by JL Bryan
I took slow, deep breaths, trying to get myself into a more mindful, observant state. Calm my energy. Be as quiet as possible. That kind of thing.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Don't keep a lady waiting all night, Gary.”
I reached into my backpack and carefully removed the yellowed, cracking page of the Owl that I'd found in Millie's room. Doing my best not to tear it, I spread it open on the floor. The paper’s logo, a cartoon owl, perched in the upper left corner of the yellowed newsprint. Underneath it were the words EYES OPEN IN THE DARKNESS, which I took to be the paper's motto.
“There's an article you wrote over on this page,” I said. “About a tenant organization trying to improve things in Mechanicsville. Was that one of the areas where the Pennefort company was sending men to threaten and terrorize families so they'd sell cheap and move? That's what this is about for you, isn't it?”
The temperature dropped sharply in the room, and there was a clattering sound, like an ancient air conditioner had just kicked to life somewhere. A soft, cold wind nudged the old newspaper paper along the floor, away from me, scraping like the tumbleweed-papers had the night before.
The paper lifted free and rose in the chilly jet stream of sour-smelling air conditioner exhaust. It gradually tumbled upward, toward the ceiling, then drifted sideways toward the heap of filing cabinets.
I followed after it without a word, gripping my unlit flashlight.
The paper drifted to a back row of metal cabinets, and I had to climb over a landslide of cardboard boxes and spilled files to reach it.
Shedding yellow crumbs, the paper drifted against the second-to-last drawer of a gray metal cabinet and folded up against it. The cracking, crumbling old sheet of newspaper batted against it a couple of times, then broke into a cloud of tiny yellow scraps that drifted to the floor.
The indicated drawer was locked, but I do have some basic lock picks in my utility belt, and I'm pretty decent with them. I popped the lock open and slid out the drawer of files.
“Everything okay in there?” Stacey asked over my headset.
“Come on up,” I said. “You missed the ghost, but you're just in time for the paperwork.”
Stacey sighed before coming up to join me.
It took a little while of flipping and reading to get an idea of what the papers were. They related to the purchase of several parcels of land along McClintock Street, wherever that was. I couldn't find the street on my phone's map app, though, as if it no longer existed, perhaps obliterated by some new development. I took snapshots with my camera. The dates on the contracts were all in the mid to late 1960's.
“This is so fun,” Stacey said, shining her flashlight into the files for a better view. We'd turned the overhead lights on again, but the type was small and faded.
“It might confirm what Jackie Duperre told us at jail,” I said. “About what the Pennefort Development company was doing, intimidation and terror aimed at moving out residents.”
“How does that help us?” Stacey asked.
“That's...a good question. It explains why Gary Brekowski was investigating them for the Owl, and maybe why his ghost is still lingering around. On top of the fact that he died here, he never really finished his mission of exposing the Pennefort family crimes.”
“The clients might have some problems with us publicly revealing the crimes, if that's what you're thinking,” Stacey said. “I mean when you consider our clients are the Pennefort family...”
“I know. I'm not sure what we can do to settle Gary's ghost and help him move on.”
“He's not even one of the problem ghosts.”
“No, but his murderer might be the hot red ghost that Hyacinth saw. If that ghost is Elton the Hippie Bomber.”
“How can we figure it out?” Stacey asked.
“We could try stirring him up somehow,” I said. “Find out what music he liked or something that would have been significant to him. Or anything related to the New Front. But we shouldn't do it right in the client's apartment. The results could be....”
“Explosive?” Stacey asked.
“Right. Hot and fiery, anyway.” I felt sick at the thought of a fire sweeping through the family's apartment, and my heartbeat kicked way up. “There are plenty of empty areas in the tower. Maybe even the lobby, if that's where the bomb went off in the first place. We'll have to convince the family to let us work down there; it's a public area, but I doubt there's much foot traffic at night.”
“Just Pauly the SAFE-T-OFFICER,” Stacey said.
