The Tower

by J L Bryan

  “I had a bad feeling from the time we moved in, but of course there was plenty of good reason for that. I liked the West Paces house. It had a nice big back yard, gardens, fountains...I could have nice parties there with friends. Here, not so much. The apartment's smaller, and every room feels kinda dark, there's no real outside...and it just doesn't feel welcoming.

  “I guess it was a week or two after we moved in that I first saw it,” Amberly continued. “I was tossing and turning, so I got up and went to the kitchen. It was late, everybody else was asleep, or at least in their rooms and quiet. The whole apartment was quiet. I got myself a Chamomile Green Body shake—they're supposed to help with sleep. That's when I saw it in the dining room.

  “The door was half-open, and of course all the lights in the dining room were out. We hardly go in there. It's still got unopened boxes from the move. I saw the...thing I wanted to call you about...in the moonlight. It was a dark shape, and it seemed female to me, but it was too tall to be Hyacinth. I couldn't really make out the face. I couldn't really make out anything except the outline.

  “I felt like it was looking at me, though, and I felt cold. The room got real, real cold. And then it came toward me, almost like it was going to talk to me, or grab me, or attack me...then it was gone. All gone. I managed to reach my hand through the door, and onto the light switch. I felt half-sure something was going to grab me before I got the light on.

  “But it didn't. The chandelier switched on, the bulbs that aren't burned out, anyway. The dining room was all lit up, and there wasn't nothing in there but the table, chairs, and our moving boxes.”

  “Did the cold feeling continue?” I asked.

  “I guess it started to lift once I got the light on. But that was just my first glimpse. I've seen her since, and felt her. Felt something, at least, looking at me, watching me. Now I can't bear to be alone in that apartment anymore. I call my assistant up.”

  “The one we just met?”

  “Well, she's the new one. The old one quit last week. Maybe she got sick of being called up to keep me company.”

  “Did she see anything?”

  “I don't know. Never thought to ask her. I didn't want to sound crazy.”

  “Have any of your other family members experienced anything?” I asked, careful to keep my tone neutral. Sometimes, the ghost exists only in a person's mind. An extra witness can help clarify things.

  “Yes,” she said. “My daughter saw something following her in the hallway. She says it's red.”

  “Red?” I asked.

  “A red shadow. Flickering like fire. She said it ran after her, then it disappeared. And it made the room hot. Now, Dexter gets scared sometimes, and he said his room got too hot a couple times. He won't talk about it too much. Maybe he's just being a twelve-year-old boy, and he doesn't want anyone to know when he's scared. It's hard to get him to talk sometimes. He likes to just sit and stare at his video games.”

  “And your husband? Has he experienced anything?”

  “He says we'll get used to it. Said the place spooked him as a kid, too.”

  “Is he okay with our investigation, though?” I asked. I don't like being sprung on uncooperative spouses or family members.

  “It's been a little bit of a fight. Thurm's real private. He didn't even like the little garden parties at our house, no matter how small I made them. And there's his family's reputation to think about. The local media might laugh if word got out that we had ghost hunters in here. That's why the lawyer was all in a wad about signing you to secrecy.”

  “That's completely understandable,” I said. “We always work to be discreet, even without an NDA. Lots of people want their suspicions about having a haunted house kept private, for several reasons.”

  “Well, I don't care about that, but Thurm's family does. I know what I've seen. And I know I'm not crazy. It never even crossed my mind.” She sipped her Green Body shake.

  “Have you seen the entity again?” I asked. “Or experienced other problems?”

  “I've seen her around. I've felt her around. Look, I know ghosts are real. One time I was going down to the lake when I was fourteen—we'd cut through this one yard with lots of trees to get to the lake, so we had plenty of hiding spots if we needed them.

  “Well, my cousin didn't make it that night, turned out she got caught by her dad on the way out. So I waited and waited by the lake. The air got cold, even though it was July. A funny, heavy fog rose up over the lake, too.

