

The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series books 1 – 3.

This boxed set includes:

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

Cold Shadows

The Crawling Darkness

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper and Cold Shadows

Copyright 2014 J.L. Bryan

The Crawling Darkness

Copyright 2015 J.L. Bryan

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

#

# Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

by

J.L. Bryan

# Foreword

Thanks so much for picking up this copy of Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper. It's the first in a new series for which I have high hopes, because it's been a lot of fun to write so far.

I thought ghosts would be an interesting area to explore because, unlike other paranormal types like vampires, werewolves, creatures from black lagoons, and so on, we can't be completely sure that ghosts don't exist in the real world. In fact, my wife and I once heard a voice that couldn't be explained except as some kind of ghost, so I half-believe in them myself.

For this series, I try to keep it as close to reality as possible. My characters, for the most part, use methods and equipment employed by the countless ghost-hunter and paranormal groups that exist in the real world. The setting is contemporary Savannah, Georgia, a city where most of the downtown buildings are said to be haunted.

I look forward to Ellie's future adventures, and I hope you will, too! Thanks for reading!

-J.L. Bryan

# Acknowledgments

I appreciate everyone who has helped with this book. Several authors beta read it for me, including Daniel Arenson, Alexia Purdy, Robert Duperre, and Michelle Muto. The final proofing was done by Thelia Kelly. The cover is by PhatPuppy Art.

Most of all, I appreciate the book bloggers and readers who keep coming back for more! The book bloggers who've supported me over the years include Danny, Heather, and Heather from Bewitched Bookworks; Mandy from I Read Indie; Michelle from Much Loved Books; Shirley from Creative Deeds; Katie and Krisha from Inkk Reviews; Lori from Contagious Reads; Heather from Buried in Books; Kristina from Ladybug Storytime; Chandra from Unabridged Bookshelf; Kelly from Reading the Paranormal; AimeeKay from Reviews from My First Reads Shelf and Melissa from Books and Things; Kristin from Blood, Sweat, and Books; Lauren from Lose Time Reading; Kat from Aussie Zombie; Andra from Unabridged Andralyn; Jennifer from A Tale of Many Reviews; Giselle from Xpresso Reads; Ashley from Bookish Brunette; Loretta from Between the Pages; Ashley from Bibliophile's Corner; Lili from Lili Lost in a Book; Line from Moonstar's Fantasy World; Lindsay from The Violet Hour; Rebecca from Bending the Spine; Holly from Geek Glitter; Louise from Nerdette Reviews; Isalys from Book Soulmates; Jennifer from The Feminist Fairy; Heidi from Rainy Day Ramblings; Kristilyn from Reading in Winter; Kelsey from Kelsey's Cluttered Bookshelf; Lizzy from Lizzy's Dark Fiction; Shanon from Escaping with Fiction; Savannah from Books with Bite; Tara from Basically Books; Toni from My Book Addiction; and anyone else I missed!

# Also by J.L. Bryan:

### The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

Cold Shadows

The Crawling Darkness

Terminal

House of Whispers (coming October 2015)

### The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)

Jenny Pox

Tommy Nightmare

Alexander Death

Jenny Plague-Bringer

### Urban Fantasy/Horror

Inferno Park

The Unseen

### Science Fiction

Nomad

Helix

### The Songs of Magic Series (YA/Fantasy)

Fairy Metal Thunder

Fairy Blues

Fairystruck

Fairyland

Fairyvision

Fairy Luck

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trappers

Smashwords Edition copyright 2014 J.L. Bryan

All rights reserved

Smashwords License Statement

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

For Christina

# Chapter One

"Why do ghosts wear clothes?" Stacey asked as we drove toward the possibly-haunted house.

Stacey was twenty-two, four years younger than me and much prettier, her blond hair cropped short and simple, carelessly styled, but her makeup was immaculate. She looked like what she was: a tomboy despite being raised by a former beauty-queen socialite in Montgomery, Alabama. She was a very recent graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design film school, but she'd been eager to join Eckhart Investigations and hunt ghosts rather than pursue a more sane and profitable career.

I had to wonder how Alabama-socialite mom felt about that.

"Well?" Stacey asked, raising an eyebrow. She rode shotgun as I drove our unmarked blue cargo van through the streets of Savannah. It was June, and rich sunlight fell through the thick, gnarled branches of ancient live oaks dripping with Spanish moss and crepe myrtles heavy with red blossoms. The stately old trees shaded columned mansions and gardens filled with summer blooms.

"I don't know, Stacey," I said, trying not to sigh. "You tell me why ghosts wear clothes."

"I'm asking you!"

"I thought you were setting up a joke," I said.

"Nope, totally serious."

"I don't get the question," I told Stacey. "Why wouldn't they?"

"Well...think about it," Stacey said. "The living wear them to keep warm or whatever. If you're a ghost, you don't have a body."

"Does _that_ keep you warm?" I smirked at her low-cut tank top, which wasn't quite appropriate for work. I've been scratched and bruised by enough angry spirits that I wear turtlenecks, leather, and denim even in hot weather. I've tried to warn Stacey about this, but she hasn't listened so far.

"Uh, no..." Stacey looked down at her shirt as if puzzled.

"So why do you wear it?"

"Because I don't want to be naked?"

"Question answered," I said. "Next?"

"Why do ghosts wrap themselves in bedsheets?" Stacey asked.

"They don't do that. Why would you even think--?"

"So they can rest in peace." Stacey beamed, then her smile faltered a little. " _That's_ a joke."

"No, jokes make you laugh."

"That one killed at my second-grade Halloween party."

"Only because your audience was high on sugar," I said.

"Here's another one: why do ghosts come out at night?"

"Because their electromagnetic fields are sensitive to dense concentrations of photons."

"Joke-ruiner," Stacey said.

We drove north and west, away from the city center. The Treadwell house was in an odd area of town, upriver, near empty brick warehouses and a few old factory shells dating back more than a hundred years. The nearest residential neighborhood was a row of decrepit bungalows on narrow, weedy lots, some of them clearly abandoned or foreclosed. They'd probably been inhabited by factory and dock workers at some point.

One old factory did show some signs of remodeling and gentrification, with a clothing boutique and one of those restaurants where you can buy a cruelty-free mushroom sandwich on sprouted-grain bread for just fifteen bucks. Maybe the area was on its way back.

I dropped the sun visor and opened the mirror to double-check myself before meeting the new clients. I always kept it pretty simple—minimal make-up, long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. I can't do much more than that with my crazy coarse hair, anyway. Back in high school, I'd let it grow too shaggy and thick, and it combined with my old armor-thick glasses to create a real Mad Scientist Girl look.

Unlike Stacey, I hadn't been trained in a thousand subtle varieties of cosmetics and hair products. After my parents died when I was fifteen, I didn't really care about normal adolescent stuff like parties, dances, or dating, anyway. I'd stay up late at night studying everything from William James and Spiritualism to Tarot cards and Aleister Crowley.

Even then, I was training myself to be a ghost trapper.

"I don't see any houses down this way..." Stacey said. We passed a low brick warehouse choked with vines, its windows boarded over and spraypainted with graffiti.

"Maybe there." I pointed to an overgrown lot with a screen of massive old trees and a wilderness of overgrown shrubs. A narrow, cracked brick drive led from the street into the darkness behind the trees.

We had to slow down and squint to read the old letters rusting off the ivy-choked brick mailbox. It was the right address.

I turned and eased the van up the cracked driveway, nosing aside low-lying limbs.

"Doesn't look like anybody's lived here in a long time," Stacey whispered. "Do you think it'll be a real ghost this time? I'm tired of duds."

"Careful what you wish for," I told her. More than half our calls come from people who are just plain ghost-happy. They think their place is haunted, and they haven't bothered to eliminate other options. Sometimes that eerie, moaning cold spot is just a clunky air conditioner; sometimes those strange footsteps in the attic are just squirrels. Our first job is to check for any non-paranormal causes for the alleged haunting.

Stacey hadn't seen much in the way of real ghosts in the three weeks since she'd been hired full-time. If she had seen the kinds of things I've seen, she would have been less eager to find a true haunting.

The house lay beyond a jungle of green that had once been a lawn and gardens. Here in coastal Georgia, with the hot sun and constant rain, the wilderness is always ready to sprout back at the first sign of neglect.

I slowed to a halt as the front of the house came into view.

"Wow," Stacey whispered.

A three-story brick mansion loomed above us, much of it hidden by the shadows of the old trees overhead, and even more of it concealed by moss and wild vines. It was a Gothic Revival style house, made of dark brick and heavy wood, with treacherously steep roofs and sharp, high gables rising toward the dim tree canopy above. It had a medieval castle look to it, maybe the kind of neglected castle where Beauty would find the Beast hanging out, just waiting for the remodeling power of love to turn it all into a gorgeous palace.

A team of three men worked on the roof, repairing years of broken shingles and rotten wood. A pair of paint-spattered pick-up trucks sat in the drive below them. I idled beside the trucks for a moment.

"This place looks creepy," Stacey whispered. "Does it feel cold to you?"

"There's enough shade to lower the temperature a few degrees," I said. "Don't get worked up and spook yourself. Keep your mind empty."

"An empty mind is an open mind," Stacey intoned solemnly, imitating our boss, Calvin Eckhart. We both broke down into snickering. Stacey is a pretty convincing mimic, and Calvin's occasional bouts of Zen are always amusing, delivered in his earthy good-old-boy accent.

"It's true," I said, straightening up in my seat. "They said to pull around to the side."

"Ooh, we have to use the servants' entrance?" Stacey made a face as we followed the weedy brick drive back around to the two-story east wing of the house. The east wing had its own chimney and looked to be in much better repair than the main facade, with no mold or vines on the bricks, the trim freshly painted a dark brown. "They must not want the neighbors to know they called the ghost exterminators."

"What neighbors?" I asked, thinking of the empty warehouse we'd just passed.

I parked near a likely-looking side door. The door was heavy and red, built of solid wood and shielded by a screen door. It was sunken at the back of a small brick porch under the shadows of a sharply peak roof. The door itself looked new, and the brick looked worn but recently pressure-washed.

Two more cars were parked there, a silver Jaguar and a small black Mercedes. Good. Eckhart Investigations charges on a rough sliding scale, so people and businesses who can afford it pay more, while poor people pay less. We also do some free work for people who obviously can't afford anything.

I sort of hoped the Treadwells had a true haunting. The ghost business had been slow for a few weeks, and I could use a decent paycheck at the end of the month.

Stacey and I got out of the van. I grabbed my black toolbox, while she brought her camera bag.

"Are you the ghost catchers?" a small, whispery voice asked, and I jumped. Maybe I was a little more affected by the dark, creepy old mansion than I wanted to admit to Stacey.

A girl in a yellow dress emerged from the shadows under the roofed doorway, clutching a cloth doll in her hands. She twisted the doll nervously as she stared at us. She was nine or ten, and she had purple bags under her eyes as if she hadn't slept in a long time. It was unsettling to see that on a kid so young. She could have been the cover girl for Sad Orphan Monthly, if not for the brightly-printed Cavalli dress that probably cost as much as a month's rent on my apartment.

"We are the ghost catchers," I replied. "I'm Ellie, and this is Stacey Ray."

"Just call me Stacey!" Stacey said. She waved and gave the exaggerated smile people use when clumsily trying to ingratiate themselves to small children. "What's your name?"

"Can you make her go away?" the girl asked me, and for a moment I thought she was talking about Stacey. The little girl's face was pale and solemn.

"Make who go away?" I asked.

The girl glanced back at the door behind her, as if to check whether anyone was watching. Then she whispered, looking down at her doll: "The lady who comes at night."

"Is she scary?" Stacey asked. The girl looked at Stacey like she was incredibly stupid.

"Is your mom Anna Treadwell?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Would you get her for us?"

"Mom!" The little girl turned and screamed at the door, but she did not move closer to it. "The ghost people are here!" She turned back and stared at us. "I don't like to go inside."

A minute later, a woman stepped out of the red door. She looked to be in her late thirties or early forties, her dark hair in a stylish professional bob. She was attractive and fit—I pegged her as the Pilates type. She wore old sneakers, worn jeans, and a t-shirt that read _Southeastern Wireless: Team-Building Camp 2013!_ Every bit of her, from her hair to her toes, was spattered with light blue paint.

"I'm so sorry, I'm a mess," the woman said, blushing hard and trying to adjust her hair. "Is it ten already? It's so easy to lose track of time in this house."

"That's fine, please don't worry about it. Doing some renovations?" I pointed to the guys working on the roof.

"You have no idea." She shook her head as if overwhelmed. She wiped a paint-crusted hand on her jeans. "I'm Anna. I'd shake your hand, but you probably don't want to stain your clothes Daydream Azure, so..."

"I'm Ellie Jordan, senior investigator for Eckhart," I told her. "We spoke on the phone yesterday."

"Oh, yes!" She smiled, but it looked forced, like she was trying to hide some serious apprehension. "Nice to meet you."

"This is Stacey Ray Tolbert, our tech manager." I delivered our job titles with a straight face, as if our company consisted of more than three people. It was just me, Stacey, and our boss Calvin Eckhart, a retired homicide detective who had fallen into paranormal investigations and ghost-trapping years ago. Calvin had hired Stacey because he wanted to withdraw from fieldwork, claiming that he was tired of trying to chase ghosts in rickety attics and basements while confined to a wheelchair.

"You can call me Stacey," Stacey told her. I don't know why I even bother introducing Stacey by her full name. It's just kind of fun to say: _Stacey Ray Tolbert_.

"I guess you've already met Lexa," Anna Treadwell said, giving her daughter a half-hug with one arm. Lexa ducked away, looking annoyed. "Come on inside, everyone. Please ignore the mess, we're still unpacking and organizing...everything's been crazy lately." I took it she didn't mean _crazy_ in a fun way.

"Did you recently move here?" I asked as we followed Anna and Lexa inside. Anna had a gentle Midwestern sort of accent, so I knew she wasn't from Georgia originally.

"Oh, yes. About six weeks ago." The hallway was tall but fairly narrow, with a dark hardwood floor that made our footsteps echo. A hammer banged overhead. Light bulbs burned in a chandelier, but the heavy shadows of the corridor seemed to absorb the glow, leaving the upper corners dark. Heavy wooden doors lined both sides of the hall. One opened onto a dining room with a long, polished cherry table and matching chairs, plus cardboard boxes heaped in the corner. The opposing door opened onto a living room with a long leather couch, a big flatscreen on the wall, and more boxes waiting to be unpacked.

The hall seemed to end abruptly. On the right side, a flight of polished wooden stairs led up and out of sight. Just past the steps, at the very end of the hall, was another heavy door like the one through which we'd entered. Three industrial-sized deadbolts were built into it, and one was locked into place. The wall around the door seemed a slightly different color than those around it, as though the wall and door were not original to the house and had been added later.

"Dale!" Anna shouted up the stairs. The hammering paused for a moment, then resumed. "Dale, the ghost detectives are here!"

The hammering continued.

"My husband will be down in a second," Anna said with an apologetic smile. Though she was putting up a calm front, her hands were trembling.

"No rush," I said. I wanted to put her at ease but wasn't sure how. "Where did you move from?"

"Oh, Marietta. Outside Atlanta?" She pointed back over her shoulder.

"I'm familiar."

"Chicago before that. Dale grew up there." Anna took a deep breath and screamed: "Dale, get down here _right now_!"

The hammering stopped, and there was another loud bang, as if someone had thrown a hammer on the floor. Footsteps clomped on the stairs. A thin man about Anna's age, his dark hair speckled with gray, stomped down from the landing.

"Anna, I can't leave a bookshelf half-hung!" he snapped at his wife. He definitely had a Chicago accent. There was a lot of nose in that voice. "I had to finish that second nail. Maybe if you helped out more, you would understand—"

"Dale, the detectives are here," Anna interrupted, pointing at us.

"What's that?" Dale saw us, then straightened up. A look of confusion crossed his face as he looked at me and Stacey.

I knew that look. I saw it most often among older males—they get thrown off-balance by the idea of a female detective.

We introduced ourselves quickly. Dale's voice became less whiny now that he wasn't alone with his family.

"You have a beautiful home, Mr. and Mrs. Treadwell," I added, eager to defuse any tension.

"It's a wreck," Dale said, shaking his head. "Real money pit, just like I said before we bought it. And that was before all the..." He shrugged, as if deciding he didn't want to finish his sentence.

"Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?" I asked, glancing at the dining room, where eight chairs were spaced around the table.

"Maybe the dining room." Anna and her family stepped around the piles of boxes to sit on one side of the table. Stacey and I took the opposite side, our backs to the two narrow windows that barely let in enough sunlight to pierce the gloom.

"I'm sorry about the clutter," Anna added, gesturing helplessly at the pile of unpacked boxes beside her.

"If you don't mind me asking, how did you end up moving to Savannah?" I asked.

"Oh, well, in our past life, Dale was vice-president of product development at AlgoSystems Data Management. Have you heard of them?"

I shook my head.

"Well, they're a...software company, basically," Anna continued. "And I was a corporate accounts executive at Southeastern Wireless. With our commutes and our careers, we barely saw each other, and Lexa practically lived at the daycare center. Together, Dale and I decided it was too much. We wanted to escape the rat race." She touched her husband's hand. He looked at the floor and slouched, as though maybe he wasn't so happy about escaping that particular race. "We'd visited Savannah a couple of times, and it was just such a beautiful city...We decided to buy one of these big old houses and turn it into a bed and breakfast. We bought this place for a steal, even when you consider how dilapidated it is."

"Yeah, we've stayed at some bed-and-breakfast spots around the country, and they're usually run by idiots," Dale said, perking up a little. "Just complete idiots. So we figured we could do it smarter. Imagine this: wife comes to husband, says she wants to spend a weekend at some fruity-fruit bed and breakfast in Savannah, so she can shop for antiques, visit museums, junk like that. Husband says no way. But wait, wife says. _This_ one's got a sports lounge right on the ground floor—we're talking big-screen TV, beer on tap. Now husband's like, heck yeah, I can catch the Bears game, let's go!"

"Something to appeal to the whole family," Anna explained.

"Can we make this quick?" Dale asked. "We have a lot to do around here. The girls say they've seen ghosts, but I don't think so. I don't believe in ghosts."

"We'll move as fast as we can, Mr. Treadwell." I said, mentally noting how he referred to both his wife and daughter as _the girls_.

I gently set my black steel toolbox on the floor, since I didn't want to risk scratching their dining table. I popped the lid and brought out a long yellow legal pad, two pens, and a digital voice recorder.

I asked if it was okay to record the interview. Dale rolled his eyes, but nobody objected. I placed the device in the center of the table and tapped the record button.

"Okay, Mrs. Treadwell," I said, since it was clear that Dale was the family skeptic. "Can you tell us why you believe your house is haunted?"

# Chapter Two

"It started about two or three weeks after we moved in," Anna Treadwell said.

"Sooner than that," her daughter Lexa interrupted, shaking her head. "Like the first week."

"Lexa was the first to experience it," Anna said. "She heard a couple of noises at night, but we thought it was just an old house with a lot of unfamiliar sounds. Settling, creaking..."

"I still say that's all it is," Dale interrupted. "The girls are just hearing things and scaring themselves."

"It is not!" Lexa snapped. " _She_ wants us to leave. She wants us to move back home."

"This is our home now, sweetie," Anna told her daughter.

"It's not _my_ home. Or Maggie's." Lexa clutched the doll close to her chest. "Maggie doesn't like it here."

"We've heard enough of that, Lexa!" Dale snapped at his daughter. "We told you, we moved here, we're staying here, and it's all final. Damned kid's regressing, carrying that doll around," Dale said to me, as if Lexa weren't even in the room.

