by JL Bryan
“Georgia Canal and Railroad sounds really familiar...” Stacey said.
“The Paulding case,” Calvin said.
“Isaiah Ridley,” Stacey said. “The ghost with the belt from hell who used to beat his kids.”
“He went bankrupt investing in GC&R,” I said.
“Right, right, and we baited him with the little promotional train-toy thingy that was all rusty and spiky and probably full of tetanus,” Stacey said.
I nodded, thinking of our clients. Toolie, who loved her job at the mattress store, and her husband Gord, who’d suffered severe emphysema until we’d eradicated the ghosts of drowning victims from his house. Crane, the eight-year-old whose imaginary friends had encouraged him to kill himself so he could join them. His sister Juniper, thirteen, who’d been fascinated by our work and ultimately helped us defeat the centuries-old poltergeist in her house. I wondered how she was doing.
“So do you think Isaiah’s ghost could be involved here?” Stacey asked. “Because I really wouldn’t want to be alone in a dark room with him again.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I just thought it was interesting. Anyway, the rail line’s gone now, but it used to bridge over the river and across the marsh islands. The crossing was right there at Silkgrove Plantation, next to the docks. The modern rail bridge is a couple of miles north of there, so I guess the marsh islands turned out to be a bad place for the bridge supports...”
“Did a train crash there or something?” Stacey asked.
“I didn’t have time to dig into that yet,” I said. “I just looked at a few rail maps over the years. I was mostly trying to figure out who lived here and when. I have a few families to investigate. Right now, I think we need to do a very broad sweep of Town Village and see if we can pinpoint where the ghosts are coming from.”
“So we should call Jacob?” Stacey glanced at the time. “It’s kind of late in the day to ask him...”
“For that wide an area, it might be better to bring Hunter,” I said.
The bloodhound lifted his head and cocked his ears at the sound of his name.
“That’s a good idea,” Calvin said.
“Are you going to help us sniff out the ghosts? Yes you are! Yes you are!” Stacey leaned over to scratch behind his big, floppy red ears. Hunter shoved himself to his feet, his bunched-up jowls jiggling, tail wagging. He was a trained ghost hunter, from a family of police hounds and search and rescue dogs.
“We should get going before the sun sets,” I said.
“Ellie, I’d like to speak to you for a moment.” Calvin turned and rolled into his office, where we could talk privately. I followed.
“I’ll just stay here with the dog,” Stacey called after me. “We’re going to have fun, aren’t we, Hunter? Yes we are!” She rubbed the dog’s back while he wagged his tail.
I stepped into Calvin’s office and closed the door behind me, wondering what this little drama was about, and why it was worth keeping our clients waiting.
Chapter Three
“What’s up, Calvin?” I asked. His office was beyond cluttered, full of bookshelves overflowing with everything from case files to old leather-bound books of occult and ghost lore.
“I have a security concern.” He wheeled behind his desk.
“About Stacey?” I asked, surprised.
“No. I just didn’t want to alarm her yet.”
“Well, go ahead and alarm me.” I dropped into the squeaky, worn rolling office chair to face him.
“The camera outside picked up something last night.” Calvin turned his desktop monitor toward me.
In night vision green, the monitor displayed video of our parking lot from a hidden security camera. The parking lot is a shattered, uneven blacktop, having failed to withstand whatever heavy industry had occupied the building before us. Maybe a brick or cement factory, judging by the stress that had been placed on the pavement.
After a moment, a black Acura sedan pulled in from the road, stopped sideways in front of our office, and idled there.
“They triggered the outdoor motion detector, or I would never have known they were here,” Calvin said.
The passenger-side window dropped, and a person inside snapped photographs of the building.
“Can we get a closer view of that face?” I asked.
“I’ve tried.” Calvin maximized another window on the screen, showing enlarged still frames of a blurry, pixelated green blob.
“Great,” I said. “What else did they do?”
