by JL Bryan
I nodded along while she recited a short, well-practiced summary of the battle, but didn't hear anything that sounded too relevant to my case. I asked whether there was a connection to the Neville farm.
“Oh, none that I know of,” she said. “I suppose some of them could have served in the Georgia militia there. We have a local genealogy database for the county. You can try that if you like. It's on the computer.”
“That would be great, thanks.”
“We also have archives of the Telephone going back years and years, if you'd like to look through those.”
“I'm sorry?” I asked. “You mean the local phone book?”
The librarian chuckled, her shiny antennae bouncing on her head. “The Sylvania Telephone, dear. That's the local newspaper.”
“That would be great. Though I'm guessing it wasn't established in the eighteenth century, by any chance...”
“1876,” she said quickly. “When the telephone was very high-tech, you see.”
She guided me toward the library's resources, and while I skimmed through records, she continued to tell me about significant events in local history, with an emphasis on the construction of “America's oldest welcome center” out on highway 301, which had once been the main route for Northern snowbirds bound for Florida before the interstate was built. This gave me some idea of why our motel hadn't really been updated in decades. It sat just off that highway and had probably lost most of its business long ago when the interstate was built many miles away.
This made me think of the old dirt road that ran through the clients' farm, and how Amber and Jeremy's version of the legend depicted the ghost as a highwayman, a former German soldier preying on travelers.
I asked the librarian if there were any old maps of the area. She found a photocopy of one from the early nineteenth century, but the hand-drawn lines and letters were blurry, not really giving me much insight. I took a photocopy of the photocopy to inspect later, maybe with a magnifying glass.
Researching the history of the land meant researching a branch of Jeremy's family. During the span covered by the local paper, I found a number of references, including the usual assortment of birth, wedding, and death announcements.
A pattern emerged over time. Over the previous century and a half, several of the men in Jeremy's family had apparently been accused of violent crimes, some of them convicted, at least one executed in the late nineteenth century. That was Oren Jubilee Neville, hanged in 1891 in connection with a local man found beaten to death on the Neville farm, his body in the high weeds not far from the road. Oren and the man had recently had a business dispute over the sale of a small piece of land.
This happened at least three more times over the next hundred years. Someone would go missing—once a local, twice just travelers passing through—and be discovered beaten to death near the road, on the family's property, and some member of the family would be charged. The most recent was in 1983, when a younger brother of the great uncle who'd left Jeremy the farm had pled guilty to aggravated manslaughter. That man's name was Lawrence Neville, arrested for apparently beating to death two college students from Augusta who'd been traveling the back roads of the state, camping and taking pictures of old farms and colonial-era ruins. He had died in prison.
The idea of restless ghosts wandering out from the family cemetery grew darker and darker as I read up on the family's history of violence. I wondered whether our bloody ghost-girl was a member of the family or a victim of its violence. Both things were possible. Unfortunately, the more I considered the glimpse I'd received when the ghost touched me, the more I became convinced that she'd lived in the late eighteenth century, and records from that time were spotty.
Eventually, the librarian sighed, shaking her head at my requests for information that the little library just didn't have.
“I wasn't going to say this,” she told me, “But if you really want to drink from a fire hose of information about the Revolution around here, I suppose I could put you in touch with Virgil Rathmew. He's a local history buff. He actually wrote a book about the Brier Creek battle, but he couldn't find anybody to publish it. I suppose the big publishers want authors with advanced history degrees and such. Virgil has a certificate in air conditioner repair from Ogeechee Technical College, but that's about it.”
“I'd be very happy to speak with him,” I said.
“He's kind of an odd bird, though. I feel a little hesitant to introduce you, because I don't want you to go thinking everybody in town is like Virgil. Virgil's one of a kind. And that's not always a good thing...”
“Believe me, I'm not afraid of eccentric people. If he has information, I want it.”
“I'll just look up his patron account and give him a call. Excuse me.”
While the librarian returned to her desk, I gathered up the paper copies I'd printed of assorted newspaper articles and other details. It was late afternoon and the library would close soon. Between the courthouse and library, I'd skimmed hundreds of pages of documents, maybe more. My eyes felt worn down, and so did my forebrain, but I'd taken in a lot of raw data. I had a number of vaguely possible suspects for the identity of Bloody Betty, but nothing to point strongly to any specific one of them. As for the horseman, I had no real clues at all.
“Virgil's voice mail answered,” the librarian said as I stood to go. “I gave him your name and the number from your business card.”
I thanked the lady for her help, which had been considerable, and hurried out the door. The shadows were already long and deep outside. It was late October, and darkness came a little earlier every day.
As I approached the van, I checked my phone. Grant hadn't gotten in touch, though I wasn't counting on him to come up with much, anyway. Michael hadn't texted me back, either. I'd let him know I'd probably be out of town on a case for a few days. Usually he asked questions, wanted some assurances I'd be safe and not, for example, getting thrown out of high windows by angry poltergeists (it's happened). Maybe he'd worked an extra long shift at the fire station. Maybe he was still wrapped up in his latest restoration project, a massive grandfather-sized clock carved to look like a black castle, with spring-driven automata chess pieces that rolled out at different hours. The clock was bizarre and unsettling to me, but he was sure he could repair it and sell it for a sizable profit. He'd promised to take us on a little vacation together with the money, but that didn't make me like the clock one tick more.
