Ghosts in the Gulch: An Evergreen Cemetery Mystery (Evergreen Cemetery Mysteries Book 1)

by S. L. Hawke

  I took a deep breath. All I could do was nod. It felt chilly in the sun. For some reason I could not stop thinking about last night. The new neighbors who moved in next door to me called me around 1 a.m. A relative of theirs had just been shot. He lived alone in San Francisco and needed them to come up to the hospital. They asked me to look after their nine-year-old daughter until they returned. They came back about 9 a.m. this morning, thanking me profusely for taking Olive, their daughter, to school.

  Peter and Olivia Beaumont were a nice couple and I was honored to be of help. Their phone call to me interrupted a dream I was having about singing in a tent, with a saddle and A.J. looking younger and rather stressed about it. I was singing to calm him. Hmm.

  Olivia was in quite a state about having seen someone walking on her patio. Was it him, I wonder?

  I sighed at the memory. Side by side, still standing in the Sloan plot, according to the map, were actually two broken headstones. One belonged to A.J.’s mother and had her death date still visible: November 23rd, 1863. Next to it was A.J.’s upper broken half, clearly inscribed with the death date as February 11th, 1865.

  Why hadn’t someone else dug them up and repaired them? Again, it was like the community had forgotten A.J. and his real story, opting for the juicier version of the Ghost of Arana Gulch hauntingly in search of revenge for his wrongful death. But the man I saw was old and sad. He had asked me to set everyone straight.

  Barton, standing over 6 feet 4 inches, wore a baseball cap over his shiny bald head. He had an enormous beard, as if his body hair needed to overcompensate for his head’s lack of productivity. He wore a different baseball cap every Monday. Today’s cap said the name of his fraternity, the, as he called it, “drinking appreciation society with a historical problem”, E Clampus Vitus. Actually they were a fraternal organization devoted to historic restoration and public charity. His steel-toed, old military boots kicked the sides of the hole I had dug.

  “The Ghost of Arana Gulch,” I said with a sigh as I squatted down and ran my gloved fingers across the face of the stone. The detail was exquisite.

  ““You gotta admit, it is kinda supernatural, which is perfect.” Barton also got down on his haunches. I rolled my eyes and shook my head. He wasn’t the first person to remark on my ‘abilities’. “You gotta help me out with this tour. You should tell these folks about your visitation, your experiences living on Arana Gulch. Maybe you are related to him in some weird way. I mean, you living on the land where he was killed, you seeing him, talking with him–” Barton was quite the salesman.

  “Okay! Okay, I’ll be there tonight. Around 5?”

  “Yep. And bring a heavy jacket, flashlight, and your phone.” Barton stood up again. He got a mischievous smile on his face. “Find any more garbage from your favorite visitor?” Barton teased. I rolled my eyes. When the Paranormal Craze peaked, another crowd began ‘investigating’ Evergreen without permission. One of them was local and routinely visited his grave. She was a famous web personality who claimed a ‘connection’ with A.J. Sloan. After her books came out, we usually found old tea light candles, forks, food containers, and wax candles across his plot. A stream of female visitors also drifted by, dropping flowers and trinkets atop the broken remains of his headstone.

  My face got hot. Maybe I was really worried that A.J. was talking with her, rather than me, even though, at times, things inside my house moved around after I asked him if I should continue looking into his family. And then, of course, there was last night.

  “She’s got a book out now, it’s all stuff taken from our files and the library. She didn’t even give us any credit! She got this guy’s DOD wrong, too! Just look at his headstone!” Barton made a noise with his lips, but he was grinning too. “Now that we’ve got this kick-butt Archive Team, we should publish something! At least it would be the truth!”

  With a flip of my right hand, I wrapped my braid up inside my baseball cap (mine said MIT, my kid’s alma mater). “I agree. Research does have a little something to do with finding stuff here.”

  With that, Barton clapped me on the shoulder again and called for a few guys, homeless volunteers actually, to help extract the rest of this granite marker. That was Barton for ya, he worked with the fringe members of society, led by example, and charmed the committee who ran this place.

  He was right of course.