“They just took pictures and drove away.” Calvin replayed the video, pausing again to show me where he’d caught an image of the license plate. The numbers and letters were as blurry as the passenger’s face had been, but the plate was encased in a frame with a cartoon duck wearing glasses in the lower corner.
“Honest Duck Rent-A-Car,” I said. “That’s something. Either they’re from out of town or they’re being very cautious. Why would anyone be spying on us? Who are they?”
“Coincidentally, I’ve been asking myself those questions all day,” Calvin said. “I wanted to bring it to your attention before you left.”
“So watch out for rental cars,” I said. “Especially black Acuras. Gotcha.” I was acting like it was no big deal, but it worried me. We don’t usually deal with enemies who are still alive.
I wanted to ask Calvin something else, but I didn’t. He’d recently mentioned retiring and leaving our little P.I. firm in my hands, a responsibility for which I didn’t feel ready at all. Lately I’d seen him staring off into space, preoccupied.
“Is there anything else on your mind?” I asked, not for the first time in the past couple of weeks. “Aside from this spying situation?”
“Oh...” He shrugged, looking away from me. “Mortality. Meaning. The purpose of life.”
“Any insights so far?”
He chuckled. “Nothing that hasn’t already been reduced to cliches, platitudes, and bumper stickers. Here, take these.” He opened his drawer and tossed me a foil bag with a cartoon dog wearing a crown on the front of the package.
“Dog treats?” I asked.
“Dried duck liver. His favorite.”
“Thanks.” Sensing I was dismissed, I stood up. Calvin turned to his computer. He was a little disheveled, his graying hair tangled, with three days’ worth of black and gray beard stubble. Calvin was showing signs of depression, but I didn’t know what was bothering him. I did know that he would deflect any questions that got too personal, and prying would just make him clam up tighter. “Anything else?” I asked.
“Good luck,” he said, not looking back at me.
“You know you can talk to me about anything that’s on your mind, right?”
“You know the clients are already expecting you at their home, don’t you?”
“Okay, we’ll get going...” I hesitated a second, then walked out the door. “Try not to lose all your money playing online poker.”
“I never play online,” he said. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Out in the workshop, I collected Stacey and Hunter and loaded them into the van, feeling weirdly like a soccer mom with a kid and a dog. Hunter wagged his tail, excited to be going on any kind of adventure. His tail slowed and his saggy, wrinkly face grew more saggy when he saw he’d be riding in his dog crate in the back. Calvin lets him free-range it inside the car, with his head out the window, but I planned to drive fast and didn’t want to bang him around the van.
We skirted the edge of downtown and hopped onto the highway, traveling fast under the night sky.
I slowed as we entered Town Village, again passing the picturesque Main Street retail ghost town, followed by the lawns of white and brown McMansions lining the main drag, Town Village Boulevard. Side streets curved away in both directions. I kept my eyes out for any black Acuras, or other rentals with the Honest Duck logo, but didn’t see any.
“What’s up?” Stacey asked. “You’re quiet tonight. Was it something Calvin said?”
&
nbsp; “I’m just thinking over the case,” I lied. “I think we should take Hunter toward the central park first. The Whalen farmhouse used to stand in that area.”
“Okey-dokey. So you’re keeping Calvin’s thing secret.”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” I said, pulling into the Kozlow driveway. “Somebody took pictures of our office late last night.”
“That sounds like a big deal.”
“It could just be somebody interested in buying the property,” I said. “We have no idea.”
“So what do we do?”
“Just be on guard, I guess. I’m going to speak to the Kozlows. Take Hunter out and walk him. His bladder’s not as reliable as it used to be.”
“Yeah, I think I smell dog pee, actually...” Stacey glanced back toward Hunter, who watched her from behind his bars.
“Then swab out his crate.” I left the van as she wrinkled her nose at me.
I jogged up the long wooden staircase to the front porch on the second floor, above the garage, and rang the front door bell.
