“Can’t be battery drain,” Megan said, chewing her gum even faster. “They are working fine. Look on the monitors. I’ve got six cameras up, and there’s nothing. Not even the odd shadow creature. Not battery loss. So far, we’ve got nothing. I thought this was the hottest spot in the county, Mike.”
Mike was the boss, or at least the field boss. He didn’t say much but stared at the cameras intently. He was a true believer, but he liked to pretend he was a skeptic. That was the only way he could successfully pitch the show. The people at the Paranormal Channel had enough programming featuring the proponents of the paranormal. They wanted to present opposing viewpoints, and that was where My Haunted Plantation came into play. We were supposed to be disproving these hauntings.
“What do you think, Jess?” Mike glanced up at me.
I crossed my arms and chewed on my lip as I stared at the camera feeds. “Oh, the ghosts are here, all right. They’re just hiding from us.” I stared at Camera Three. It was in the basement, my least favorite location in the rambling old house. My brother used to say, “This place has bad vibes.” And Sugar Hill did. Something sinister lingered there and wanted to remain undetected. It liked being alone. I felt my spine tingle, as if someone had poured ice water down my back.
Megan stopped chewing her gum and reached for a walkie-talkie. “Well, let’s shake things up, chickie. I’m going in. You coming?” She slid the radio on her hip and straightened her black MHP hat. Megan was taller than me and had way more curves. She didn’t have a problem hamming up our hunts for the camera while I preferred to hang out in the background. I liked the way we worked together. She treated me with respect, at least on camera. She listened to what I had to say, but she was one to make up her own mind about things. That’s how she rolled, as she told me time and time again.
“Yep.” Mike handed me a digital recorder and said, “Why don’t you guys start in the basement?” My eyes widened at the prospect as I nodded. Mike never talked much about his superpowers of ghost detection, but I suspected he had them. “And don’t forget to wait a few seconds between questions, Megan.”
“Then let Jessica ask the questions this time.” She rolled her eyes and tossed her gum in the small garbage can. Once upon a time, Megan and Mike had a thing, but the red-hot flames of that relationship had died out over the summer. We typically took summers off and did our hunts in fall and winter. When we all got back together again this past fall, the two barely spoke to one another. It had been awkward for a while, but now it was just something we didn’t talk about. Besides, the show execs didn’t encourage that sort of thing. The focus of the show wasn’t to discuss our personal lives—much less have one outside the show.
No worries for me. I hadn’t had a date in over a year, and it had been much longer than that since my last intimate encounter. Sometimes that bothered me, but most times I didn’t think much about it. I spent my time reading books, studying up on hauntings that interested me and keeping up with my blog. If there was ever a nerd girl, it was me.
We jumped out of the back of the van and walked up the sidewalk that led to the house. It was windy tonight, and I was glad I wore my fleece-lined jacket, a gift from my parents last Christmas. I zipped it up and shoved my hands in the pockets. “Watch your step here,” I warned the cameraman who followed us into Sugar Hill. Someone had left a bunch of cables in the walkway, which made for a major tripping hazard. It would be difficult to see them while peering through a camera lens.
“Thanks,” he muttered. His name was James, if I remembered correctly—he was new and quite the nervous type. Not the kind of guy you would think would be part of a ghost hunting group.
As Megan opened the door and we stepped inside the house, a hush fell over the place. A spiritual hush. As a sensitive, I was responsible for “feeling” what was around us. There was usually something, residual evidence of some trauma or tragedy, but this place was remarkably clear at the moment. It hadn’t been that way earlier. I’d definitely detected a strong female presence and a male presence lingering around the edges. Yes, this place practically sighed under the weight of its secrets.
As always, the lights were out. That was how we conducted all MHP investigations. It made the film look spookier, but other than that I honestly didn’t see any advantage to stumbling around in the dark. I didn’t think the ghosts cared either, except for the kind you didn’t want to meet. I felt a weird sensation in my side, as if I’d been running and had a catch in it. It grew in intensity and then disappeared.
Hmm…that was odd.