"Dale, calm down," the wife said, looking shaken. "We're trying to figure this out."

"Nothing to figure out," Dale said. "You want to spend more money we don't have on stuff we don't need. Ghost hunters, Anna? Really?" He turned to look across the table at Stacey and me. "How much is this gonna set me back?"

"We haven't even determined whether there's an actual ghost," I replied. "Our fees depend on a variety of factors—"

"Already sounds expensive," Dale grunted.

"Dale, _please_ ," Anna snapped at her husband. "This is important."

Dale sighed and rolled his eyes again. "Couple of doors bang in the night, you girls get hysterical."

"I am not crazy!" Anna shouted. "Lexa is not crazy. If you would just listen--"

"All I do is listen! I listen to you two complaining and griping all day long. Always some stupid thing or some other thing that's even stupider than the last thing--"

"Why do you always think you know better than everyone else?" Anna hissed at him.

"Because I always do!" He slammed his fist on the table. "It's not my fault I'm surrounded by idiots!"

Lexa had curled up in her chair, tucking her knees up to her chest and clutching the doll tight. She looked a little flushed. I couldn't tell if the poor girl was scared or embarrassed. Maybe both.

Stacey and I were doing our best to keep our eyes on the table and pretend we weren't in the room while our clients had their family argument. It was awkward.

"That's enough of this crap." Dale stood up. His voice was getting whiny again. "You can all sit here wasting time and scaring each other if you want. Somebody has to get some real work done." He left the room and stomped away up the stairs.

"I'm sorry," Anna told us, her voice quiet. "It's been very stressful around here. I think he knows something's wrong, but he doesn't want to admit it..."

"Should we come back another time?" I asked, hoping she would say no.

"No!" Lexa shouted, sitting up in her chair. "You have to help us! You have to make her go away!"

"It's okay, sweetie." Anna tried to comfort the girl by patting her on the head again, but again Lexa pulled away from her. Anna looked at me. "We may as well go ahead."

"Why don't we start over?" I suggested.

"Okay." Anna took a deep breath. "After we moved in, Lexa started having bad dreams. We thought it was because, you know, a new house in a new city..."

"It was the lady," Lexa whispered. "Her eyes are like holes in the ground."

"One night, Lexa came to our bedroom and woke us up," Anna said. "She said there was somebody in the house."

"I heard her footsteps," Lexa added. "They came up the stairs. They stopped at my room. It was just footsteps that time."

A loud banging sounded overhead. Dale was hammering again, louder and harder than before, as though trying to make some kind of point.

"We got out of bed and searched around," Anna said. "We were a little worried about vandals and vagrants, since the house had been empty for a few years before we bought it. We didn't find anybody, but then we checked downstairs, and the door to the main house was open."

"Which door?" I asked.

"Down at the end of the hall."

"The one with all the deadbolts?" Stacey asked. "I was wondering about that..."

"At some point, the east wing was walled off from the rest of the house," Anna said. "It was a caretaker's apartment. Only one door connects it to the main house, and that's the door I'm talking about. It already had the deadbolts when we moved in, but two of the three are rusted and stuck open."

"Was it locked when you went to bed that night?" I asked.

"We assumed we must have left it unlocked, so we threw the bolt and went back to bed," Anna said. "I didn't think too much about it then. We thought the footsteps were just another of Lexa's bad dreams, and we expected those to stop once she got used to the house."

"It wasn't a _dream_ ," Lexa insisted. "I heard the door open. It went cree-eeeeak. Then her footsteps."

"It happened again the next night," Anna said. "Lexa came into our room talking about footsteps. We found the door to the main house wide open, with a cold draft blowing in. I know the door was deadbolted that second night, because I double-checked before bed. My husband insisted I must have been wrong." Anna rolled her eyes a little. "He said it must be the draft blowing open the door. So, the next night, I made _him_ bolt the door and double-check it before bed."

"And how did that go?" I asked.

"We actually didn't have a problem that night," Anna said. "But the next night--"

"She came back," Lexa whispered. "I heard it from my bed. The door opened, the footsteps....Then I saw her." Lexa crumpled up in her chair, not looking directly at anyone.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," her mother said.

"First I heard the door, and I knew she was coming." Lexa was barely speaking above a whisper, and Stacey and I had to lean in to hear her. "Then her footsteps. It was usually just a couple of steps, but this time they came all the way up the stairs." Lexa was shivering, and she looked close to crying. "Then she came to my door and looked at me."

"What did you see?" Stacey asked, clearly enthralled as if hearing a campfire story. I cut her a warning look. _Don't look so happy_ , I thought.

"You don't have to tell us if it's too scary," I told Lexa. "But it would help if you did."

Lexa whispered something, swallowing her words.

"It's okay, sweetie." Anna rubbed the girl's back. "Can you say it a little louder?"

"I said she looked dead," Lexa said, her eyes lifting to stare into mine. "She looked rotten. Her whole face. She had a raggy dress and her hair was really dirty. I couldn't see too much because all the lights were out, but I could feel her looking at me."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I couldn't move!" Lexa's face screwed up and turned red. "I tried. I couldn't even yell. I was too scared. So I just stayed there and wished she would go away. She was gone after a minute."

"Back down the stairs?" I asked.

"Noooo..." Lexa shook her head furiously to emphasize how wrong I was. "She was just gone. I waited and waited and waited and then I tiptoed and looked out the door. She wasn't in the hall. She wasn't on the stairs. I ran to Mom and Dad's room."

"Lexa was really upset that time," Anna said. "We searched all over the east wing again, but nobody was there."

"And the security door downstairs?" I asked.

"Wide open again." Anna shook her head and rubbed the fresh goosebumps on her arms. "Dale and I had both checked to make sure it was locked before sleep."

I nodded. It was possible, I thought, that the girl was behind it all—first running downstairs and opening the door, then waking her parents and claiming to see and hear scary things. Lexa didn't seem like she was lying to me, but you have to consider these possibilities.

"The lady started coming every night," Lexa said. "Sometimes just footsteps. Sometimes I see her. She's mean."

"So we barricaded the door the next night," Anna said. "Furniture and heavy boxes full of hardback books. Dale thought there must be some kind of problem with the deadbolt. I thought so, too. It was the only thing that made sense, you understand?"

"Of course," I said.

"A loud crash woke me up later that night," Anna said.

"It woke up _everybody_ ," Lexa added.

"We told Lexa to stay in her room, then Dale and I ran downstairs." Anna folded her hands on the dining table. She was trying to act calm, but her hands were trembling and her face had lost all its color.

"Downstairs, the boxes and chairs had fallen over, and some of the boxes had spilled open. It looked like someone had given the door a hard shove and knocked it all down, but only a really strong person could have pulled that off. And the deadbolt was wide open again. A draft came from the main house, and it smelled like...just rot and decay. Death."

"She didn't like that," Lexa said. "When we tried to lock her out like that."

"Dale called the police,"Anna said. "He was convinced it was a break-in. 'Probably teenagers,' he kept saying. 'Probably just some idiot teenagers.' The police looked around, but they didn't find anybody. All the doors were locked and the windows latched, so nobody had broken in—not in the main house, or here in the east wing. There was no explanation. Lexa told them about the disappearing woman she'd seen."

"Dad didn't want me to tell the police about her," Lexa said. "He got mad at me."

"I tried to laugh it off, but I guess I wasn't very convincing." Anna forced a laugh. "Just before they left, one of the officers—an older man—pulled me aside and told me that if it kept happening, I might call your detective agency. He said Eckhart Investigations had cleared up a few hauntings around town. I just looked at him like he was crazy. Now I feel pretty bad about that."

I'd been taking notes the whole time. Footsteps: possible auditory manifestation. The door opening, even when bolted and barricaded: possible psychokinetic activity. The vanishing dead woman: a full apparition. If the haunting was real, it was a major one, but nothing we couldn't handle.

The only other explanation was an elaborate prank, which is more likely than it sounds. More than a few cases have turned out to be kids faking a ghost. I doubted Lexa was lying—she looked pretty scared and sleep-deprived—but logically I had to consider it.

"Let's back up a second," I said. "What exactly did you and your husband do after the crash woke you up? I mean from the first moment you were awake."

"Well..." Anna tapped her fingernails as she thought about it. "First, we looked at each other. Kind of a 'did you hear that?' moment, but we didn't have to say anything. We both ran to the hall, and we checked on Lexa first, of course--"

"How much time passed between the crash and when you reached her room?" I asked.

"Not long. Five seconds, maybe. Less than ten, I'm sure. Why?"

"Just being thorough..." I jotted down her time estimate. "How did you find Lexa when you reached her room?"

"She was upset."

"I was scared," Lexa said, nodding.

"I mean, where in the room was she? Near the door?"

"Lexa was still in bed," Anna said.

"You think I'm lying about the ghost," Lexa said, scowling at me. "Just like Dad."

"I didn't say that, Lexa," I told her. "I'm just trying to understand what happened that night."

"Yeah, right." She crossed her arms. "Are you going to help us or not?"

"I will if I can, Lexa. Have you seen anything else since that night?"

"She keeps coming to my room," Lexa said. "Even if I lock the door, it opens. Sometimes I can see her. Sometimes it's just footsteps."

"Has anyone else had strange experiences?" I asked Anna.

"Dale says he's never seen or heard anything, but I..." Anna hesitated and glanced at her daughter. "Lexa, do you want to go and play now?"

"No," Lexa said.

"I need to speak with the detectives alone, sweetie."

"You saw her." Lexa turned her scowl on her mom. "You saw her and you don't want me or Dad to know about it."

"I just...have had strange feelings, especially at night." Anna's fingers twisted together on the table while she spoke. "Like there's someone here who isn't supposed to be here. Someone watching me." She shuddered. "That's all. But...well what do you think?" Anna looked at me. "Do you think we have a ghost?"

She and Lexa both watched me closely. So did Stacey, who'd stayed quiet during the interview because she was still learning the process. Anna and Lexa looked worried; Stacey was barely able to hide her excitement.

"It sounds very possible to me," I said. The family didn't strike me as particularly crazy or ghost-happy. It's a little awkward when you meet new clients and part of your job is assessing whether or not they're completely in touch with reality. I got my degree in psychology to help me work with ghosts, but it's handy when studying potential clients, too. "Can you show us the places where you've had activity? The door, the stairs, maybe Lexa's room?"

"This way!" Lexa said, shoving herself out of her chair as if eager to get things moving.

"Do you mind if Stacey takes some video, Mrs. Treadwell?" I asked. I nodded at Stacey, who was already opening her camera bag to grab her video recorder. "It's part of the process."

"Of course." She gave me a tight, fake smile. "And you can call me Anna."

As we left the room, Stacey was on the balls of her feet. She probably felt what I felt—there was something wrong in this house, a sense that the shadows were too dark and the air too cold and heavy. Stacey was probably thrilled about that.

# Chapter Three

Anna began our tour with the downstairs kitchen and living room, explaining how they'd started with the bathrooms and kitchen to make the caretaker's apartment livable.

"Everything was a wreck at first," she told me. "We brought in new appliances, of course, and we had to scrub and re-stain all the woodwork...the floor's new, obviously...we have contractors in and out all the time."

I nodded politely while she demonstrated the drawers and cabinets, and how they opened and closed and had shelves inside them. She brightened up as she talked about her struggles with picking new cabinet pulls. It seemed to calm her down, so I didn't interrupt.

Finally, we walked down the short hallway and faced the door. Anna's chatty smile faded into a quiet frown. Lexa stayed behind her, crossing her arms and glaring at the door.

"It looks like a serious security door," I said, stepping close to study the three bolts. "Is it thick?"

"A few inches, I think," Anna said. "It's a bear to haul it open."'

"It would take a pretty strong draft to do that," Stacey said.

"I wonder why somebody would put this here," I said.

"We think somebody used to rent out rooms here," Anna said. "In the main house, each bedroom has a lock with a key. The master suite on the third floor was cut up into rooms that can be locked against each other."

"But you don't know for sure?" I asked.

"The realtor didn't know much about the house's past, but it looks that way to me," Anna said. "Somebody lived in the east-wing apartment and rented out the bedrooms. Maybe he didn't trust his tenants."

"That's something we'll have to find out." I knocked on the door, then reached for the closed deadbolt. "Do you mind if I open it?"

Anna and Lexa looked even more pale. Anna attempted to speak twice before she managed to say, in a very reluctant voice, "Go ahead."

I grasped the cold, rust-speckled iron knob. I pulled, and it scraped heavily against its housing, reluctant to move. I had to grit my teeth and wrench it hard, and it finally slid open with a shriek.

"Creepy," Stacey said, smiling behind her camera.

"Shh," I told her. "I just want to test the door."

The door's curved handle was also heavy, cold iron. I wrapped my fingers around it and pulled hard.

The heavy door opened onto a dark hallway, much of which had been stripped down to studs for remodeling.

"I don't think a breeze would nudge that door open," Stacey mentioned again.

"No," I said. "The lock and handle are both iron, though. Highly conductive."

"What does that mean?" Anna asked.

"Ghosts are dense electromagnetic energy," I said. "It may be easier for them to manipulate conductive materials."

"So we should change the lock?" Anna asked.

"It could help a little, but I want to learn more before I start giving advice." I peered ahead into the dark main-house hallway. "Do you ever see or hear anything strange in there? Besides this door opening?"

"Sure, some creaking and settling at night," Anna said. "We don't go over to the main house after dark. We work over there during the day, but of course we're making a lot of noise then, hammering and sawing....Plus, I like to blast music when I work."

I nodded, eased the door closed, and slid the deadbolt back into place.

"These are the stairs where you hear footsteps?" I pointed to the staircase. Lexa nodded, with a deep frown on her face.

"Those are the only steps in the east wing," Anna told me.

"Let's check them out." I ascended the stairs slowly. They were made of beautiful dark wood, surrounded by matching paneling on the walls. The Treadwells had already hung family pictures here, showing their little family at younger ages, as well as posing with others I assumed to be family friends and relatives. I wondered if the household ghost felt annoyed at this territorial marking by the new owners.

A huge antique chandelier dripping with crystal hung at the landing. I had to turn around to climb the next flight of steps up to the second floor. The wood squeaked and groaned beneath my shoes.

"Lexa's room is the first door you see," Anna told me as I reached the upstairs hall. Like the downstairs hall just below it, it was oddly short for its width. There was no door at the end of this one, just a blank wall where the east wing had been severed from the main house.

I stopped in front of Lexa's bedroom. "Lexa, can you show me where you saw the lady?"

"She stops right here." Lexa slowly opened the door. "She stands right here and watches me in bed."

Her room was particularly nice, spacious with a high ceiling, a queen-sized bed, a brick fireplace with a hand-carved mantel, and a row of narrow medieval-style windows. It was painted a shade of yellow that seemed like it was trying too hard to be cheerful and sunny.

I asked Lexa to describe the ghost woman again, and she mostly repeated what she'd said earlier—ragged dress, dead face with some decay, hair like dry straw. I nodded, quietly checking her story for consistency. One old cop trick I'd learned from Calvin: people who are telling the truth tend to keep their story consistent, while those who aren't tend to change and embellish the story each time they tell it. I always like to ask witnesses to recount their experiences a few times over, just to check.

"What do you do when you see her?" I asked Lexa.

"I just stay there and keep quiet," Lexa said, nodding at her canopy bed, which was occupied by a large stuffed bear in a tuxedo. "I'm too scared to close my eyes and I'm too scared to yell for help."

"Does she say or do anything while she's here?"

"No. But she doesn't like us. She wants us to leave."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"I can tell by how she looks at me." Lexa shrugged. "By everything she does. Slamming the door open and trying to scare us."

"Has she ever hurt anybody?" I looked from Lexa to Anna, but they both shook their heads.

"Listen, Lexa," Anna said. "Why don't you show Stacey your room for a minute?"

Lexa gave her mother a suspicious look.

"Oh, good idea!" Stacey agreed. "And you can tell me more about the ghost..." Stacey's warm, smiling attention seemed to relax Lexa a little bit, and Lexa led Stacey into her room.

I looked at Anna, wondering why she'd wanted to send them away. Anna took my arm and led me into the master bedroom. The windows were open, and I could hear Anna's husband outside, barking orders at the roofers in his Chicago accent.

"He thinks he knows everything," Anna whispered. She led me past the king-size bed. The polished antique furniture was mostly heavy, dark wood. A few bookshelves had been nailed to the wall, but that project looked half-completed, with nails and sawdust on the carpet below. It looked like they'd put in new carpet before renovating the walls—not the smartest choice.

Anna took me into the spacious master bath. The tub was Jacuzzi sized, and there was a separate shower stall tucked into the corner. A big picture window overlooked the dense, tangled greenery of the back yard. A little sunlight seeped in through the wide glass pane, but the canopy of leafy, twisted limbs outside seemed to absorb most of the light before it ever touched the house.

I shivered. Despite the seeping sunlight, the master bath was much colder than the master bedroom. I waved my hand in front of the air-conditioner vent, but no air was blowing out.

"It's cold, isn't it?" Anna whispered. "It's not just me?"

"No, it's not." I crossed my arms, feeling a little ill. "This room doesn't feel right."

"I didn't want to scare Lexa, and I know Dale would just call me crazy, but..." Anna took a breath. She gestured toward the shower stall, which was walled with clear panes of glass. Not much privacy there, especially when you considered the giant picture window just across from the shower.

"Did something happen to you?" I asked her, speaking as gently as I could.

"Two nights ago," Anna said. Her voice was so soft I had to lean in to listen. "We'd been doing cabinets and painting all day—I like to do the painting—so I thought I'd have a long, hot shower before stumbling to bed. I was exhausted.

"In the middle of the shower, everything turned cold," Anna said. "First the water, like the water heater had conked out, which is totally possible since Dale installed it himself. Then the _air_ got cold. I could feel the temperature plunge. I opened my mouth to yell at Dale, and that's when the lights turned out. So I'm standing there in the dark, freezing, with my hair full of shampoo.

"I called out to Dale to see if he'd turned off the light by accident, or maybe as a prank, but Dale doesn't really do pranks. I called for him a few times, but nobody answered.

"I washed out my hair as fast as I could in that freezing water, then I turned it off. I opened the shower door and sort of felt along in the dark until I found the towel rod.

"After I wiped my face and opened my eyes...that's when I realized I wasn't alone. Someone else was in the room, but it wasn't Dale. It wasn't Lexa, either. It was an adult woman. She stood right there, like a solid black shadow in front of the window. She was facing me, and she wasn't moving at all." Anna wrapped her arms around herself, and I could see goosebumps all over her.

"Can you describe her a little more?" I asked.

Anna shook her head. "She blocked out most of the moonlight. I could sort of see her hair—stringy, messy hair like dry straw...sort of like a crazed drug addict's hair, you know? She was staring right at me."

"What did you do?"

"You'd think I would scream, right? But I didn't. I could barely catch my breath. I couldn't even move, except for my knees. They wouldn't stop wobbling. I just stood there and clutched my towel and stared back at her."

"How long did that go on?" I asked.

"I don't know—a few seconds, a minute? It felt like a long time. And she still didn't move _at all_. Then she spoke to me. Just a whisper, and I heard it right in my ear. She said..." Anna swallowed, then spoke in a harsh whisper: "She said, ' _Leave this house_.' That was it, just three words.

"When I heard her voice, I screamed. I could move again, so I ran to the door and pulled it open." Anna demonstrated by opening the bathroom door and gesturing into her bedroom. "The light was on in there, and it didn't feel cold at all. Dale was just lying in bed with his reading glasses and his new issue of _Motor Trend_.

"He jumped up, and I told him there was someone in the bathroom...The lights flickered back on just as he came in here to check. He acted like I was crazy. She was gone."