“Stay right there!” Tom Kozlow called over his shoulder while he opened the door. “I’ve got it.”
“Is it them?” Ember shouted from somewhere inside the house.
“We thought you’d be here earlier,” Tom said.
“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “We found some interesting information on the history of the area, as well as some interesting EVPs--”
“What?”
“Electronic voice phenomena,” I said. “Ghost voices. The female entity in your basement answered two questions--”
“Is it them?” Ember shouted from wherever she was. The living room in the back, maybe. “I want to talk to them!” Ember shouted.
“Should I come in?” I asked.
Tom sighed. “Just don’t upset my wife. She’s very delicate right now. I’d rather she didn’t have to think about any of this at all.”
“That’s understandable,” I said.
He led me into the house, a spacious place decorated with restored furniture, a few bright abstract paintings, and numerous pictures of friends and family. Ember sat in the living room on an overstuffed couch. A photograph of a crumbling general store with a big hand-painted Coca-Cola sign hung on the wall behind her.
She looked mopey, reading an Organic Life magazine, but gave me a smile as I entered the room.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Good. So what exciting things are we doing tonight?” Ember asked.
“You’re going to be resting,” Tom said, drawing a small scowl from her.
“We brought my boss’s bloodhound, Hunter,” I said. “We’re going to walk him around the community tonight, see if he can zero in on a source for the hauntings. Unless you’ve had any trouble here?”
“She hasn’t started crying yet,” Ember said.
“You can just call my cell if anything happens.” I gave her an extra copy of my business card. “If you leave the basement door unlocked, I won’t have to bother you when I come back. You might be asleep.”
“No problem!” Ember said.
“No, there is a problem,” Tom said. “They’ve had a few break-ins around the neighborhood lately. I don’t want to leave anything unlocked.”
“Do you have an extra key?” I asked.
“Right here.” Ember opened her purse and dug out her keychain.
“Just be sure we get it back in the morning,” Tom said.
“Tom!” Ember said. “I’m sure she’ll give it back.”
“I definitely will,” I said. I quickly caught them up on the case—what I’d gathered about the history of the land, and what the ghost had said when I asked why it was there.
“That’s freaky,” Ember said. “Hiding. They died. Can I hear the recording?”
“Sure, let me go grab my tablet--” I began.
“I think Ember’s had enough stress for one night,” Tom said.
This left me looking between them awkwardly, not sure what to do. They stared at each other, the tension uncomfortably heavy in the room.
“I’ll just check on Stacey and Hunter...” I finally said, backing away slowly.
“I want to see the dog.” Ember smiled, pushing herself up to a standing position. Tom dashed over to help her, or maybe to stop her.
“You don’t need to go up and down all those stairs,” he said.
“I would never have agreed to move into this house if I knew you’d use those stairs as an excuse to keep me prisoner.”
“Nobody’s keeping you prisoner! You could fall.”
“I’m pregnant, not elderly.” Ember strode past him, toward me and the front door behind me. “Let’s go meet your ghost-sniffing dog.”
I accompanied her outside, and her annoyed husband followed, and it was entirely unpleasant to find myself caught in the tension between them.
On the front porch, I stepped aside as Tom insisted on walking down the stairs in front of Ember, for her own safety. I’d first thought it sweet how he worried over his pregnant wife, but I could see how his concern probably felt domineering to her. I wouldn’t want anyone telling me what to do from moment to moment like that. If I were her, I probably would have punched him in the nose by now.
Ember made it all the way down the stairs without falling, or having her water break, or any other five-alarm emergencies.
“She wants to see the dog,” I told Stacey, who was letting Hunter sniff the fire hydrant. Stacey brought him over. Ember petted him and rubbed him behind his enormous, floppy ears, and his tail wagged.
“He can really find ghosts?” Ember asked me.
“My boss, Calvin, trained him from a puppy,” I said. “Took him to haunted locations all over the city. Animals are usually more sensitive to ghosts, anyway. They don’t have an elaborate rational mind trying to block them out.”
