The Maelstrom of the Leaf Academy (Gulf Coast Paranormal Book 11)

by M. L. Bullock

  “I’m going too, Midas. I’m not good at research, not like Sierra. She doesn’t really need me for any of that. I would like to check out the cameras. I need to pull the cards and review any captures we have. I have to be on site to do all of that.” Sierra’s cheeks reddened, but she didn’t say a word. She left the decision up to Midas, who agreed with Joshua.

  “Sierra, when you’re finished, meet us at the school. Call one of us before you head out, though, so we can keep an eye out for you. I’m anxious to see what you’ve found.”

  “That’s fine, and I will. Give me a couple of hours. I should be done by lunch. Tell you what, I’ll bring lunch with me,” she said rather too sunnily as she reached for her tablet and walked out of the conference room.

  “Let’s load up.” Midas glanced at his phone quickly as if he were expecting a message. I felt a twinge of worry for some reason. I had no idea what was going on in his head beyond this investigation, but the wheels were turning, no doubt. He’d tell me when he wanted me to know. I wasn’t going to push him.

  We rode to the property in silence. It was a pleasant morning, but I found it difficult to enjoy it. I apparently wasn’t the only one. I prayed that the temperature remained cool, but it likely wouldn’t. At least it wasn’t raining. Jocelyn mentioned that during her last investigation, a horrible storm had rolled through. I couldn’t imagine staying at the Leaf Academy in a thunderstorm. Talk about ambiance. The ride ended quickly, and Midas put the SUV in park and turned in his seat to face Jocelyn and Joshua.

  “Joshua, we will help you run through the footage. You set the cameras to motion detection mode, so that shouldn’t take us too long. We’ll investigate the greenhouse and the sheds before we make the trek to the back of the property. Everyone stay close. No taking off to check out anything. I don’t care what the circumstances are—alright? This thing can take on the images of people you know. Don’t be tricked. We always go with partners, got it?”

  “Okay,” Jocelyn grumbled, and Joshua agreed with clear relief. How could he be so mad at Sierra that he would be willing to sit inside a haunted school by himself to review the footage? They must have had a serious falling-out.

  “Alright,” I added as we unloaded ourselves and our personal investigation gear from the vehicle. There was no happy banter as we waited for Midas to unlock the building. I held my breath as I walked into the Leaf Academy. The equipment was fine, and nothing appeared out of place. Nothing except us. The air had a coolness to it that I hadn’t expected. I suddenly wished I’d brought my denim jacket.

  Joshua didn’t waste any time getting started. “Looks like the cameras on this floor are still in place. Nothing is moved. Cassidy, why don’t we go check on the cameras? I just want to make sure nothing is moved and everything is where it should be. Midas, how many hits do we have?”

  “Fourteen,” he said as he tapped on the keyboard. “Let’s not get excited yet, though. We know there are lots of living things that could trigger these cameras.”

  “I’ll go with Joshua,” I agreed. My voice echoed strangely through the bottom floor. I wondered why his hadn’t… You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Cassidy Wright. Get your head in the game!

  Cassidy…

  I froze on the staircase but only momentarily. “Joshua, did you say something?”

  “No,” he said as he turned his head slightly. We both paused, and Midas watched us from the floor below. Jocelyn was tinkering with a camera, removing the digital card or something. She didn’t appear to notice.

  “It was probably nothing,” I said as I waved to Midas, who took a seat beside Jocelyn. I smiled awkwardly at him, and Joshua and I climbed the steps together. As we cleared the top step, I felt as if I had walked into a thick cloud of cobwebs. I yelped and swatted at the invisible web while Joshua watched.

  “What is the matter with you? You’re jumpier than a feral cat. You’re going to give me a heart attack if you don’t calm down.”

  “I walked into a spider web! Didn’t you feel it?”

  He moved his hand around but shook his head. “I don’t feel anything. Turn around, let me check for spiders. God, I hate spiders.”

  “Me too! And spider webs!”

  Joshua briefly examined my clothes and hair and gave me the all-clear. “It’s weird because I don’t see any webs. Not even a remnant of a web. You sure it wasn’t your hair?”