"That sounds pretty upsetting," I said, looking over the picture window. "I don't see any way someone could sneak in or out of here...the windows don't open..."

"Exactly. So, do you think I'm crazy?"

"I think something is obviously happening in this house."

"Me, too." Anna seemed relieved. "Do you think it was the same woman Lexa keeps talking about?"

"There's no way to tell yet, but maybe you should discuss that with her."

"I don't want to scare her."

"She's already scared," I said. "I think she'll feel better if she knows she's not alone, that you've seen things, too. Especially since your husband doesn't seem to believe any of it."

"Maybe I'll talk it over with her." Anna hurried out of the cold bathroom. The bedroom beyond it had to be ten or fifteen degrees warmer. "Should I tell Dale about it first?"

"Tell Dale about what?" Dale leaned in through one of the big, open bedroom windows, apparently taking a break from harassing the roofers. "This better not cost a heap of money, Anna."

"There's no charge for the initial consultation, Mr. Treadwell," I said.

"Yeah, right." He stepped in through the window.

"Is there anything else you wanted to show me?" I asked Anna.

"That's the worst of it," Anna said.

"Are you still talking about that light going out in the bathroom?" Dale asked. "I told you, Anna, we're still repairing the electricity. It's all a big rat's nest down at the fuse box. Stuff's gonna happen."

"And I told you I saw somebody in there," Anna said. "A woman."

"Oh, right. The 'move out now' lady. We aren't moving out, so she better give up." Dale smirked and shouted into the bathroom, his hands cupped around his mouth. "Hear that, ghost lady? We aren't moving!"

"Don't make her mad," Anna whispered, and Dale just snorted and shook his head. He walked past us and clambered on down the stairs, and turned on the television to watch a golf game. He must have been exhausted from all the minutes he'd spent watching the roofers work.

"Do you think you can help us?" Anna asked me as we walked into the hall.

"She says they can!" Lexa said, dashing out from her room. Stacey followed behind her with the little video camera, and she gave me an apologetic smile.

"There must be something we can do, right?" Stacey asked. She was blushing—she'd overstepped her bounds a little bit, and she knew it. I was supposed to be the one who determined whether the alleged haunting needed further investigation.

Fortunately for Stacey, she was right this time. I did think something nasty had moved into the Treadwell house.

"Here's what I would like to do," I said. "Let's schedule a night when Stacey and I can stay over. We'll do a full observation of all the hotspots—video, audio, thermal, electromagnetic frequencies. We'll have cameras in the hallway, the stairs, and of course the door that keeps opening..." I led them downstairs as I spoke, then I gestured at the heavy security door with the deadbolts. "I'll probably camp out in your hall to keep an eye on that door."

"Maybe we could rig a camera on the other side, too," Stacey said. "You know, in the main house over there? We might catch the ghost coming or going."

I nodded. "And I'll look into the history of the house and see if we might find a cause for a haunting. Maybe some clues to the ghost's identity, if we're lucky. It's so much easier to trap ghosts when you know who they are. What do you think, Anna?"

Anna and Lexa looked at each other.

"Can we start tonight?" Anna asked me.

"Let me check my schedule..." I opened the calender app on my phone and pretended to look through it, even though the only appointments were meeting with the Treadwells this morning and my kickboxing class at four in the afternoon. "We could come back around seven or eight."

"Yes!" Stacey said, grinning and nodding like a goofball. She was eager to catch a ghost. "I can start the set-up right now, if you want..." She looked between Anna and me.

"We'll have plenty of time when we come back," I said.

"And then you'll get rid of the ghost?" Lexa asked.

"First we have to know what kind of ghost we're dealing with," I said. "But, yes, Lexa. We'll get rid of this ghost even if we have to drag her out by her hair. You're going to be perfectly safe."

For the first time since I'd met her, Lexa smiled.

# Chapter Four

"Full apparition with multiple witnesses, psychokinetic disturbances...sounds promising," Calvin Eckhart said. He sat at the scuffed wooden worktable in our office, which was actually more of an industrial space out on Telfair Road. Not exactly a central or historic spot—our next-door neighbor is a car-crushing place—but building and maintaining ghost traps has elements of heavy industry, so Calvin rents his space away from the more populated areas.

Our clients rarely come to the office, anyway. We mostly do house calls. It's not like they can bring their ghosts to us.

There's a semi-professional-looking area out front, with some actual carpet, a few old chairs for visitors, and few dog-eared magazines that are even older than the chairs. The largest area is the workshop in back, where we were eating lunch. Here, the floor is bare concrete and power tools hang on the walls. There are coils of copper wire and a big blue Paragon kiln for glassmaking.

I'd brought Calvin some pork fried rice from Happy King China. I'd ordered myself some of their vegetables, but more importantly, I had a large Styrofoam cup of sweet tea. Happy King China has the best sweet tea in town. Not many people know that secret.

Calvin's dog, a droopy-faced bloodhound named Hunter, sat under the table sniffing fried-rice aroma with his super-sensitive nose.

"So what's your plan of attack?" Calvin asked. He dug his chopsticks into his rice again.

"Pretty standard so far. I'll hit the library and see what I can dig up about that house. I already called the Savannah Historical Association, but nobody can meet with me until tomorrow. The family's ready for us to set up a full-spectrum observation tonight...well, the wife's ready. The husband thinks it's all nonsense."

"He's probably just in denial to hide his fear," Calvin said. "He knows something is opening that door at night, and he knows he can't stop it."

I nodded. "So that's the plan. I'm going to sit by that door all night."

"I've been concerned about you going to these jobs by yourself," Calvin said.

"I know, so you hired Stacey, and now I'm stuck training a ghost-happy paranormal fangirl."

"Stacey has plenty of good qualities for this job."

"Name one," I said.

"She'll work for cheap," he replied.

"Name two."

"She's good at collecting audio-video evidence."

"Name three."

"Stop moving the goalposts," Calvin said. "My point is, I don't want you to get hurt investigating these hauntings. Stacey sits out in the van with the monitors while you're alone inside."

"I can handle whatever any ghost wants to throw at me."

"I used to think that, too." Calvin glanced at his thin legs, sitting useless in his wheelchair. Calvin had grown out his gray hair a bit since leaving the force, but he still had the square shoulders and rigid bearing of a cop. Even wearing his granny glasses and sitting in his wheelchair, he still projected authority.

"I get it, Calvin," I said. "I really do. You think you're sending a couple of girls into danger, but I promise you, we can handle it. If we can't, we'll get out of there. This doesn't even sound like a very dangerous haunting—maybe a territorial ghost trying to drive out the living, but she hasn't hurt anyone..."

"I am responsible for your safety," he said. "But I also think the team could use an extra perspective. An extra set of hands, too."

"I don't know if you've checked the ledger lately, but we aren't exactly rolling in spare cash right now. So even if we did need somebody else, which we don't, we can't afford it. We're lucky Stacey is a trust-fund baby willing to work for peanuts."

"Then we're doubly lucky that the young man I have in mind is willing to work for free—for now, at least—as part of his therapy."

"Therapy? What is he, a phasmophobic?"

"He doesn't have an irrational fear of ghosts," Calvin said. "If he's afraid of them, it's because he finds himself surrounded by them. Purely rational, really."

"I don't think I like where this is going." I put down my fork and sat up on my old wooden workbench stool.

"He was in an airline crash," Calvin said. "One of only a few survivors. Since then, he's been in almost constant contact with the dead--"

"No, no, come on. You know what I think about using psychics."

"I've had some great help from them in the past," Calvin said.

"And we've been burned by them, too. Subtract out the frauds, the crazies, and the ones who maybe _are_ psychic but are still obviously crazy--"

"An old friend recommended him to me," Calvin said. "She thinks working with us would help him gain control over his abilities."

"That's why he'll work for free, then," I said. "Because he doesn't know what he's doing."

"Exactly. You said yourself this is a minor case with limited danger. It sounds like a good test for him. We can just see what he finds."

"I like to keep it scientific, Calvin. Things you can observe and measure."

"This city's full of colleges. Why don't you call around and see how many professional scientists agree that applied parapsychology is related in any way to actual hard science?"

"I just don't like the idea of some guy wandering around pretending to download information into his brain. It can distract you from the real evidence."

"Or break the case," Calvin said. "I had one or two psychics help with that even when I was still on the job. Missing persons and homicide—police use psychics more than the public knows."

"You told me I'd be in charge of the field work now," I said. "That was our agreement. You can't stick me with some crystal ball reader who'll just trip up my investigation." I stood up and tossed my greasy to-go box into the trash. "I have to run. The library closes at six today. You going to your poker game tonight?"

"Changing the subject and running away?" He raised an eyebrow at me.

"Exactly. I'll check in later." I opened the steel fire door at the back and hurried out before he could try to sell me on the psychic again. He really should have known better.

I left the big van at the office so Stacey could set it up when she returned from lunch. I drove my own car, a black 2002 Camaro that continues to run mainly by magic, I think. It has T-tops that pop out so I can soak up the roughly nine months of summer this city enjoys every year. And, when I get the chance, I can drive very, very fast. It's probably not the kind of car I would have bought for myself, but I inherited it from my dad, so I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I zipped a couple of exits down the interstate, then hit thick traffic downtown. I didn't have far to go, though.

The Bull Street Library is a thing of beauty, nearly a hundred years old, with a Grecian marble facade and Ionic columns. It's a gorgeous sunlit place to spend a few hours slogging through microfilm in search of murder and death.

# Chapter Five

"I want to check whether you recognize any of these women," I said to Anna. We sat at her dining room table again, facing each other. I'd asked Lexa and Stacey to leave the room. It was eight-thirty, and the windows behind me showed solid darkness outside.

I opened the manila envelope and slid out ten black-and-white photos printed on regular computer paper, all of them drawn from the library's newspaper archives. They showed women with clothing and hairstyles from across the past century. I'd been at the library until closing time, mucking around in microfiche, which meant I'd missed my kickboxing class. I didn't totally regret it—kickboxing is a great workout but also kind of a pain.

Of the ten images on the table, only two really interested me. The other eight were filler. Since Anna had described a woman with straw-like hair, half the women were blond.

Anna watched with her brow furrowed as I spread out the pictures. She took a few minutes looking them over.

I sipped some of the coffee she'd thoughtfully brewed for Stacey and me. It was strong and rich, which was good. It was going to be a long night.

Finally, Anna touched one page and slid it over to me.

"That could be her," Anna said, tapping a pretty woman in a dark dress with long, unkempt yellow hair. The woman wore a flat, blank look. It was an arrest photo.

"Who?" I asked.

"The one I saw. If it's any of them, it's her."

"Okay. I'd like to ask Lexa the same thing, if that's all right." I slid the woman's picture back into place.

Anna nodded. She opened the door and brought Lexa inside. The house echoed with the sound of banging—Dale had picked the moment of our arrival to go hang drywall in the main house.

Stacey leaned in the door with a questioning look, and she obviously wanted to get in on the action. I gestured for her to stay where she was. She nodded, gave a conspiratorial wink and a thumbs-up, then raised the digital camera to continue recording us.

Lexa sat across from me. Her eyes were wide and solemn as she looked down at the pictures.

"Lexa," I said, "I just want to know if you happen to recognize any of these people."

"That's her." Lexa picked up the same printout and waved it at me. "Who is she?"

"Her name is Mercy Cutledge," I said. I hesitated to continue. What I was about to say was not exactly great conversation for a ten-year-old, but Lexa was already being haunted by the woman. Knowing the identity of a specter can give you a real sense of power over it—it's no longer some unknown evil tormenting you, but a specific person with a name and a past. If I were Lexa, I would have wanted to know. I had to see kids frightened or endangered by ghosts, and always feel a special need to protect them.

"Did she used to live here?" Lexa asked, still gazing at the grainy picture.

"I think so. The newspaper said she was a household employee of a past owner of this house, a sea captain named...Augustus Oliver Marsh." I drew out a picture of Captain Marsh, a bald, white-bearded man in a white suit, posing in a highbacked chair next to a telescope and a globe. His mouth was a hard, humorless line almost lost in his enormous beard, which curled down to his shoulders and chest. His eyes were bright and sharp, almost stabbing outward from the paper. "Have you heard of him?"

Anna shook her head.

"Do you recognize this woman?" I pointed to a scratchy image of a woman in a high-necked dress and a large hat decorated with feathers. It was the oldest picture of the group.

"No," Lexa said, and Anna shook her head again.

"This was Eugenia Marsh, his wife," I said. "She died in 1901. Sudden sickness and fever."

"Oh, no!" Anna said.

"Captain Marsh himself died in 1954...also in this house. He was murdered by this woman, Mercy Cutledge." I pointed to the picture that Anna and Lexa had both picked up.

"I just felt chills up and down my back," Anna whispered.

"Was it like someone was touching you?" Stacey asked, dashing toward her with the camera. "Like fingers, or a hand, or—"

"Calm down, Stacey Ray," I said.

"She's a murderer," Lexa whispered, staring at the blond woman.

"I don't understand something," Anna said. "If his wife died in 1901...how old was he in 1954?"

"According to his obituary, he was born in 1848." I brought out a copy of the old newspaper notice to show them. "He fought in the Confederate Navy as a teenager, and later he became a steamship captain. So he was a hundred and six when he died."

"Wow." Anna gaped at the picture.

"Why did she kill him?" Lexa asked. "What did he do?"

"I couldn't find that in the papers," I said. "She was committed to a state psychiatric hospital..." I leafed through more of the printouts. "Released in 1982. After which....Well, it's a little disturbing." I was already feeling bad for talking about the murders in front of the girl.

"Lexa, do you want to leave the room?" Anna asked.

"No!" Lexa scowled. "Tell me everything about her."

I glanced at Anna, who sighed and nodded.

"She paid a return visit to this house after she was released the mental hospital," I said. "By then, it was owned by Marsh's grandniece, Louisa Marsh. And...well, Mercy came back here and took her own life."

Anna gasped and looked at Lexa, who was just nodding and processing. She looked much calmer than her mother.

For Lexa's benefit, and maybe for Anna's, too, I spared the true gory details. I hadn't mentioned how Mercy Cutledge had stabbed the extremely elderly man thirty-three times with a butcher knife, or how she'd hanged herself from the second-floor landing in the foyer twenty-eight years later, leaving Marsh's grand niece to find the body.

I figured I would get into those specifics only if I needed to, and preferably when the little girl wasn't around.

"So that's our ghost," Anna whispered.

"It seems likely to me," I said. "Especially after you both picked her out of the line-up."

"Then how do we..." Lexa glanced around, then lowered her voice until it was barely audible, as if afraid the ghost would overhear her. "How do we make her go away?"

"First, we have to see what kind of ghost she is," I told them. "Some ghosts are more like recordings, just doing the same thing again and again. Some are more aware of what's going on around them. She's obviously territorial and trying to scare your family away. Maybe she thinks she's still living in this house. Stacey and I will do our observation tonight, and that should give us plenty of information about what we're dealing with."

"Are you going to stay all night?" Lexa asked.

"That's the plan," I said.

"Good." Lexa nodded.

"We'll both be watching out for you, Lexa," Stacey said. "You don't have to worry about anything tonight!"

That claim was a little exaggerated. It was entirely possible that our presence would anger the ghost, goading her into being more aggressive. Still, I nodded slightly, wanting to comfort the girl. Lexa gave me a suspicious look, but she did seem to relax a little in her chair.

"Should we get started?" I asked.

Since Dale was working over in the main house, with the security door ajar, we started upstairs. We set up twin cameras in the master bathroom, one regular digital video, one thermal to detect cold spots. Stacey hummed the _Ghostbusters_ theme while she worked, until I gave her a look that told her to cut it out.

"I guess I'll be using the hallway bathroom tonight," Anna said, in a resigned, half-joking sort of tone.

"Remind Dale, too, please," Stacey said, and I had to swallow back a laugh. Stacey would be out in the van monitoring all the cameras and microphones together. She was probably worried about seeing Dale using the bathroom in the middle of the night. That would be less scary than a ghost, but not by much.

When Stacey was done there, we moved out into the upstairs hallway. We set up a night vision camera outside Lexa's door. Stacey raised it high on its tripod and tilted it forward, so we could see anyone on the second flight of stairs or in the hallway by Lexa's room.

Lexa smiled and nodded a little, as if the camera made her feel a little safer.

We set up another pair of cameras in the downstairs hall, a night vision and a thermal, pointed right at the security door. I placed my little inflatable air mattress behind them. This way, I could watch the door with my own eyes, plus see the display screens of both cameras, all at a glance.

Through the security door, we could still hear Dale hammering away at the drywall in the main house, though it was almost ten o' clock now. Anna and I stepped through the door.

We stood in a dim hallway in the main house, lit by a couple of electric lanterns. The floor was ancient, heavily scuffed hardwood. If there had been any furniture here, it had been cleared out while the contractors stripped and replaced the walls. The hall had a few old wooden doors, all of them closed, and it led into darkness in both directions.

"Don't you think that's enough for tonight, Dale?" Anna asked. "The ghost hunters need to set up over here."

"Oh, almost forgot about them," Dale said, giving me a little sneer. "I hope you don't slow things down too much."

Here's what I wanted to say: _You're only being sarcastic and smarmy to hide your fear, Dale. You know something creepy is happening, and you're just making a pathetic attempt to cling to the denial stage._

Here's what I actually said: "We don't mean to cause you any trouble at all, Mr. Treadwell. We just need to monitor this hallway tonight."

Dale made a show of sighing and putting down his tools.

"Whatever calms the girls down, I guess," he said. "I need to go take a shower, anyway."

Stacey looked worried as Dale walked through the open security door, back into the east wing. He tossed her a smile as he passed by.

"Use the hall bathroom!" Anna told him. "They put cameras in ours."

"Oh, come on!" Looking annoyed, Dale strode up the stairs. "Can't get any privacy around here..."

I kept my face calm and professional while he left, biting back the urge to make a snarky remark when he was out of range. Anna and Lexa were still his wife and daughter and might not appreciate such comments from an outsider, no matter how he was acting. All three family members were my clients and had to be treated with respect.

I caught Stacey's eye just as she opened her mouth to say something, and she seemed to think better of it and stayed quiet.

"It's dark in here," I said. Dale's two electric lanterns were feeble in the heavy gloom, like sputtering candles. I clicked on my flashlight, piercing the darkness with three thousand lumens of shimmering light.

A flashlight is a ghost trapper's sidearm. Seriously. You can chase a lot of nasties away with a solid blast of bright white. It doesn't hurt them, but it can bother them enough to make them slip off in search of darker pastures. A strong bright light interferes with the ghosts' electrical fields, making it harder for them to focus when they want to claw at you or throw dishes at your head. This is probably why ghosts prefer to do their haunting and harassing at night.

Lately, I've been carrying an MF Tactical PowerStar, a SWAT team flashlight with a hard aluminum casing and protruding steel ridges around the lens, which can help if you need to break in or out of a place quickly. It puts out up to thirty-three hundred lumens at a blast, like a beam of sunlight on a hot desert day.

Of course, my job is to find and remove the ghosts, not to send them scurrying away into hiding, so I only use the flashlight as a last resort, when the need to finish the job is momentarily overshadowed by danger. Or by fear—I get into a lot of very dark, scary situations in this line of work, and I'm not too ashamed to say I still get terrified when I encounter malevolent specters and spirits. I'm only human.

"I want to get the door from each direction," Stacey said. She raised a night vision camera on a tripod and pointed toward the back of the main house. "I'll do this one back there. Do you mind setting up the last thermal?"

"Sure. I want to check out the foyer, anyway." That was where Mercy, Captain Marsh's murderer, had hanged herself in 1982. It was bound to be a center of any activity.

Anna and Lexa stayed on their side of the house, but Lexa stood right in the doorway watching Stacey with large, fascinated eyes.