“So you’re saying the whole neighborhood is haunted? Is that it?” Tom asked.
“The ghost I saw was mobile,” I said. “I think it’s based somewhere else. There used to be a farmhouse in the area where the park is now.”
“Yeah, the ‘park,’” Tom said, making finger quotes for emphasis. “You should be careful out there. I was serious about those break-ins around the neighborhood.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Stacey said. “We’ve got a dog.”
Hunter rolled over on his back, paws in the air, exposing his rumpled belly to Ember so she could rub it.
“Can you point out which houses were broken into?” I asked.
“You’d have to ask Mr. Nobson. He’s the neighborhood watch chief.”
“I’ll do that tomorrow.” I looked up at the night sky. The moonlight was dim, and shadowy clouds gathered on the horizon, blotting out the stars. “We’d better get moving.”
“Take care,” Ember said, pushing herself to her feet while Tom hurried to assist her. “Call us if you get into trouble. I’ll send Tom.”
“Thanks so much,” Tom replied.
Stacey and I grabbed gear from the van. I walked Hunter over to the sidewalk while Stacey carried a set of super-sharp lopping shears to help us cut through undergrowth. She carried her camera in her backpack, and both of us had utility belts loaded with our tactical flashlights and our usual array of ghost-hunting tools. I brought thermal and night vision goggles in my own backpack.
I nodded to Stacey, and we headed for the sidewalk, Hunter wagging his tail and ready to search. I glanced back to see Ember ascending the stairs again, Tom’s hand pressed firmly on her back as if steering her.
“Cute couple,” Stacey commented when we’d walked past a few houses. This street was well-lit, most of the houses inhabited and maintained, their yards groomed. The streets deeper into the neighborhood lay dark and empty.
“He seems a little overbearing to me,” I said.
“Probably just nervous about the baby.”
We reached the central hub of the community, the roundabout from which the main streets radiated. It enclosed an area that
was meant to be fifty acres of parkland and amenities, but was instead filled with scrub pine and dense briers.
“This doesn’t look like the safest set-up, does it?” Stacey asked as we crossed the two-lane roundabout to the sidewalk that encircled the undeveloped park. “All the kids have to cross the busiest road in the community to reach the park.”
“Good thing there’s no reason to come to the park,” I said. We followed the curved sidewalk to a gap in the spindly trees and brush where the developers had managed to install a paved path just wide enough for a golf cart.
The lights of the inhabited streets had receded behind us, so we flipped on the small square LED lights clipped to our belts. They didn’t have the same ghost-blasting oomph as the high-powered SWAT flashlights holstered at our hips, but they were hands-free.
The thicket of high, spindly pine trees seemed to swallow us up as we entered the park area. Stars glowed overhead, but the thin sliver of moon wasn’t much help.
Hunter trotted along amiably enough, sniffing here and there but not fixating on anything.
“Hunter,” I said, and he stopped and looked up at me, his dark eyes attentive from their nests deep in the red folds and flops of his face. “Find the ghosts.”
He whined a little, but also wagged his tail and picked up the pace, his head higher now. Dog on the job.
We walked alongside a chicken wire fence. Beyond the crude, hastily constructed fence was a paved green area, obscured by years of pine needles and leaves. A light wind scattered more of the dried leaves, burying a few more inches of green pavement.
“I’m guessing these are the fantastic tennis courts we read about in the brochure,” Stacey said.
“There’s the playground.” We slowed as we passed a shadowy area where red mulch covered the ground. Through the chicken wire, we could see the half-built equipment, including a couple of two-story castle towers connected by a plastic rope bridge and a pink spire with a slide coiled around it. Plastic horses, grinning gnomes, a big clown face, and baby swings decorated with cartoony plastic bugs lay strewn in the dirt like bodies on a battlefield, filthy with years of exposure to rain and debris.