  Up the Glory Path

  5 p.m.

  “That’s them.” Barton waved to a group of five people, three women and two men, all dressed in black hoodies with the letters S. C. G.H. printed on their backs in caution tape yellow. Underneath those letters were the words: “Paranormal Investigator”.

  It all looked so official. Hugging my down jacket close, I walked up to the group as they assembled underneath the arch of the Main Gate. Barton and I had decided to simply give them a standard history tour, with Barton taking the lead, until a small woman with bright blond hair that seemed to catch the last rays of light as it slowly faded into dusk, strode up and introduced herself.

  “Hi! I’m Genoa with Santa Cruz Ghost Hunters!” She shook our hands with warmth and then proceeded to introduce her “team”. The other two women I noticed were profoundly redheaded. Both were thin and tall. One twinkled as she smiled, her short, curly auburn hair framing a face that radiated humor. She was the techie of the group and quickly explained her equipment – a meter that monitored changes in electromagnetic fields and a “radar” that caught “ghostspeak”. It was all above my head.

  Barton, on the other hand, was fascinated. The second woman reminded me of a Celtic Warrior Queen. Her red hair hung in a braid that fell below her butt! Her role was to simply document via camera anything at all. She showed me some samples of bright white orbs that appeared in seemingly random photos. Some had wisps and shadows that went against the direction of natural light.

  The two male investigators were so quiet and so profoundly opposite of each other in build and looks. One was named Jesus. He was tall and looked like a bandido with long black hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. He handled sound recording. This was a dicey job, as he had to filter out a lot of local noise and later on would clean up the recordings to see if any “ghost speak” not caught on the “radar” could be validated or added to.

  Kent, the other guy, was a retired police officer. He was the same height as me, had white hair, and mentioned that he made his own beer. He shared a memory of Evergreen when it was a haven for drug addicts and criminals. He praised us and thanked us for all of our work and caring.

  “What’s your job?” I asked. He jokingly answered that he was here to protect the team. Suddenly, as if a veil dropped away, I saw that Kent wore amulets on his wrists and around his neck. Some looked old. One bracelet, Kent claimed, was from Tibet. I believed him because I also had one. He looked at me with intense study but said nothing else.

  “This is exciting!” the Warrior Queen announced. Barton looked like he was about to be beheaded or in love. Hmm. Barton cleared his throat.

  “Welcome to Evergreen! Um, what can I tell you about the place?” Barton stammered.

  Oh my God! The Celtic Queen had rattled the imperturbable Barton! A first for him. I stepped in. Someone had to. I began with the story of the Main Gate. Evergreen Cemetery was an old historic site. Filled with the caskets of the city’s non-Catholic founders, it became a resting place of tragedy, sadness, and eventually neglect. The local museum now had custody of it. The cemetery took the blame for past debt from poor management until recently, when a new director came in and shook things up. Part of that shakeup was Barton, a no-nonsense manager who could get tasks done from air, I bragged. Using purely volunteer talent, we began to literally bring Evergreen back into the light. I don’t think I have pulled up so much ivy in my entire life. I drew the line at removing bedrolls, food containers, and well…other illegal camping items…we could use a positive bit of press…and so on.

  “But,” I continued, “Many folk buried here we are now disc
overing, through archival research, were tragically murdered or died in mysterious circumstances.” There were other stories, too, such as the White Lady of Evergreen who walks about in sadness, or the one about a crowd of ghost children, singing and playing among the graves.

  That particular sighting made my hair stand on end, as Evergreen had many children, even one entire family of children buried together, dead from what was now a treatable disease. (That plot was directly across from where we were now standing.) I walked them uphill to our newly installed Chinese Monument.

  An electronic voice called for us to stop.

  I did. Barton swore in a whisper. The Ghost Hunters got busy. Genoa suddenly called out into the cemetery: “Who would like to talk to us tonight?”

  An electronic voice shouted: “Brethren. Seek.”

  “You know,” Barton suddenly got animated. The Chinese Monument was his baby. He waved his hands as he explained the practices of old Chinese funerals. I felt cold and thought I had run through a spider web. I brushed my head with my hand.

