Inferno Park

by JL Bryan

  “Uh, no...” Stacey looked down at her shirt as if puzzled.

  “So why do you wear it?”

  “Because I don't want to be naked?”

  “Question answered,” I said. “Next?”

  “Why do ghosts wrap themselves in bedsheets?” Stacey asked.

  “They don’t do that. Why would you even think--?”

  “So they can rest in peace.” Stacey beamed, then her smile faltered a little. “That’s a joke.”

  “No, jokes make you laugh.”

  “That one killed at my second-grade Halloween party.”

  “Only because your audience was high on sugar,” I said.

  “Here’s another one: why do ghosts come out at night?”

  “Because their electromagnetic fields are sensitive to dense concentrations of photons.”

  “Joke-ruiner,” Stacey said.

  We drove north and west, away from the city center. The Treadwell house was in an odd area of town, upriver, near empty brick warehouses and a few old factory shells dating back more than a hundred years. The nearest residential neighborhood was a row of decrepit bungalows on narrow, weedy lots, some of them clearly abandoned or foreclosed. They'd probably been inhabited by factory and dock workers at some point.

  One old factory did show some signs of remodeling and gentrification, with a clothing boutique and one of those restaurants where you can buy a cruelty-free mushroom sandwich on sprouted-grain bread for just fifteen bucks. Maybe the area was on its way back.

  I dropped the sun visor and opened the mirror to double-check myself before meeting the new clients. I always kept it pretty simple—minimal make-up, long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. I can't do much more than that with my crazy coarse hair, anyway. Back in high school, I'd let it grow too shaggy and thick, and it combined with my old armor-thick glasses to create a real Mad Scientist Girl look.

  Unlike Stacey, I hadn't been trained in a thousand subtle varieties of cosmetics and hair products. After my parents died when I was fifteen, I didn't really care about normal adolescent stuff like parties, dances, or dating, anyway. I'd stay up late at night studying everything from William James and Spiritualism to Tarot cards and Aleister Crowley.

  Even then, I was training myself to be a ghost trapper.

  “I don't see any houses down this way...” Stacey said. We passed a low brick warehouse choked with vines, its windows boarded over and spraypainted with graffiti.

  “Maybe there.” I pointed to an overgrown lot with a screen of massive old trees and a wilderness of overgrown shrubs. A narrow, cracked brick drive led from the street into the darkness behind the trees.

  We had to slow down and squint to read the old letters rusting off the ivy-choked brick mailbox. It was the right address.

  I turned and eased the van up the cracked driveway, nosing aside low-lying limbs.

  “Doesn't look like anybody's lived here in a long time,” Stacey whispered. “Do you think it'll be a real ghost this time? I'm tired of duds.”

  “Careful what you wish for,” I told her. More than half our calls come from people who are just plain ghost-happy. They think their place is haunted, and they haven't bothered to eliminate other options. Sometimes that eerie, moaning cold spot is just a clunky air conditioner; sometimes those strange footsteps in the attic are just squirrels. Our first job is to check for any non-paranormal causes for the alleged haunting.

  Stacey hadn't seen much in the way of real ghosts in the three weeks since she'd been hired full-time. If she had seen the kinds of things I've seen, she would have been less eager to find a true haunting.

  The house lay beyond a jungle of green that had once been a lawn and gardens. Here in coastal Georgia, with the hot sun and constant rain, the wilderness is always ready to sprout back at the first sign of neglect.

  I slowed to a halt as the front of the house came into view.

  “Wow,” Stacey whispered.

  A three-story brick mansion loomed above us, much of it hidden by the shadows of the old trees overhead, and even more of it concealed by moss and wild vines. It was a Gothic Revival style house, made of dark brick and heavy wood, with treacherously steep roofs and sharp, high gables rising toward the dim tree canopy above. It had a medieval castle look to it, maybe the kind of neglected castle where Beauty would find the Beast hanging out, just waiting for the remodeling power of love to turn it all into a gorgeous palace.

  A team of three men worked on the roof, repairing years of broken shingles and rotten wood. A pair of paint-spattered pick-up trucks sat in the drive below them. I idled beside the trucks for a moment.

  “This place looks creepy,” Stacey whispered. “Does it feel cold to you?”

  “There's enough shade to lower the temperature a few degrees,” I said. “Don't get worked up and spook yourself. Keep your mind empty.”

  “An empty mind is an open mind,” Stacey intoned solemnly, imitating our boss, Calvin Eckhart. We both broke down into snickering. Stacey is a pretty convincing mimic, and Calvin’s occasional bouts of Zen are always amusing, delivered in his earthy good-old-boy accent.

  “It's true,” I said, straightening up in my seat. “They said to pull around to the side.”

  “Ooh, we have to use the servants' entrance?” Stacey made a face as we followed the weedy brick drive back around to the two-story east wing of the house. The east wing had its own chimney and looked to be in much better repair than the main facade, with no mold or vines on the bricks, the trim freshly painted a dark brown. “They must not want the neighbors to know they called the ghost exterminators.”

