by JL Bryan
“Looks like fairyland lost the war,” Stacey said.
Hunter sniffed curiously at the fence, as if drawn to the playground ruins.
“What is it, boy?” I asked.
“Did Timmy fall down a well and find a ghost?” Stacey asked.
Hunter sniffed again at the fence, but then turned and kept walking.
“That’s okay,” Stacey whispered to me. “I didn’t want to go in there.”
Next came the tragedy of the community pool area, where partially-constructed tiki-style decks, gazebos, and cabanas surrounded a yawning Olympic-sized concrete hole filled with more leaves and debris.
“This place is starting to creep me out,” Stacey whispered. “It’s kind of post-apocalyptic, all the people gone...”
“Except nobody was ever here in the first place, except the construction crew. And they didn’t finish.”
“So, kind of pre-post-apocalyptic, then? Is that a thing?”
“Sure.” We reached a very wide area of dirt and weeds, probably intended to be a big open lawn for Frisbees and such, as well as the promised community baseball field. A wooden concession stand squatted near one corner of the big clearing.
Hunter nosed among the weeds, and I let him lead the way. He took his time absorbing the scents.
“Let’s talk about anything besides how weird this place is,” Stacey said. “What’s the news with Michael?”
“I told you all there is,” I said. “We had a pretty good time.”
“And that was a few weeks ago.”
“We just have opposite schedules,” I said. “I work all night hunting the dead. He’s on the day shift, trying to keep people from turning into ghosts.” Michael was a firefighter, and he’d been very helpful when we’d eradicated a fearfeeder from the mansion-turned-apartment-building where he lived. Particularly nice to me, especially when I’d had a face full of glass.
“You went out once, you had a good time...and...what?” Stacey asked. “Why are you so tight-lipped? Is he avoiding you?” She stopped walking.
“No, he’s been out of town—wait, why do you assume he’s avoiding me? If anybody’s avoiding anybody?”
“Uh, no reason.” Stacey suddenly looked very interested in a patch of wildflowers near the toe of her boot. “So you’re avoiding him? Why?”
“Nobody’s avoiding anybody. He was away for some ropes training for a while. Technical rescue stuff.”
“He was away.”
“I meant to call him back, but it’s too late now. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“You are avoiding him! Why? What dirty secret did you find out, Ellie? Is he a Michael Bolton fan or something?”
“Sh.” I brought out my phone.
“Yeah, call him!”
“I compared the old property map of the Whalen farm to contemporary maps,” I told her. “I did my best to come up with GPS coordinates for where the house was located. Come on, Hunter.” I tugged the dog, following the digital map on my phone.
“So you’re avoiding him and avoiding the subject of why you’re avoiding him?” Stacey asked, strolling along beside me. “Do I have that right?”
“Keep prying into my love life and I’ll start prying into yours. Have you told Jacob about The Country Barn yet?”
“I’m, uh...working up to it. Hey, I think all this talk is distracting the dog.” It wasn’t true, she’d just decided to end the conversation.
“There’s not much here,” I said.
“Except that.”
I finally looked up from my phone and saw we stood only fifteen yards from the two-story concession building, painted white with red and blue stripes at the corners, the paint already weathered and peeling. The two big serving windows were closed and padlocked, sealed by panels of solid wood. Wooden stairs ran up along one side of the building, and the second floor had another big window, also sealed with a wooden panel. If it was like other such buildings I’d seen in the parks and high schools of America, the second floor was meant to house the controls for the scoreboard and the public address system.
Hunter sniffed a little louder and pulled me toward the closed-up building. After a few paces, he stopped and growled, staring at the concession stand.
“Uh-oh,” Stacey whispered.
“Maybe that’s where the farmhouse stood,” I whispered.
“Don’t forget the break-ins around the neighborhood.”
Hunter growled and pulled harder.
We walked in a wide circle around the corner of the building, moving toward the piney woods behind it. Just past the foot of the exterior stairs, a door led into the first floor of the building.
The door stood ajar by an inch, giving us a view of solid darkness within the building. A long crack split the wood around the doorknob, exactly as if somebody had kicked in the door.
Stacey and I looked at each other. She raised her eyebrows, silently asking me what the plan would be.
I shrugged, put away my phone, and drew the tactical flashlight from my belt. I pointed it at the door. If we were dealing with a dangerous ghost, the high-powered light might help keep it at bay. If it was a living person, the flashlight was designed to double as a solid metal club.
Beside me, Hunter continued his low, steady growl, his entire body oriented toward the broken door.
Stacey raised her lopping shears, ready to use them as a weapon.
I pointed my flashlight up the stairs at the door to the second floor. That one was padlocked from the outside, which I was happy to see. It meant nobody could sneak out that door and come around behind us while we were inside.
I gave Stacey a nod, then we charged the broken door. I kicked it open and swept my flashlight from corner to corner, revealing the dusty, cobwebbed interior of the concession stand, about the size of a one-room log cabin. Rusty nails, splintered wood, and broken glass littered the floor.
