Why are you even using those?”
“It creates a feeling of security. Lets everyone know the authorities are here and in charge.”
“There are only four people on the entire island, Gary. Who are you trying to impress?”
Gary scowled, but he reached in and killed the flashing blue lights.
Darika turned her attention to Stacey and me, looking over the damage we’d taken in the woods. I was in especially bad shape, covered in dirt. “What happened to you two?”
“I hit a steep spot where the ground’s crumbled away and the wall’s broken, and I nearly fell off the bluff. You might want to fix that.”
“Finally, something to place on my to-do list for this wretched island,” Darika said. “So, you chased a ghost into the woods. I don’t suppose you caught it?”
“Not this time.”
“When you do, let me know. Until then, stay away from my house at night. And as a general rule.” Darika stepped back into the house and closed the door. I heard her lock it with a chain on the inside.
Chapter Ten
“I’ve seen that look on her face before.” Gary approached us as we left Darika’s porch. “You do not want to be on the business end of that lady’s wrath, I can tell you.”
“Sorry for the false alarm, Gary,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”
“Hey, just doin’ my duty. Looks like you two got banged up pretty bad. Darika didn’t do that, did she?”
“We got drawn into a wild dog chase in the woods,” I told him. “It wasn’t great.”
“You need my first aid kit?”
“We have our own, thanks. We could use a ride back to the main house, if you don’t mind me getting dirt all in your cart.”
“Heck, no, I end up hosing that thing out every week for one reason or another. Hop in.” He opened the rear door for us like a limo driver. I decided not to ask about the frequent hose-outs.
Stacey and I climbed into the extended golf cart, glad for the mesh that blocked the insects. The electric cart barely made a sound as it glided up the oyster-shell road.
“While we’re all stirred up out here, how about a night drive on the beach?” Gary suggested. “You can see the stars real well right now. And this cart’s got new sand tires I want to test out. Tread’s so deep you could shove your whole fist up inside.”
“Is the beach haunted?” Stacey asked.
“Could be. It’s a nice spot, anyway. The horses like it.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing the wild horses.” Stacey looked interested now. “And they run around on the beach in the moonlight? Did I fall into an episode of Black Beauty?”
“I think our hands are full enough as it is,” I said. “Did you see anything unusual tonight, Gary?”
“Me? Nope, I just watched a DVD and hit the sack. Top Gun. Always puts me right to sleep.”
“Someone called the dogs off with a horn. Any guesses who that might be, Gary?”
“Wasn’t me. Pretty sure it wasn’t Darika.”
“Guesses can include dead people,” Stacey told him.
“Dead people, huh?” He rubbed his chin. “I suppose the old game warden whose house I took over. Or maybe it’s Old Man Grolman himself, out hunting boar and deer from beyond the grave. But a dead man’s got no use for meat.”
“Maybe he enjoys the chase,” I said.
“It has to beat lying around in your grave all night,” Stacey said.
“Is Grolman buried here on the island?” I asked Gary. “In that cemetery, maybe?”
“Oh, I could take you on a night tour of the island. The cemetery’s all right, but I don't recommend it. I’d say the beach is the way to go.”
“I’d like to see the cemetery in the morning,” I told him. “Late morning. I think we’re just about done for tonight.”
“Suit yourself.” Gary parked by the front door, near our van. He hopped out to get the door for us again. “If you see anything else crazy, just holler. I’ll keep my radio on. But do not—and I can’t say this enough—go and bother the boss lady at her residence again. She only likes to meet with people in her office at the lodge. Never has anyone to her house. That guest cottage is like her personal bubble, you know what I mean?”
“Okay,” I said as we stepped out. “Thanks for the lift.”
“Be careful out there.” His gaze shifted from us to the heavy front doors of the lodge. “And in there, too. I couldn’t tell you which place is more dangerous, to be honest.”
Then he drove off, his black security cart as silent as the deathly carriage of a Dullahan from Irish lore.
“Well, that was all terrible,” Stacey said as we climbed into the van. “You’re bleeding. Let’s go patch up your scratches.”
At the chambermaids’ cottage, the communal bathroom's floors and pipes looked new, but the walls were aged concrete, even in the shower stalls, creating a dismal prison feeling. The lodge had originally been built as a show of wealth and power by Grolman, but little thought had been given to the comfort of the numerous people meant to staff the place. So far, it didn’t look like social-media tycoon Wyatt Lanigan had any serious plans for labor reform, either.
After showering in one of the concrete nooks, I changed into some night clothes—not pajamas, not in a place where things might creep in to attack us at night. Instead, it was yoga pants and a loose long-sleeve shirt, suitable for sleeping in a strange bed or running for your life from some demonic horror.
