by JL Bryan
I could imagine old Hiram gathering the roughest, most disturbed spirits of his descendants, the ones who stuck around after death instead of moving on, and pulling them together into a family group built around his obsession with protecting the farm and his daughter. He'd failed to protect her in life. The guilt might have haunted him, keeping his spirit earthbound after he died.
“There must be some way to release you all,” I whispered.
More words were engraved low on Mildred's small, sunken headstone. I had to peel away moss before I could make out the letters—and even then, it took a little time.
After a minute, I was pretty sure it read Infant Neville, 1781.
I blinked, tracing the remnants of the inscribed letters with my fingertip.
“Infant?” I asked, as if poor Mildred could have answered me. “Virgil didn't say...did you have a baby with you? The horseman killed your baby, too?” I curled my lip in disgust, thinking what a monster he must have been.
The baby didn't have a name, though. Perhaps Mildred had been in advanced pregnancy when she was killed, enough for the family to mention it on their shared headstone. Mother and unborn child interred together.
Then again, maybe Virgil was wrong altogether. His story about the Hessian horseman killing Mildred had been based on an oral history, after all, that might have been no more than local folklore. There might have been no horseman at all. Mildred might simply have died in childbirth, as so many did in those days. The gravestone offered no clues about how the young mother and her baby had found their way into the earth so early, both of them at such tender ages, sharing a headstone.
Horse hooves sounded, distant and soft, moving at a low trot. I wasn't immediately worried, since I knew Corrine woke up by sunrise to attend the horses. Still, it was a little unnerving, given the stories of the murdering horseman.
I hustled to the gate, having completed my mission of finding Mildred's grave. The girl had indeed existed, though the circumstances of her death remained murky. I had a strong feeling she was the one who'd touched me with her cold hand.
Anyway, the ghost had left her psychic mark on me, regardless of whether either of us had really wanted that to happen. I could feel pain in my lower body from the moment I found her headstone until the moment I stepped outside the gate and closed the padlock again. Then it was gone. I can't say for sure whether it was the horrible pain of a childbirth gone awry, or of a sword having ripped its way through my stomach, or getting gutshot with a primitive ball of lead. I'm not familiar with the finer distinctions among those different forms of excruciating pain, and I'd really rather not become too familiar with them if at all possible.
Outside, I took a deep breath. I'd been more nervous than I'd realized while inside the cemetery, and stepping back onto the road felt like fresh air and freedom.
The hoof beats returned, still distant. I turned slowly, trying to find the source. They weren't coming from the Neville farm, but from somewhere farther up the road, toward the place where the riverside marsh eventually swallowed it. It was possible that distant neighbors used the road for horseback riding, since it was virtually guaranteed to have no auto traffic on it.
Still, I didn't waste any time hustling down the road. The hoofbeats sounded closer, definitely on the approach.
I watched over my shoulder. The trotting sound seemed just around the curve now, on the cusp of emerging from behind a stand of interwoven old oaks thick with poisonous vines. My body tensed up in expectation, ready to fight or flee. Or wave, I suppose, if it turned out to be Corrine or just some neighbor happening by.
The hooves fell silent. I waited, and continued to wait, but nothing emerged from around the bend. There weren't any sounds of retreat, either. It was as if something had come to a halt behind the stand of trees, and now waited there silently.
I crossed the road so I could see a little bit farther around the bend. Then I approached the place where I'd last heard the sound, feeling more tense with every step.
Around the bend, there was more dirt road, lots of weeds in the ditches on either side, and nothing else. Light spilled through the canopy above in a hundred little sunbeams.
There was no sign of a horse or rider, except for the fresh-looking hoofprints in the dirt. They ended abruptly, just where the sound of the approaching horse had fallen silent. It was as though the horse had evaporated, just like we'd seen in the corn maze. And I hadn't seen any sign of a choppa.
I turned and hurried back to the farm, eager to leave the woods behind.