  “When I saw him, he looked as real as you and I sitting here right now. His skin was gray. So were his clothes, which was weird because he had those Hawaiian-style flowered shirt and shorts, and they usually have a lot of bright colors, not just gray and black. His clothes were soaking wet and clinging to his body. He was a fat guy, an older guy. But I couldn't see his face. He had a big ol' double chin, and the sides and top of his head were there; his hair was real thin and gray.

  “But his face was missing. I don't mean his skin was missing, and you could see the bones and stuff...no. I mean there was a big, dark cave where his face was supposed to be, and nothing inside it but pure solid darkness. Just a bottomless, face-shaped hole.

  “And he stood there, about knee-deep in the water, like a Baptist preacher waiting to dunk somebody, just a few steps away from me, surrounded by fog. He was dripping wet. I could hear the drip drip drip clear as anything, drops coming off his fingertips where his hands hung by his side. He stood there, just dripping, just...being there. And the longer I looked at him, the scareder I got. And the scareder I got, the more I just kinda froze to the spot. He was so close, he could have waded over and grabbed me anytime.

  “Then a cloud musta shifted or something, because a bunch of bright moonlight spilled down from above. The fog went away, and so did the faceless guy.

  “I backed up, but I didn't dare turn away from the lake until I got to the driveway of the big house where I was trespassing. I ran right up the middle of that driveway instead of cutting around the side yard like usual. I knew it would make the security lights come on and the dog bark, but I didn't care. I would rather have been arrested by the police than spend another second alone that night.

  “I saw him in the newspaper two days later. A man had fallen from a speedboat after drinking too much. When his friend, also drunk, swung around to get him, he hit him with the boat. The dead man's face got all hacked up by the propeller.

  “The paper had a picture—from when he was alive, I mean, not after his face got cut off. Same thin gray hair, double chin. Even had the Hawaiian shirt. He had a regular face in the picture, nothing scary about it, just a guy. But I couldn't stand to look at it, not for one second.

  “So, yeah, I know ghosts are real. I know that cold feeling when one is close. I'm not crazy. I know this place is haunted.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let's go have a look at the apartment.”

  Chapter Four

  When we stepped inside the elevator, Amberly inserted an old brass key into a lock on the wooden control panel. She turned it before pressing the button marked 16.

  The elevator rumbled and shook as it climbed.

  “So,” Stacey said. “Pretty old elevators, huh?”

  “There's a company that knows how to keep them running. They stop by once or twice a year, I think,” Amberly said.

  “That often, huh?” Stacey grasped the brass handrail as the elevator shifted under us. “And hey, we're only like sixteen stories up, so what could go wrong?”

  The car screeched to a halt, bells rang, and the doors rattled open.

  We stepped into a corridor. One end opened up into what must have been the music room, judging by the grand piano in the corner. It was set into the narrow end of the building, so windows on three walls looked out onto the rainy city below.

  It looked like a room for hosting parties, with several little tables just big enough for cocktails and conversation. The chairs, sofas, and tables were Edwardian in style, sturdy and pr
actical, with just enough detailing around the edges to let you know someone paid serious cash for them.

  Despite the basically cheerful design and décor, the music room felt very gloomy. The dark clouds hanging over the building probably didn't help, but there was also a sense of being in the shadow of the much newer skyscrapers all around it, all of which stood dozens of floors higher than the Pennefort. Modern construction had literally overshadowed the old seventeen-floor tower.

  Amberly led us away from the music room, past the elevators and into the gloomy hallway ahead, which had very few doors. The red carpet was worn, its design long faded. Unlit, mini-sized chandeliers of wrought iron hung from the ceiling. Light bulbs flickered in widely spaced sconces along the walls.

  Amberly thumbed through her keychain and brought out another long, antique brass key. This one unlocked a door on the side of the hallway.

  We stepped into an empty sitting room, outfitted with a grandfather clock and matching dark-wood furniture that could have been stripped from an old church, stern and medieval-looking benches and chairs.

  And there were brightly painted dragons, wizards, and ladies in armor, perched here and there on bookshelves and in nooks. A tree-like electric candelabra flared to life as we entered the room; its limbs were full of fantastic creatures like griffins and unicorns. Dark curtains had been pulled tight over the room's windows. A huge TV dominated one wall.