  “Any thoughts?” Kent, the man with the amulets, asked me quietly. His pale eyes seemed to look right into me. I felt revealed – if that is the way you could describe it.

  “Well, I thought – uh no, I know that a brotherhood of Chinese existed in the 1860s.”

  “Brethren?” Kent prompted. The rest of the hunters let out a collective sigh of acknowledgement. “And did they burn the objects of the dead?”

  “Yes, but many cultures have turned the leaving of food, the burning of objects (and food) into–”

  Barton interrupted, thankfully: “When I’d stumbled across an old news story of a Chinese funeral here at Evergreen, I found it hard to believe they burned entire meals in that small urn.”

  Barton pointed to the newly restored cement house-like structure on the side of the hill. Its air holes made it look like a glorified incense burner. Next to it was the large, modern Chinese Gate Monument built at the request and donation of a wealthy member of the local Chinese community.

  The news clippings I read also spoke of white culture’s curiosity, members of the town following the procession of mourners, and their theft of the food left behind. I knew that from an Asian stand point, especially of those bringing the food, it was still a comfort to indeed have their offerings accepted by the human representation of supernatural beings. But I wondered about them. Like many here, no one cared who they once were, or what they had endured.

  Then Barton blurted: “Selene’s seen a ghost herself! Selene lives on Arana Gulch and has seen the famous ghost Jack Sloan. He’s buried right down there–” Here Barton pointed to A.J.’s plot.

  “Betrayed!” the electronic voice shouted. “Lies.”

  The team got very excited. We traveled down towards the Sloan plot but sat on the brick border of the plot next to A.J.’s which belonged to his older sister and family, the Guilds. Genoa kept asking questions to the air and actually getting some answers. Then she did a very curious thing. She placed an unlit flashlight on the edge of one of the monuments inside the Guild Plot. Genoa explained to the approaching darkness that there was a button on the back of the flashlight. All the ghost would have to do is ‘touch’ it. She demonstrated by tapping the flashlight on its stone perch, then told the dark that doing so, making the light go on, means ‘yes’. No light means ‘no’. I wanted to go home and do this in my backyard.

  Genoa took a step backward and consulted with her Techie Girl who then placed a meter on the ground to the right of the flashlight. She briefly explained that if the meter flashed red, energy was nearby, proof that ‘something’ was trying to manipulate the flashlight.

  I felt something brush my face. I turned towards it, knowing there was nothing there, only to see Kent’s gaze fixed on me.

  “Is there anyone here who would like to talk with us?” Genoa’s voice took on a soft, almost magical quality. The air crackled. The Warrior Queen then spoke.

  “We’d really like to hear what you have to say. Please let us know you are here. Turn on the flashlight.”

  The light turned on. “Moon. Girl,” the radar spoke. Kent smiled at me with a nod as the meter flashed red.

  Haunted Pass (Or Fawn Path)

  Arana Gulch

  “Ghosts aren’t a problem,” Olivia and Peter Beaumont said in unison as they looked out of the house’s rear bay window. The sun shone through a gigantic oak tree, sending dappled sunlight into the living room. I really want this house, Olivia thought to herself, squeezing Peter’s already sweating palm and bouncing on her heels with anxiety.

  “Well, the listing agent has this house described as--” Here the agent paused for effect. “--‘haunted by the ghost in Arana Gulch’.”

  “It’s all greenspace," Peter, Olivia’s husband, said, pointing to the oak-heavy gulch in front of them. “They should be happy to haunt here.”

  “Okay,” the agent said with a tense smile, “Disclosure is everything.”

  The second time the Beaumonts came into the neighborhood, they walked around the house’s rickety outside deck. A hawk cried out, then landed in the large oak branch an arm’s length away.

  “Does the ghost do decks?” Peter joked. They all laughed.

  “Shall we go inside?” the agent chirped.

  The third time, today, their eight-year-old daughter, Olive, met the neighbors.

  The downsides of this house were obvious. The constant ‘rushing water’ noise was automobile traffic. Situated less than half a mile from the highway, the house had tiny bedrooms and rotted decking. The whole house would need some love and care.