I carried the thermal camera up the hall toward the front of the house, swinging my flashlight from side to side. The house contractors still had a lot of work to do, but generally the hallway looked nice, with its high crown molding and plaster ceiling fully intact and recently restored.

From the public real estate records, I knew the house had gone through several owners since it left the Marsh family. The sale prices had ballooned during the real estate bubble, until the last owner suffered foreclosure during the downturn. The house had been empty and bank-owned since then, until the Treadwells had purchased it at a very reduced price a few months earlier.

I reached the end of the hall and put down the thermal camera, but I didn't set it up yet. Curiosity was driving me onward.

I nudged open the last door and stepped out into the foyer.

It was a large space, two stories with a row of narrow Gothic windows above the door. A wide, blocky staircase ran up the western wall and connected with a second-story walkway. Heavy oak double doors stood at the front of the room, with a fairly new steel chain looped and locked around the door handles, making entry from the outside impossible.

Unlike the rest of the house I'd seen, this spacious room appeared to have been hit hard by the corrosive effects of rain, wind, vagrants, and juvenile delinquents. Several of the second-story windows were boarded up, and many of them were surrounded by water damage and dark patches of mold. The room reeked of decay, probably because of the mold.

The walls were discolored and warped, and they looked like diseased skin. Graffiti was everywhere, all over the walls, floor, and stairs, some of it occult, most of it just puerile and pornographic.

I shined my light up the stairs. An ornate wooden handrail adorned the staircase. At the top, the handrail curved around and became the balustrade for the upstairs walkway, where a few doors and a central hallway led deeper into the house. The balusters were densely packed all along the way, two to a stair, and carved in ornate Victorian style.

The second-floor walkway ended at the eastern wall of the room. I could see a rectangular area where the hallway had been walled up and painted over to divide the east wing from the rest of the house. It looked oddly sunken, like a closed lid over a missing eye.

I swung the light back along the balustrade. Near the center, one of the thick wooden balusters had broken, and its lower half was missing. I wondered if that was the spot where Mercy Cutledge had hanged herself.

I was starting to feel ill. The rotten mold smell was aggressively forcing its way up my nostrils and down my throat. A sudden wave of sickness can indicate a ghost—typically a ghost who does not want you around.

"Mercy," I said, in case she could hear me. "Mercy Cutledge. We know you died in this room. We're here to help. We don't mean you any harm—we want to help you move on and leave this family in peace."

I didn't receive an answer, unless it was the second wave of nausea rolling through me, making me want to vomit between my boots. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand, my stomach heaved, and I ran back to the door through which I'd entered as fast as I could.

"Hey, you okay?" Stacey called out at the sound of my running into the hall. She blasted her flashlight at me. "Ellie?"

I waved my hand, afraid that if I spoke, it would be the final straw in making me throw up in a very embarrassing and entirely unprofessional fashion. I leaned against the wall and caught my breath. Compared to the foyer, the air in the side hall was like a crisp, clean mountain breeze.

"Earth calling Ellie," Stacey said. "Can you just say something? Say 'shut up, I'm fine.'"

"Shut up, I'm fine," I managed to breathe out. As the dizziness and nausea passed, I stood up and busied myself with the thermal camera. "That front room is a very bad place. Or at least a very rotten one. That could be the ghost's main lair."

"Should we stick a camera in there?" she asked.

"I'll just place this one at the very end of the hall. Maybe we'll catch something coming out of that room." I activated the camera and checked the little monitor to make sure it captured the length of the hall. Then I walked back to the open security door to join the others.

Stacey gave me a giddy, excited grin as we stepped back into the east wing hallway. "All set?"

"We're ready." I followed her through and pushed the security door shut, then slid the deadbolt and twisted the knob up to lock it into place. I double-checked to make sure the door was sealed tight.

Then I turned to face Anna and Lexa. Anna stood behind her daughter, her hands on the girl's shoulders. Lexa twisted the soft doll nervously in her hands.

"Okay, ladies," I told them. "You said it usually shows up between midnight and two, right? So we have about an hour. I'd recommend you follow your usual routine from here on."

"That means we should have gone to bed at nine," Anna said with a thin smile.

"I want to stay up with the ghost hunters," Lexa told her mom. "I want to see what they do."

"You won't miss much, Lexa," I said. "It's mostly a lot of sitting around. Like a police stakeout, but without the doughnuts, because Stacey and I are watching our carbs. If anything happens, Stacey will record it to show you in the morning."

"Yeah, you get to skip to the best parts, without the long boring parts in between," Stacey told her. "I'll cut together a special video of anything that's _not_ boring, okay?" She flashed Lexa a cheerful smile, and the girl returned it, a little.

"Come on, sweetie," Anna told her daughter. "I'm ready for bed, too. We should let them work."

I watched the two of them depart up the stairs.

"Are we ready?" Stacey whispered. "Do you think we'll get one this time?"

"I hope so," I whispered back. "I've got bills to pay."

"Good luck to both of us, then." Stacey winked and clapped me on the shoulder. She left through the side door. I made sure it was closed behind her, but not locked. Stacey would be outside in the van, watching every camera at once. I wanted her to be able to come running if I needed help.

The house lay quiet. I turned out the lights, leaving only a single small lamp burning in the living room. It left the hall in a deep gloom, but not pitch dark. When my eyes adjusted, I could see the outline of the bolted security door.

I sat down on my inflated mattress on the hallway floor, facing the security door. I checked the display screens on the thermal and night vision cameras again. My cameras were recording the door at the end of the hall and a portion of the first flight of stairs. If anything came through the door and up the stairs to harass Lexa, there was a fair chance I'd capture a hint of it on camera.

I slipped on my headphones. While I waited for midnight, I read a thick paper copy of _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. So sue me, I'm a nerd.

I kept my eyes on the locked security door, and I waited.

# Chapter Six

It's a tricky business, ghost trapping. Ghosts have a funny way of not showing up when you want them, but instead creeping up on you when you don't. When you're alone in the house late at night, minding your own business, that's when you're likely to hear the unexplained footsteps, walk into a cold spot, or feel invisible fingers touch the back of your neck. When you're actually trying to find them, they can hide silently for days, even weeks.

The ghost at the Treadwell house, fortunately, did not keep us waiting long.

For a time, all I could hear was occasional creaks, and a slow drip of water somewhere as if a faucet had been left slightly open.

"Ellie," Stacey whispered over my headset. We stayed in touch through headphones with little microphones to keep our hands free. "Ellie, there's something happening in the main house."

"What is it?"

"It's a...oh, wow...uh...uh...holy cow..."

"You could be a littler clearer," I whispered.

"Sorry. The hall, over in the main house, by the foyer. I'm getting a rapid drop in temperature...it's been eighty-seven degrees but now it's seventy...sixty-eight..."

"What do you see?"

"Nothing on night vision. The thermal, though...it's like a deep blue cloud. It looks like it came from the foyer...now it's drifting down the hall...it's moving toward you, Ellie."

"Okay," I managed to say, while staring at the bolted door. My heart was already thumping faster in anticipation. I listened carefully, but I heard nothing on the other side. If an entity was moving toward me, it was doing so in complete silence.

"Getter closer now," Stacey whispered in my ear. "It's almost to the door."

"Can you see anything on night vision?"

"Nothing, sorry." Stacey took a breath. "It's at the door. It's stopping. Still just a blue mist on the thermal...the whole hallway is getting cold, like fifty degrees now, so it's hard to make out the shape..."

"Shh." I thought I'd heard something very small. A tiny metallic _plink_. The door was just a dark rectangle in the gloom, so I looked to the little screen of my night vision camera.

The room was quiet for a second...and then there was no mistaking the rusty, rasping sound as the bolt slid open. I could see it plainly on my night vision, the heavy bolt moved by an invisible hand.

I don't care how many ghosts you've encountered—the fear never goes away. I watched the bolt slide and felt myself shiver. A feeling of panic rose in my gut and had to be fought down. It was surreal, like a bad dream, watching that bolt scrape itself open.

I grabbed my flashlight from my open toolbox, just in case Mercy the ghost was in an angry, attacking sort of mood tonight, but I kept it turned off.

The door opened slowly and gently, as if nudged by a silent breeze, the hinges creaking. Behind the door lay a rectangle of solid darkness—even on my night vision camera, I couldn't see any details of the little hallway on the other side. There was just no light over there at all. It was unnerving to see that on my night vision, like staring into a black hole.

"Holy cow, the door's open!" Stacey gasped over my headset. "Right in front of you, Ellie!"

"Yeah, I noticed," I whispered back.

"We're picking up something on your thermal," Stacey added. "This could be it!"

I looked at the screen, and there it was—the blue mist shape Stacey had mentioned, visible only by its cold temperature.

I didn't need the camera to tell me something was in the room with me. Already, the temperature was dropping hard. It's disturbing to be surrounded by hot summer air that abruptly begins to freeze. The air grows heavy and closes in around you like a big invisible hand.

I checked my Mel Meter, which detects electromagnetic fields as well as temperature. It's a critical tool. Parapsychology has never been an exact science—in fact, it's often called a pseudo-science or just plain delusion—but generally, a ghostly presence is strongly indicated when you have an unexplained surge in electromagnetic energy combined with a sudden drop in temperature.

I'd already checked the usual electrical hotspots, like outlets and appliances, so I had a general idea of what was normal for the room around me.

The EM portion of the meter spiked to six milligaus, indicating a high-energy presence. Readings of two to seven milligaus are often associated with ghosts. At the same time, the Mel Meter's temperature readings plummeted from ninety to sixty-seven degrees, confirming that the cold front prickling my skin and making me shiver wasn't just in my head.

"You okay in there?" Stacey asked. "Should I join you? I can totally come in if you want! I'm ready!"

"Stay in the van," I whispered. "I need your eyes all over the house."

On the thermal display, the mist rolled slowly toward the stairs, then drifted up along the first flight. I still couldn't see anything with my eyes or the night vision.

Then I heard the creak. It was just one stair, something like a light footstep made by a small woman. It may not sound like much, but at that moment, the single creak all but made my hair stand up.

Onscreen, the blue mist continued upward and out of sight. I quietly rose to my feet, flashlight in one hand and Mel Meter in the other. I grabbed my thermal goggles and perched the lenses on my forehead in case I needed them.

"She's out of sight," I whispered.

"Coming up the stairs," Stacey whispered back, and at that moment, I heard another creak, this one from the second flight that I couldn't see. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I forced myself to stay calm.

"She's a very active one," I whispered. "I'm following her."

"Are you sure? Should I come in now? Let me just grab my flashlight and my handheld camera, okay?" Stacey asked. She was trying to sound concerned, but she wasn't able to hide the excitement that wanted to bubble out. Stacey hadn't seen enough scary stuff to be cautious, but I knew she would eventually, if she stuck with me long enough.

"Hold your position," I said. That kind of talk comes by way of being trained by Calvin Eckhart. It's become automatic for me in these situations. "Just keep your eyes and ears open for me."

Gripping my flashlight in one hand and the Mel Meter in the other, I began to ascend the stairs. It grew colder with each step...sixty-one degrees on the first flight, fifty-three by the time I reached the midway landing. I started up the second flight.

"You're right behind her," Stacey whispered. "This is so freaky."

Forty-eight degrees. My own footsteps sounded as loud as gunshots in my ears as I climbed the stairs. Forty-five degrees. By the time I reached the top step, it was at forty degrees, and I could see a frosty plume each time I exhaled.

I stood in front of Lexa's door. The upstairs hallway was cold and silent around me, the moonlight thin from the windows, barely penetrating the darkness. The gloom felt oppressive, the air unnaturally heavy.

I was just about to drop the thermal goggles down over my eyes when I heard the tiny _click_ from Lexa's door. Lexa's name was painted on a wooden square mounted in the middle of the door, surrounded by little flowers and butterflies in bright pigments.

The round doorknob gave the smallest squeak as it turned. The door to Lexa's room crept inward, again moving slowly, as if nudged by the lightest possible draft of air.

Lexa sat up in her bed, outlined by a feeble pink-flower nightlight plugged into the far wall near the fireplace. The room grew even darker around her, as if the nightlight were burning out.

"She's here," Lexa whispered to me. She raised a shaking arm and pointed at me. "She's right beside you."

The temperature was down to thirty-six degrees—my fingers would begin to freeze if it grew much worse.

I turned toward the freezing center of the cold spot and reached for my goggles again.

I didn't need them.

She took shape gradually, like a scrim of frost collecting in midair. At first, she was just a shape—female, petite, a little shorter than me, pale as ice. Then more details appeared. She wore a clingy, low-cut black dress, and some kind of teardrop-shaped pendant hung against her transparent white flesh. Her hair was colorless and stringy, hanging in thick clumps.

Then I could see rope burns on her neck, and I recognized her face from the picture. Mercy.

She stared at me with hollow eye sockets. Even at her most detailed, she was transparent, barely even there. I could plainly see the hallway behind her. I felt like, if I blinked, she might vanish again.

"Ellie, what's up?" Stacey asked. "Are you seeing something? These temp readings are down low, like deep-winter low...that whole upstairs hallways is like creepy-crawly with cold—"

"Sh," I whispered. Her chatting wasn't helping me. Every nerve in my body was tense, screaming at me to run away, to run straight out of the house and slam the door behind me. It was hard to ignore my instincts, but I had a job to do.

Resisting the desire to flee, I forced myself to speak instead.

"Mercy," I said. "Mercy Cutledge."

The ghost's hollow eyes widened a little, giving me a better view of the empty hallway behind her. Her mouth opened, and I thought I heard a cold buzzing in the air. For some reason, it made me think of the ice machines at cheap motels.

"Mercy," I said. "Leave this family alone. Your time here is done. You need to move on."

Her lips drew into a sneer. She had no visible teeth or tongue—as with her eyes, it was just empty hallway behind her when her mouth opened.

She blasted one word at me. I felt it strike me in the forehead like a gust of arctic air, and I heard the word inside my brain more than with my ears: _Leave._

"You don't understand, Mercy," I said. "You're dead, you died--"

A howling shriek hit me right in the brain. The ghost charged at me, her misty face distorted and distending as she put on speed, her empty eye sockets and mouth hole stretching to inhuman shapes.

I raised my flashlight, but she slammed into me before I could click it. A rush of cold, rank air that smelled like a meat locker full of rotten carcasses blew back my hair, and I gagged, growing instantly sick and off-balance. Stacey shouted my name over the headset.

Then it was gone, an evil wind blowing away down the stairs. I didn't have the luxury of a moment to recover. I had to keep moving.

"What happened?" Lexa asked.

"Be right back," I told her, racing down the stairs. I heard footsteps from the lower flight below, but I couldn't see anyone there. The apparition was no longer visible.

I hate it when they turn invisible.

"Mercy, wait!" I shouted. "Show yourself again."

That got no response. I took the second flight of stairs two at a time. When I reached the bottom, I dropped my thermal goggles over my eyes in time to see flimsy blue tendrils of cold mist curling away into the open security door.

"Ellie!" Stacey shouted again over my headset.

"I'm following her. What do you see in the main house?"

"There's a shrinking cold...nothing," Stacey said. "I see nothing on either camera. It's like it melted away."

"Mercy?" I stepped through the open security door and looked up and down the hall. No blue mist, no cold spot racing away from me. The hallway felt warm, the way it should have on a June night in Savannah.

"Sorry, I lost her," Stacey said.

"She did what she came to do," I said. "She's retreated into the gray zone for now. Maybe for the night."

"Shoot," Stacey said, disappointed. "Well, what happened? I saw your hair blow back. You looked like you wanted to scream."

"I'm surprised I didn't," I told her. "She went right past me."

"Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine. A little shaken. I'd better go check on Lexa." I stepped back through the security door, then closed and bolted it.

"So what do you think?" Stacey asked.

"Yeah," I replied. "I'd say this house is definitely haunted."

# Chapter Seven

Stacey and I stayed up the rest of the night, but there was no more activity at the house.

We joined the family for breakfast, which was bowls of cold cereal and some Pop-Tarts. The kitchen had a shiny new oven, but it looked like it had never been used.

Stacey had extracted and combined the important video clips from the various cameras, and she played them for the family while I ate my first bowl of Captain Crunch in who knows how many years. Hello, sugar-packed carbohydrates!

The family watched quietly as the cold blue mist drifted up the hallway in the main house and stopped at the security door. The footage flipped to the night vision camera on the other side, where I'd been sitting. An invisible hand drew open the bolt, and the heavy door creaked open by itself.

I watched Dale as he stared at the footage, wondering how he would take it. Not well, as it turned out. He turned pale, his spoonful of Oat Flakes forgotten halfway to his mouth. A little milk dribbled out of the spoon as his hand shook.

"That's...that's..." he said.

"Just what you and your family reported, Mr. Treadwell," I said. "The entity opens the door a little after midnight."

"You can see it again on thermal." Stacey showed him the cold blue mist flowing out of the door and up the stairs, followed soon by my warmer, redder shape.

"That's what the ghost looks like?" Anna asked.

"That's where it's sucking heat out of the air," I told her. "Ghosts need energy to manifest, or to pull PK tricks—that's 'psychokinetic,' sorry—like opening a door. They pull the energy from the room, so you feel it growing cold. Sometimes they'll put out candles or small fires in their hunger for energy."

Anna shook her head. "I just can't believe I'm seeing this," she whispered.

The footage switched to another camera—the thermal one upstairs, showing the mist moving toward Lexa's room. It grew darker blue, bordering on purple, while my shape came up the steps after it.

"That's when she opened my door," Lexa whispered.

"Here it is on night vision." Stacey played another clip with the same time stamp. In the greenish world of night vision, I approached the door, taking the temperature and energy levels around me. Something small flickered across Lexa's doorknob—just a tiny orb, a pale circle no bigger than a shirt button. It vanished as Lexa's door opened.

I hadn't seen the orb in person, but that's why we use night vision. It's extremely sensitive.

We could hear Lexa's voice, then mine. The cold blue mist pulled itself together into a dense, dark shape vaguely suggesting a woman.

Her voice, seething with anger, played over the speakers on Stacey's laptop: " _Leave."_

Anna gasped, and Dale finally lost control of his spoon. It dropped back into his cereal bowl, splashing him with oat flakes and driblets of milk. He jumped in surprise at the clanging and splashing.

"That was her," Lexa said.

"Lexa and I both saw an apparition here," I told them. "But the night vision camera didn't seem to catch it."

"Really annoying," Stacey commented, nodding. "I should have come in, brought my handheld—"

A ghostly shriek sounded from the speakers. On the screen, the cold mass flung itself at me. It rushed past, blew back my hair, and swirled away downstairs, trailing long threads of ice-blue cold behind it.

The family watched in rapt silence as I chased the ghost into the main house, where we lost all sign of it.

"And that's pretty much all that happened," Stacey said, sounding a little sad about it. She ejected a CD from her laptop and snapped it into a plastic jewel case. It was labeled ECKHART INVESTIGATIONS, with our contact info and the current date. She slid it it across the table toward Anna. "That's your copy."

Anna looked at the CD as if it were a maggoty fish lying on her breakfast table.

Dale was uncharacteristically silent.

"So...any questions?" I asked.

"Can we get rid of her now?" Lexa asked. Smart girl, right to the point.

"That's our next step," I said. "From what I've seen, it looks like we have a territorial ghost here—she's obviously trying to make you leave. That's what she said to me, too. We know that Mercy Cutledge was some kind of servant or employee to Captain Marsh in his later years. We don't know for sure whether she actually lived in this house...but if she did, she probably feels that you're intruders in her home."

Dale and Anna gave each other a worried look.