I thought about calling him, but the excited look on Stacey's face as I climbed into the van distracted me.
“Want to hear the ghosts?” Stacey asked, grinning as she nudged her way up the narrow pass between the two front seats. She handed me her headset.
Chapter Eight
The headset filled my ears with static, the buzzing of flies, and the distant chirping of crickets. I closed my eyes and listened carefully. Something crunched in the leaves, maybe an animal that had nosed its way past the microphone in the cemetery the night before.
Then something breathed in my ear. It was heavy, masculine, just one slow breath in and back out, and it sounded very human.
I opened my eyes, and Stacey just nodded at my expression.
“Now listen to this,” she said, grabbing another sound clip on her laptop screen. “It's also from the cemetery, from a little after two in the morning.”
I closed my eyes and listened again to the ambient sounds of a quiet cemetery at night.
“Someone is watching,” a voice whispered, making me jump. Voice apparitions are rarely so clear—breathing is creepy enough. To hear the flat, cold voices of the dead, even for just a few words, is always disturbing. It came again, closer, as if approaching the microphone. “Someone is watching us.”
“Do you have any video with this?” I asked Stacey.
“Sure do. The night vision camera picked up a little orb, smaller than a penny, passing near the microphone.”
“We're getting somewhere with this case.” I removed the headset
and started up the van. “I'm just not sure where, exactly.”
“Well, wherever we're going, they have talking dead people there,” Stacey said. “That should be a comforting thought. Oh, Jacob said he can come up tomorrow night.”
“That actually is a comforting thought,” I said. “The Jacob part. Not the part with the talking dead people.” I could still hear the flat, almost mechanical voice, devoid of any inflection. Someone is watching. I hate how ghosts sound when they talk.
We stopped at a restaurant in town long enough to order a couple of take-out salads, then returned to the farm as the sun sank away below the trees.
Taking our advice, the family members each slept with a flashlight in or near their beds, in case spirits bothered them at night. Stacey and I rigged up a pair of powerful floodlights on the house's stairway, where the bloody girl had attacked me the night before. These could be triggered by motion detectors or remote control from Stacey's workstation in the van. If Bloody Betty reached the stairs again, she'd be drenched in light. There was also a speaker that would blast Gospel music if Stacey activated it. These were our best attempts at securing those stairs so I could explore freely during the long night.
I didn't wait inside. This time, I set up shop on the front porch, with a thermal and night vision camera recording a wide sweep of the front yard. I remained out there while the hours grew late and the night grew quiet.
I watched and listened, creaking back and forth on a rocking chair.
One bit of information I'd picked up at the library seemed to confirm the possibility of a Hessian horseman ghost. A large number of the German mercenary soldiers had taken part in the British seizure and occupation of Savannah during the war. Many had stayed afterward, some of them having deserted during the war—Hessian deserters were punished with death if caught by the Germans or the British, and several of those involved in the Savannah occupation had been executed. At the same time, the Continental Congress offered a reward of two hundred acres for any Hessian who deserted, so there were incentives to quit.
I found myself reading up on the centuries-ago occupation of Georgia as best as the Nevilles' spotty satellite internet service would allow. Jeremy had complained about the lack of cellular and cable or fiber-optic service out here, and I was ready to complain about it, too. Anyway, it was hard to stay online, and I got frustrated with the endlessly rotating circle that meant things were allegedly loading.
Several times, whenever I thought I heard something moving through the dry grass, I grabbed my thermal goggles. This enabled me to spot a possum scampering past the house, and then a stray cat about an hour after that.
Later, I texted Michael again, but he didn't reply. It was almost midnight, and not unthinkable for him to be asleep, but it was still odd not to hear from him at all. I considered texting his younger sister instead, just to make sure he was okay, but decided against starting down the road to Psycho Stalker Girlfriend Land. Surely Melissa would have called me if there was some kind of major emergency, anyway.
“There's something moving inside the house,” Stacey said. I hopped to my feet, reached for a tactical flashlight, and headed for the front door. I was expecting the worst, that the ghost had decided to enter another way and was harassing Maya or somebody else upstairs.
I swung open the outer screen door, then shoved open the solid inner door and leaped into the foyer like a boss, ready to kick some supernatural tailbones.
The motion detectors on the stairs caused the floodlights to fire up, and the room filled with the sound of the Sensational Nightingales, an all-male quartet that was sort of the Menudo of Gospel music, enduring for decades by repeatedly replacing their membership, although the members are generally much older than the boys of Menudo. So maybe it's more like Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/Starship, whatever that was all about.
The point is, lights and music flooded the place, which caused the girl on the stairs to jump and scream. She wasn't bloody and moaning or crawling around on the floor. It was just Corrine, startled by the gadgets that had sprung to life around her as she descended the stairs.