Built-in cabinets surrounded the shuttered serving windows, above and below a counter that ran the length of the room. Most of the cabinets had been smashed to pieces, as if someone had pounded them with a sledgehammer. Someone who really hated cabinets.
Another counter ran the back length of the room, with a big empty square cut out at the center. Through the shattered cabinet door below it, I could see a stainless steel sink and lengths of copper pipe, though it was impossible to say whether the sink had been vandalized or never really installed in the first place.
I didn’t see anybody in there. A closet-sized room was built into one corner of the concession stand, and the door was shut tight.
“Hunter, stay. Stay.” I dropped his leash, leaving the bloodhound just outside the door so he wouldn’t walk on the loose nails and broken glass. Hunter didn’t argue. Bloodhounds might be the world’s best tracking dogs, but they have little interest in fighting, confrontations, or anything that remotely resembles danger. They’re more like Columbo: rumpled and amiable, but extremely perceptive. “Stacey, watch your step. It’s the Land of Tetanus in here.”
“Great.” Stacey followed me inside, and together we approached the closet door.
“Police!” I said, banging the door as hard as I could with my flashlight. So it might be illegal to impersonate a police officer, but I figured that was more intimidating than the truth. “If you have any weapons, put them down now. Come out with your hands where I can see them.”
We waited, tense, for some meth-crazed addict to leap out swinging a lead pipe at us. I held my breath, listening for any sound.
After a full minute, I gave Stacey another nod, then I flung open the door, ready to dent somebody’s skull with my flashlight.
“You’re kidding me,” I whispered.
Stacey looked into the closet with me.
More broken glass and nails littered the floor, and cobwebs filled the corners, but it was otherwise empty. The bad news was the wooden strips nailed into the wall to form ladder rungs. These reached all the way to the ceiling, where a square panel offered access to the second floor.
“Light my way,” I whispered, and then I began to climb the ladder.
“What?” Stacey whispered, shining her beam on the trap door. “Somebody might be up there, Ellie.”
“That’s why I’m up here.” I reached the ceiling, braced my hand on the trap door, and motioned for Stacey to be quiet.
A loud thud broke the silence, followed by cracking wood and another banging sound, exactly as if somebody had kicked a locked door to the exterior stairs.
I heaved open the trap door and swept my light around the second story.
I’d emerged into another closet like the one below. The closet door stood open, so I could see out into the dusty room beyond. Its only feature was a bare, built-in table behind the closed window panel, the place where the scorekeeper would sit during baseball games, looking out over the field.
Past that, the door to the stairway landing outside had been bashed open, and still creaking back into place from its high-speed impact with the moonlit railing outside. I heard a single footstep on the stairs.
Outside, Hunter gave a few loud barks, then whined and fell silent.
I climbed down a few rungs and jumped off the ladder. Stacey and I ran back across the first floor and back outside.
“Hunter!” I shouted, swinging my light around. He wasn’t in the spot where we’d left him, or any other spot I could see. I looked to the exterior stairs, but there was nobody there, either.
“Hunter!” Stacey shouted. We spread out, calling for the dog.
Something rustled in the scrubby pine woods behind the concession stand, like footsteps crunching pine needles.
I hurried toward it, widening the iris of my flashlight to illuminate as much of the woods as possible.
Something shadowy moved behind a dense curtain of thorny briers, and I circled it, jabbing my flashlight like a sword.
I heard him before I saw him. Hunter whined, shivering.
“Hunter, what happened?” I asked, as if he were going to recount whatever had startled him into the woods. I knelt and checked him over. Aside from a couple of scratches from the thorns he’d been hiding beneath, he was fine.
“Is he okay?” Stacey asked.
“I think so.”
“Did you see anybody?”
“Nope.” I pointed my light into the woods. “I didn’t hear anybody, either.”
I coaxed Hunter out of the briers and back into the clearing, while Stacey looked back and forth with her flashlight, trying to find any sign of what had scared the dog.
“Wait out here with him,” I told her. “I’m going back in to take some readings. Let me know if you see anyone.”
“Be careful.”
On my way back to the building, I strapped on my annoyingly bulky thermal goggles, which felt like wearing a front-heavy hat made of solid rock. I left them propped on my forehead for the moment.
I returned into the shattered first floor of the concession stand and slowly paced around it, watching the Mel Meter ghost-detection device in my hand. The temperature dipped a degree or two here and there, but more significantly, it was giving me readings of two to three milligaus in a building that was well away from any live electrical wiring.
Peering through my thermals, I picked up pale blue cold smears scattered on the broken cabinets, as if a ghost had left greasy fingerprints behind. I saw nothing larger than that, no active presence in the room with me.
I checked the closet—a little colder, same electromagnetic frequency readings—then headed upstairs. The EMF readings were weak until I reached the closet, and they spiked around the trap door. It figures. Ghosts can obsess over doors, windows, mirrors, stairways, or anything that stands for crossing from one place to the next.
Still, I didn’t see any active presence. If I waited around long enough, I might catch a residual haunting, or maybe something worse, like a roaming revenant with a destructive bent. If it could smash apart the fixtures in the concession stand, it could smash apart living people, too.