“He'll be a pushover. I'm more worried about the family, and how they're going to take it when I tell them the ghost who keeps scaring Amberly might just be Thurmond's Aunt Millie traveling out of body from upstairs. And that we need to put video equipment in her room, too. I just don't see any way around it.”
“You'll have to turn up your charm to the max,” Stacey said.
“It already is turned up to the max, unfortunately. Let's take these files upstairs. It's going to take a long time to look them over, and we have plenty of other research to do.”
We started back up stairs. I paused to look back into the room, and thanked the reporter's ghost out loud for his help. I wasn't sure whether he was helping us very much at all—maybe he was just pressing his own agenda, focusing on his own observations—but he hadn't attacked or threatened us in any way, which was more than I could say for some of the other ghosts in the building.
Chapter Seventeen
I actually managed to catch a little sleep just before dawn. Stacey and I continued to sleep in shifts because the ghosts were harassing us so much. Vance's exploring into the occult and paranormal and attempts to communicate with the dead might have really opened a kind of spiritual rupture, stirring up both active and latent hauntings throughout the building.
We met with Amberly and Thurmond as soon as their kids were gone for school. Apparently it was the kids' last week before Christmas break. I did my best to explain our progress so far.
Stacey played the voice recording we'd picked up: “...Falcon...help us...”
“That's from the same ghost that passed through your room and dining room,” I said. “I saw it...in fact, I touched it. Or it touched me, pretty forcefully.”
After a long minute of quiet, Thurmond spoke up.
“Aunt Millie never really talked about her crazy hippie days,” Thurmond said. “I mean, occasionally she'd go off on a ramble about this or that, but she was pretty medicated, spent a lot of time in the mental hospital, so...” He rubbed his temples.
“What does Millie have against me?” Amberly asked. “Why's she bothering me?”
“Unless the help us bit is a ruse, she may actually be trying to reach out to you for help,” I said. “She's trapped somehow. And so are others. It's also possible that the ghost was lying, about her identity and about needing help, and that she's one of the darker and more destructive entities here. But I don't know who it would be, in that case.” And all my suspects for the female ghost's identity so far were Thurmond's ancestors or relatives, so I held my tongue about which ones were more likely to be evil. Having known none of them, I would have suspected Ernest's wife Siobhan, since their daughter Catherine had died at seventeen and their grandchild Miriam had died as a ten-year-old girl. It's certainly possible for a child ghost to be evil—and definitely possible for a teenage ghost to be—but Siobhan had lived well into adulthood, which simply gave her more time and opportunity to become a negative personality.
“Then how do we help them?” Amberly asked.
“By finding out what's keeping them here,” I said. “Thurmond...do you know of any kind of tragedy or violence that occurred here at the tower in its earliest days? Maybe even before the little boy's death in 1908? I've been searching the newspapers about your family—”
“That makes me feel weird.”
“—sorry. But I can't find anything earlier, either about the building or in your family's past, that could indicate the
cause of a haunting so early. We don't know that the death of Ernest's children, Lawrence and Catherine, were anything more than what they seemed to be, but they sort of started a pattern that continued down the generations.”
“Are our kids safe here?” Amberly asked. She looked from me to Thurmond. “Thurm?”
He chewed his lip and didn't answer. “A lot of my family members have died here. But a lot of them have lived here, so of course they died here, too.”
“Some lived here for decades, and to old age,” I said. “That's not a guarantee of safety, though. When will your house be ready?”
“Ready?” Amberly looked startled. “For what?”
“For your family to move back.”
“Oh,” she said, and they both slouched a little.
“I'm sorry, did I miss something? I thought you said the family home where you normally live was being renovated...” I flipped through my pocket notebook.