"What often happens is that ghosts don't realize they're dead," I continued. "If she understood that, she could move on from the house rather than clinging to it. In these situations, it's good to try and communicate with the spirit and make it understand that it has died. That's what I tried to do last night, but direct dialogue rarely works—the ghost is already in serious denial, obviously, and not ready to give up its delusion of being alive."

I took a breath, hoping I'd prepared them enough for my proposed solution. Some clients tend to freak out at the idea.

"Ritual and symbolism connect better with the dead than analysis and hard facts," I said. "In these situations, we can create what we call a 'mock funeral' for the restless spirit. This can help them realize they're dead and move on."

"Wait," Dale said. "You're telling me you want to have a funeral for this thing? With a minister and all that noise?" I could see the dollar signs weighing him down.

"No, Stacey and I can take care of it," I said. "You don't have to bring in anyone else. I'd recommend doing it in the front room of the main house. That's where she died."

"Can I wear my black dress?" Lexa asked, raising her eyebrows.

"I don't know if we should get in the way..." Anna looked at me.

"To be honest, it would help if the homeowners are there," I said. "Or at least one of you. Being the current owners gives your presence some authority."

"I'll go," Anna said. "I'll do whatever you want."

"Stacey and I can come back this evening and set things up," I said. "We'll do the funeral as soon as the sun goes down, make it an early night."

"And then all this will be over?" Dale asked. "That'll solve it?"

"I hope so," I said. "If we can't convince the ghost to leave, then we have to catch her and forcibly remove her. And that can get...messy. I recommend trying this first."

"It just sounds freaky," Dale said.

"You don't have to decide right now." I stood up, and Stacey stood with me. "But honestly, it would be better if you did. We need time to prepare."

"Dale?" Anna said. "If there's a chance it could work..."

Dale sighed. "I don't pretend to understand what's going on. I don't even know if I believe any of this...but yeah, if it'll fix the problem, we might as well fix the problem, huh? That's what we're paying you for."

"That's true." I nodded. "Then we'll be back tonight." That's me, closing the sale.

"Okay." Dale shook his head. "Just get it done."

I double-checked my toolbox on the way out—thermal goggles, night vision goggles, Mel Meter, flashlight...everything was there. We'd loaded all the cameras back into the van before breakfast.

I drove us back to the office. Hunter barked upstairs, where Calvin keeps his personal apartment on the second floor. The dog would probably wake Calvin, who might come down in his elevator.

I hurried to close the garage door and lock the van inside. I didn't want Calvin showing up and revisiting our conversation about the psychic guy.

Driving home in my own car through the sun-dappled streets, under archways of live oak dripping with moss, I could finally breathe freely again. After a dark night in a haunted house, there's nothing as sweet and soothing as golden Georgia sunlight.

I went home. I live in a second-story apartment on Liberty Street, in an old brick building that was a glass factory in the nineteenth century. That's what I've heard, anyway. Reaching my apartment required unlocking a gated side door, then climbing a flight of interior stairs to my door.

My cat dashed over to greet me when I walked inside, which meant he'd probably run out of dry food during the night. He purred and rubbed against my ankles.

"Morning, Bandit," I said, picking him up. He purred and batted at a long brown lock of my hair. Bandit is a black and white little creature with black patches around his eyes, giving him a raccoon-mask look. I've always thought he looked untrustworthy, hence the name.

I set him down, and he followed me to his two bowls at the corner of the kitchen nook. Plenty of water, no food. I poured him some kibble, and he immediately lost interest in me.

My apartment was a studio, shaped like a ship's galley and equally spacious. Two walls were raw nineteenth-century brick, while the other had been plastered over. At some point, I'm sure, some real estate developer had visions of selling the building off as high-priced condo lofts, like developers all over the city had tried to do at one point, but then the real estate bubble broke and the swarms of rich hipsters failed to materialize.

I could probably afford something bigger if I were willing to live with roommates, but I need my little pocket of privacy.

The walls are decorated with an assortment of dreamcatchers and Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs, like stars and trees. They're meant to be hung on the outside of barns to ward off bad luck and evil spirits. I painted the wall a color locally known as "haint blue," meant to resemble running water, which is also supposed to stop unwanted ghosts. I can't say whether any of this works, but I need all the help I can get. I also replaced my original cheapo window panes with heavy leaded glass, which I _know_ is a barrier to ghosts.

I stripped out of my jeans and turtleneck, flopped down on my bed, and closed my eyes. Nap time. Sweet relief.

Naturally, my phone rang.

I grunted, annoyed, and clambered over to fish my phone out of my jeans. Even exhausted, though, I couldn't help but smile at the name on the caller ID. Grant Patterson.

"Good morning, Grant," I said, trying not to sound as grouchy as I felt.

"Good morning, dear," he said. Grant has all the grace and charm of a Southern lady from an old-line Savannah family. He's a research fellow at the Savannah Historical Association, which is a hobby for him. In his day job, he's a semi-practicing lawyer. His true calling, however, is gossip—whether it's two minutes old or two centuries, it's all juicy to him, as long as it's about our city.

Grant had helped us with our cases for years. Not only could he navigate the byzantine rooms of the Historical Association's old Federalist mansion, digging up long-lost details about old houses and properties, but he knew all the old, prominent families in town, since his family was one of them. He can dig out dirt with a few phone calls that nobody would ever share with lowborns like Calvin and me. Grant was always good for extra insight into the history of the haunted properties, and I think he gets a kick out of working with ghost hunters.

"Are we still meeting today? Tell me you're not calling to cancel," I said.

"Not to cancel, but merely to delay," Grant said. "Ellie, I am ashamed to say that I had no idea what a pit of sin and scandal we had in that Marsh house. I didn't even realize there still _was_ a house under all that moss—I assumed it had rotted away years ago. You must tell me about the new owners."

"As long as you can tell me about the old ones," I said.

"And I will, but I want to collect just a bit more hearsay and rumor before I do," Grant said. "You've got me interested now. If you give me until lunch tomorrow, I will have unearthed the whole story for you."

"What are you learning?"

"It is wonderfully sordid, dear. I'll see you tomorrow."

I hung up, only mildly annoyed at his delay. It meant an extra hour of sleep today, after all.

I slept.

The events at the Marsh/Treadwell house replayed in my dreams—this kind of work brings lots of nightmares. In mine, the ghost didn't simply blow past me and vanish. Instead, I was trapped inside the old house, running through smoke-filled rooms while a fire swept through behind me. Somewhere, a dark voice was laughing.

# Chapter Eight

So, you know what can get awkward? Putting together a mock funeral for a creepy ghost of a person who died decades earlier. It's especially awkward when you have to be the funeral director and also give the eulogy. My goal is usually to get it over with ASAP.

Stacey and I arrived at the Treadwell home about seven in the evening, with a vanload of weird stuff. Anna and Lexa watched from the kitchen as we carried it into the house and set it up in the foyer—Lexa looked curious, while Anna appeared disturbed. Natural reaction.

First, there were the flowers. A couple of wreaths, a pink and purple "memory bouquet" of lavender and pink carnation blossoms, a few baskets of assorted blooms, slightly withered. We set the wreaths on the flimsy wire stands from the florist, put a basket on an old wooden side table, and arrayed the rest of the flowers on the stairs.

The flowers cost us zilch because we'd dumpster-dived them from behind the Pierce Funeral Home. Well, Stacey did it while I stood guard—part of her initiation as the new kid.

Swiping used flowers from a funeral home or cemetery might sound both ghoulish and cheap, but we did it for a reason. They'd already been part of a funeral ritual, imbuing them with that particular tone and energy. Secondhand funeral flowers are better than fresh ones for our purposes.

We brought in a couple of little easels, where we set up large, blurry posters of Mercy Cutledge's face drawn from the newspaper account of her arrest, since it was the only image we had.

I found Dale on the couch in the living room, wearing a sweat-stained Cubs shirt while watching the Cubs on television. He also wore a Cubs cap and held his beer bottle in a Cubs cozy. Big Cubs fan, old Dale.

"Hi, are you busy, Mr. Treadwell?" I asked.

"Are you kidding?" he asked. "Cubbies are down by two, you got this Puerto Rican snake at bat for the Brewers—"

"I was hoping you could help us carry this coffin into your house." I tried not to crack a smile as his jaw dropped at my question.

"You guys have a real coffin?"

"A real one," I said with a solemn nod. It's not real, though it's carved and painted to look that way. It's made of plywood, just a stage-set coffin, but it's still hefty enough that I'd prefer to get a guy to lug it for me. It wouldn't kill Dale to help us out in between bouts of implying that we were all crazy.

"This is getting weirder all the time." Dale grunted and shook his head, but he paused the TV and stood up to join me.

I led Dale out to the blue cargo van, where I gestured through the open back door at the five-foot-long mock coffin waiting inside. I'd used this same one a few times, though usually with Calvin officiating instead of me.

"That thing looks heavy as an elephant," Dale complained. "I've got a bad back. Why don't you and the other girl carry it? What am I paying you for, anyway?"

"I'll get the other end for you," I said.

"It's just too big..." Dale slipped his fingers under the foot of the coffin, gritted his teeth, and tugged it upward, testing its weight. The light plywood coffin rose easily in his hands, clearly surprising him.

He helped me carried it inside.

"Is there a real dead person in there?" Lexa asked as we carried the coffin past the kitchen. She and her mother were at the round table by the old river-stone fireplace, ostensibly playing Uno but stopping to watch Stacey and me each time we passed.

"You bet it's a real dead person," Dale said, with a wink at me. Ugh. "A scary dead person, and it's gonna get you!"

"Dale!" Anna snapped. "Not funny. Not right now." She took Lexa's hand—the girl looked thoroughly frightened.

"Nothing funny about missing the Cubbies, either," Dale grumbled as he carried the coffin down the hallway and through the security door.

As usual, the portion of the hallway past the door was noticeably dimmer and cooler than the portion before it.

In the foyer, Stacey had already set up the two sawhorse-like wooden supports for the coffin. Dale dropped the coffin into place and shook his head.

"Sick stuff," Dale muttered, looking around at the withering flowers and the row of folding director's chairs we'd brought. We could have used the Treadwells' own folding chairs, but it's better to remove every element of the mock funeral afterwards, to totally strike the set. Otherwise, the ghost might attach itself to some funerary object, and you don't want to leave your clients with a set of haunted lawn chairs. They really ruin the family barbecues.

"Thanks for carrying that," I said. "Can you open the windows and the front doors for us?"

"I have to get the key." Dale thumped the padlock and chain sealing the heavy double doors from the inside. He made no move to actually fetch the key, instead letting his comment hang in the air as if he'd identified some difficult or impossible obstacle.

"Please?" Stacey asked, giving one of her annoyingly cute grins. She was dressed in light summer clothes, a t-shirt and shorts, for the heavy-lifting portion of the evening.

Dale shrugged, looking indifferent to her perky hot blondness. "I'll send the girls to help out. I'm already behind on the game." He trudged out of the room.

"Thanks!" Stacey called after him, with an aggressive cheerfulness that made me want to laugh. "He's a chivalrous type," she whispered to me.

"Okay," I said, hurrying to change the subject from the lunky schlub Dale before we started really making fun of him. "Is the music ready?"

"I'm loaded up with old-school Gospel. All the old rugged crosses and trips across the River Jordan you could ever want." Stacey gestured at her iPad on a side table. We didn't really know anything about Mercy's religious beliefs, if any, so we were betting on statistical probability and going for a general Southern Protestant vibe, with elements she would likely have seen or heard at local funerals.

Anna and Lexa arrived, both of them looking a little stunned at how we'd turned their dank, dark foyer into a makeshift funeral parlor. It actually fit the motif pretty well, with all the old woodwork and narrow Gothic windows, if you ignored the graffiti on the walls.

"Dale said you needed this key?" Anna asked.

"We're going to open the doors and the windows," I told her.

She cast at doubtful look up at the second row of windows, some broken and leaking, high above us.

"Just the ones on the first floor," I added. "Open doors and windows will help encourage the ghost to leave."

"But can't they walk through walls?" Lexa asked. She was slowly approaching the mock coffin with a mixture of fear and fascination on her face. "Why do they need doors and windows?"

"They don't always need them," I explained. "It's a psychological thing for them. Especially with ghosts who may not fully realize they've died."

Lexa reached the coffin and stared.

"Can I open it?" she whispered.

"Lexa, don't get in the way," Anna said.

"There's nothing in there," I told Lexa. "But you can open it if it makes you feel better."

Lexa carefully placed her fingertips under the edge of the coffin lid. Shivering, she raised it up to peer inside. The lid's hinges squeaked, startling her.

"It's all fake inside." Lexa frowned. The interior was plain, unpainted plywood. "Can I get in?"

"Lexa!" her mother shouted, looking understandably disturbed by the question.

"That's not a good idea," I said. "It's flimsy. It could break or fall."

"Help me raise the windows, Lexa." Anna pushed open the double doors. Warm air and the rich, green smell of their overgrown jungle of a front yard wafted into the room. The place already felt a little better. Certainly less smelly, anyway. The music of thousands of crickets and cicadas filled the darkness outside.

"I guess we're ready," I said, after Stacey and I helped them open all the first-floor windows.

"Except for wardrobe." Stacey nodded at my jeans and black turtleneck. "Unless we're doing a beatnik funeral."

"It's not a beach funeral, either," I said, pointing to Stacey's revealing work outfit.

"I'm wearing my black dress!" Lexa announced, dashing out of the room.

"We'll go get ready," Anna said. "I'll try to get Dale off the couch, too."

"Good luck," I told her.

Stacey and I changed in the van. She kept throwing nervous glances at the windshield, worried that Dale would creep out and try to spy on us. Something told me he probably wouldn't leave his Cubs game just for that, especially after his complete lack of reaction to her charming smile.

Stacey put on a black cocktail-style dress trimmed in black silk lace. It looked pricey. She also had matching stiletto heels and an actual hat with a little veil. I, on the other hand, wore a frumpy brown dress with a high collar and chunky old walking shoes. Don't laugh—I was going as a traveling tent evangelist type. That would have been the most common sort of Southern female preacher when Mercy Cutledge was growing up in the 1930s and 1940s. I mean, I couldn't exactly pretend to be a Catholic priest.

When it was time, we stood with the Treadwell family in their hall by the open security door. Anna and Lexa wore black dresses, too. Lexa kept mentioning hers until everyone had complimented it.

Dale wore a business suit, and weirdly, had applied a fresh splash of some oaky cologne, like he was really going out in public. I expected him to grouse and complain, but he now seemed deeply worried, like a man waiting for results from a cancer lab.

"Let's get it over with," he mumbled.

"We'll go in silently, as a procession," I said. "When we're done, we leave the same way. Once we step through that door, we need to act like this is real."

I led them through the door and up the hall toward the foyer. The electric lanterns spaced along the hallway cast tall, weird shadows on the walls.

Dale was behind me, then Anna and Lexa, the girl grasping her mother's hand tightly, with a look of determination on her face. Stacey followed at the end, keeping the family bookended in case of any sudden attack from the Other Side.

The foyer was silent despite the open doors and windows, as if all the night insects had gone on strike. Despite the electric lanterns, the cavernous room seemed much darker than the hallway. The air, as rank as ever, felt stiff and thick with a cold tension, like something tragic was waiting to happen.

Nobody said a word as we entered. The iPad played a rather sweet version of "In the Garden" sung by Dolly Parton. I paused it after Stacey and the Treadwell family members took their seats, Lexa perched in between her parents.

We'd arranged the coffin area at the dead center of the room. I stood behind it, facing the little congregation. The open doors behind them looked out onto blackness. Old, vine-choked trees blocked any view of us from the road, so the Treadwells didn't have to worry about passing motorists witnessing our bizarre funeral ritual through the open windows and doors.

Stacey had set up three cameras behind the chairs to capture the funeral—as you'd expect, there was one regular video, one thermal, and one night vision, just in case the ghost decided to attend her own funeral. We certainly hoped she would.

Next to me was one of the big, blown-up pictures of Mercy. Behind me were a couple of closed doors leading deeper into the house. Above them ran the second-floor walkway where Mercy had hanged herself.

I looked out over my congregation of four, and I raised the big old 1859 leather-bound Bible we use for this stuff. I opened it to a bookmarked page and set it on another easel beside me.

I adjusted my reading glasses and took a breath. _Get into character, holy roller._

"Brothers and sisters," I began, "We are gathered today to celebrate the life of Mercy Cutledge, and more importantly, her return to her Creator. Mercy has passed away. Mercy has died." I was being repetitive for emphasis. Hey, I had a specific message to get across here. "Mercy is now free of this mortal world of suffering, and can now ascend into the Light of God. Mercy can leave behind this home, though she may have loved it well, because another, greater home awaits her. Peace and happiness await her the moment she departs."

Lexa smiled at me and seemed to relax in her chair, as if taking comfort from my words. That warmed my heart.

"We know a few things about Mercy," I continued. "We know she lived fifty-three years, and twenty-eight of them were spent in a state asylum. Her life could not have been an easy or pleasant one. We know she..." I paused, trying to think of a delicate way to say _murdered somebody_. "Had conflict and violence in her life. She must have felt great fear, and confusion, and pain, maybe sadness, regret, and guilt. We know she chose to end her life. We also know that she is now free to move on..." I made a sweeping gesture toward the open doors and windows. "Mercy can now leave us in peace, and go to find a greater peace of her own. Amen."

"Amen," Stacey and the Treadwells repeated, as I'd instructed.

"Now, let's pray..." The Twenty-Third Psalm is always a good one in situations like this, so I hefted the old Bible and read, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want..."

When that was over, I started the music again, and Stacey and the Treadwells filed out. I left after them. The coffin remained in place—we would leave it all in place for the ghost to contemplate.

I was disappointed. The first time I'd done this, operating the cameras while Calvin performed the little ceremony, we'd all felt the spirit flee the room halfway through, parting the window curtains on its way out.

Nothing so obvious had happened this time. The room still felt cold, the air still oppressively heavy. It felt like a failure.

I blew out the candles as I left.

# Chapter Nine

While we waited for that funeral to sink in—and for the ghost of Mercy to depart for happier trails, hopefully—Lexa invited us to play Uno with her and her mom. It didn't sound like a half-bad way to pass the time. Stacey and I sat down with them while the Cubs game blared in the other room, punctuated by Dale's frequent unnerving shouts, moans, and howling profanity.

"How many ghosts have you caught?" Lexa asked me while we played.

"I'd actually have to check the files at work," I said. "Maybe a hundred?"

"Whoa." She leaned back, widening her eyes, apparently impressed.

"Sometimes there's more than one ghost in a house, so that helps up your numbers," I told her with a smile. "I've been doing it for a few years, too."

"Don't you ever get scared?" she asked.

"Not her," Stacey said.

"I get scared all the time," I said. "It's scary work, but it's something people need, and there aren't many people who can do it for them."

"What's the scariest ghost you've ever seen?" Lexa asked.

I had a ready answer for that, but I wasn't going to talk about it, for a whole batch of reasons, only one of which was to avoid giving nightmares to my client's ten-year-old daughter.

"It's hard to pick," I said. "Most ghosts aren't really dangerous, though. They're like old memories that won't leave a house. A lot of them are just repeating parts of their lives again and again. They all seem kind of scary, but it's rare to find one who can really hurt you. Mostly they're just wrapped up in their own problems and not thinking about you at all."

"Like regular people," Lexa said. Combined with her serious, thoughtful nod, her comment made me laugh out loud. "What?" she asked, looking confused.

"You're smart, Lexa," I said.

She beamed at me.

Then the crashing and banging began.

First, it sounded like dishes spilling out of kitchen cabinets—a sound I've specifically heard before, it's a favorite trick of your more drama queen-ish ghosts—but we were sitting in the kitchen, and the cabinet doors hadn't stirred.

