by JL Bryan
I nodded—just what I'd thought.
"Not the plumbing, though, right?" Hayden asked. "Or the, you know—"
Kara didn't hesitate to jab him then, and he yelped. "I was going to say bath mats," he mumbled, then, happily for the rest of us, he chose to be quiet.
"How could you have been here before?" Alyssa asked. "It's private property."
"Oh, well...you can see a lot from a boat," I said, not really wanting to get into my childhood memories. "Everybody wants a closer look at the old lighthouse, sooner or later."
"Is that how you saw the old house?" she asked. "From a boat?"
"Why does it matter?" I asked. "I was a kid."
"I just want to know how you managed to get such a close look at a house that was screened off from the sea by so many trees," Alyssa said.
Now everyone was looking at me. Nothing uncomfortable about that.
"Well...it was like twenty years ago—"
"Those trees were there twenty years ago," Alyssa said. "We cut most of them down during the expansion. But twenty years ago, you would have seen nothing from a boat. Maybe just a little bit of the ruins through the undergrowth. You talk like you know just how it looked and just how big it was." Emotion was creeping into her voice, a little tremor of anger, and along with it her voice seemed to roughen around the edges. She sounded more South Georgia than California. "Why don't you want to tell me?"
"It was trespassing," I said. "But I was a kid. I'm sure you didn't own the property back then. Right?" It occurred to me that I knew nothing of her background. I hadn't had time to research before learning her identity.
Alyssa looked at me a long moment, green eyes simmering. I felt at a complete loss, not sure what the problem was. I glanced at Stacey, who could only give me the most subtle shrug by way of advice.
Kara watched me with her cold, pale eyes, her mouth a flat line as she watched to see what I did next, how I would dig myself out of this strange hole I seemed to be in.
"Of course I didn't own it," Alyssa said. "I would have been a kid the same time you were. And I know what it looked like back then."
"You visited it, too?" I asked. "As a kid?"
"Yeah. But it wasn't trespassing when I did it."
"Oh. So, you had the permission of..."
"It don't matter." Alyssa shook her head and took a breath. When she spoke again, her accent had vanished, and her back had straightened a little. "All I need you to do is check the place for ghosts and clear out any you find."
"If you have some personal history with this place, that could be a factor," I said.
"Nothing personal," she said quickly. "This isn't about me. This is about the house. That's all."
Then Alyssa stalked off down the hall, everything in her attitude and movement making it clear that nobody was to speak to her again. After a couple of seconds, Delavius followed her out.
"Way to annoy the movie star," Hayden told me.
"I'm not sure what I did," I said.
"You will all need to sign non-disclosures before we can hire you," Zoe said. "It is important that no unauthorized media of Miss Wagner leaves your firm and makes it out to the tabloids or to the public in any way." She switched back to 'Miss Wagner' now that her boss was out of the room. "We can't retain your services without one signed by every person who will be involved in the case or have any access to these images and recordings that you're making. We also need assurances that any physical media be destroyed or surrendered to us at the end of the case, and any digital copies be permanently erased."
"We can agree to all of that," Kara said. "We will also need a significant deposit to initiate a case of this size, with rushed service, as requested..."
While they talked money—quite a lot of it, as it turned out—I looked out the enormous glass wall. The dark granite lighthouse stood at the ocean's edge, rain pouring down around it, water lapping the sharp boulders at its base. Banks of sharp-shelled oysters grew around the lower steps that curved up the outside of the tower.
The single arched window, halfway up, was a dark socket, the glass long gone from the frame.
The lantern room at the top was dark and empty, as it had been for decades, offering no light to save anyone from the dangers lurking below the rising water.
Chapter Nine
"So, she's hiding something, am I right?" Stacey whispered. "It's not just me?"
We were outside on the circular driveway, paved with old bricks that had probably been someone's chimney in generations past. There was plenty of parking space on the long, wide brick avenue winding through the woods, should Alyssa ever decide to host a huge party with a glamorous guest list. The rain had ceased for a moment, or at least slowed to a lazy mist.