  Some kind of Celtic-type folk music with flutes and bagpipes and harps drifted out from deeper inside the apartment.

  “We'd better let Thurm know we're here,” Amberly said. “Remember, he can be shy at first.”

  “But he knows we're coming, right?” I asked.

  “I told him. But he didn't say anything. Like he was mad. That's what he does sometimes.”

  Great, I thought.

  She led us into the kitchen, then pointed to a sliding door off to one side. “Dining room,” she said. “We'll come back to that.”

  I glanced through the slightly parted sliding doors, but all I saw in the dim room was green cardboard boxes with the cow logo of MOOVIN’ ON, a large chain of professional movers and truck rentals.

  The rooms in the apartment, as well as the hallway, had a cramped feeling. Everything was separated into small compartments divided by walls and doors; a more modern apartment or condo would have aimed to have as much open space as possible.

  The first place she led us was the source of the flute and harp music. It smelled like fresh paint.

  A man sat at a worktable, fortyish, his waist-length hair starting to gray. He'd tied it back and away from his face as he focused on painting a clay castle in front of him, its tallest tower about ten inches high. The room was warmer than the others. A large kiln sat in the back corner. I noticed there was no carpet here, just tile, maybe as a fireproofing step because of the kiln.

  “Hey, Thurm,” Amberly said, knocking on the frame of the open door.

  “Huh?” He looked up at her. Then he saw us and seemed to flinch. He wore a smock, heavily smeared with clay and paint. “Who are they?”

  “These are the investigators,” she said. “I told you. To look into the ghost.”

  “Was that today?” He picked up his phone and thumbed it rapidly. “Oh.” He glanced up at Stacey and me, then back at his screen. “You didn't tell me they were women.”

  “Is that a problem?” Stacey asked.

  “No! I didn't mean it like that.” He glanced at her quickly, then back to his screen, as if it was a safe space for his gaze. “I just looked up and, you know, that's what I thought.”

  “I'm Ellie Jordan,” I said. “This is my tech manager Stacey Tolbert. We promise we didn't mean to bother you. We'll just have a quick look around. We'll be as quiet as possible.”

  “Oh, I don't care if you're quiet.” He rinsed his paintbrush and stood, wiping gray paint onto his smock with one hand. “I tend to zone out when I'm working. Sorry.”

  “Do you make all these?” Stacey pointed to a drying rack, where a small elf sat next to a green-skinned horned demon lady.

  “They're in tribute to the Spells of Magicia universe.” He nodded to framed posters on the wall. They included the movie posters from the recent adaptation of the century-old fantasy trilogy: Spells of Magicia, Swords of Magicia, and the grand finale, Kings of Magicia. More sequels had been tacked on for the movie series.

  “Oh, yeah, my boyfriend loves those,” Stacey said.

  “I assume he's familiar with the expanded universe, too? The Skull Chasm cycle? The Paladins of Pormador?”

  “Uh...probably? I know he has the board game.”

  “The 1974 original or the watered-down 2012 version?”

  “I'll be sure to ask.”

  I glanced again at Amberly's purple and silk dress with the gold trim and puffy sleeves, the leather riding boots that laced all the way up to the knees. She was like one of his painted figures, a royal princess from a fantasy land, glittering with jewelry all over. She even had the pretty face of a girl from a fairy tale, one that would bring princes hacking their way through enchanted overgrown thorn mazes and armies of trolls just for a kiss.

  “I wish I could decorate my place with stuff I made myself,” Stacey said. “That's pretty neat.”

  “He sells them, too,” Amberly added. “Renn Fests, Dragon Con. You can follow him on Instagram.”

  “That's why I can't really say they're from the Spells of Magicia universe—even if that's clearly Scarletta the Witch...” He pointed to a snarling female figure in a conical scarlet hat, wielding a pitchfork.

  “I should buy one as a Hanukkah present for Jacob,” Stacey said. “How much for that castle you're making?”

  “This will be nine hundred dollars,” Thurmond replied.