  “I know the difference between my hair and a spider web. I know what I felt. Let’s get this over with.”

  He snorted and said, “You sound just like my wife.”

  I didn’t comment. No way was I going to get between the “fighting McBrides.” Brushing my hair out of my face, I hurried down the hall to check out the laser grid and the proximity sensor. They were in good working order, but I quickly replaced the batteries in both. Just in case. Better to be safe than sorry later.

  “Okay, next is the camera in the teacher’s room. Then we’ll check the one at the opposite end of the hall.” It was business as usual for Joshua, or at least that’s what he wanted me to believe. I rubbed my face, wishing that feeling that I’d walked into a thick spider web would go away. Yuck! Disgusting. I shivered as my mind summoned up images of giant spiders hiding in dark corners of each room. What was wrong with me? I wasn’t usually afraid of spiders. I didn’t want one as a pet, but I wasn’t necessarily afraid of them.

  The air in McCandlish’s room was cold and a bit damp. Nothing had changed, except we’d removed the stack of drawings from the room. They were downstairs near the computer. I think Midas originally wanted to use them as trigger objects before he knew anything about the Nalusa Falaya. Now, we knew we wouldn’t need trigger objects—that’s what we were. All of us on the Gulf Coast Paranormal team. We were trigger objects.

  “Camera looks fine. I’m grabbing the card,” Joshua told me as I walked to the dirty window and looked outside at the grounds below. How were we going to find Shanafila’s Medicine Hill? I couldn’t say exactly when he lived here, but it had to be long ago. Hundreds of years ago, way before the Leaf Academy was constructed.

  Shanafila, I’m sorry for what happened to you.

  “Earth to Cassidy…you with me?”

  “Sure, just looking around. Let’s get that other card.”

  “Okay, who’s pulling my leg? Where is the camera?” Joshua asked me as we hoofed it down the hall. “I left it right here.”

  “I definitely saw you set it up, and I’m not aware of any leg-pulling.” I reached for my radio and called Midas. “Hey, what are you seeing for camera four?” I eyed Joshua and asked, “Four, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. What the heck?” He checked out the room beside me and the one at the other end of the hall and declared them empty.

  “I see camera four. That looks odd. I can’t see you two at all. But I can see the woods and from a high vantage point. Did you move it to the roof, Joshua?”

  Josh shook his head and reached for the door that led to the roof. “Why would I do that?”

  I radioed back. “He didn’t put it on the roof. We’re going up to check it out.”

  “Stay put. We’re coming up.” Midas’ voice didn’t convey his usual calmness. He was frazzled by this mix-up. Surely that’s all it was, a mix-up of some kind. Maybe a mass hallucination? I mean, we all knew where the camera had been.

  “Roger,” I answered as we waited. “Hurry.”

  Somewhere, and not far away, I heard a door squeak.

  Chapter Fourteen—Cassidy

  Joshua’s wild-eyed expression added to the freakiness of the moment. I couldn’t stand the silence. “Are we going to pretend we didn’t hear that?”

  “No, but let’s wait for the boss to investigate. All the more proof to me that someone is pulling our leg.”

  “Come on, Josh. You know that’s not true.” My palms felt sweaty now. “How could that have happened? Do you really think someone else came in and moved it? I don’t see the neighbors trying to break int
o this place. Do you?”

  “I thought we were supposed to debunk first. Or has the protocol changed?” Joshua’s icy attitude floored me. I was glad to see Midas and Jocelyn clearing the steps and making their way to us.

  “The other equipment okay? Nothing else missing?”

  “No, there is nothing else missing. And I know for a fact that I did not put that camera on the roof. I haven’t even been on the roof. I’m ready to go take a look at this.” Joshua sounded disgusted by the whole thing. I was more freaked out than anything but also curious. Sure, I was down for debunking, but we couldn’t discount Jocelyn’s investigation. She wasn’t one for theatrics. Come to think of it, ghosts had moved around cameras before, but not like this. In previous cases, the camera would’ve ended up in a heap on the floor. Not stationed in another location, and certainly not on the roof. This was highly unusual. Maybe Joshua had the right idea. The camera’s relocation seemed an impossibility unless a human agent was involved. I would have a hard time believing that any entity could relocate a camera without damaging it and set it up in a completely new location. Knocking one over? Yeah, I could see that happening.