Stacey and I retired to our rooms.
In mine, I made sure the windows were shuttered, because sunrise was only a few hours away, but also to prevent things from looking at me while I slept. Paranormal entities can easily walk through walls, but also can be somewhat in denial about being dead, so they obey certain physical boundaries out of psychological habit. Habit is a powerful force in a ghost’s existence.
I pulled together the four narrow
beds in my room into one giant superbed, then spread out my sleeping bag atop it. The mattresses were new but cheap and uncomfortable. The bedframes were more than a century old and creaked at the slightest movement. With my phone alarm set to wake me at the crack of ten, I looked forward to a few peaceful hours before sunrise.
Despite the poor accommodations, I was tired enough to fall asleep quickly.
My sleep was unpleasant and uncomfortable, though, filled with dreams of unseen beasts pursuing me through the woods.
I awoke disoriented in total darkness, the air around me painfully cold, like I was sleeping in a refrigerated locker down at the morgue. My fingers and toes were numb, and I felt drained, like some paranormal parasite had been feeding on my energy.
Footsteps sounded, small and soft. I wanted to believe it was just Stacey passing my door on a late-night visit to the bathroom or kitchen, but I doubted it. Stacey doesn’t generally suck all the warmth out of a room or all the energy out of people’s souls. If either of us has that effect, it’s probably me.
I eased out of bed, pawed around on the flimsy nightstand until I found my flashlight, then padded to the door in my socks, trying to keep my steps soft to avoid alerting the entity to my presence.
My flashlight stayed off and pointed at the floor, but if I heard a growl from the darkness ahead, it was going full white-light flood mode.
I’d left my bedroom door ajar in case Stacey needed me, but not enough that I could step through without pushing it open and advertising my presence.
Refraining from that, I looked out through the small gap of my slightly open door, into the hallway outside. Stacey’s room was just across the hall, her door wide open.
Someone stood in the hall, barely visible in the moonlight from the front room windows, staring into Stacey’s room with her back to me. She wore a white apron over an ankle-length black dress. The apron straps crossed her back, tied in a large bow at her waist. A white cap concealed most of her head, but a few long strands of pale hair had escaped from beneath it.
The woman looked completely solid. My main indicator that she wasn’t of the living was the cold front she’d brought with her, though her Victorian-era maidservant costume was another hint.
I eased open my door, trying to make no noise, but the hinge gave a rusty squeak.
The woman turned to look at me. I jumped, and I screamed.
Her appearance horrified me. Her face was bizarrely canine, the ears wide and triangular, the nose sharp, the eyes black and empty.
Being in the ghost business, I’m never proud to admit when I’ve been startled into screaming, but we’d only just been menaced by disappearing diablo dogs in the woods earlier that night.
As I screamed, I reflexively turned on my flashlight to strike her with thousands of lumens of white light.
Her canine face was a mask, a sculpted red work of monstrous, brutal artistry that concealed her whole face in the guise of a demonic-looking fox.
I tensed, ready for an attack.
The ice-cold woman vanished instead, possibly chased away by my light. I carry that thing for a reason.
A bright blue glow erupted from Stacey’s room, as if Gary had driven in there with patrol lights blazing. Stacey’s cylindrical blue bed tent glowed from within. The tent unzipped, and Stacey jumped out swinging her flashlight. “Ellie? What happened?”
“I saw a horrible apparition.”
“Oh, good! Where?” She swept the hall with her flashlight. “In your room? No wonder you freaked out.”
“Actually, she was in the hallway, staring into your room,” I said.
Stacey shivered at that, and shivered more as I described the woman I’d seen.
“Do you think they had fancy dress balls at the lodge?” Stacey asked. “Costume parties?”
“Maybe. She wore more of a maid’s outfit, though. Black dress, white collar. Either she was one of the household maids, or she decided to dress like one and spend her afterlife in the maids’ cottage. That second option’s possible, but would require some pretty specific motivation.”
“Yeah, a ritzier guest would probably haunt the main lodge,” Stacey said. “I wonder why she’s here. And why she keeps wearing the mask in her ghost form.”
“It must have been significant to her. If she hadn’t been wearing it, or we hadn’t been stalked earlier, I could have kept myself under control and observed her longer.” I shook my head, disappointed in my reaction.
“While she observed me,” Stacey reiterated. “In my sleep.”
“Maybe you’re sleeping in her old room. Maybe even her old bed.”
“Ellie, stop!” Stacey sighed. “I’m moving into your room.”