A wall of old trees and fresh plantings created privacy. So did some twelve-foot privacy fences, mounted with tiny, waterproof outdoor security cameras. It would be very difficult to get a view inside the property from almost any vantage except for out on the water.
"The place is shielded against paparazzi," I said. "And stalkers, fans, nosy locals..."
"That's not what I meant." Stacey shifted her eyes to the house and back. "She didn't want to talk about whatever childhood experience she had here."
"Sometimes people like to keep their childhood experiences to themselves," I said.
"No wonder things are moving so slowly," Hayden said as he emerged onto the porch, then headed down the steps. "You're supposed to be helping me unload gear."
"We are." I gestured toward the open side door of the van, and the open cargo compartments full of gear inside. "We're trying to decide what to take next."
"Take it all," he said. "We're using all of it. Maximum coverage."
"At maximum price, it sounds like," I said.
"Hey, she didn't have to buy an old place and spend a million bucks building it up," he said. "This place is—how old?"
"Over two hundred years," I said.
"Yeah. When you buy yourself a two-hundred-year-old lighthouse keeper's cottage, you have to expect two things: mildew and ghosts. That's just common sense." Hayden loaded his hand truck with big black cases full of electronics. "Feel free to help with the work," he added as he wheeled it all away toward the house.
Kara emerged as he pulled the heavy hand truck up the steps, one by one, grunting each time. He had to swerve around her as she descended from the porch. She looked at me, ignoring him completely.
"What is taking so long?" she asked.
"We were thinking about whether we should go ahead and put some observation gear inside the lighthouse," I said.
"Of course not," Kara said. "Our client does not own the lighthouse. It belongs to the American military."
"Really?" Stacey asked.
"The Coast Guard," I said. "But I doubt they, you know, check on it very often. It looks more like they're just waiting for it to fall into the sea."
"D-Train did say he followed that ghost toward the lighthouse," Stacey said.
"We are not risking expensive equipment in that derelict structure," Kara said. "We do not want any legal problems with the United States government, either. And if any of you were to get injured in there, we wouldn't have anyone to sue for damages."
"Aw, you're worried about us getting hurt," Stacey said. "Sort of."
"Stay on the client's property," Kara told me, looking right past Stacey. "Focus on her house and other buildings. Stay away from that lighthouse."
"Okay," I said. "Unless—"
"Unless nothing. Go and wire the client's house. When that is complete, we return to the office for another load of gear. We want the client to see we are earning all that she is paying." She turned and walked back into the house.
"Notice she didn't offer to help with the gear," Stacey muttered.
"If that's the price of her staying out of our way..." I said. "Let's get moving. It sounds like we have a long day ahead. I don't want to give Kara an excuse to supervise us more closely."
After
we'd moved the gear indoors, we started unpacking and spreading it out. Hayden and Kara drove back to the office to pick up a second round of gear. Stacey and I headed toward the caretaker's bungalow, the most remote part of the strange three-building structure connected by an outdoor hallway.
The hallway was unusual. They'd mentioned that the walls were glass, giving us views onto small manicured gardens on either side. Flowers and shrubberies grew just outside the glass walls, and hummingbird feeders were hung above them. A blue hummingbird hovered there now, drinking sugar water.
We departed from a back door of the main house. Along the way, we passed a door leading into the guest house, which was a smaller version of the main house.
"This must be the spot," Stacey said. We slowed as we approached the doorway to the caretaker's bungalow. "Zoe said she saw the ghost guy walking around right here. So we're definitely going to need eyes here, huh?"
"Eyes and ears," I said, opening up a case of gear. "I might even spend my night out here in the bungalow, see if the ghost comes around again."
"A ghost was also seen out on the beach," Stacey said. "You're spending the night in the bungalow instead of out on the beach?"