“Okay, picking up something in here now. Let’s head to the basement and work our way up, Jess.” Megan waved her handheld device around looking for anomalies in the electromagnetic field. “Yes, definitely getting some spikes.” She reached for her walkie-talkie and called the van, as if they couldn’t see us on camera. “Okay, Mike? Becker? We’re heading through the kitchen and to the basement. Getting some good spikes in here. Look at this, point four, point five and rising!”
“Why don’t you hang out there for a few minutes? See what else you get.”
“Got it,” she said as she waved her gadget around. I closed my eyes and “felt” around the room. I gasped as whatever was in here quickly darted out. It was heading for the basement too! Then the pain came back. I grimaced and clutched my side.
“What is it, Jessica? You feeling something?” Megan touched my arm, genuine concern on her face.
“Yeah, I’ve got this pain in my side. It’s coming and going.”
“What kind of pain? Are you hurt, or is this some sort of transference?”
Transference. That was a good word for it. I could hardly think of how else to describe it. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Okay, well, let me know if it gets too bad. I don’t want you to put yourself in danger.”
In danger…
“Did you hear that?” James asked. He’d been on two investigations with us and had never intervened until now. He didn’t move out from behind the camera, but I could see his puffy face was sweating. I felt sorry for the guy. He was never going to last in this business if he didn’t get in better shape.
“Yeah, I heard it,” I replied. I pulled the digital voice recorder out of my pocket. “Why don’t we do a session, Megan? Before we go to the basement.”
“What did you guys hear?” she asked. “I thought I heard a whisper. I assumed it was you.”
“Nope, wasn’t us,” James and I answered simultaneously.
“Okay, let’s do a session. I’ll sit here. Jess, you go first.”
I cleared my throat and waited for a moment. It was always nerve-wracking thinking about what to say. “We know you are here. We heard you speaking to us. Do you want to talk to me or to Megan?”
I remembered to count to five in my head before I asked another question. The audio recorder was my favorite tool for ghost hunting. It picked up voices that the human ear often missed. Except we had heard the voice just a minute ago. Maybe we wouldn’t need the recorder in here.
“My name is Jessica, and this is Megan.” I counted to five again in my head. I heard something that sounded like a bag of flour sliding across the floor.
“Did you…” I began to ask, but Megan interrupted with a nervous laugh.
“Yes. Keep talking. We’re getting some action now. I guess they didn’t want to stay hidden after all.” She grinned as she looked around the room. “Do you know where that was coming from?”
“I think the doorway there, the one that goes from the kitchen to the basement.”
Megan hopped up and opened the door. “Like someone was dragging something down the stairs?”
Nodding, I walked to stand beside her. For some reason I felt like there might be safety in numbers. I mean, we had been warned. We were in danger. “Did you just make that noise? We can hear you.”
After a few seconds, I asked, “Can you make another noise? I know it takes a lot of energy, but speak really
loudly this time.” I waited another few seconds, then Megan and I gasped as we felt a breeze blow past us down the stairs.
“Is the front door open?” Megan asked James. He looked behind him and shook his head. “Okay, so the door is not open. The air conditioning and heating units have been turned off. I don’t see any windows open in here. I can’t imagine what that could be.”
“Might be a window open down there. Or a door.”
To another world. A dark world where you don’t want to go. I kept that thought to myself.
Megan agreed and called down the stairs, “We are coming down now.” Suddenly the pinch in my side returned, and I gasped at the sudden pain. “Oh yeah, that’s not a normal pain. Definitely transference.” Sometimes I felt the pain of others, and on a few occasions it had helped us figure out what happened to the ghostly occupants of the houses we visited. Most of the time there was no way to prove what I felt, but I believed the messages were accurate. At least in the case at the Halloran Hotel, we were able to prove it. Enid Halloran had died of blunt force trauma, which explained the almost debilitating head pain I experienced during last year’s investigation. The older I got, the worse these episodes became. And now I was twenty-five. Would I live to be thirty? I couldn’t imagine exploring haunted houses all my life. I would most certainly not enjoy it if I needed to be on pain medicine.