  “What neighbors?” I asked, thinking of the empty warehouse we'd just passed.

  I parked near a likely-looking side door. The door was heavy and red, built of solid wood and shielded by a screen door. It was sunken at the back of a small brick porch under the shadows of a sharply peak roof. The door itself looked new, and the brick looked worn but recently pressure-washed.

  Two more cars were parked there, a silver Jaguar and a small black Mercedes. Good. Eckhart Investigations charges on a rough sliding scale, so people and businesses who can afford it pay more, while poor people pay less. We also do some free work for people who obviously can’t afford anything.

  I sort of hoped the Treadwells had a true haunting. The ghost business had been slow for a few weeks, and I could use a decent paycheck at the end of the month.

  Stacey and I got out of the van. I grabbed my black toolbox, while she brought her camera bag.

  “Are you the ghost catchers?” a small, whispery voice asked, and I jumped. Maybe I was a little more affected by the dark, creepy old mansion than I wanted to admit to Stacey.

  A girl in a yellow dress emerged from the shadows under the roofed doorway, clutching a cloth doll in her hands. She twisted the doll nervously as she stared at us. She was nine or ten, and she had purple bags under her eyes as if she hadn’t slept in a long time. It was unsettling to see that on a kid so young. She could have been the cover girl for Sad Orphan Monthly, if not for the brightly-printed Cavalli dress that probably cost as much as a month’s rent on my apartment.

  “We are the ghost catchers,” I replied. “I’m Ellie, and this is Stacey Ray.”

  “Just call me Stacey!” Stacey said. She waved and gave the exaggerated smile people use when clumsily trying to ingratiate themselves to small children. “What’s your name?”

  “Can you make her go away?” the girl asked me, and for a moment I thought she was talking about Stacey. The little girl’s face was pale and solemn.

  “Make who go away?” I asked.

  The girl glanced back at the door behind her, as if to check whether anyone was watching. Then she whispered, looking down at her doll: “The lady who comes at night.”

  “Is she scary?” Stacey asked. The girl looked at Stacey like she was incredibly stupid.

  “Is your mom Anna Treadwell?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Would you ge
t her for us?”

  “Mom!” The little girl turned and screamed at the door, but she did not move closer to it. “The ghost people are here!” She turned back and stared at us. “I don’t like to go inside.”

  A minute later, a woman stepped out of the red door. She looked to be in her late thirties or early forties, her dark hair in a stylish professional bob. She was attractive and fit—I pegged her as the Pilates type. She wore old sneakers, worn jeans, and a t-shirt that read Southeastern Wireless: Team-Building Camp 2013! Every bit of her, from her hair to her toes, was spattered with light blue paint.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m a mess,” the woman said, blushing hard and trying to adjust her hair. “Is it ten already? It’s so easy to lose track of time in this house.”

  “That’s fine, please don’t worry about it. Doing some renovations?” I pointed to the guys working on the roof.

  “You have no idea.” She shook her head as if overwhelmed. She wiped a paint-crusted hand on her jeans. “I’m Anna. I’d shake your hand, but you probably don’t want to stain your clothes Daydream Azure, so...”

  “I’m Ellie Jordan, senior investigator for Eckhart,” I told her. “We spoke on the phone yesterday.”

  “Oh, yes!” She smiled, but it looked forced, like she was trying to hide some serious apprehension. “Nice to meet you.”

  “This is Stacey Ray Tolbert, our tech manager.” I delivered our job titles with a straight face, as if our company consisted of more than three people. It was just me, Stacey, and our boss Calvin Eckhart, a retired homicide detective who had fallen into paranormal investigations and ghost-trapping years ago. Calvin had hired Stacey because he wanted to withdraw from fieldwork, claiming that he was tired of trying to chase ghosts in rickety attics and basements while confined to a wheelchair.

  “You can call me Stacey,” Stacey told her. I don’t know why I even bother introducing Stacey by her full name. It’s just kind of fun to say: Stacey Ray Tolbert.

  “I guess you’ve already met Lexa,” Anna Treadwell said, giving her daughter a half-hug with one arm. Lexa ducked away, looking annoyed. “Come on inside, everyone. Please ignore the mess, we’re still unpacking and organizing...everything’s been crazy lately.” I took it she didn’t mean crazy in a fun way.

  “Did you recently move here?” I asked as we followed Anna and Lexa inside. Anna had a gentle Midwestern sort of accent, so I knew she wasn’t from Georgia originally.

  “Oh, yes. About six weeks ago.” The hallway was tall but fairly narrow, with a dark hardwood floor that made our footsteps echo. A hammer banged overhead. Light bulbs burned in a chandelier, but the heavy shadows of the corridor seemed to absorb the glow, leaving the upper corners dark. Heavy wooden doors lined both sides of the hall. One opened onto a dining room with a long, polished cherry table and matching chairs, plus cardboard boxes heaped in the corner. The opposing door opened onto a living room with a long leather couch, a big flatscreen on the wall, and more boxes waiting to be unpacked.