"You sit in the wet sand and the rain if you want to. Besides, I'm not allowed to pursue any ghosts out to the lighthouse, remember? Not that I'd really want to..." I shivered. Through the glass wall and a stand of trees, I could see it out there, massive and gray against the cloudy sky.
I almost told Stacey about my childhood visit to the lighthouse, the rainy picnic, the strange white figure I'd seen at the top of the lighthouse when I'd come close to drowning.
I held back, though. Talking about my parents was a great way to shatter my professional mask and turn me into an emotional wreck. I'm not really into breaking down into an emotional wreck if I can avoid it, so I pushed those memories away and focused on the job at hand—which, I reminded myself, specifically did not involve investigating the lighthouse.
When we'd set up outside in the hallway, we stepped into the little bungalow. It was definitely snug on the inside, as Zoe had described—one open sitting and kitchen area, one bedroom, one full bath. It was like a small downtown apartment, actually bigger than the old brick studio loft where I lived.
“Let's set up in the bedroom,” I said. “Use a night vision camera. Make sure you get the window in the frame in case the guy walks past again.”
“It's not bad in here,” Stacey said, taking in the sizable queen bed. Compared to the main house, the bungalow was spare, offering basic comfortable furnishings but no paintings on the wall, no decorations. Maybe that was so the caretaker could personalize the place. I did see a few holes on the wall where pictures had been hung and removed.
“It's probably worse at night, when the ghost is stomping around.”
“This ghost doesn't sound so bad,” Stacey said. “He hasn't hurt anyone.”
“Careful what you say. You don't want to jinx us.”
“Who's getting jinxed?” a male voice asked, making us jump. Hayden walked into the bedroom, wearing a heavy black backpack. His tinted sunglasses only made him look even more like an 80s-era David Hasselhoff. “I can help with that.”
“I'm sure you're a real wizard,” Stacey said.
“What is taking so long?” Kara's voice asked from a phone clipped to Hayden's belt. Apparently it was in walkie-talkie mode. I tried to remember everything I'd said since Hayden had entered the room, hoping I hadn't said anything to upset her. Then I hated myself for caring about her opinions, for being afraid.
“We're on our way,” Hayden said. “Right, ladies?”
I started to make a sarcastic remark, centered on how he could stop addressing Stacey and me as “ladies” when he knew our names—plus it was pretty obvious who he was talking to, anyway, since there was literally nobody else in the room. I bit my lip. Kara was listening.
“We're coming,” was what I said out loud, feeling lame.
The three of us left the caretaker's bungalow and headed back up the hallway, rolling the hard black boxes of our remaining gear along behind us.
“Crazy passageway here, huh?” Hayden asked as we walked between the glass walls looking out into gardens beyond. “It's like a huge aquarium tank, yo. Only above ground. And without any fish. Or water.”
“Amazing insight, Hayden,” Stacey said.
“Thanks!” he replied, with what sounded like a complete lack of sarcasm. He really wasn't the worst, as far as the new people who'd taken over the agency. At least he tried to be helpful. Nicholas had been pretty distant since that time I'd turned him down for a date. And Kara... was too awful to think about.
She met us in the hallway in front of the guest house, casting her typical contemptuous look in my direction.
Then we got to work.
We brought every sort of gear—audio, video, EMF meters, laser grids to detect the slightest movement in a room, more cameras to record the grids.
There were REM pods, projecting electromagnetic fields like invisible bubbles around them, ready to alert us with ghostly chimes and beeps if anything disturbed them. Motion detectors and geophones were ready to pick up vibrations in the air and the ground.
We filled the caretaker's bungalow, the guest house, and the main house with equipment, more than I'd ever put out for a single observation before. Certainly more than I'd ever used on the first night of an investigation. The minor haunting didn't really demand so much gear. It couldn't have been more obvious that Kara was trying to run up the bill.
Of course, hauntings that seem minor at first can escalate.