Chapter Thirteen
“So that's it? You're all done?” Amber asked. Stacey and I stood with her in the little shop near the front of the farm, while Jacob snoozed in the van. The shop was already open for Saturday-morning business, and a couple of elderly early-bird customers studied the small baskets of fresh produce with sour looks on their faces.
“I wouldn't say we're all done,” I said. “You'll want to keep the gate locked and never allow anybody in there again, for starters. We're going to study all we've learned, see if we can learn more, and develop a strategy for making the whole area safe again.” I was trying to speak in some kind of vague, coded language, since I doubted she wanted us talking openly about ghosts and ghouls in front of visiting customers, even if it was almost Halloween.
“So much for Jeremy's prized Haunted Woods attraction, then. Y'all want some hot cider?” Amber asked the two customers, indicating the warm urn that filled the air with a sweet cinnamon. The elderly couple muttered under their breaths, as if competing to see who could sound the most bitter and the least coherent at the same time. Amber shrugged, then lowered her voice to a whisper, leaning toward us across the counter. “What about the corn maze? Is it safe now?”
“Wait a couple of days,” I said.
“We'll miss Halloween.” Amber shook her head, looking crestfallen. “This was all a bust. All our work to make this some kind of fun place, to turn around the bad memories...”
“The bad memories?” I asked.
“Well, the time or two Jeremy came here as a kid, his uncle was pretty mean to him,” Amber said. “Called him a city-sissy, threatened him with a gun when his parents weren't looking. Made Jeremy help skin a deer when he was a kid, which gave Jeremy nightmares. The poor thing was still breathing when they dragged it off the truck and hung it up on the deer stand. Bleeding all over, shot through the ribs, but still alive.”
“That's awful.”
“It's kind of ironic that Jeremy ended up inheriting the farm, considering how much old Uncle Tyrus hated him,” Amber said. “But then, Tyrus should've been a nicer person if he wanted to have some kids of his own, you know? Jeremy was the closest relative.”
“So that could be why the...” I paused as the elderly couple left without buying anything, muttering sourly to each other as the entrance bell jangled happily on its ribbon overhead. “...why the dead ancestors don't like Jeremy. Because his great-uncle, the last owner of the place, thought he was weak, thought he didn't belong.”
“Jeremy was always kind of a reject among some of his family,” Amber said. “I guess because he was adopted.”
“He was? Why didn't anyone mention that?” I asked.
“Does it matter?” Amber looked perplexed.
“That could explain why the native ghosts are so hostile,” I said. “Jeremy isn't a blood relative. That means your kids aren't, either...none of you are. The family ghosts might see all of you as outsiders.”
“There's not much we can do about that.” Amber shook her head. “Maybe this was all a bad idea. Jeremy was right when he wanted to sell it. I was the one who had to get crunchy and New Age about it. Hey, let's move our family out into the country, let the purity of nature clean up our souls and clear out our problems...or at least put some serious distance between Corrine and her druggie friends back home...”
“It sounds like a nice idea,” Stacey said.
“It might still work out,” I said. “Just leave
the cemetery alone.”
“This year's a bust, anyway.” Amber sighed. “I'm glad you were able to help. I can't say how much it means.” She looked a little bit relieved, at least, but clearly still had plenty of worries and fears on her mind.
“There may be more ahead,” I said. “But I'm glad there seems to be some progress. You and your family should rest easy tonight. We're taking most of our gear with us, but we've left the ghost burglar-alarm arrangement set up on your front porch, and another one on the front stairs, in case the crawling girl returns. The lights have been effective in driving her off before. Let us know if anything sets them off, or if you see anything else. You call my cell anytime. I'm a night owl.”
“Thank you,” Amber said. “Are you sure you don't want some fresh-brewed apple cider?”
“No, thanks,” I told her, but Stacey eagerly accepted a to-go cup.
It was nice to leave the farm behind and begin our journey home. We stopped by the Old Walnut Inn long enough to check out.