  Jocelyn led the way to the roof; her hands were clenched into fists as we made our way to the top of the Leaf Academy. The roof beneath our feet didn’t look completely sound either. Any good shake and one or all of us would go tumbling through to the floor beneath. There were random patches of grass, garbage and plenty of graffiti up here. At some point, this had been a popular place for teenagers to gather. That surprised me. Maybe there were lulls in the activity here. That was certainly a possibility. The rumor was that the activity increased during the month of October. Given what had happened to us in January, I shuddered to think what this place was like in October.

  “I see it! It’s there in the corner!” Joshua stormed over to the camera. The equipment remained intact and standing perfectly level on its tripod. It wasn’t crooked or wobbly-looking at all. Whoever relocated this camera had done so carefully.

  “Wait a second!” Midas yelled at Josh before he reached for the camera.

  “Wait for what? I want to take a look at this thing and get the card out. What’s the matter with you?” Joshua’s short-tempered attitude was beginning to grate on my nerves.

  “I want to look at this before we start moving it around. Look at how it’s pointed! Clearly, whoever moved this camera wanted us to take a look in this direction. I don’t think that’s an accident, do you? Let’s just go slow here.”

  Joshua didn’t snap back, and wisely so. Jocelyn and I looked around for any evidence of footprints besides our own but found nothing. There wasn’t much soil up here except in the few places where weeds were growing, and those were nowhere near the camera.

  Joshua said, “It’s pointed in that direction, toward the back of the property. I think you’re making too much of this, Midas. Someone is having a joke on us. Maybe Ms. Shanahan has some weird sense of humor? I’ve never seen a camera moved a full floor and reset without human help. Have you? Let’s be real here.”

  My fiancé wasn’t paying Josh a bit of attention now. He was busy looking through the lens and examining the camera for any damage. “Jocelyn, take a few pictures of this, and then we’ll break this setup down and take the camera downstairs.”

  She snapped away, but there wasn’t really anything to see. Just a camera on a tripod pointing south toward a faraway building. Oh yeah. I hadn’t seen that before. I walked to the edge of the roof to get a closer look. Using my phone, I zoomed in on the location. “Jocelyn, how good is your zoom on that thing?”

  “Pretty good. Better than that phone, I bet. Why? Oh, I see.” She stood beside me and tinkered with her camera. It whirred quietly as she adjusted the lens and then snapped away. “It’s a church. That’s a church building, Midas. I don’t remember there being a church on this property. Did you know about this?”

  Midas glanced at the faded white building and then took a peek at her camera screen. She handed it to him so he could get a better look. “Nope, but I imagine there are quite a few old buildings on the property.” He turned back to us and said, “I’m calling Adrian, and then we’re heading over there. Just to make sure this place is open to us. Joshua, you need help with that?” Midas sounded stressed. He was only expressing how we all were feeling.

  “No, I’ve got it. Thanks.”

  The trip downstairs didn’t reveal much. The camera went off a few times while whoever or whatever moved, but the images were blurry. One minute the camera was on the second floor, and the next it was on the roof. There was no evidence that a person had moved it. But then again, there was no evidence that a ghost had moved it either.

  Midas stalked back toward us, and we headed out to his SUV. As he walked, his feet left tiny clouds of dust behind him. “I’m going to call Sierra and tell her where we are going. I don’t want anyone coming here by herself. Adrian says we have the key and that we are more than welcome to check it out. There’s a road that will lead us back there. She says it’s not good to travel on foot. Too many snakes and coyotes. You guys have everything you need?”

  “I think so. Let’s get going. I’m dying to see inside this place,” Jocelyn said as she climbed inside the SUV.

  I put on my seat belt as Midas turned the car to go back down the driveway. Dying to see inside…that wouldn’t have been my choice of words.