Then the true hammering started, like a series of cannonballs striking the front of the house, shaking the timbers, the walls, the old hardwood floorboards. It was like a stampede of angry bulls crossing through the house in the middle of an earthquake. Plaster crumbled and rained from the ceiling. Lexa screamed.

"Under the table!" I shouted, taking Lexa by the hand. All four of us crowded under the sturdy maple table while the house shook as if under attack. Dale clambered into the room, looking pale and screaming for his wife and kid. He finally saw us and crammed his way under.

Then everything stopped. I could hear scattered rattling and banging around the house as the last of the shuddering energy worked its way through and fell quiet.

"Is it over?" Lexa whispered.

"What the dog-crap was that?" Dale asked, his voice thin and reedy, his face as white as cream cheese. He grabbed my sleeve with a look of desperation. "Tell me!"

"I hope we got that on video!" Stacey gasped. The girl had her priorities. She scrambled out from under the table, grabbed a handheld camera and her flashlight, and dashed to the hallway.

"Wait!" I took off after her, grabbing my flashlight and Mel Meter from my toolbox.

"Dale, go with them," Anna said. I glanced at Dale, but he continued huddling under the table. His head moved slightly from one side to another, like he wanted to refuse but didn't want to admit it.

"You can all stay here," I said, mentally adding a few hundred bucks to Dale's bill. I ran to catch up with Stacey.

She was sliding open the bolt on the security door. We'd left it sealed, and regardless of whatever had just happened in the main house, the ghost hadn't come back through the security door this time. Stacey heaved it open.

"Come on!" she shouted, and then raced into the dim hallway, waving her digital video camera excitedly.

We ran together through the main house hall. The electric lanterns spaced along the wall had gone dim, as if all their batteries were dying. It was possible. While ghosts have always fed on ambient heat, fire, and even the physical energy of the living, some ghosts in modern times have also learned to suck energy from batteries and electrical devices. This can obviously cause huge problems, not just for the victims of the haunting but for ghost hunter equipment. That's why I prefer pneumatic ghost traps.

We flicked on our tactical flashlights, lancing the darkness with a pair of high-powered beams. By the time we reached the foyer, our flashlights were the only illumination. The electric lanterns we'd left had turned completely dark.

"Whoa, this place is trashed," Stacey whispered, slowly shining her light around the room. She was right. The folding chairs had been knocked over, as well as the antique table and most of the easels. The old flowers had been shredded as if by a mulcher-mower, then scattered like bright bits of confetti all over the room, their flimsy wire stands toppled and twisted. The three video cameras had been knocked down, too, their tripods jutting out like the stiff legs of dead insects. The coffin lay on the floor with its lid open, as though some zombie had escaped from it.

Only two things remained standing: an easel with a blown-up image of Mercy Cutledge, and the easel with the old Bible on it.

Turning toward the front of the house, I found the source of the barrage that had shaken the house. The front doors had slammed closed, and so had each one of the windows we'd opened. Some of them had dropped hard enough to crack their panes.

"Well, that didn't work," Stacey said. She grabbed the iPad from the floor and shook off a few crumpled flower petals. We'd left it playing hymns, but now the tablet was dark and silent. "Looks like the battery's dead," she told me.

"Great," I said, taking in the mess. "We have a confirmed squatter. We'll have to evict."

"Ghost trap?" Stacey asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Unfortunately."

"I'll get one from the van!" She started for the door.

"Hold up, Stacey. Let's wait until we meet with Grant Patterson tomorrow. He might know something that helps us customize a trap for our ghost."

"Oh, fine." Stacey stopped where she was, shoulders slumped. "So what now?"

"We break the bad news to the family—this isn't over, and we have to come back for a third night. And then we clean up this mess."

"Thanks a lot, Mercy!" Stacey shouted up at the second-floor walkway.

We told the disappointed Treadwells we'd be happy to stay until sunrise and monitor the situation, and they accepted the offer.

After Stacey and I cleaned up the wreckage and reloaded all our funerary junk into the cargo van, we set up cameras inside the east wing hallway to watch the locked security door again. Stacey, bless her heart, offered to stay in the house with me for the night, instead of staying out in the van with all her monitors again.

I agreed. I didn't feel like sleeping alone with an angry tornado of a ghost lingering around.

We reviewed the footage from the three cameras in the foyer, which Stacey had fixed up again so she could watch them from her laptop all night. We didn't see much—the cameras had been knocked to the ground early, so all they really caught was bits of flowers raining onto the floor.

"Maybe we'll get some more tonight," Stacey said, disappointed. She was wrong. For the rest of the night, nothing stirred. I didn't even hear much in the way of the usual creaks and cracks you might expect in an old house at night, no tree limbs scraping at windows, nothing. The house was silent as a tomb.

I imagined the ghost of Mercy Cutledge, exhausted from her outburst, retreating into some dark and quiet corner of the house to plan her next move.

# Chapter Ten

Stacey and I decamped at sunrise, leaving the quiet, exhausted Treadwell family to their breakfast. None of them looked like they'd slept well. Stacey and I hadn't slept at all, though, and we were ready for our own homes and beds.

"We'll be back before sunset," I assured the family as we stood by the door, ready to leave. "We're going to capture that ghost, I promise."

"Are we safe now?" Lexa asked.

"Your ghost doesn't come out during the day," I reminded her. "Most don't. By tonight, we'll be back, and we'll get rid of her for you."

"You'd better, or I'm not paying a dime," Dale said.

"I understand, Mr. Treadwell."

Stacey sighed as we pulled away in the van.

"That pretty much sucked. We look like amateurs," said Stacey, who'd been on the job for a whole three weeks.

"We'll take care of everything tonight," I told her.

We each had time to shower and nap before our lunch appointment with Grant. He wanted to meet at the Olde Pink House by Reynolds Square, which wasn't exactly the cheapest spot in town, but his information was free so we couldn't complain too much. He often insisted on picking up the check, anyway, with a large tip and a patrician indifference to the size of the bill. It's handy to come from old money, or so I assume. Grant was nominally an attorney, but I'm not sure how much time he spent doing any actual lawyering.

If you're not familiar with Savannah, the Historic District is laid out in twenty-two squares, following the planned grid initially laid down by the colony's founders in 1733. The squares are essentially little parks with gardens, brick paths, some very tall trees, and sometimes fountains, statues, features like that. They're usually surrounded by beautiful old mansions and churches, built in every imaginable architectural style. Reynolds Square's main adornment is a statue of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who lived right on that spot.

The Olde Pink House sits across from the square, an eighteenth-century Georgian mansion fronted with a Greek portico. The house is clad in a layer of stucco—I'll let you guess what color. The building might be more formally called the James Habersham house, after its first owner, who is supposed to haunt the house to this day. Nearly every building in the sprawling Historic District is said to have a ghost or ten. That keeps me busy.

Grant Patterson was already there, seated at one of the cheerful little outdoor tables, wearing dark glasses against the bright sunlight. As always, he looked perfectly put together: graying brown hair crisply coifed, his white summer suit and peachy silk shirt spotless, golden cufflinks polished, nails manicured.

I wished I ever looked that good when I left the house. I'm usually dashing around in old jeans with my hair in loose brown tangles around my face. Today, though, I'd put on some half-decent linen slacks for our lunch.

"There you are," Grant said as Stacey and I arrived together. Stacey had a light, breezy blue cotton dress that looked great on her. I don't do light and breezy. Or dresses, unless I have to.

"Thanks for meeting with us, Grant," I said. "It sounds like you put a lot of work into this."

"Digging up dirty, long-forgotten gossip and rumors hardly feels like work, dear," he said, rising to greet me. He looked at Stacey while he gently shook my hand. "Who is this pretty little thing?

"Stacey Ray Tolbert. Eckhart just hired her."

"Oh, a new little ghost hunter," Grant said, smiling as he shook her hand. "Goodness knows our city could use a few more. How is Calvin? Too busy for lunch, I see."

"Still trying to make his retirement happen," I said.

"And that explains the new girl."

We took our seats as the waitress arrived. Grant was starting lunch with a Bloody Mary. I ordered coffee.

"I suppose we should get right to it," Grant said. "The Marsh house. Do you want the long version, or should I skip to the dirty parts?"

"Let's start with the dirty parts," I replied. Stacey snickered a little.

"I hoped you'd say that." Grant's eyes seemed to shine as he took a goodly sip of Bloody Mary. I wondered if it was his first drink of the day. "So. Augustus Marsh, born to a very minor family in 1848, joins the nautical life early, serves in the Confederate Navy. After that, a steamship captain—most of his routes would have been nothing too glamorous, hauling produce from the South up to Boston and New York so those folks could eat something besides fish. He may have traveled a bit farther—into the Caribbean, perhaps across the Atlantic. Records are spotty.

"He may have been involved in some sort of smuggling, because he amassed quite a lot of money. Bought that estate west of town, when the land was mostly woods and marsh, and built that house for his new bride. In 1890, he marries Eugenia Bremmer, daughter of a small-time shopkeeper. At nineteen, she's literally less than half his age. A bit of a beauty, from what anyone remembers, and she's devoutly religious and starts giving his money to the orphanage and other charities.

"Here's where the story turns dark," Grant said, relishing the moment. "In 1901, she develops an illness and dies almost overnight. Some people suspected Captain Marsh had poisoned her."

"Do you think it was murder?"

"I wouldn't know, but the examining doctor was a friend of the Captain's, and often attended the debauched parties at the mansion after the wife died. Captain Marsh _did_ have a couple of possible motives to murder his wife."

"Like what?" I asked, and then the waitress arrived to take our lunch order. I'd barely looked at the menu. I asked for she-crab soup, Stacey ordered a wedge salad, and Grant asked for their BLT salad with fried green tomatoes. The waitress frowned a little as she left—soups and salads for lunch don't lead to a large bill.

"You should come here for supper sometime," Grant advised us. "The seared sea scallops—amazing."

"Why would Marsh kill his wife?" I asked.

"Oh, well, nobody can say for sure that she _was_ murdered, first of all. If she was, though, it could be because she was aggressively giving away his money, or because she failed to provide him any children. The soil at the Marsh estate was rich, dark, and fertile, and the crops grew tall, but nothing grew inside poor Eugenia except religious feeling and charity. So she's giving away all his money and not giving him any heirs. After eleven years of that, maybe he decides to poison her and have his doctor friend cover it up. Maybe not. It's interesting to speculate." Grant raised his eyebrows, watching for my reply.

"Is this the dark, sordid history you were hinting about?" I asked him. "It doesn't sound like much. One possible murder?"

"Oh, no, dear." Grant leaned back, smiling like I'd stepped into some little conversational trap he'd set. "Not at all. The scandals begin after Eugenia died. Apparently all the godliness left the house with her."

Stacey inclined her head a little closer to Grant, listening intently.

"The marriage must have reined in Captain Marsh's lower instincts, you see," Grant continued. "After she was gone, he did not seem interested in remarrying. Within a year or two, his house had become a den of excess for young men of wealthy families. There was drinking, gambling, possibly opium, and certainly girls. His home evolved into something of a high-class brothel." Grant delivered this with a satisfied smile.

"Did anyone else die there?" I asked.

"My, aren't we all business?" Grant shook his head. "Over time, as Marsh's reputation grew worse and worse, the parties at the Marsh mansion lost that 'high-class' tone. He gambled away much of his money and land, and his former gardens and fields became warehouses and factories. The crowd at his mansion grew, let's say, less civilized year by year. Yet the dirty festivities never stopped, though Marsh grew older and older. It's shocking he lived past a hundred. In fact, it's amazing he lived past fifty, given his reputation for drinking, feasting, smoking, and keeping company with the professional ladies.

"Even when he died—you must know this by now—it had nothing to do with his health and lifestyle. He was stabbed to death by one of his working girls in 1954."

"Mercy Cutledge," I said. "A household servant, right?"

"Well, she did live there, but she was no maid," Grant said. "She performed other services for Marsh and his, well, gentleman visitors."

"Oh, wow." Stacey looked at me with wide eyes. "We didn't know that."

"So why would Mercy kill him?" I asked.

"One can imagine any number of conflicts arising in that situation," Grant said. "However, what she told the police, after they arrested her, was that the elderly Captain Marsh was an 'occult wizard in league with demons.'" Grant looked amused as he said it. "Her exact words."

"Was her claim investigated?" I asked, just in case, and Grant laughed.

"Well, no," he said. "When you stab an old man to death, then tell the police about black magic and demons, they tend to call in the psychiatrists, not the demonologists. To answer your question, though, nobody can remember any evidence or corroborating witnesses, and I've spoken to a few very old folks who were alive then. The judge decided she'd flipped her lid, and people generally seemed to agree with the verdict. They shipped her off to Lassiter State Asylum near Milledgeville.

"Marsh's grand-niece, Louisa, inherited the big old house and ran it as a boarding house. Apparently the house continued to attract the lowest sort of people during her era. Drifters, drug addicts, prostitutes. It's a wonder the city didn't shut it down earlier than they did. There were more deaths there, you'll be interested to know. Murders, overdoses, suicides. The house seems to have been a magnet for misery.

"Now, Lassiter State Asylum abruptly closed in 1982. Budget cuts. A whole flock of loonies was released that year. And I suppose you know she returned to the scene of her crime and hanged herself. The city told Louisa Marsh she would have to bring the rotten old house up to code if she wanted to continue renting it out—really, I think, they just wanted to finally close the place down. Louisa stopped renting rooms and eventually sold the house and moved away. Since then, the house has changed owners several times, with nobody settling in for very long."

"Did Louisa experience anything unusual in all those years?" I asked.

"It's possible, but I couldn't find anyone still living who knows much about her," Grant said. "Maybe you could ask her yourself. She's still alive, in a nursing home in Waycross. I have the information in your file folder, don't let me forget." He tapped his briefcase, down on the bricks beside his chair.

"Thanks," I said. "I wonder if she's the one who divided the house." I described how the east wing was walled off from the main house except for one thick security with multiple locks.

"Maybe she was trying to lock out ghosts," Grant said, looking amused.

"Or, from what you've told us, maybe she wanted security against her own tenants," I said.

"Or both!" Stacey offered.

"Mercy didn't die until 1982," I said, "So I'm betting Louisa divided the house to protect herself against her living tenants, not Mercy's ghost. We're pretty certain Mercy is the one haunting the house. She's rejected our invitation to scoot out of there peacefully and quietly. What we could really use now is some kind of object that belonged to her in life. Anything of significance that might draw her interest. Bait for a ghost trap."

Grant blew between his lips and shook his head.

"That's a tall order," Grant said. "Maybe Calvin has a friend who can dig through old police evidence storage, but we're talking about an open-and-shut murder from sixty years ago..."

"Calvin's doing that," I said. "Any other ideas? Where did Mercy live before the Marsh house? Where did she grow up?"

"I wish I could help." Grant tapped his fingers on the table, thinking. "Nobody I spoke to knows where she came from—there's an idea she came from a farm in central or west Georgia, probably looking for some city adventures, but that's all I've heard. If you can't find out from her police records, you might track down her doctor from the asylum, if he's still alive. Or check the records at the asylum yourself."

"But you said it closed in 1982."

"Exactly. Closed, but neither demolished nor refurbished. Left to rot instead. You may find it's a little bit of a time capsule inside, if vandals or arsonists haven't destroyed it."

"Wait," Stacey said. "You're suggesting we break into an abandoned mental hospital—"

"I suggest no such thing, dear girl!" Grant shook out his cloth napkin and laid it on his lap as our food arrived. "I'm simply sharing what I know. The two of you can do whatever you think best. Don't these tomatoes look delicious? A crispy golden crust on the outside, sweet and juicy on the inside. My mother used to make them with these big red homegrown beauties from her garden. Try one, Ellie." Before I could reply, he transferred one of the fried green tomato slices from his plate to the edge of my soup saucer.

"You said there were more deaths in the house," I said. "What do we know about them?"

"As I said, drifters, drug addicts, and good-time girls," Grant said. "Not the sort of individuals closely tracked by the newspapers. We do know it was considered a dangerous place, renting rooms to the rougher sorts."

"Sounds like it could be a very haunted house," Stacey said.

"We've only seen one ghost so far," I told her. "No need to panic our clients with too many extra details right now. All we have to do is remove the ghost of Mercy Cutledge, and their house should fall quiet." I looked at Grant. "Is there anything else you can tell me about her?"

"I have heard that Captain Marsh was stabbed to death while lying asleep in his bed," Grant said. "Do be careful with this ghost, Ellie. She sounds like a nasty one to me."

# Chapter Eleven

Tips for breaking into an abandoned mental hospital: first, get permission from the current owner, probably a bank or government agency. Second: go during the daytime. Third: go with a large group.

Stacey and I followed one of these three suggestions. We wanted to get over there and back before sunset, and Milledgeville is two hours from Savannah if you stomp on it. I drove my Camaro to make better time. The company cargo van is a reliable old horse, but a slow one.

Naturally, zipping out to a dark, long-abandoned loony bin on a likely wild goose chase was not how I would have preferred to spend my afternoon. Calvin had tugged at his contacts in the police department, but if there was anything belonging to Mercy in deep storage somewhere, it was going to take days to even find out if it still existed.

It would have been handy to find the butcher knife she'd used to stab Captain Marsh, or some related piece of evidence. Her ghost wouldn't be able to ignore a highly personal object like that, but we didn't want to make our clients wait.

We had other options. According to police records, Mercy was originally from Camilla, a little peanut-and-cotton town in deep southeastern Georgia, two hundred and fifty miles away. Not exactly an afternoon trip. Plus, it would take some poking after we arrived there, since nobody named Cutledge currently resided in the town, as far as we could find. I'd put in some calls to local police and newspapers trying to find out about her family. If anyone was going to call me back with useful information, they hadn't done it yet.

We could poke around the Treadwells' house for any remnant of Mercy's life, but it would be better to find an artifact she hadn't encountered in many years, rather than something that was located in the same house she'd been haunting for the past three decades. It would be more likely to grab her attention.

For now, the old hospital seemed like the best bet. We could get out there and back in half a day. Even if we didn't find any of Mercy's personal belongings, we could probably find all kinds of artifacts that would be familiar to her. She'd spent more of her life there than anywhere else.

Calvin had also pushed for me to meet with the supposed psychic guy again, but I was still resisting. I just think a self-proclaimed psychic walking around my client's home had too much potential to muddy the waters, and it seemed like we would soon be closing the case, anyway.

The dark, massive shape of Lassiter State Asylum squatted on a lot badly overgrown with waist-high weeds, brambles, and tall pine saplings that were well on their way to becoming trees. A chain-link fence surrounded the complex of old brick buildings. We were heading for the central administration building, which was four stories at the center with two-story wings sprawling out on either side. The windows were all barred, and the building resembled an old fortress covered with graffiti.

"Looks inviting," Stacey said, taking a picture as we drove past. "You think they have greeters at the front like Wal-Mart?"

"I hope not." I pulled off the single-lane country highway and onto a service road that took us around back. There was no good reason to park out front and advertise our presence to local police. It would have been handy to get permission first, but who has time for red tape?

The service road was badly overgrown and potholed, so we drove slowly, mowing down high weeds as we went. Not exactly inconspicuous, leaving a wide, broken trail behind like that. I hoped no police or security-conscious citizen happened to notice.

We parked at the back of the chain-link, where sections had been ripped open by years of weather and trespassers. Stacey frowned as we stepped out of the car. The empty buildings loomed ahead of us, casting deep shadows like the towers of a crumbling fortress.

"You think it's safe in there?" she whispered, even though we were a long walk from the building. "What about, like, dangerous vagrants and drug addicts?"

"You should go to kickboxing class with me." I opened my black toolbox in the trunk and began to load things onto my belt—my SWAT flashlight, Mel Meter, night vision goggles. I have a utility belt that would make Batman jealous, but I rarely use it because it's uncomfortably heavy.