“It is,” Thurmond said, very quietly now. “But not for us. We're prepping it for sale. Like I said, Uncle Vance left us a lot of problems. Mr. Tartan—that's our family lawyer, who handles most of our stuff—said we had to sell. This tower is the only place we can live rent-free. And there's cash flow problems...” Thurmond coughed and looked down at the floor. “I just want to sell the tower, but because it's commercial and corporate instead of a private family property like the house, well, it's different. There's corporate debt involved. And my aunt's living will insists she be kept here instead of put into a nursing home. It's going to be a while before we can sell off the tower. Maybe a long while. And maybe nobody even wants to buy the dump. But we'll sell it as soon as we can. Then we can live anywhere, and not have to worry about money again.”
Amberly nodded along strenuously, looking from him to us, as though eager to make sure everyone in the room believed what her husband was saying. As though desperate to believe it herself. The strain on her face was obvious.
I nodded back, feeling awkward about this turn in the conversation. It sounded like they were stuck here for the moment. Apparently Thurmond's clay knights and dragons weren't super-lucrative, and they'd been depending on his family fortune to support them, but it was turning out to not be such a fortune after all. I hoped they'd be able to pay our bill, but my motives for this job ran a lot deeper than getting a paycheck, anyway. Protecting the living from the dead is what I do, especially when there's kids involved.
“So...back to my question,” I said. “Do you have any ideas about possible violence or tragedies in your family history before 1908?”
“Me?” Thurmond asked, blinking, as if he was the least logical person to ask such a question.
“Yes...”
“I don't know. You should ask my uncle...” He blinked again. “There's nobody to ask anymore.”
“There were some questions about their business practices in the 1960's,” I said. “Intimidation and violence, usually against poor homeowners and small businesses, trying to drive them out.”
“Who was doing that?” Thurmond scowled.
“We've heard that the Penneforts might have been, especially your grandfather, Albert. If there were similar practices in the 1890's, maybe related to buying the land on which this building stands...well, the victims could be hanging around, getting revenge on Ernest's heirs, generation after generation.”
“I don't know about what my family might have done all those years ago. I wasn't born then. It's not like my dad was sitting around when I was nine years old saying, hey, want to hear about the time we hired thugs to drive people out of their homes? I'm sure my family's done all kinds of shady stuff. But not lately. We haven't even built anything in years, so we definitely haven't pushed anyone out of their homes. Fifty years ago, a hundred years ago...sure, I believe it. I just don't know anything about it.”
“I understand. We were just hoping there would be someone who might know,” I said. “It's not likely to be well-documented in company records, obviously.”
“Well, you could ask my uncle...” He shook his head, as if he'd momentarily forgotten Vance was dead. “Sorry. My cousin Grady is Vance's son, but I don't really know him. Grady's lived out in California all his life, with his mom, so he wouldn't know anything at all.”
“What about your family's lawyer? Mr. Tartan? It sounds like he's been deeply involved in your family affairs.”
“He might know some dirt, but he'd never spill. There's attorney-client privilege, for one thing. For another, he basically sees me as a little kid and doesn't take my requests seriously. I guess there's nobody who would know details of the old days, really. Not anybody who's still alive. Maybe if you know someone who can talk to the dead, they can tell you.”
“I do!” Stacey said, and I nudged her to settle down. She was way too excited to bring up Jacob. They were such an odd pair, really; she was an outdoorsy, let's-hike-in-the-woods-with-the-mosquitoes type, while he was an indoorsy, let's-watch-a-bad-UFO-movie-from-the-1960s type. But then, Michael and I didn't have much in common, either. Maybe that was why our relationship was falling apart, or already had. Or maybe having my biggest enemy possessing him for a while had permanently changed his perspective on me.
I was glad to be hours away from home for this case, away from drama and problems and bad memories. Well, except for the restless murdering dead, but what's that compared to a rocky romantic relationship? Maybe I could move to Atlanta permanently. The city wasn't as old as Savannah, but many times larger. It had to have plenty of ghosts hanging around.
Maybe I could move somewhere even farther from home. Colorado. California. Mars. Anywhere.
