Shuttered Secrets

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “Do the guys from Southwest Ghost Investigators join you?” Riley asked, thinking of the team who led the investigation at the Jordanville Ranch.

  “It depends,” Nina said. “The level of the haunting and the guys’ schedules all factor in. We keep fairly busy individually, but we help each other out as much as possible. I also have several people in my network I can ask to join me, depending on what the job requires.”

  Riley nodded again.

  Nina smiled and squeezed Riley’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Just keep me in the loop about how, what, and who you’re feeling.”

  Riley didn’t like the “who” part of that one bit but followed Nina up the front walk anyway.

  This house was beige with muted gray accents and a brown garage door. A small garden sat out front lined by a semicircle of bricks. There was an identical garden outside the house Riley had parked in front of. A three-tiered fountain burbled softly on the corner of the small porch, a box of sidewalk chalk sitting beside it. Nina had just reached the porch when the door swung open and a pair of giggling girls came running out. The older one grabbed the handle of the chalk bucket, called a hello, and kept moving down the front sidewalk without breaking stride. Riley had jumped out of the way just in time to avoid a collision. The smaller girl laughed sheepishly, her front teeth missing. She waved a small chalk-stained hand at Nina and Riley before darting after her sister.

  “Sorry about that,” came a woman’s voice.

  Riley refocused on the front door where an exhausted-looking woman stood. Her hair was in a messy ponytail, and she swiped a wayward brown curl out of her face.

  “They’re seven and five and never stop moving,” the woman said, laughing softly. “Thanks so much for coming by. I sent the girls over to their grandparents’ house. They’re two doors over.” She stepped aside to let them in.

  “I’m happy we found a time that worked,” Nina said. “Sounds like the girls have a busy schedule.”

  “We keep hoping that if we put them in enough activities, it’ll wear them out,” she said, smiling at Riley as she stepped into the small hallway after Nina. “I think it’s wearing out my husband and me more than the kids. I’m Julie, by the way,” she said to Riley, her hand out.

  Riley shook it. “Riley. Nice to meet you.”

  The short tile-lined hallway was littered with discarded dolls, shoes, and a pair of roller skates. Nina navigated the maze with ease, making her way into the living room. Riley followed her. A black leather sectional couch at the back of the space was piled with laundry. Given the small folded stack on the ottoman, Julie had only just started.

  Julie closed the front door and joined them, looking around her living room in dismay as if suddenly realizing there was no comfortable place for anyone to sit. Something thumped upstairs and she jumped, a hand to her chest. Her eyes immediately welled with tears.

  Nina closed the space between them and placed her hands on Julie’s elbows. Nina had done the same for Riley in the cellar at the ranch when she’d been sure Riley was in the throes of a panic attack. In her usual calm, soothing voice, Nina said, “Julie, it’s okay. You’re fine. Don’t worry about the state of the house. Don’t worry about who’s upstairs. Shall we have a seat in the kitchen?”

  “Um …” Julie said, a hand still to her chest. “The, uh … dining room.” When another thump sounded from upstairs, Julie tipped her head back to scowl at the ceiling, then broke away from Nina’s light hold. “This way.”

  The dining room table was positioned near back patio doors that revealed a pool and a yard in desperate need of landscaping. On the opposite end of the space was the kitchen.

  Once they were seated at the long oval-shaped dining table, Julie said, “You said in your email that this just is an evaluation, right? How exactly do you figure out if a haunting is real or not?” She flinched when another thump sounded. “Do you use some kind of equipment like they do on those shows on TV?”

  “I’m just going to ask a few questions,” Nina said, her calm tone a sharp contrast to Julie’s increasingly anxious one.

  “Okay,” Julie said, pulling the sleeves of her sweater over her hands, and then sitting back in her chair. She crossed her arms. Chewed on her bottom lip.

  “What have you personally experienced?” Nina asked.