“Hold on to me, Jessica.” Megan pulled out her tiny yet powerful flashlight and waved it on the steps in front of us.
After a few seconds the pain lessened but didn’t completely vanish. “Can you hear that?” I asked as we descended. I could have sworn I heard someone crying. No, that was whimpering.
“I don’t hear anything.” We stood in silence with James on the stairs behind us. Megan clutched my hand now. That was a sure tell that she was “feeling” something. I was glad it wasn’t just me. “Dang, it’s cold down here. Is this normal?”
We moved into the space and spread out. James followed Megan as she waved her device. “Getting some major spikeage. Jess, how are you feeling? Anything else? Can you hear or see anything?”
The pain hit me so hard I nearly doubled over. I felt the sudden urge to cry for help as I fell to my knees.
“Oh my God! James, get Jessica.” Megan pushed a button on the walkie-talkie and shouted, “Mike, get in here. Jessica needs help!” Then the tapping began.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
It was steady and growing louder. I could hear it, but I couldn’t be sure they could. The pain increased in intensity, and I nearly gagged. “Where is that coming from? James, don’t you dare leave us down here.”
“I’m trying to get a wider shot. I see something!”
I pushed up from the ground and managed to sit cross-legged still holding my side. What was this feeling? A gunshot? A stab wound? Someone had definitely been hurt here, a woman, and she wanted her mother.
“Talk to me, Jessica.”
“There’s a woman here. She’s over there.” I pointed furiously at the far wall. As I did, the ghost slid back into the wall and an expression of terror crossed her face. She began to fade before my eyes. I gasped at the sight, and the pain began to subside. “Oh no! She’s in the wall! She’s in the wall! Get me something!” The banging grew louder, and I could hear footsteps upstairs. It had to be Becker and Mike. They ran down the stairs, but as soon as Mike’s foot hit the basement floor the banging stopped.
“Jessica? Oh no, she’s passed out.”
But I wasn’t passed out. I was still with them, in the in-between place where dreams and consciousness met.
And that was where they were. The two women: one younger and one older. Both with long, unbrushed hair, torn clothing and dirty hands.
Hands that had been digging for centuries to get out. I could see the younger woman quite plainly—she wanted me to see her. And I could see the wound, the black, bloody wound that was evidence of her horrific demise. As I watched in terror, unable to move as she reached for me, her long fingers extended to supernatural lengths and gripped my arm. Her pale face glowed and then vanished, revealing the bone underneath it.
“No!” I screamed in terror. Whether she meant to hurt me or not, I did not want her to touch me. But now she was leaning closer. Her fetid breath again filled my nose.
With a dry, dusty voice she said, “Find me…” She squeezed my wrist once more before she released me. Again I screamed, unable to verbalize what I saw. Mike and Becker lifted me off the cold floor as I writhed. I was fully awake now, and I let them carry me outside.
Mike’s voice shook, even as he tried to remain controlled. “Jessica. Are you with me? Stop filming, James. Grab my phone! We need a doctor.”
I found my voice and squeezed his hand. “No. I’m fine.”
“The hell you are. Look at your skin…it’s red.” He held my arm gingerly and stared at my wrist. “What happened?”
“She wants out. She’s in the wall, Mike. They are both in the wall! We have to get them out!”
That wasn’t what he expected to hear. He rubbed his hand across his shaved head and put his arm around me as I sobbed. “Come on. Let’s get you in the van.”
“Please, we can’t leave them in there.” I leaned on his shoulder.
“It’s okay, Jess. It’s going to be all right. That’s a wrap, guys. We’ll meet in the morning.”
Megan joined us long enough to glare at me, but I couldn’t do anything but cry. Mike held me and carried me to the MHP van.
As I clung to him, I glanced back at the house once more. That’s when I saw him, the other one. He’d stayed hidden most of the night, but he was there. Watching us.
Watching everything.
Watching and waiting.
Chapter Nine
Summer Dufresne
“What the frick, Avery?” I gasped as my cousin nearly tripped over me. “What the heck are you doing running around in the dark? And what happened to the lights?”