“We do have a psychic medium that we bring in for some cases,” I said. “He may be able to narrow down the cause of the haunting for us—why the entities are here, and hopefully what they want, what their intentions are, and some idea of what we can do to get rid of them. We have traps for ghosts, but they're not too useful until we know how to bait them. And we can't bait them until we know who the ghosts are and what they care about.”
“Ghost traps?” Thurmond asked, his eyebrows rising.
I explained quickly how our traps worked—a layer of leaded glass, a layer of battery-charged mesh creating an electromagnetic barrier. We have different graveyards where we take different kinds of ghosts; less threatening ghosts are released within the walls of pleasant burial grounds, free to wander within the natural psychic barriers of graveyard fences. Other, more dangerous ghosts are buried in a less pleasant place in the mountains, full of dangerous ghosts. Both locations are far from any inhabited town.
“Sounds like y'all have done this a lot of times before,” Amberly said.
“Oh, yep!” Stacey said. “Zillions of times. I mean, approximately.”
“But it's going to take more research,” I said. “You have a lot of active entities here. It's possible your uncle Vance's attempts to reach out to the dead really stirred things up. Which is why things may be worse now than when you lived here as a child.”
“It definitely doesn't feel any better than when I was a kid,” Thurmond murmured.
“We want to set up more gear up in Vance's apartment. And we'll continue looking around the rest of the building.”
“Whatever it takes,” Thurmond said.
“And this might be more delicate...but we ought to put some monitoring gear into your aunt's apartment, too. That might give us some idea of whether she's really leaving her body and wandering at night, or if there's any other activity in her apartment that could be affecting her.” I didn't want to say out loud that a powerful ghost could be the reason Millie was in a coma at all, because I'm not a doctor, but it was a possibility. Her spirit could be trapped somehow, or maybe there was an evil entity preying on her, benefiting from her vulnerability during her endless sleep. There's a reason ghosts so often come after us at night, when we're lying in our beds.
“I'll tell the nurse we're coming,” he said.
“Was there a nurse on duty last n
ight?” I asked, thinking of the voices and the banging closet door Stacey and I had seen.
“Yeah.”
“Did they report anything strange?”
“Not to me.” Thurmond shook his head. “I knew this place was all wrong when I was a kid. But nobody listened to me then.”
“We're all listening now,” Amberly said, rubbing his arm affectionately. “You don't have to stay quiet about it.”
Thurmond let out a sigh and nodded. “If I think of anything else, I'll let you know.”
We hit Blossom Tree again for lunch, because I was already craving it again. Bulgogi tacos and kimchi rice. Yum. And I'll say it a second time. Yum.
After that, it was back to the library for more.
I spent a lot of time squinting at maps from the 1800's. I don't want to say that there aren't any maps from the 1800's, because they do exist, technically. However, we are talking hand-drawn lines and boxes with hand-scribbled labels, usually photocopied from faded paper. The best I could tell, there might have once been a pharmacy and a barber shop at or near the place where the skyscraper now stood. The afternoon could have been more pleasant.
Stacey put in a call to Isaiah Halberson, the teacher formerly known as the radical writer A. Truthteller. He had a publicly listed landline, of all the crazy things. She left a message. I let her handle situations where “warm and perky” is the way to go. If you need sarcastic and a little prickly, that's more my department. It's not intentional on my part. It just comes naturally.
There was much to learn, and many hints of scandal, but I just couldn't find anything quite old enough to seem like the root cause. Not if the little boy's accidental death in 1908 was an effect of the haunting.
I began to wonder whether little Lawrence Pennefort's electrocution might not be an effect of the haunting, but a cause. Nobody had reported a little boy ghost—other than the voice Stacey and I had heard in the closet—but ghosts don't always present themselves literally. Like the living, they may have very distorted images of themselves, or may wish to project a certain image of themselves to others. Unlike the living, their appearance can change according to their emotions and thoughts; they are energy, not bounded by flesh. Typically, they have no appearance at all, but when they do, they can look like anything they can imagine.