  “For me, it’s usually the thumping,” Julie said. “When we first moved in, it only happened occasionally, but starting about six months ago, we started hearing them at all hours of the day. We hear footsteps going down the upstairs hall at night. Doors open and close at night, too—sometimes the actual doors open and close, and sometimes it’s just the sound.” She sighed. “Last night … it sounded like someone threw ten bowling balls down the stairs. It was a horrible, horrible sound. All of us heard it. The kids woke screaming. My husband flew out of bed and grabbed a baseball bat, sure someone had just broken in.”

  “Had something fallen over?” Nina asked.

  Julie shrugged helplessly. “Nothing we could find. The doors and windows were all still locked. The alarm was set. It’s hard to discount something like that when four people hear it. It seems like every night something happens now. We’re all exhausted. The girls are fine during the day, but they get really anxious around bedtime.”

  “I understand how stressful this must all be,” Nina said. “Especially when you’ve only been here a year.”

  “And we’re not really in the financial position to just pack up and leave … but you saw how fast the girls ran out of here,” Julie said, tears welling in her eyes again. “I hate the idea that they’re growing scared of the house.”

  Nina nodded. “Has most of the activity happened upstairs?”

  “Yes, almost exclusively,” Julie said.

  “Do you know anything about the previous tenants?” Nina asked.

  “We didn’t when we moved in,” Julie said. “A neighbor across the street just told me last week that the woman who used to live here overdosed. The assumption is suicide. I’m wondering now if that’s who’s haunting the place. I know it’s not a state law that sellers have to disclose deaths that happened in the house. We didn’t even think to ask.” Another thump. “I guess we should have asked.”

  “I will do my best to figure out what’s happening here,” Nina said. “Would it be okay if Riley and I explored upstairs alone?”

  “Sure. Take all the time you need. I’ll be in the living room … that laundry isn’t going to fold itself. If the ghost did that instead of make so much noise, she could stay as long as she wanted,” Julie said, covering up her awkward laugh with an even more awkward cough. “Anyway, my husband won’t be home for a few hours, so it’s all yours.”

  Riley smiled just as awkwardly at Julie and stood, following after Nina. The stairs were in a small recessed alcove. Riley followed Nina up.

  There were three bedrooms and a communal bathroom upstairs. The doors to all the rooms stood open. The master bedroom was to the left of the landing. A short hallway snaked off to the right, leading to the remaining rooms.

  They stood on the landing facing the stairs, with the master bedroom to Riley’s right, and the open doorway of an office to Nina’s left.

  “All I want you to do today is let yourself feel the energy of this space,” Nina said. “I know that sounds like fluffy nonsense, but humor me. Think of your ability as an additional sense. Cutting off sensory input to one sense will help heighten the others. So I want you to hang out in this hallway with your eyes closed and see what your other senses pick up. That’s all I expect of you.” She pulled a handheld tape recorder out of her messenger bag. “I’m going to attempt to get a few basic EVPs.”

  Riley nodded. She walked to the middle of the hallway, pressed her back against the wall, and then slid to the floor, sitting cross-legged. Having something solid behind her would help convince her brain that nothing could sneak up behind her. Granted, that argument wouldn’t work when the threat was an incorporeal being …

&nbs
p; “Good,” Nina said. “Now, close your eyes and try your best to relax.”

  Riley did so, placing her hands on her bent knees. She blew out a slow breath. She could feel Nina a few feet away, and she could hear the faint sound of Julie moving downstairs, working her way through the massive pile of laundry. A clock ticked somewhere nearby. Other than that, the space was quiet.

  “My name is Nina Galvan,” Nina said, and Riley flinched at the sudden sound of her voice in the near-silence. “We’re here to talk to you. Are you here with us?” A long pause followed. “Can you tell me your name?”

  Riley tracked the sound of Nina slowly moving around. Her voice grew distant as she moved into the master bedroom, where she asked the spirit how long she’d lived in this house, followed by a question about how she’d died. Footsteps shuffled closer to Riley, then disappeared into the office to Riley’s right. Nina asked why the spirit was still here.