Stacey actually managed to fall asleep again within a few minutes of moving over to a new bed. It wasn’t so easy for me. My mind kept rerunning my spill down the bluff, the threatening growls in the woods, and the haunting image of the girl in the hallway with her hideous mask, definitely not the kind of thing one wore to a children’s party. The fox mask seemed designed to be unpleasant and disturbing.
It appeared the Grolman estate was indeed home to a host of spirits, as reported by the many workers who’d quit, and even hinted at by Captain Walker, who certainly seemed to know his way around the islands.
After the difficult night, it was almost a relief when my cell phone woke me, even though it was Darika calling to demand an update.
“Good morning,” she said, in the most perfunctory of ways. “I’d like a rundown of your work so far.”
“We’ve only just started—”
“Yet we need swift progress. In addition, I’ve arranged for you to speak with Dr. Wendy Haverford.”
“Oh. Good? I’m sorry, who is—”
“Oakland College History Department. Pittsburgh. She wrote a biography of Senator James Ryland.”
“And who is James—”
“Again, I’ve retained her to explain that to you, at some expense, so I suggest you listen to her and make good use of that time and our money.”
“Okay, but if I knew—”
“Can you help us or not?” Darika asked.
“We did have another development.” I told her about the apparition we’d seen in our cottage. “Do you have any idea who that could be?”
“I certainly do not. My task was the legal and political work involved in gaining the island lease, as well as renovating and modernizing the estate when that proved too difficult a task to delegate. The history of the people who once lived here was irrelevant.”
“We see that in a lot of cases.”
“Come to my office at nine-thirty for the meeting with Dr. Haverford.”
“Is she here on the island?” I asked, surprised, but Darika had hung up.
“What’s up?” Stacey asked.
“Darika's not feeling patient with us at all. And I still don’t get the rush. How can you buy a nineteenth-century mansion that’s been neglected for decades and expect to flip it into something modern and habitable overnight? These people watch too much Home and Garden TV.”
“Because Wyatt Lanigan is famously impulsive,” Stacey said. “That’s how he ended up living on a blimp. The company that owned it was going to decommission it, and he felt bad for it.”
“He lives on a blimp?” I asked. “That he felt bad for?”
“You know, the LookyLoon blimp? I read he’s got it all decked out inside like a luxury apartment, and he prefers it to any of his houses. Or his yacht. Or his submarine.”
“A wacky, extravagant kind of billionaire, then,” I said. “Did he just buy Satilla Island as another hobby? Because he felt bad for it? Or as a status symbol? ‘Look at me, I’m as rich as an old-time Rockefeller.’”
“And now we’re risking our lives to make it a safe playground for him,” Stacey said. “Maybe he should abandon the island instead. Find another hobby.”
I thought it over, then sighed and shook my head. “If there are dangerous entities, we want to remove them
from the world—not just for the benefit of some tech billionaire’s twentieth vacation home that he’ll maybe never visit, but to protect all the people those entities might endanger in the future.”
“Like the people who work on the island,” Stacey said. “Or unsuspecting campers and explorers, if it becomes a public park again.”
“When the dead don’t stay buried, we have to bury them better and deeper,” I said. “That’s just what we do. Let’s be glad we have a client who can pay his bills for a change.”
With no time to spare, we hurried to get ready, then drove up toward the main lodge, which looked like an immense, shadowy tomb even in the morning light.
Chapter Eleven
“I’ve had a team up all night researching the island,” Darika said by way of greeting us when we stepped into the office. She’d set up two large, curved, gaming-style monitors atop the giant redwood slab of the antique desk. The ragged stuffed boar stared at us with glass eyes over its long, curved tusks. The fox was perched on a log, its paws nailed into place.
One of Darika’s monitors, turned partly toward us, displayed grainy newsprint and black and white pictures, with the headline EVANGELINE RYLAND RAISES EYEBROWS AT DEBUTANTE BALL. A portion of a photo showed a cluster of grim, unsmiling young women in stiff, high-collared, tightly cinched dresses. One stood apart from the others, keeping her distance and smirking, in a much looser dancing dress. “Reading anything good lately?” I asked.
“I’ve forwarded everything to you. Please have a seat. Dr. Haverford will be joining us in a few minutes.” Darika rotated the screen to fully face us, then tapped at her keyboard, which was silvery and ergonomic, sleek and wireless, as was her mouse. Her monitors and speakers were also wireless. I wasn’t even sure where their electricity was coming from.
“I did look up Senator Ryland, but I didn’t have time to read in depth,” I said. “They were a Pittsburgh family who did well in the iron industry.”
“Very well, yes,” Darika said. “They were members of the Jekyll Island Club and had a winter cottage there like other prominent families.”