  On the upside, there was a lower workshop level for Peter’s bike shop, four bedrooms instead of three, and the neighborhood was an isolated cul-du-sac sharing greenspace with a hospital, an historic cemetery, and a resort.

  Olivia gazed anxiously at Peter. He nodded back at her.

  They signed papers on the back deck one month later.

  “What day is it?” Peter asked as he began to sign his share of the escrow papers.

  “February 11th!” Olivia and the real estate agent said in unison. After the signing, Peter and Olivia, their daughter in tow, began to meet the neighbors.

  The first neighbor was a gregarious marine biologist named Tobin. Peter and he shook hands with warmth. Both of them worked at the University on the Hill, as they all called UCSC, and shared management of an occasionally overambitious graduate student. Tobin was then joined by his wife, Alma, who introduced their five-year-old twin sons, Alistair and Aloisha.

  The second set of neighbors was an elderly couple named Mikhail and Dulcet. Mikhail was tall and thin. The wide-brimmed straw hat he wore appeared to have melded to his head. His wife, Dulcet, confined to a wheelchair behind their white slatted fence, shouted at him with a voice like a big goose: “Mikhail! Get your ass back in this yard where you belong, God Dammit!’’ Mikhail ignored her.

  Peter and Olivia saw that Mikhail grew anything that had leaves. Dulcet complained about the state of Medicare and the homeless.

  “The current events in America is crap!” Mikhail and Dulcet shouted in unison. Dulcet handed Olivia a huge bag of yellow plums from a tree inside their square corner lot. They were the size of baseballs. Olive followed Mikhail behind his shed where, after a few tense minutes for Peter and Olivia, Olive ran back to announce that Mikhail had an “awesome” koi pond.

  The third neighbor shared their new house’s backyard property line. She was also an older individual and reminded Olivia of her late mother, who had also been shorter than Olivia by about a foot. She even wore a long dark braid. Selene, as she introduced herself, appeared quite possibly to be Hawaiian, but informed them both that she was not only Hawaiian but Russian as well.

  Olivia felt a grin appear on her own face. Selene was the perfect match for her older brother Randall. A little prodding on Olivia’s part revealed that Selene did live alone, did have grown children (like Randall), and was also a widow (like Randall). Oli
via suddenly felt mischievous.

  “We should set Randy up with her,” Peter whispered in Olivia’s ear. Olivia nodded quickly, trying hard not to giggle.

  “My brother-in-law will be staying with us,” Peter said as he pointed towards their new home. “He’s great with his hands.” Olivia burst out laughing but covered her mouth just as quickly, faking a cough.

  Olive quietly asked Selene if she could play on the shared backyard tree. A series of embarrassing questions (in Olivia’s mind) came out of Olive’s mouth with particular emphasis on the location of the graves of Selene’s family pets.

  “Wow, we can see each other,” Peter remarked as he gestured towards their house’s deck.

  “There’s a tree in the way,” Selene pointed out. She then offered them a refreshing concoction of Pellegrino water with a splash of lemon juice and cranberry balsamic vinegar. The sunlight filtered down through the heritage oak forest surrounding them, making Peter and Olivia feel as if they were the only inhabitants in the entire gulch.

  “I wish Dad were here to see what we bought,” Olivia said to Peter as they walked hand in hand back to the car. He would have liked it, she thought.

  After much of her adult life away from here, Dad would have forgiven her, even after marrying Peter. Now that she had Olive, coming home finally meant more than just revisiting old haunts.

  Their title paperwork slid through processing as if it were a magic carpet. They moved in a week later. The whole place was unpacked a week after that. It would seem that they had landed in the right place for all of them. The last day of February was warm and the apple trees in her front yard had been tricked into swelling their buds. Never mind that it had been a dry winter.

  Olivia often found herself imagining her father smiling, laughing loudly at the slightest thing, sporting his drover’s hat and rider’s long coat with Aussie pride as he hefted a beer in one hand. “Augh, you did right, Livie,” he would have said, his ‘down under’ accent still tinging all of his words. “I forgive you…”