  As Nina passed in front of Riley, she asked, “Was the overdose an accident?”

  A thump sounded so loudly to Riley’s left, she jumped, her eyes flying open.

  “Are you okay up there?” Julie called from downstairs.

  “All good,” Nina said, her tone as calm as ever.

  Riley had a hand pressed to her chest, where her heart galloped at the speed of a herd of wild horses.

  At the end of the hallway, where the bathroom was, stood a small credenza. The top was lined with framed photos of Julie and her family, along with a small potted fern on one side, and a decorative vase on the other. Stuffed into the credenza’s four cubbies were board games and random toys. Nearly all the framed photos had been knocked over, and the fern in its wicker pot lay on its side, soil spilled across the floor.

  The thump, Riley realized, had come from the credenza lifting off the floor and then crashing back to the ground—like a mini, localized earthquake.

  A familiar sensation, like she was being watched, washed over her and Riley’s attention whipped toward the top of the stairs. She sucked in a breath at the sight of the haggard woman stumbling from the master bedroom. Her black hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, but wisps of it had come loose. She wore a T-shirt, jeans, and an open bathrobe, the ties hanging by her sides. The bags under her eyes were dark. There were a few scrapes on her face and arms, like road rash. Her bottom lip was split and swollen. Had she been in a car accident? Though the woman stared toward Riley, her focus wasn’t fixed on one spot. Her gaze darted here and there, and she placed a hand on the wall near the top of the stairs, as if to steady herself.

  Riley was so startled by the sight, she couldn’t speak, couldn’t alert Nina.

  The woman doubled over then, groaning with her arms wrapped around her stomach. With a hand pressed to her mouth, she attempted to make a quick turn back to the bedroom, presumably where there was a master bathroom, but the abrupt movement seemed to cause a wave of vertigo. She stumbled back a step, tripped over her own feet, and flailed wildly for purchase on the wall or the stair’s railing.

  Riley instinctively reached out a hand. “Hey, watch it—”

  The woman’s eyes grew wide, as if she’d heard Riley, and then lost her balance, foot slipping off the edge of the top stair. Riley ran to the top of the staircase as if she could keep the woman from tumbling down, but all she could do was watch in horror as the woman bounced hard down the steps, hitting the wall, the sharp edges of the stairs, the railing, thudding her way down until she sprawled on the hardwood floor below, her arms and legs twisted at awkward angles.

  Riley pressed one hand to her mouth and the other to her stomach. She wanted to run down the stairs and check her pulse, to call for help. But she knew the woman was already dead and had been for at least a year. The sound of her flesh slamming against hard unforgiving surfaces replayed in Riley’s mind on an awful surround sound loop. Somehow the fall had lasted hours and mere moments at the same time.

  The woman vanished abruptly, causing Riley to expel a shaky breath.

  Julie was there at the bottom of the staircase a moment later, eyes wide. “That was the sound we heard last night!” she said, hands pressed to her temples. “Please tell me you heard it, too. Tell me I’m not losing my mind!”

  Riley slowly shook her head, lowering her hand from her mouth. “You’re not losing your mind. We heard it, too.”

  Nina, keeping her voice low so only Riley could hear, said, “Looks like we have enough reason to come back.”

  Once back downstairs, Nina told Julie that she’d be in contact soon to schedule a more thorough investigation of the house.

  “She’s not malevolent,” Riley told Julie, feeling compelled to reassure her even if she was equally compelled to shield her from the specific details of what she’d seen.

  Julie, near tears, had only nodded in reply.

  Nina walked Riley to her car across the street. “So, what did you see?”

  The horrible sound of the woman tumbling down the steps echoed in her head and Riley’s stomach roiled. “I don’t know about the overdose part of the story, but the woman who lived here fell down those stairs. That horrible sound is her falling to her death.”

  Nina nodded. “She felt sick in her stomach before she fell. Confusion, too. Did you get that sense?”