  I glanced at my side mirror as we pulled away from the Leaf Academy. A little boy was standing on the porch staring at us. Only his head and shoulders were clear to me; the rest of his body was translucent, and I could see the faded red bricks of the building behind him. A flurry of crows flew past the porch, but the boy didn’t flinch. Why should he? Standing behind him was a very tall man with red hair and a neat beard. He was also translucent from the chest down, but his face…oh, his face was bereft of all emotion, all expression. He was like a doll, like a plaything for the dead. My heart sank at the horrible sight. As I stared, I began to see more faces, more dead standing behind the boy. A woman in a deerskin dress, another woman wearing a red dress, or at least I thought they were dresses. The longer I stared, the more solidified the image became. Suddenly, I felt terrified. I closed my eyes against it. “Midas?” I whispered in surprise, but he wasn’t paying attention. He was on the phone with Sierra.

  I looked back, and the boy was gone. Even though I couldn’t see him anymore, I could feel him watching me. Watching us. And he hated us all. I couldn’t find the words to convey what I felt, what I’d seen. Had no one else seen him? No, they didn’t appear to have seen anything. But they weren’t looking, were they?

  Midas was busy relaying to Sierra our latest find, the small white building that we all assumed was a church at the back of the property. Jocelyn was telling Joshua about how the Leaf Academy put off strange echoes. Every time she snapped photos, it was as if she heard another photographer, a phantom photographer, taking photos right behind her. And I was seeing ghosts.

  Rather than break up the conversations, I closed my eyes and tried to memorize the boy’s face. Thankfully, it hadn’t worn the face I’d seen in the few pictures of Dominic that Midas had shown me. But this face, I had to draw it…and others.

  I reached into my backpack and dug out my small sketch pad and pencil bag. I took out a pencil, just an ordinary pencil with a light lead, and started to draw.

  “But that’s not the worst of it. I saw several apparitions at the school, and none of them were friendly, except one. Hugh McCandlish, the schoolteacher who died there, he helped me find my keys. I don’t think I would have made it without his help. But he’s no match for Ollie. Not face to face. That Ollie-entity interacted with McCandlish for days, even weeks, according to Moriah Mitchell’s journal.”

  “Its real name is the Nalusa Falaya,” I corrected Jocelyn from the front seat. “And they are still there, Jocelyn. They’re all still there.”

  Midas hung up the phone, and I paused briefly from my sketching to glance at him
. He turned the SUV down the narrow road that would lead us to the building we’d targeted. “What is it, Cassidy? Why do you say that?” He put the vehicle in park; there wasn’t anyone else out here on this overgrown road. Nobody would be out here at all unless they were chasing ghosts.

  “The Nalusa Falaya doesn’t want us here. I mean, it really doesn’t.” I leaned back on the seat and closed my eyes briefly, hoping that I could keep my emotions in check. How could I explain everything I was feeling? I silently counted to three in my head and opened my eyes. I totally agreed with Jocelyn. This thing had the power to trap the dead, maybe even to add to its ranks. And they were all trapped. Even Hugh McCandlish. Even Shanafila. Or maybe not. I couldn’t be sure. Midas gently pried the sketchbook from my hand, and he, Jocelyn and Joshua studied it. A boy’s face peered back at us. His expression lacked innocence. Instead of innocence, I felt malevolence, hatred. I hoped that I had properly conveyed those emotions. The drawing wasn’t even complete; this was only half his face. And the silhouettes beside and behind him weren’t finished either.

  “Let me see,” Jocelyn said without a hint of fear in her voice. “Oh crap. Yeah, that’s Ollie. What did you call it again?”

  “The Nalusa…” Josh began, but Midas cut him off.

  “A word of caution, and this is for everyone, not just you, Joshua. I don’t think we should keep saying the name.” Midas handed me a tissue from the console between us. I dabbed my eyes with it and accepted the sketchbook back from Jocelyn.

  “Why? We’re not schoolchildren, Midas. We’re not playing Bloody Mary or Old Wintzell. We’re conducting an investigation. It’s going to be hard not to say ‘Its’ name.” Joshua made air quotes as he used the word. “We aren’t children.”