“Hey, never mind,” Stacey was saying over my headset, just a bit late. “It's just one of the family members.”
“What is going on?” Corrine shouted, covering her ears as if the music was deafening. Her eyes were squinted shut, too, against the searing white light that had suddenly appeared in the dark house.
“Sorry!” I said, killing the music and lights. The damage was done, though. We'd scared the older girl this time, and once again the family was springing out of their rooms, flipping on the upstairs lights as they came to see what had happened. Within a few seconds, the family had assembled on the top stairs, wearing their pajamas, all of them looking down at me.
I cleared my throat.
“Ah, sorry,” I said. “It looks like Corrine might have triggered the little ghost burglar alarm we set up around these stairs, here.”
“This is so stupid. I was just going for a glass of water.” Corrine stalked down the staircase and tossed a glare at me as she passed by. “How are a bunch of lights going to get rid of ghosts?”
“They won't get rid of them, but a flood of protons can scramble a ghost's electromagnetic...” I gave up as she left through the doorway to the kitchen, clearly ignoring me.
“Will the screaming be an every night thing while you're here?” Jeremy asked. He stood with his arms crossed, his red hair messy and his eyes bleary, as though he'd had a series of long days with minimal sleep. “And if so, can we agree to schedule it sometime before midnight? Eight-thirty would be ideal.”
“I told the kids to use the back steps if they had to go downstairs,” Amber said. “Sometimes Corrine decides not to hear anything I say to her. She's trying to punish for moving us out here. Even if she does get to have a horse.”
“A horse I'm not allowed to ride anywhere,” Corrine said, returning from the kitchen with the glass of water. She rattled the ice cubes inside it, for no apparent reason other than to be loud. “Except in little circles around the corral.”
“You came home terrified that someone had chased you in the woods,” Amber said. “That's part of the reason these detectives are here!”
“Yeah, just part of it. Because you waited until Maya saw something, too. You didn't believe me or my friends. You thought we were...” Corrine's eyes shifted toward me for a second. “...making it all up. But we weren't. And now everybody thinks I'm a freak and we're all freaks with the undead wandering around our house at night.” She stalked up the stairs and past her parents, then slammed the door to her room.
Amber took a deep breath. “So, I think we know how she feels about that.”
“This is my fault,” I said. “I'm sorry for causing loud problems. Late at night. Again.”
“Are we clear to return to bed?” Jeremy asked. “Because that is where I'd rather be if at all possible.”
“Yeah, everything's fine. False alarm.”
“Come on, Castor.” Jeremy put a hand on his son's shoulder and began steering him back towards his room. “Maybe tomorrow night you'll get your chance to scream everyone awake.”
“I bet I can scream louder than Corrine,” the boy said.
I mumbled some more embarrassed apologies as Amber gave me another long look, then led Maya away. The youngest girl was wide awake, asking whether the ghost had come back.
“We are really on top of this case,” Stacey said over my headset, when I was finally alone again.
I stepped out onto the front porch before replying.
“Maybe you should have dealt with the family instead,” I told her. “You've got that wholesome, innocent charm thing going. I never had that.”
“Aw, you think I'm charming and innocent?”
“Or that you can act that way for short periods of time, at least,” I said. “You're somewhat less likely to terrify children in the night than I am.”
“I'm taking that as a compliment. You
want to sit in the van for a while? I mean, the 'mobile nerve center'? I can get out and pace around, trying to look busy like you've been doing all night.”
“I'll let you know. How long until Bloody Betty shows up?”
“Assuming she's on the same schedule as last night, we've got about twenty minutes,” Stacey said. “Do you think she's that predictable?”
“We'll find out.” I drew the thermal goggles over my eyes again and watched the yard. Tiny red and orange blobs of night creatures moved through the gardens, the corn maze, and the pine woods beyond. Small warm blurs indicated bats and owls among the trees. It wasn't the hot little shapes of living animals that worried me, though, not unless a coyote or puma came stalking out.
The thing that worried me happened about twenty minutes later. A deep purple-black mass of cold formed in the middle of the dirt road and began rolling toward me across the lawn. It was exactly reminiscent of the cold layer that had covered the foyer floor on the previous night. If I'd removed my thermals, I would have seen a thin layer of fog slithering its way through the grass and fallen leaves in the yard. Stacey confirmed this over my headset.
Tonight, I wanted to keep Bloody Betty out of the house altogether. The trick was figuring out how to stop her. The problem was that I still didn't know much about her. A name would have been extremely useful. Unfortunately, names and dates were exactly the sort of specific details that Stacey's psychic boyfriend Jacob had the greatest trouble fishing out.
All I had was a list of possible names, so I started testing them.
“Ruth Neville,” I said. “Died in 1853. Age seventeen. Is that you?” My question didn't stop the fog at all, though that didn't really mean anything as far as whether she was actually Ruth or not. Many spirits will stop and pay attention if you say their names, but there are plenty who just don't care what you say to them.