"That's your plan? Seriously?" Stacey gaped at me while grabbing out her own tactical flashlight and a backpack.

"I also brought this." I showed her my stun gun and thumbed the button. An arc of electricity crackled between the two sharp little metal prongs.

"Does that work against ghosts, too?" Stacey asked.

"I haven't tried it." I holstered it on my belt. "Interesting idea, though. It could disrupt their electromagnetic fields. Let's get moving, the daylight's slipping." It was already mid-afternoon and our shadows were long and dark.

We didn't have much trouble finding our way through a collapsed section of the damaged fence. We had to wade through dense weeds across the long-broken parking lot. A thorny green vine tangled around Stacey's leg, and she had to whack it away with her flashlight.

"Should've brought a machete," she grumbled.

The day had grown intensely hot, without a cloud in the sky, so I welcomed the shade as we reached the back wall of the building. Broken beer bottles were scattered all through the weeds here—good thing Stacey and I had worn boots. Some of the labels were fairly new, too. Somebody had been drinking and smashing here within the past few days. Great.

The windows back here were barred, too, but that hadn't stopped people from smashing the glass over the years. I was conscious of how isolated we were as we poked through the tall weeds, pushing and stomping through knots of thorny jungle as we explored the back of the extremely long brick building. Our efforts to hide ourselves from the road also meant that no one would know if some former asylum inmate decided to murder us and leave us in the bushes.

We found a steel door that stood slightly ajar, its handle and lock broken away so long ago that the remnants of the lock had turned to rust. I grabbed the edge of the door and pulled. It gave a loud, rusty shriek as I opened it wide enough for us to fit through.

"Great," Stacey whispered. "Now all the crazies know we're here." I didn't know whether she meant possible vagrants or the ghosts of old patients, and at the moment, it wasn't an area of conversation I wanted to explore.

I flipped on my flashlight and stabbed the high-powered beam deep into the darkness. It looked like what you'd expect—more graffiti on the old brick walls, a layer of nameless filth coating the floor. The light fixtures hung on chains high above us, their bulbs shattered into jagged pieces.

There was a smell of must in the damp air, and a distant sound of dripping water, though it hadn't rained in a day or two.

Stacey and I walked shoulder to shoulder up a wide brick corridor scattered with debris—broken sticks of old office furniture, a rolling hospital bed jammed against one wall, its sheets black with grime.

"Ugh," Stacey whispered. "Look up there."

Her flashlight had found something we did not want to see. Several steps ahead of us, a thin old mattress, maybe the one from the old hospital bed, lay on the ground. A heap of wadded, filthy clothing sat beside it, as well as an open coffee can filled with dark gunk. Cigarette butts were scattered all around.

Stacey gave me a questioning look—stay or go?

I raised my stun gun, and she frowned and nodded.

We continued onward, into the thick darkness of the old asylum, stepping over ripped hospital gowns, a dirty slipper, an overturned cafeteria tray. Noises scuffled and scratched in the dark rooms we passed. They were probably possums or rats, but I stayed on guard, ready to zap an attacker or stab him with the protruding steel edges around my flashlight lens.

We checked each doorway, peering into more decay, more crumbling plaster ceilings stained dark with water damage. The sound of dripping grew louder.

I was looking for some kind of filing room, which I reasoned would exist somewhere near the center of the admin building. I hoped there would be something about Mercy I could use.

If it sounds like we were grasping at straws, I'd call that a pretty accurate assessment. However, finding just one little object with emotional value to Mercy would make it all worthwhile.

We pushed open door after door, ready to stun anyone who attacked us. We found the remnants of old cubicles and an occasional office chair overgrown with mold.

Finally, we reached a big room crowded with old filing cabinets, some of them knocked over with their contents spilled into mildewed heaps on the floor.

"Hooray," Stacey whispered in a flat tone.

We dug through the mess, looking for patient records. Stacey found some likely suspects in a row of old cabinets against the back wall.

"Careful," she said when I started to look through a drawer. "Some of them are all moldy and stuck together."

"Great." I found a cabinet full of patients with "C" surnames and checked each drawer in turn. Shuffling through the file folders was like peeling apart the layers of a rotten sandwich, complete with the stench of decay. "Hey, what should we grab for dinner tonight? Subway?" I asked Stacey.

"Ugh," Stacey said from the file cabinet next to me, holding her nose. "Don't even joke."

"I can't believe it," I whispered. I gently lifted out the manila folder, which had the slimy consistency of old lettuce excavated from the very back of a produce drawer. With my scorching-bright flashlight beam, we could make out a portion of the text on the blurry and faded label on the tab: _Cutledge, Me...._ The rest of the name was illegible.

"That has to be her," Stacey whispered. "Right?"

I laid the folder on top of the dirty filing cabinet and gently pried the pages open.

It looked like our girl. There was a black and white photograph of her in a patient's gown, her blond hair chopped short, her eyes dark and vacant-looking. I could easily imagine her as the transparent specter who had accosted me in the hallway outside Lexa's room.

I skimmed her file. She'd been treated as a schizophrenic, including heavy 1950's-style doses of first-generation antipsychotic drugs, later followed by years of brain-zapping electroconvulsive therapy. That's a serious neurological beating. If she wasn't insane when they put her into the hospital, she definitely was by the time they let her go.

"What are we looking for?" Stacey whispered over my shoulder.

"We want to find her old room, for one thing."

"Do we really want to do that?" Stacey asked. "That could get dangerous. This is a huge building, we could get lost..."

"All true," I said, still reading. "Here we go. Her room was over in building C, apparently the secure ward for dangerous patients. Her personal effects were put into storage when she checked in. There's a code number for finding it in the storage area."

"Where's that?"

"Don't hospitals usually post maps on the walls? For fires and stuff? Help me look." I shined my light along the corroded plaster walls, stepping gingerly through the rotten muck on the floor.

We found a pair of big, laminated maps, though I had to wipe grime away with a slightly less grimy scrap of carpet to make them at all legible.

"Here are our options, Stacey. We can go outside and across the hospital complex, break into the secure ward, and find her room up on the second floor. Or we can go down to the basement of this building and check the storage rooms."

"Those aren't great options," Stacey said. "Why would any of her stuff still be stored in the basement? Wouldn't they have returned it to her when she left?"

"Possibly, but she was released when the whole hospital closed," I said. "Maybe some things were left behind in the confusion. The employees might have been more concerned about getting out of here and finding new jobs for themselves than with reuniting all the released patients with their long-forgotten possessions. Let's check the basement first. It's closer."

"Whatever gets us out of here fast. I'd rather not get torture-killed by vagrants if we can avoid it."

"Good attitude," I told her. I slid the moldy file folder into Stacey's backpack, and she wrinkled her nose.

We walked out of the file room and back into the main hall, avoiding rotten debris while we walked to the hallway intersection ahead. The map had told us we'd find the stairs there.

"How about we take the elevators?" Stacey snickered as her flashlight landed on the closed steel double doors. She even jabbed the round button with her thumb.

"I think you'll be waiting a long time. If it does show up, it's probably haunted." I pushed open the heavy stairwell door under the dead EXIT sign.

Stacey and I hesitated, shining our lights down the filthy, damp concrete stairs into the darkness below. It was a cinderblock stairwell, with years of accumulated graffiti on the walls. A streak of dark liquid oozed down one side to accumulate in a puddle on the concrete landing below.

"What is that gunk?" Stacey whispered.

"I'm guessing rainwater," I said. "It's slowly worked its way down from the roof, getting nastier all along the way."

"Sweet," Stacey said. "Well, let's go check out the dark basement of the abandoned insane asylum. Nothing could possibly go wrong down there."

"Stay close." I started down the steps, and Stacey followed right behind me.

Our footsteps echoed through the stairwell. I glanced upward with my flashlight, but could only see the underside of more concrete stairs zagging back and forth into solid darkness above. If any dangerous guys were up there, listening to us, there were plenty of places for them to hide.

We crept down the stairs, avoiding the dank puddle that had collected on the landing. Unfortunately, the puddle had overflowed, sending a thin but nasty trickle of foul water down the second flight and into the basement. We stayed to one side of it.

The basement had solid brick walls, with heavy brick columns supporting the building above us. There were lots and lots and _lots_ of spiderwebs down here, plus more of the dank puddles made of water dripping from the ceiling.

"It feels cold," Stacey whispered.

"Temperature is ten degrees lower than upstairs," I said, checking my Mel Meter. "Not shocking since we're underground, though. Nothing special on the electromagnetic side."

The basement's layout was less rational than the hallway grid upstairs. It was more like a catacombs, or something carved underground by blind moles, clusters of brick rooms opening onto each other. We could not walk in a straight line, but instead had to pass from chamber to chamber, picking and choosing doorways. I used glow-in-the-dark chalk to mark an arrow by each doorway through which we passed so we'd have less chance of getting hopelessly lost.

The rooms farther in were more cluttered, and we had to navigate around old beds and antiquated equipment draped in dusty sheets. Great hiding places for psycho killers. We lifted the edges of the sheets, looking for storage boxes or bins, but the first room held only rusting hospital beds, plus dusty cardboard boxes of surgical gloves, gowns, scrubs, cotton balls, and sutures.

In the next room, Stacey lifted an old sheet and grimaced.

"Uh, what's that, Ellie?" Her flashlight revealed a roughly hewn chair. Its arms and legs were abnormally wide, with thick leather restraints built into them.

Stacey wasn't looking at the leather straps, though, but at a wooden box that protruded from the chair's high back. If you'd sat down in the old chair, the box would completely cover your head. There was a kind of knob or crank built into either side of the box, about where your temples would be.

"Is that an electric chair?" Stacey whispered.

"I doubt it." I raised the box on its hinges to look at its underside.

The knobs on the outside of the box were attached to metal rods on the inside, each of which ended in a small, flat block of wood. The patient could be placed inside, and the wooden blocks used to lock the patient's head into place.

"You wouldn't be able to see anything in there," Stacey whispered. "You'd just sit there, seeing nothing, not able to move your head or anything else..."

"That must have been awful."

"I wonder how long they kept people locked up like that." Stacey shuddered as she dropped the sheet back into place.

We continued in our generally southward direction. The next doorway was so low I almost bumped my head going through it, and I'm not particularly tall. The arched wooden door had long since rotten from its hinges and fallen flat on the floor.

The room beyond it was narrow, the brick ceiling uncomfortably low and sloping all the way to the dirt-covered floor. Rickety, uneven shelves and tables lined the room, making it almost impassable.

Stacey and I silently passed our lights over the shelves. My skin crawled at what we found there—studded leather flails, rusty chains with cuffs and weights, rusty iron collars, leather masks for muzzling humans.

The room was particularly cold—nine degrees colder than the last one. My Mel Meter also picked up a quick spike of electromagnetic energy. I felt dizzy and off balance.

"I'm going to be sick," Stacey whispered. "We have to get out of here."

She didn't say aloud what we were both thinking: that a strong negative entity, an evil or dangerous ghost, can make you feel ill with its presence.

I shined my flashlight deeper into the room. It was narrow and long, almost like a hallway.

"Come on! Please, Ellie!" Stacey was pulling hard on my sleeve. "Let's go!"

"It looks like this room's a dead end, anyway," I said. "We need to double back."

"Or maybe get upstairs and outside," Stacey said, towing me along as she hurried out of the room. "I need to get out into the sunlight."

"Calm down. Stacey, stop." I planted my feet. She gave me a couple of frustrated tugs.

"Are you kidding? There is something in there!" Stacey hissed, pointing her flashlight back into the extra-cold room we'd just left. The shelves of old straightjackets and human muzzles cast creepy, human-shaped shadows high on the walls as her light whipped among them.

"I agree," I whispered, making my voice sound as calm as possible. I wanted to run and scream, too, the natural human reaction to walking into a dark supernatural presence. It's not the professional reaction, though, and I had to make that clear to Stacey.

"So let's go!" she said.

"We walked into its nest, but it didn't bother us," I told her. "You don't want to show fear. You don't want to draw its interest. We have work to do down here."

"Are you crazy?"

"This is the job," I said. "You can go back to being a cheerleader if this is too rough for you."

"I was _never_ a cheerleader!" Stacey looked offended. Well, good. Anger was a little better than fear.

"Then stop trying to run away, and be aggressive. B-E-aggressive," I said.

"Okay, enough."

Since we'd reached a dead end, we doubled back. I kept marked the doors, now using a glowing "X" to indicate where we'd already been.

We passed through the chamber with the restraint chair again, but this time we took a different doorway out of that room. Another, larger room seemed to be what we wanted. It had rows of metal shelves that reached almost to the ceiling above. It was resembled a library, but with the shelves packed full of cardboard boxes instead of books. Over the years, boxes had fallen or been ripped apart by vandals, leaving each aisle full of debris.

"We're looking for lot number S146," I reminded Stacey.

"Doubt we'll find anything in this mess," she said.

Searching from one aisle to the next, we finally found a few boxes marked with an "S" and a number in faded black marker. The first one I saw was S12, which lay ruptured open on the floor. Through a rip in the side, I could see part of a rotten leather loafer and a plaid coil of necktie.

We had to push aside boxes and little rat-nests of clothing as we crept down the long aisle. I saw boxes labeled S47, S78, and S91 among the mess, but many of the numbers in between were missing.

Stacey stopped walking and went stiff, holding up a hand. I froze.

A footstep echoed from somewhere, as if someone had been walking along with us and stopped abruptly when we did.

"Did you hear that?" Stacey whispered. "It sounded like the next aisle over."

We stood in place, listening. I didn't hear anything. I tried to peer into the next aisle, but more boxes blocked my view.

I shrugged and kept walking.

Once we started moving again, I thought I heard another footstep from the next aisle. Stacey looked at me, and I brought the zapper out of its holster on my hip. If the thing stalking us was alive and weighed less than four hundred pounds, I could deal with it.

We moved along until we hit a big pile of fallen boxes, including one marked S132 and another marked S155.

"You should dig through here," I said. "I'll keep watch."

"Ugh." Stacey crouched and began pulling the heap apart, looking for the elusive S146, if it was still here at all.

I heard something further up the aisle, like cardboard shifting and scrubbing against metal. My flashlight revealed nothing but cardboard, metal shelves, and empty space.

"What was that?" Stacey asked.

"I'm not sure."

"I can't find anything down here!"

I holstered my stun gun and knelt to help her paw through the debris. The room was growing chillier. I wondered if the dark presence in the room of flails and masks had decided to leave its lair and come bother us.

Something made a sound near my ear. It was almost like a grunt, like a man lifting a heavy weight. I turned with my light, but again I didn't see anything.

Then there was a feeling of something crawling across my hair, like a spider. I slapped at it, but didn't find anything.

"You okay?" Stacey asked.

"Yeah." I tried to shake it off as I pushed more rotten cardboard. "Look, Stacey! This is it."

The box was almost flattened from being trapped under the weight of the pile, but I could read the black marker scrawled on its side. S146, Mercy's lot number. It was where they'd stored whatever possessions she'd brought from the outside world.

"Is it empty?" Stacey whispered.

"Hope not." I lifted the box free and folded it open.

Clearly, the hospital had not cared very much about preserving its patients' property, simply tossing their belongings into cardboard boxes in the basement while patients spent years and decades locked away in the cells upstairs.

Mercy's clothes were moth-eaten, the remnants of a dress, maybe some pants, some leather-strap sandals coated in mold.

I did find one thing that wasn't rotten to dust, though, and I couldn't help taking a sharp breath when I saw it.

"What's wrong?" Stacey asked.

I held up a tarnished necklace with a silver pendant shaped like a raindrop.

"I've seen this before," I told her. "An image of it, I mean. I think Mercy's ghost was wearing--"

A loud crash sounded as a heavy box fell somewhere up the aisle. While I turned toward it, Stacey screamed and toppled forward, landing on her hands and knees in the heap of rotten clothing and cardboard.

"What happened?" I turned my light toward her, in time to catch something shadowy pass behind her and vanish into the shelves.

"Something grabbed my pants!" Stacey pushed to her feet, swinging her light. "Seriously, there's some kind of pervy ghost in here!"

More crashes sounded, like boxes falling in the aisles on either side of us. The deep male voice groaned again, as if in agony, from the direction where I'd seen the shadow vanish. The high metal shelves where I'd last seen it began to shake hard, like a prisoner rattling his cage bars.

The voice groaned louder, and the room grew even colder. Whispers echoed in the darkness all around us. One voice was high-pitched and sharp, like an evil clown, while the one was like a rapid hiss. Their words were too distorted to understand, if there were any words at all and not just meaningless guttural sounds. They were not the voices of the living, but of the insane dead.

"Now can we panic and run away?" Stacey asked, her face completely pale and her jaw trembling. She was barely holding it together...but she _was_ holding it together, which impressed me.

"Yeah, let's panic and run." I shoved the silver necklace into my pocket and jumped to my feet.

We ran together up the aisle, our flashlight beams barely piercing the inky blackness ahead. That meant the air was getting thicker and darker. A manifestation might be imminent. I wanted to be out of there before that happened.

As we reached the end of the aisle, cold, sharp fingers sank into my arm, just above the elbow. I turned to face it, raising my flashlight alongside my head at eye level, like a cop approaching a drunk in a dark parking lot.

My light caught broken pieces of a face floating in the air beside me—a fragment of a jaw, a single colorless eye, a sharp-boned cheek, all loosely held together by pale spectral mist. The thing recoiled from the three-thousand-lumen direct blast, and it vanished.

That didn't mean it was gone, though. It just meant I had no idea where it might appear next.

Old Groany's voice sounded again, but louder, deeper, and apparently in even greater agony this time. Stacey, a few steps ahead of me, suddenly twisted and fell sideways as if something had rammed hard into her right hip. She crashed into the shelves as I ran to catch up with her.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"It's heavy," she gasped as I helped her up. She looked around, her eyes huge with fright, jabbing her flashlight at the darkness like a spear. "It's _strong._ Did you see it?"

"I didn't see anything."

We ran, our flashlights now about as useful as a pair of tiny wax birthday candles against the darkness. The air had grown so thick that it was hard to breathe, and hard to move, like in one of those nightmares where something is chasing you while your feet are somehow trapped or mysteriously heavy.

The host of creeps closed in around us. I'd heard at least three distinct voices, but there could have been more specters than that. It felt like a dark cloud of them, a cluster of ghosts that had more or less lost their individual identities, their yearnings merging into a combined pool of hunger, anger, pain, or whatever emotions motivated them to stick around instead of moving on. A "cluster haunting" is Calvin's term for this.

We pushed through the thick, dark air and passed through another doorway. We should have seen at least one of the glowing green arrows I had drawn, but we didn't. The darkness was like heavy, cold smoke, crushing in to choke us while we walked blindly through it.

Then the groan sounded again, followed by the other voices. They grabbed at us from every side, with hands that were invisible and insubstantial until they clawed into you. I felt icy fingers on my legs, another hand grabbing at my stomach, and another seized the back of my neck. That one made me scream.

Stacey screamed beside me, but I could barely even seen her. Pale, distended, half-formed faces rose in the darkness, their eye sockets hollow, the dark misshapen holes of their mouths wide open as if they expected to feed.

"They're all over me!" Stacey shouted.

Since our flashlights weren't helping much, I had to switch tactics. I holstered my flashlight and traded it for a wireless palm-sized Bose speaker. Then I touched the iPod on my belt to activate my emergency playlist.

I held out the little speaker like a weapon toward the nearest creepy, pale half-face.

A slice of Handel's "Messiah" blasted out at ear-crashing volume. It was the Hallelujah Chorus, one of the loudest and most potent sections of the song—I didn't have two hours for build-up.