“I'm going to miss this place,” Stacey sighed, looking over the concrete-plugged pool surrounded by grimy furniture. I assumed she was kidding.
We stopped at the first urgent care that was open on Saturday. It was in the small town of Rincon, about half an hour outside of Savannah. Jacob's injuries weren't so bad. He received two stitches in his middle finger, and that was about it. We had a late breakfast at a local spot called Debbie's, which was a small house tucked into a sandy corner lot next to a trailer park. The food was basic but tasty—eggs, grits, and mushrooms for me. Filling. I was ready to sleep after that, but we still had to drive back home.
After dropping off the kids—okay, Stacey and Jacob are only a couple years younger than me, but sometimes they seem like kids to me—I finally returned to my own apartment. Bandit, my cat, hadn't seen me in a few days. He responded to my return home after this long absence by opening one eye where he lay on the couch, then closing it again and going back to sleep.
“Nice to see you, too, pal,” I told him. I refilled his water and dry-food dispensers before adjusting the blackout curtains, showering, and heading to bed. My apartment is nothing special, just a narrow brick-walled studio in a refurbished factory, but at that moment it seemed nicer than any five-star hotel. The Old Walnut Inn couldn't compete.
My sleep was filled with nothing but intense, fiery nightmares and Anton's smiling face, just as it had been for the past few days.
Calvin called me into the office that afternoon. Stacey wasn't there yet, but Calvin was at her big three-screen video editing station, looking through footage and images she'd earmarked for him. Cold spots and dark figures from around the farm looked back at us from the screens.
I caught him up on the case so far.
“What are the odds that Virgil got the girl's name right but was wrong about how she died?” I asked. “It seems just as likely she could have died in childbirth. Any kind of death certificate or news article would help right about now, but it's hard to scrape up documentation from the seventeen-eighties.”
“You should contact Grant at the Historical Association,” Calvin said, without looking up from a still image of the cold front that had crept across the foyer, the one that represented Bloody Betty—or Mildred, as the scarce evidence was beginning to indicate.
“He's in the loop. And he'll be at the Lathrop Grand ball tonight, hopefully with something new to add. And you're still invited.”
“I'm not interested in balls, thank you,” Calvin said. “You and Stacey make better representatives to the public than I ever could.”
“I don't know about that. What are you looking at?” I gestured at the screens.
“Have you contained the haunting?” Calvin asked.
“Sure, but I'd call it patched, not fixed,” I said. “If you have any suggestions about draining the swamp, you know, getting all the ghosts out of that cemetery so that even the most sensitive mediums can walk through there at night without getting harassed and possessed, I'm definitely all ears.”
“Determine what's keeping them here,” Calvin replied. “The natural course is for us to move on, not to linger around poking at a life we've outgrown and need to leave behind.” He didn't look at me at all, just kept his gaze fixed on the screen. It seemed like he was making an effort to avoid eye contact.
“Are you talking about the Neville case, or something else?” I asked.
“I forgot to offer you coffee.” Calvin gestured at the coffee maker on the worktable—the old-fashioned green coffee maker that looked like it dated back to 1982, not the newer espresso machine I'd added more recently. The pot was full of something that looked like black tar. “I made coffee,” he added.
“I've had your coffee before, and I'd rather not watch my heart explode out through my chest, but thanks.”
He didn't even give a fake smile for my lame joke, just kept looking at the screens as if there were something new to see there. He hadn't looked at me since I'd arrived, in fact.
“Calvin?” I said. “What are you not telling me?”
He finally did look at me, his eyes wrinkled and tired behind his glasses, his hair thin, gray, and unkempt, nothing like the crisp and formal look he'd always had as a cop. He wasn't yet sixty but looked older than that, his thin body slumping in his wheelchair.
The look he gave me was one of resignation...and maybe apology.
“No,” I said. “No, Calvin, come on.”