  “Eh,” Stacey said.

  “We'll see you later, Thurm.” Amberly blew him a kiss.

  “Okay. They saw Frank, right? He gets so ticked if we don't run stuff by him.” Thurmond sounded intimidated by the diminutive lawyer.

  “They did. Frank's been pacified.”

  “So how do you capture the ghosts?” he asked me. “Proton accelerator?”

  “Nothing so high-tech,” I said. “We do have traps, but the big problem is baiting them. We can't bait them until we know who the ghost is and what the ghost wants. Often we don't trap the ghost at all, but help it move on...or force it to.”

  “Hm. I've never been one to believe in ghosts, not since attaining adulthood,” he said. “This building is old and strange, but that's all. However, should you find a ghost, I would be rather interested in seeing it.”

  “I'll make that happen if I can,” I said.

  “Do you think you'll be done soon?” he asked. “By lunchtime?”

  “Well...that really depends on what y'all want to do.” I was taken aback by his time frame, especially since my stomach was already growling for some lunch. “Typically, if we can't rule out a paranormal cause, we set up observation gear overnight. Just a few cameras and microphones—”

  “In our apartment?” He backed up a step, nearly tripping over his chair. “You'll be watching our every move?”

  “We can keep the gear to the public areas,” I said. “The hallway, definitely the dining room, just focusing on spots where people have had encounters.”

  “I've felt it in our bedroom, too,” Amberly said. “The coldness.”

  “What if hackers break into your equipment?” he asked. “What if they spy on us?”

  “Our stuff's totally encrypted,” Stacey said. “Not even the NSA could hack into it.”

  “You're sure?” Thurmond asked.

  “Yeah, totally.” She was definitely exaggerating.

  “Okay.” Thurmond sighed and sank into his seat. “I hate to be paranoid, but they are watching.”

  “I'll take care of everything,” Amberly told him. “You just focus on your castle.”

  He nodded, seeming relieved by those words. He sat back down at the table and picked up h
is paintbrush.

  “Our room is this way.” Amberly led us down the hall, past open bedroom doors. “Boy, then girl, then master...”

  I glanced into the rooms along the way. They were long and narrow, each with one wall full of rain-spattered windows overlooking the city.

  The boy's room had dirty clothes scattered around, even hanging precariously from corners of his chair, bed, and table. Video game posters hung on the wall. An assortment of video game controllers were strewn on the floor, in front of a TV so big it took up most of the wall.

  The girl's room offered pictures of bugs—wasps, spiders, and freaky-looking horned beetles. Nothing cute, not a single ladybug or butterfly to break up the horror show. A labeled diagram of a termite mound, possibly a National Geographic centerfold, was tacked up on the wall. The room was neat and orderly, the bed made with perfectly square corners like the ten-year-old girl had been through boot camp or prison.

  The master bedroom looked, basically, like we'd stepped through the enchanted attic door that led to Magicia. Dragons and trolls, wizards and witches, knights and ladies, squat little goblins in spiky armor—they were perched all around, on tables and shelves. Tapestries hung on the wall, featuring paranormal forests and enchanted swamps, the Spells of Magicia logo tucked into the corner of each one.

  The king bed was really too big for the room. The tree-trunk-sized bed posters were carved to look like rearing horses. Layers of bed curtains hung from the canopy above. The bed would have looked at home in a late medieval palace, belonging to a nobleman who really, really liked his horses.

  “You've seen things in here?” I asked.

  “I've felt it go cold. And something came out of my closet once, shadowy and rushing toward me. It disappeared...but I just know it was her again.”

  “The shadow woman from the dining room?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is the dining room where you saw her most clearly?”

  “That's right.”

  “Maybe we should head over there.”

  “Okay...but listen,” she said. “Just understand that my husband has this real severe anxiety. Social anxiety, that's part of it. He never likes to go out in public, except for the cosplay at big fantasy conventions, and only if he wears a mask. So having strangers tramping around here is stressful for him. If he seems snappy, or starts acting weird—just know that everything's okay. Try to brush it off. Okay?”