“Summer? What are you doing here?”
I crossed my arms and looked at her like she was crazy. Did I need her permission to show up here? Hadn’t she called me looking for a housekeeper? Needless to say, I didn’t say that. “You called me all freaked out. Remember? Now what’s going on?”
“We heard a big boom, and Jamie saw someone in the upstairs hallway. The lights just went out.” Avery clutched my arm, and I could feel her shaking.
“You two. Get a grip, y’all. The big boom was probably thunder. It’s about to storm, and it looks like it will be a doozy.”
“I’ve heard storms before, and that was no storm,” Detective Richards barked back.
I rolled my eyes. “Well, how do I know what it was? Maybe it was a power surge. That happens a lot in old houses like this. Let’s go check the breaker box. It’s in the basement, scaredy-cats.”
“It can’t be that,” Richards snapped. “I’ve never heard a breaker box sound like breaking glass. It was nothing like a power surge. Nothing like that at all.”
“Fine. It was a big scary ghost. Now give me that flashlight so I can check the box. Some detective,” I said with a bleak laugh. I walked back through the kitchen and opened the basement door. I hated this basement, but it was nothing like the one at Sugar Hill. That basement felt horrific and always had a bad smell to it. Even though the air was dank here, it wasn’t smelly and there were no rodents clawing at the walls trying to rip off my flesh. I accidentally kicked an ill-placed cardboard box, then walked over it and opened the panel. Sure enough, the main breaker had been flipped.
“Hold this a sec?” I handed Avery the flashlight and used both hands to flip the switch up. It was stubborn and didn’t want to flip back into place, but it did eventually obey me. Naturally the brave detective hung back and didn’t offer to help. Some hero. And of course, the lights came on. “See?”
Avery’s blue eyes clamped on me. “I know we heard something. It sounded like glass breaking or maybe a chandelier crashing to the floor. And what about the person
Jamie saw upstairs?”
“I bet I have the answer to that. Follow me.”
We walked back up the basement stairs, and I closed and locked the door behind me. I always locked the one at Sugar Hill. “Come on, y’all. I’ll show you the ghost.”
“Mock me if you want to, but I saw someone up there. Maybe a transient. Someone looking for shelter from the storm? I don’t know. I never said it was a ghost,” Richards grumbled as he followed me up the wide staircase. As if it wanted to prove me right, the thunderstorm broke loose over us. The sound of thunder shook the walls of Thorn Hill and set the glass chandeliers tinkling as we arrived on the second floor.
“Welcome to Alabama, y’all. Home of big, scary thunderstorms at all times of the year.” I couldn’t help but smile at them. Sure, Avery had something to be afraid of, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t this thunderstorm. And I seriously doubted if the family ghost would reveal himself to Jamie Richards. But then again, I was no expert. I wasn’t even the “anointed one.”
“I know I saw someone, Miss Dufresne.”
“Please call me Summer. And I don’t doubt you saw something. Was it that?” I pointed down the hall as I flicked on the light. There at the far end, standing between two suites, was the marble statue. I always hated that thing. That was an odd place to put a statue, but this was an odd house, no question about that. “I’d like you to meet Champion Dufresne and his dog, Spider. Champion was the son of Chase and Athena—their eldest son, to be more precise. He lived here from about 1835 to right before the War. In fact, he became something of a recluse. He shot himself dead cleaning his gun.”
Richards looked relieved. He was one good-looking man, and except for being a little jumpy tonight, he seemed like a decent guy. Kind of the all-American type. Probably used to women falling all over him. I squinted as I appraised him, hoping he didn’t realize how intimately I was assessing him. He was probably a reasonable lover, and I had no doubt he’d like to please Avery up one side and down the other. Although he hadn’t yet. How did I know? It sure wasn’t because my cousin confided in me. It was just that Richards had the “I’m-so-hungry-I-could-eat-a-bear” look. Surely Avery wasn’t pining over Jonah Blight. No, I couldn’t imagine that. Not at all. What a jerk that guy was!
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