“You know I've been wrestling with this for weeks. It wasn't easy.”
“That's why you wanted to speak to me before Stacey got here,” I said.
“I thought it might be a little more personal for you. She is still relatively new.”
“While I've been at this since I was fifteen. Not that it ultimately mattered to you, did it?”
“Lori was five when the divorce happened,” Calvin said. “Then they moved away. I missed most of her childhood, Ellie. Neither of them wanted anything to do with me, the crazy man who spent all his free time in the haunted attics of old houses, wrestling with spirits of the dead. Sometimes things followed me home from work.”
“Not puppies, I'm guessing,” I said, thinking of all the protections Calvin had insisted I hang around my apartment.
“My daughter wants me back in her life. This baby she's having...it's like a second chance for me. There won't be a third.”
“Do you really have to pack it up and move?” I asked.
“I don't want to see her only in pictures. I had enough of that with Lori's childhood. And, let's be honest, it's not as if I've been much help here lately. You operate independently, Ellie. You haven't needed me in some time. Or hadn't you noticed?”
“I hadn't noticed because it's not true. I depend on everyone around me. Jacob, even Stacey a little bit...but mostly you. You taught me everything. You're still teaching me. Even right now, I'm not sure how to handle this case.”
“You know how,” he said. “You always do. Lower your head and keep pushing until you find a way. That's the only answer there is.”
“Tell me you're not really moving away.” I tried to look calm and not as mentally unbalanced as I was beginning to feel. “You can't just leave out of nowhere.”
“I've been preparing you for weeks,” Calvin said. He was staring at the screens again, not facing me.
“You were always planning to do it,” I said. “From the first time they offered to buy the agency.”
“I'm doing what's best for all of us.” He finally looked in my direction. “You'll still have your job, and I'll be paying you a bonus as soon as the sale goes through—”
“Forget the bonus. You're obviously more desperate for money than I am.” I turned away and left the room, passing through our ratty little lobby on the way to the broken, uneven parking lot outside. My eyes were burning, and I didn't want him to see it.
After my parents died in the fire, Calvin had been the one who'd told me the truth. He'd encountered the dark side of our city a
number of times during his time as a homicide detective. He discovered the name of my parents' murderer: Anton Clay, a handsome and wealthy cotton trader who'd first burned down a house in the same location in 1841. It had been a sizable plantation house, and Anton had an affair with the young wife of the older man who owned the house. After she ended the affair, Anton had slipped in one night and burned down the house, killing her, her three children, her husband, three slaves, and himself.
Since 1841, five more houses had been built in the same general location. The last one was my parents' house. I'd barely survived the fire. The lot had been abandoned, which meant Anton was trapped and contained in the earth there. Calvin had assured me it was too dangerous for me to face Anton.
I still visited the place occasionally. It had become a weedy lot barricaded behind a saggy wooden fence, without much sign of my parents' house left to see. Sometimes I could sense Anton's presence, though. Sometimes I could see him, watching me through the fence.
If we caught a dangerous ghost, the best we could do was bury the ghost trap in a distant, abandoned graveyard with the ghost still inside. If the ghost managed to eventually slip out of the trap, the psychological force of the old walls or fence would keep the spirit inside with the dead, where it belonged. As long as the site of my old house remained undisturbed, Anton Clay was just as trapped. The place was a graveyard itself, after all, the earth full of the remains of all those who'd burned to death there over the years. The ashes of Anton and all his victims, including my parents, were mixed deep into the soil by now.
I burst out through the front door, passing Stacey, who was just arriving to spend the afternoon sorting through the hundreds of hours of video and audio we'd captured from around the farm.
Stacey was scowling.
“Jacob wants to be Martian Manhunter,” Stacey said. “Do you even know who that is? Because I don't. He says it goes with Supergirl, but I think...” Stacey trailed off, noticing that I was ignoring her and stalking toward my car, trembling with too many emotions. “Ellie? What's wrong?”