  Riley nodded. “So did the overdose kill her, or the fall?”

  “Good question,” Nina said. “Her energy spiked when I asked if her overdose was an accident. She’s definitely trying to tell us something, but I agree with your assessment—she’s not a danger to the family.”

  Riley looked back at the house, scanning the exterior and the windows for any sign of what had happened here.

  “How do you feel? Seeing her fall couldn’t have been easy,” Nina said.

  “It’s burned into my head—the sight and the sound,” Riley said. “But I think I’m okay. I just hate that I had to watch her fall and couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

  “The visual component of your ability is always going to add an extra layer of intensity for you. Are you comfortable returning here?”

  “Yes,” Riley said with little hesitation. “Before she fell, it looks like she was already banged up pretty good. I think something happened to her even before the supposed overdose.”

  “Interesting. Good to know for the investigation. I’ll be in touch later in the week to coordinate coming back, okay? I have a friend who may be a good fit for this case. Between the two of you, we may be able to figure out what happened.”

  Riley watched Nina walk toward her own car. She’d called Nina today because of Brynn and the woman in the yellow dress. In the events of this afternoon, Riley had managed to forget that for a few hours. “Nina?”

  She turned back, brows raised.

  “When I called earlier, I mentioned I’d been sucked into another mystery …” Nina closed the distance, and Riley told her the gist of what she knew so far. “I don’t know where to go from here. It seems like there’s a connection between the mystery woman and Brynn—I mean I don’t know for sure, but—”

  Nina held up a hand. “Does your gut say they’re connected?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then trust that. You have to learn to trust your own instincts. Beyond that, I have another séance coming up next week. It’s my usual monthly group. If you want to join and bring the camera in question, just let me know.”

  Nope! It wasn’t a fear of attending another séance. It was just a visceral gut reaction to the suggestion.

  Nina had told her moments ago to trust her instincts. The séance was out. Still, she thanked Nina for the offer.

  On Riley’s drive home, she marveled at the fact that the number of mysteries she needed to solve had doubled in less than an hour.

  CHAPTER 6

  Three days later, she had no new insights into Brynn Bodwell or the woman in the yellow dress, and Nina had yet to confirm a return date for the investigation at Julie’s. Riley did her damnedest to slip back into her usual routine, but she was so t
ired. She’d woken with a start twice last night, heart racing, unable to shake the sense that someone had just been leaning over her bed.

  Which was why she was sitting on her kitchen counter at seven in the morning, eating cereal out of a widemouthed mug. She hadn’t done dishes in a week. Shortly after chugging a full cup of coffee and feeling both manic and jittery, she’d called Detective Howard at half past dark thirty and left him a message asking if he’d ever heard of a Brynn Bodwell. The detective was based out of Santa Fe, only two hours from Taos, where Brynn’s body had been found. The case had not only gone national but wasn’t far from his neck of the woods.

  Riley’s sleuthing had originally led her to the detective because he’d been one of the officers on the scene when Renee Palmer’s body had been found bludgeoned in the Gila National Forest back in 1983. The case had been cold for decades before Riley’s trip to the forest had both heightened her abilities and revealed secrets of Renee’s past.

  Riley’s relationship with the detective had smoothed out since their first series of interactions. She’d called several times a week to check his progress on reopening the cold case—though the detective might have used the word “pester.” The final showdown with Hank had resulted in the detective getting shot in the arm, but he had also been able to apprehend Hank, a man who had eluded capture for the majority of the detective’s career. Once Hank had been handcuffed and stuffed into the back of a cruiser, Detective Howard had said, “I might have to seriously reconsider how often I use psychics” before one of his fellow officers had escorted the “stubborn old man” to the hospital.

  When her phone rang, she nearly toppled off the counter. The jolt of surprise caused her to slosh milk onto her pajama pants. Cursing under her breath, she swiped away the milk and a corn flake, then put down her mug and picked up her phone.