“There’s nobody home right now,” I said, stepping outside to join Stacey. “Something was in there, though. I found clear traces.”
“You think a ghost did all that damage?” she asked, looking worried, which was the correct way to look under the circumstances.
“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a vagrant or drug addict committing a desperate burglary,” I said. “They would have taken out the pipes to sell for scrap. So it’s either teenage vandals or a ghost with strong psychokinetic abilities and a bad attitude.”
“I’m hoping teenagers, then,” Stacey said.
“We’ll set up the works here tomorrow before sunset,” I said, stashing my thermals back into my backpack. “Cameras, microphones, motion detectors. Let’s head back. I think Hunter’s been through enough tonight.”
“Sounds great to me.” We started back across the clearing to the paved road by the never-used recreation facilities. Then Stacey stopped abruptly.
“What is it?” I looked back to see Stacey half-turned away from me. Hunter was straining to walk in the opposite direction, toward the little thatch of thorns where he’d been hiding. “It’s okay, boy. We’re done for now.”
Hunter whined and pulled harder against his leash.
“Is there something in the woods?” Stacey whispered.
I pointed my flashlight in that direction. “Nothing I can see. Okay, Hunter, show us what the big deal is.”
I took his leash from Stacey. As soon I began to walk, Hunter broke into a little trot, his loose, floppy jowls jiggling, his nose to ground as he huffed excitedly.
He plunged us into the scrub pine and briers, pausing twice along the way while Stacey cut open a path with the shears.
We emerged onto a wide patch of red dirt and weeds. We’d reached the far end of the park. Across the roundabout lay the most undeveloped streets in the community, with a few skeletal house-frames and lots of bare red earth. Unlit streetlamps overlooked the empty lots and sidewalks.
Directly ahead lay a street that didn’t even have street lamps, fire hydrants, or storm drains, just a flat black ribbon of pavement. While much of the land along the other streets had been cleared and flattened to make room for future houses, the land along both sides of this street was still full of old trees the developer had never cut down. The road ran out of sight into the deep shadows of the woods. It was the least developed area of the community, the back end of the enormous swatch of property, bordering the federal wilderness.
Hunter whined and pulled in that direction, and I let him lead us.
“Is it just me,” Stacey whispered, “Or did the dog pick the scariest possible path?”
“This is actually as far as you can get from the entrance,” I said, as we crossed the roundabout and started down the road into the woods. “Funny how it starts off strong with all the fancy columns out front, but by the time you reach the back, there’s nothing here.”
“Yeah. Pretty funny, I guess.” Stacey shivered. “Is it colder back here?”
“Check your meter. I’ve got the dog.”
While Stacey took temperature and EMF readings, I noticed that the chorus of night insects in the woods grew quieter as we followed the road deeper into the shadows. Hunter walked along the center of the street, never slowing.
The night grew colder as the dark woods swallowed us up, blotting out the sky above. I felt apprehensive, my stomach a tight knot. Something bad was waiting down the road for us.
Finally, when we were far from the lights of the inhabited portions of the community, and the woods were almost silent around us, we reached the end.
It was a dead end, appropriately enough, stopping abruptly and without fanfare, immediately giving way to dense old woods. There wasn’t even a little barrier or any reflectors to try to prevent errant motorists from crashing into the thick oak trees.
“Okay,” Stacey said. “So it looks like the develemergeoper ran out of money right about...here.” She touched the end of the pavement
with her boot.
“What do you say, Hunter?” I asked. “Are you satisfied? Should we go back now?” It was getting very late, and the woods were cold and silent.
Of course, Hunter was not satisfied. The bloodhound nosed into the tangle of vines and thorns blocking our access to the old woods.
“You’re up, Stacey,” I said. “Get lopping.”
Stacey sighed and began carving a path through the dense growth. “There’d better be a whole pack of ghosts waiting in here.”
“Careful what you wish for.”
The bloodhound watched her impatiently, shifting from one paw to the next, clearly eager to pursue whatever it was he’d discovered.
I stayed on guard, keeping my flashlight in motion, watching for anything evil to emerge from the woods.
Chapter Four
After slicing through a number of thorny vines and thin branches, Stacey discovered a narrow break through the woods, leading straight ahead into darkness.
“Looks like an old deer path or something,” she said, wiping sweat from her face.
“Interesting.” I looked from the path to the road behind us. “It’s like they paved over some older trail when they built this community.”
“Why does that sound ominous somehow?” Stacey asked. “Are there such things as haunted trails in the woods?”
“What do you think?”
She sighed. “At least we can walk into the dark and scary woods a little faster now.”
Hunter was eager to go, sniffing his way forward along the narrow trail. We still had to pause here and there for Stacey to clip away thorns and low limbs.
The night only grew darker and colder as we advanced, the old woods closing over our heads to form a canopy that blocked out the already scarce light from the moon and stars. The back of my neck prickled—the feeling you get when someone is watching you from behind, or from across a room, just before you turn and look at them. I didn’t see anything when I turned, though. My flashlight found only scabby tree trunks and coiled poison ivy.