  The hall seemed to end abruptly. On the right side, a flight of polished wooden stairs led up and out of sight. Just past the steps, at the very end of the hall, was another heavy door like the one through which we’d entered. Three industrial-sized deadbolts were built into it, and one was locked into place. The wall around the door seemed a slightly different color than those around it, as though the wall and door were not original to the house and had been added later.

  “Dale!” Anna shouted up the stairs. The hammering paused for a moment, then resumed. “Dale, the ghost detectives are here!”

  The hammering continued.

  “My husband will be down in a second,” Anna said with an apologetic smile. Though she was putting up a calm front, her hands were trembling.

  “No rush,” I said. I wanted to put her at ease but wasn’t sure how. “Where did you move from?”

  “Oh, Marietta. Outside Atlanta?” She pointed back over her shoulder.

  “I’m familiar.”

  “Chicago before that. Dale grew up there.” Anna took a deep breath and screamed: “Dale, get down here right now!”

  The hammering stopped, and there was another loud bang, as if someone had thrown a hammer on the floor. Footsteps clomped on the stairs. A thin man about Anna’s age, his dark hair speckled with gray, stomped down from the landing.

  “Anna, I can’t leave a bookshelf half-hung!” he snapped at his wife. He definitely had a Chicago accent. There was a lot of nose in that voice. “I had to finish that second nail. Maybe if you helped out more, you would understand—”

  “Dale, the detectives are here,” Anna interrupted, pointing at us.

  “What’s that?” Dale saw us, then straightened up. A look of confusion crossed his face as he looked at me and Stacey.

  I knew that look. I saw it most often among older males—they get thrown off-balance by the idea of a female detective.

  We introduced ourselves quickly. Dale’s voice became less whiny now that he wasn’t alone with his family.

  “You have a beautiful home, Mr. and Mrs. Treadwell,” I added, eager to defuse any tension.

  “It’s a wreck,” Dale said, shaking his head. “Real money pit, just like I said before we bought it. And that was before all the...” He shrugged, as if deciding he didn’t want to finish his sentence.

  “Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?” I asked, glancing at the dining room, where eight chairs were spaced around the table.

  “Maybe the dining room.” Anna and her family stepped around the piles of boxes to sit on one side of the table. Stacey and I took the opposite side, our backs to the two narrow windows that barely let in enough sunlight to pierce the gloom.

  “I’m sorry about the clutter,” Anna added, gesturing helplessly at the pile of unpacked boxes beside her.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up moving to Savannah?” I asked.

  “Oh, well, in our past life, Dale was vice-president of product development at AlgoSystems Data Management. Have you heard of them?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, they’re a...software company, basically,” Anna continued. “And I was a corporate accounts executive at Southeastern Wireless. With our commutes and our careers, we barely saw each other, and Lexa practically lived at the daycare center. Together, Dale and I decided it was too much. We wanted to escape the rat race.” She touched her husband’s hand. He looked at the floor and slouched, as though maybe he wasn’t so happy about escaping that particular race. “We’d visited Savannah a couple of times, and it was just such a beautiful city...We decided to buy one of these big old houses and turn it into a bed and breakfast. We bought this place for a steal, even when you consider how dilapidated it is.”

  “Yeah, we’ve stayed at some bed-and-breakfast spots around the country, and they’re usually run by idiots,” Dale said, perking up a little. “Just complete idiots. So we figured we could do it smarter. Imagine this: wife comes to husband, says she wants to spend a weekend at some fruity-fruit bed and breakfast in Savannah, so she can shop for antiques, visit museums, junk like that. Husband says no way. But wait, wife says. This one’s got a sports lounge right on the ground floor—we’re talking big-screen TV, beer on tap. Now husband’s like, heck yeah, I can catch the Bears game, let’s go!”

  “Something to appeal to the whole family,” Anna explained.

  “Can we make this quick?” Dale asked. “We have a lot to do around here. The girls say they’ve seen ghosts, but I don’t think so. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “We’ll move as fast as we can, Mr. Treadwell.” I said, mentally noting how he referred to both his wife and daughter as the girls.

  I gently set my black steel toolbox on the floor, since I didn’t want to risk scratching their dining table. I popped the lid and brought out a long yellow legal pad, two pens, and a digital voice recorder.

  I asked if it was okay to record the interview. Dale rolled his eyes, but nobody objected. I placed the
device in the center of the table and tapped the record button.

  “Okay, Mrs. Treadwell,” I said, since it was clear that Dale was the family skeptic. “Can you tell us why you believe your house is haunted?”

  *end of chapter one*

  Continue reading Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper on your Kindle! Ghostly adventures, cheap price.

  The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series

  Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

  Cold Shadows

  (more coming soon)

  Other books by J.L. Bryan:

  Urban Fantasy/Horror

  Inferno Park

  The Unseen

  The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)

  Jenny Pox

  Tommy Nightmare

  Alexander Death

  Jenny Plague-Bringer

  Science Fiction Novels

  Nomad

  Helix