It took hours of work. Kara helped by supervising, criticizing, insisting that we redo the work or alter the angles of the cameras.
The main house had five bedrooms, the guest house three. We did not wire the master suite upstairs, nor the upstairs bedroom where Zoe was staying, nor the downstairs one where Delavius stayed, with quick access to the doors on the ground level.
An electronic security system monitored the doors and the first-floor windows; Delavius explained it would give shrill beeps if someone tried to get in, and an app on his phone would tell him exactly where the break-in was happening.
I positioned a couple of cameras to look out the huge glass wall and watch the beach, especially the row of boulders where Delavius had seen the ghost. I made sure the lighthouse itself was in frame, too.
Finally, when the sun had set and the stars had emerged over the ocean, we were done. Out in the huge van, the monitors showed rooms from three different buildings. Even with all those screens, they couldn't show us every camera feed at once, so many of the monitors rotated every five seconds.
“All right, sweet,” Hayden commented. “That is one massive array of gear.”
“Massively pointless,” I muttered.
“What did you say?” Kara leaned into the open side door.
“I said, I couldn't be more thrilled to have a new case to work on,” I said. “I'm staying out in the bungalow tonight. Where are you staying?”
“At my home,” Kara said. “Or the place I'm renting while trapped in this smelly swamp town."
"And we're so glad to have you here," I said. Despite my fear of her, the snark just slipped out. I even gave my most honey-dipped, deep-fried-Snickers-bar Southern accent, which is not a thing I do often.
Kara stared back for a long moment. I was getting a little tired of her long, silent, evaluating stares.
“Yeah, I'm heading to my apartment, too—” Hayden began.
“No,” Kara interrupted. “You will stay for the night's observation. I am not entrusting all of this equipment to the new girls.”
My eyebrows jumped up, and I was ready to protest that I'd been doing this for years. Then I saw the amused glint in Kara's eye, realized she was baiting me, and decided not to rise to it.
Unfortunately, this only brought a little derisive smile to her lips. I needed to just stop looking in her direction altogether.
&
nbsp; “All right, I suppose I can keep an eye on the ladies,” Hoff said. His face pivoted a few degrees toward Stacey, and it was obvious he was looking at her through his sunglasses.
“Just keep your eye pointed that way,” Stacey said, gesturing at the array of monitors on his side of the van. “Both of them.”
“Somebody's playing hard to get,” Hayden told her.
“I'm not playing.”
“That's cool. I like a girl who knows what she wants. Especially when what she wants is a piece of the Hay-Hay.” Hayden pointed toward himself with his thumb.
“You mean the Hoff?” I asked.
“I'm trying to get away from that comparison.”
“You say that, but then you wear that Members Only jacket—” I began.
“It's not Members Only!” he shouted.
“I think you want to look like your celebrity doppelganger,” Stacey said. “I think you play it up.”
“This is just how my hair grows, all right?” He flicked his collar-length man-perm.
“I regret missing out on a night of such scintillating conversation.” Kara stepped away and beeped her keychain to unlock the black Acura, which she had driven back from the office when she and Hayden had gone to pick up more gear. She'd planned her escape pretty well.
“Hey, he's your guy,” I said, pointing to Hayden. “You brought him.”
“And he knows his job, as well as his place,” Kara said. “That's more than I can say for others in this group.”
Then she turned and departed, leaving the three of us in the big cargo van. We all listened as the Acura cranked up and sped away. Even Hayden seemed more relaxed once Kara was gone. Which wasn't necessarily a good thing.
“So, looks like we've got a real slumber party scenario happening here,” Hayden said. “What do we do first? Paint our toenails? Make s'mores? I know a trick for making them in the microwave—”
“Wait here,” I told him, then I gestured for Stacey to follow me out of the van and onto the driveway.
“For how long?” Hayden asked.
“The rest of the night.” I slid the side door closed to really make the point clear.