The hallelujahs, as sung by hundreds of voices in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir backed by a full orchestra, rang out into the lightless basement room, echoing back from the walls around us.

Ghosts in long-abandoned properties like the old asylum are accustomed to years of darkness and quiet. This is why a powerful tactical flashlight beam can jar them. So can the right kind of music. My little speaker created a wall of sound—strings, brass, and voices organized and brimming with power, the song itself glowing with religious intent. It wouldn't harm the ghosts, but like a sudden burst of light, it might chase them away for a moment or two.

The faces spun around us, losing shape, their voices crying out in shock and surprise.

The dark cloud filling the room thinned a bit. It didn't disperse or vanish, but suddenly we could see a bright green arrow drawn in glowing chalk.

"That way!" I said.

Stacey and I hurried. Our flashlights were blasting at full power again rather than getting absorbed by the darkness. I didn't know how long it would take the ghosts to adapt to the powerful music filling their lair—maybe a few minutes, maybe just a couple of seconds. Then, I had no doubt, they would close in around us again, much angrier than before.

We had to get out of there before that happened.

The faintly glowing arrows guided us back to the steel fire door for the stairwell. I pulled on the handle. At this point, I half-expected the door to be stuck or locked by the specters, trapping us in the basement.

Fortunately, I was wrong about that. The door swung open, and we dashed up the concrete stairs, stomping carelessly through the stream of dark, nasty water that dripped from step to step. Though it was still pitch black in the stairwell, the air was much warmer and thinner, and nothing seemed to interfere with the glow of our flashlights.

We ran up to the main level and down the dim corridor. The weak, dusty light seeping in through the barred windows seemed glorious to my eyes.

We turned a corner, kicked open the same door through which we'd entered the asylum, and spilled out into orange, late-afternoon sunlight. We kept running through the high weeds until we reached the chain-link fence, and then we finally stopped to catch our breath.

"Holy...mother of...cows," Stacey panted, holstering her flashlight as she looked back at the sprawling old hospital. "Let's never go in there again."

"Agreed," I said.

"Have you ever seen anything like that before?"

"It can happen in long-abandoned places like this, especially institutions like prisons and hospitals," I said. "Some of the ghosts were people who were already intensely disturbed, maybe violent, when they were alive. Decades of isolation, trapped with just each other and their own memories...well, it's not therapeutic for them, let's put it that way."

"That was the scariest thing I've ever seen. I feel like I have a bad bruise here." She delicately touched her hip where Old Groany had slammed into her.

"Want me to look at it?"

"I'd rather get the hell out of here first," Stacey said. "I don't want to be here at sunset."

She had a point. We loaded our stuff into my car, and I pulled away down the massively deteriorated and overgrown service road. I had to resist the urge to shove the accelerator to the floor and leave the place behind as quickly as possible—we didn't want to hit a bad pothole and blow a tire or break an axle. The car bobbed up and down like a canoe on a choppy sea.

"Was it worth it?" Stacey asked after a minute. She was still shuddering, still traumatized from our experience. So was I.

"We'll find out." I fished out the tarnished silver necklace and held it up in the dying afternoon sunlight. "If not, we're going to have some real problems on our hands."

# Chapter Twelve

The sun was low in the sky, and I called the Treadwells to tell them we'd be late. Anna Treadwell sounded nervous and worried on the phone.

Once we'd put twenty or thirty miles between us and the haunted crazy-house, Stacey and I stopped at a sketchy roadside grease pit called Uncle Roogey's Eatin' Place, which looked like a barn surrounded by a gravel parking lot and giant pine trees. We needed solid, heavy food and a chance to sit and shake out our nerves for a while. This local dive looked more promising than fast food.

The hostess, a gum-snapping girl of about fourteen, directed us to a booth with a wooden picnic-style table. Years of initials, hearts, crosses, and cryptic messages were carved into the surface. A ceiling fan revolved slowly above us. Drowsy, twangy country music played over the restaurant's tinny sound system, while billiard balls clacked in the next room.

"Ask me how much I don't want to go ghost-chasing tonight," Stacey said, settling into her wooden bench of a seat.

"I'm with you," I said.

"What do y'all want to drink?" Our waitress arrived, a middle-aged woman in apron who reeked of stale cigarettes.

"I'll have a beer," I said, and Stacey raised her eyebrows. I shrugged. "I need it."

"That sounds like a good idea. Me, too," Stacey said.

"We don't serve alcohol here," the waitress said, scowling at us just slightly. "The Lord forbids it."

"Sweet tea, I guess," I said, and Stacey seconded my order, looking disappointed.

"Y'all want some fried biscuits?"

"No, thank you!" Stacey said.

"They're free," the waitress added.

"Then we'll take them," I said.

They waitress walked off, leaving us with coffee-ringed paper menus to study.

"How do you do it?" Stacey asked me, her voice falling almost to a whisper.

"Eat fried biscuits? I don't know, I've never even heard of them."

"No, I mean what we just saw. How can you face things like that all the time? How do you deal with it? My skin's still crawling. I feel like I need to take a bath, and then burn the bathtub when I'm done."

"We don't deal with that kind of thing all the time," I said. "Most people hire us to help with homes or businesses. Ghosts in old, abandoned ruins don't bother people, unless someone tries to come in and renovate. A place like that old hospital is too huge, outdated, and rotten to renovate, so it's just going sit there as a ghost hive until someone tears it down."

"A ghost hive." Stacey shivered. She smiled as the waitress brought our mason jars full of iced tea, plus a chipped platter of crusty brown biscuits floating in gravy. They looked like they'd literally been dropped in a deep fryer, then drizzled with butter.

"Nothing could be as scary as these biscuits," I told Stacey when the waitress walked off. "They're the true abomination."

"I'm serious," Stacey said. "You don't get terrified? I didn't even know something like that place could exist. I don't know if I can handle this job, Ellie. Going right from one haunted place to another..."

"Listen, Stacey, Calvin hired you for a reason," I said.

"Because of all my ghost videos. That only happened by accident, though. At least the first one, in Colonial Park Cemetery. I was just trying to get some images for this class project..."

"But then you started deliberately looking for ghosts. It wasn't just an accident, Stacey. You were drawn to this. You chose to keep searching."

"Right, but I was just trying to capture images. I usually couldn't find anything, and even when I did get an image, it was fleeting, or barely there. They could be scary, but not _dangerous_. Not like something that could pick me up and bash me into a shelf."

"We told you it was dangerous," I said. "Some of them have strong psychokinetic energy. You've never heard of a ghost attacking anyone?"

"Of course I have! But you never know when a story's real, or embellished, or just plain made up," Stacey said. "Experiencing that for myself? It's too much."

"But you survived," I said. "I'm not going to lie. It's dangerous. Some of these entities are strong enough to kill you. That's why people need our help. People stuck with a haunting are desperate—usually they can't afford to leave their homes. There aren't many people who do what we do, Stacey, and when people need us, they really need us. And I think you have a talent for it."

"Really?" A little smile finally cracked through her pale, shocked expression.

"Sure," I said. Well, I wasn't sure, but she'd given me some reason to hope. "Any normal person would have taken off running out of that basement as soon as the ghosts began stalking us. You stayed and finished the job. So maybe Calvin was right about you."

"You say that like you disagreed with him," Stacey said. "Did you? Did he foist me on you against your will?"

_Exactly._ "Not exactly," I said. "I just worried about whether you could handle it."

"And what about now?"

"A little less worried." I gave her a tired smile, which was the best one I could manage. "Let's see how well the ghost trapping goes tonight."

Our waitress hovered nearby, staring at us like we were both crazy. I wondered how long she'd been listening.

I ordered some serious food: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, macaroni, green beans. Hey, I was really hungry, and I needed the calories for the night ahead.

Stacey annoyed me by ordering the salad after I'd set myself up for a pig-out, but she redeemed herself by adding a slice of pecan pie. Good girl.

Then it was time to go trap our ghost.

# Chapter Thirteen

It was well past sunset by the time we reached the Treadwell home. Stacey and I had to stop at our homes to shower and change, because the asylum left us feeling nasty inside and out.

Anna answered the door, looking even more stressed than the last time I'd seen her. Lexa stood a little behind her, twisting her cloth doll, a deep frown etched into her face.

"Is everything okay?" I asked.

"We've had some trouble. Come on in." Anna moved aside to let us through the doorway.

Right away, I saw that the long wooden table had been pushed from the dining room into the hall, with one end shoved tight against the security door.

"She's mad," Lexa said. "She's trying to get us."

"What happened?" I asked.

"It started about an hour ago, when the sun went down," Anna said. "The door won't stay locked, and it just bangs open and closed. It doesn't happen if anyone's in the room, but the moment you step away..."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Are you going to be able to take care of this or not?" Dale stomped down the stairs, buttoning his shirt over his pale, hairy stomach. He could have started buttoning a little earlier, if you ask me. "I'm not paying you a dime if we're still stuck with that ghost."

Dale seemed awfully eager to not pay us a dime, I thought. It wasn't the first time he'd said it.

"We're setting a trap tonight." I held up the tarnished silver necklace. "I think we found some good bait."

"That's her necklace," Lexa said, drawing puzzled looks from her parents.

"Exactly right, Lexa," I said. "We visited the old hospital where she used to live and dug it out."

"And that place was _haunted_ ," Stacey said. "I mean, really, really haunted."

"How does a ghost trap work?" Lexa asked.

"Step outside and I'll show you. You can come, too, Mr. and Mrs. Treadwell," I added. I just didn't want to explain the trap inside the house where Mercy's ghost might hear us. Mercy seemed at least partly aware of what was happening in the present.

"I want to see it!" Lexa bolted toward the door. Anna followed, then Dale, who gave Stacey and me a suspicious look, as though we were a couple of grifters running a scam. I'm used to that look.

We walked out to the driveway, and I opened a back door of the cargo van.

"This is a basic, standard pneumatic ghost trap," I said. Four traps stood upright in the unpainted wooden structure we use as a carrying case. I lifted one and held it out to my clients, and all three of them leaned forward, curious.

The trap was a cylinder, about two feet tall, resembling a large version of the clear plastic capsule that banks send through at the drive-up window. One end was sealed solid. I unlatched and removed the circular lid at the other end so they could look inside.

"It basically has three layers," I said. "The innermost is heavily leaded glass—we call that the 'ghost jar.' It's very difficult for ghosts to penetrate that material for some reason. Inside the glass are these wireless sensors that detect temperature and electromagnetic frequency, and they send their readings to my remote control—I'll show you that in a sec. If the inside of the jar grows cold, and the EM spikes at the same time, that's a strong sign that a ghost is inside.

"The middle layer is this copper mesh." I tapped the clear plastic exterior. The mesh could be seen through the plastic on the outside or through the glass on the inside—the trap was essentially transparent. "The mesh is charged by batteries at the bottom. It creates a second barrier, an electromagnetic wall to imprison the ghost. And the outer layer is just hard plastic to insulate the whole thing."

"Does that really work?" Dale asked, smirking at me. "It looks like something you stole off a bank teller."

"I've removed scores of ghosts with this kind of device," I replied. I loaded the trap into the stamper, which sort of resembled a four-foot microscope. A bottle of compressed gas was at the top, where the eyepiece of a microscope would be. I snapped the cylinder lid into a shaft below it, where the microscope's objective lenses would go. Then I locked the rest of the cylinder onto a little platform directly beneath the shaft. "When I press the button on the remote, the stamper slams the lid down onto the cylinder to seal the ghost inside. I can set it to automatically close when the sensors detect the temperature and EMF changes, but I prefer to operate it manually." I lifted the remote, which had a digital display screen and one big red button.

"That's pretty cool," Lexa whispered.

"I hope it works," Anna said. Dale snorted and shook his head.

"Carry it around front," Dale said. "I'm not hefting that dining table again tonight. I've got back problems."

"Can you make sure the front doors are unlocked, Mr. Treadwell?" Stacey asked.

Dale blew out a long, slow breath, as if her request was the most annoying thing he'd ever heard and unlocking the front doors was a nearly impossible task. Then he took out his keys.

Stacey and I picked up the stamper, a heavy and cumbersome piece of equipment, and lugged it together. We followed Dale through a path that had been recently hacked through the overgrown yard. Stepping stones were barely visible beneath a layer of stamped-down weeds. Dale carried my flashlight, and he wasn't all that considerate about lighting the path for us.

We reached the front steps, made of dark Georgia marble trimmed in brick.

"What the hell?" Dale asked. He stopped on the walkway, looking up at the double doors beneath the sharp, peaked overhang. One of them stood wide open. "I locked those doors this morning when you two left."

"Maybe Anna opened them?" I asked. "Or Lexa?"

"I doubt it. The girls won't go into the main house at all anymore. Just me and the workers."

"Maybe one of the workers—" I began.

"Probably. Freakin' slobs." Dale shook his head as he climbed the five steps. He pushed open the second door with a creak, then presented the pitch-black foyer with a sarcastic flourish, without stepping inside. "Here's your room, ladies."

Stacey and I lugged the stamper up the stairs and into the center of the foyer. Dale did not step inside with us, and actually pulled a pretty good vanishing act just after we walked past him. He was probably scared to enter the main house, too, and didn't want to hang around long enough to make his fear obvious.

Despite the open door and the hot June night outside, the interior of the vaulted foyer was still a little chilly. Stacey and I had cleaned it up after the failed mock funeral, including sliding the little end tables back against the wall where we'd found them, plus sweeping up an amazing amount of dust along with the shredded funeral flowers. The room still looked filthy, though, and smelled like rot.

We set up the stamper in the middle of the floor, then returned to the van a couple of times to haul in the rest of our gear. When we were done, we knocked on the side door again, because the family had returned inside the house.

"I think we're ready," I told Anna, while I stayed out on the covered side porch. "You may as well try to get some sleep."

"We can't watch you catch the ghost?" Lexa asked with a frown.

"Stacey will get it all on video," I said. "You can watch tomorrow."

"Okay." She was still frowning, but she looked a little relieved, too.

"Go get ready for bed, Lexa," Anna said. When the girl was gone, Anna asked us in a quieter voice: "Do you want us to unlock the security door in case you run into trouble? I could have Dale pull the table away."

"No, but thank you," I said. "Do what makes you feel safe. We'll be right by the front doors if we need a quick escape. I'm sure we'll be fine, anyway."

"All right." She seemed relieved. "Good luck."

As we walked away, I heard Anna lock the door behind us.

Back in the foyer, now lit by a few scattered electric lanterns, we set up for the night. We had our usual array of cameras, mostly pointed at the big stamper holding the cylindrical trap, the lid poised a foot above the open trap and ready to slam down at a moment's notice. We had a high-sensitivity microphone.

We also had a couple of sleeping bags, since there was no electricity to inflate my air mattress. The renovation workers were having trouble fixing up the wiring in the main house, though the power in the east wing seemed to work fine. We had a cooler with bottled water, sandwiches, and snacks.

"This is almost like camping," Stacey said.

"It's even worse than camping," I replied.

"We still have more than an hour until midnight. Let's take a look around this place." Stacey hopped to her feet.

"Seriously? After what happened at the asylum today, you want to go exploring a haunted mansion?" I have to admit, I was a little impressed.

"Do you think it's better to sit in the one room we _know_ is haunted?" Stacey asked.

I couldn't argue with that. Our instruments weren't picking up any major electromagnetic activity, and we weren't seeing anything on the thermal or night vision cameras. Aside from the abnormally low temperature and the aggressive reek of decay, the room seemed quiet. I don't like to sit still for very long, anyway.

"Okay," I said. "As long as we're back before midnight. Bring your camera."

I strapped my heavy night vision goggles to my head, keeping them up on my forehead for now, and grabbed my flashlight. I double-checked my pocket to make sure the necklace was still there—we couldn't have the ghost coming by and scooping it up while we were gone. Active ghosts have a talent for making small objects disappear.

We started by looking around the main level. The spacious front parlor had a big bay window overgrown with vines on the outside. A decayed piano slumped in the corner, and a few crumbling books adorned the mostly empty bookshelves. A model sailing ship lay smashed on the floor among broken glass, as if it had once been inside a bottle. A mildewed sofa lay like a corpse under an even more mildewed sheet. The brick fireplace was cold and empty, full of ancient gray ashes.

"Nothing happening here," I said, checking my Mel Meter. "Let's keep going."

A heavy, abnormally wide sliding door stood closed in the north wall, opposite the giant bay window. Its unseen rollers screeched as Stacey heaved the door aside.

I pointed my flashlight into a dining room that dwarfed the one in the east wing. Layers of crown molding encircled the high ceiling. The fireplace was huge and gorgeous, made of large river stones and almost big enough to stand inside. Sideboards were mounted along one wall, opposite a row of tall, narrow windows that showed nothing but darkness outside. There was no furniture except for a single dining chair overturned by the door to the hallway, one leg broken as if the chair had tripped and fallen while attempting to escape.

Another sliding door led us toward a room at the back of the house, where we discovered a moth-eaten old wing chair poised by the small fireplace.

"Do you smell that?" Stacey sniffed the air, which had a slightly acrid odor. "It's very faint, but it's like old cigars?"

"This must have been the smoking room," I said. "You could imagine the men retreating here to drink and smoke after a dinner party. The ladies might have gone to the parlor instead."

"According to your friend from the historical society, they might have been smoking opium in here, too," Stacey said. "And those ladies were prostitutes, at least in the later years....These must have been some wild parties."

We crossed the central hallway to the kitchen, which had acres of countertop as well as a separate prep table. It was big enough to cook multi-course meals for a crowd of people. A discolored rectangle on the wall indicated where the refrigerator had been. A brown 1970s-style six-burner stove with a circular window in the oven door remained in the room, but you wouldn't want to eat any food that passed near it. Many of the cabinets had been bashed apart by vandals, and a disgusting black stain took up one entire side of the sink, the one underneath the rusty faucet.

"So gross," Stacey whispered, shining her light into the sink.

"The Treadwells really have their work cut out here," I said. "I hope they have a fortune to spend on renovation."

The first floor was creepy, but we didn't encounter any cold spots, banging doors, or headless horsemen, and our instruments indicated nothing at all. We found the back stairs, which ran above an empty room with washer and dryer hookups, and we climbed to the second floor. The stairs were narrow and steep, designed for servants rather than valued guests. My arms brushed the walls on either side of me, and I'm not exactly a broad-shouldered football player type.

I immediately did not like the second floor. The ceiling was much lower than the first floor, and the hallway felt cramped.

We looked into a couple of rooms, finding only debris. The rooms themselves were impressive, though, with high ceilings, dark timbers, marble accents, and tall windows trimmed in colored glass. The house had probably been elegant and attractive back in its long-lost prime.

Individual exterior locks had been added to most of the doors, probably during the mansion's boarding-house days after Captain Marsh died and his niece inherited the house.

There was no such lock on the bathroom door. Stacey wrinkled her nose at the cracked, dirty tiles and the open pipes where the sink and toilet had been. An oval-shaped porcelain soaking tub remained, its interior coated with black grime, as if a layer of mold had bloomed and died there ages ago.

"I guess the boarders shared the bathroom with each other," she said. "Ew. Lousy accommodations."

The next door was ajar, and I eased it open.

"Watch out!" I told Stacey. My flashlight showed rusty nails jutting out along the edge of the door, like a row of sharp teeth running from the top to the bottom. A few chunks of the door's edge were missing. They were still nailed to the door frame.

"I wonder why they nailed it shut," Stacey whispered.

I opened the door wider, and it let out a rusty creak. Unlike the other second-floor rooms we'd passed, this one was still partly furnished, with a sagging single bed topped with rotten old blankets. A cheap pine wardrobe stood closed in one shadowy corner, by the narrow, sharp-peaked window. The plain, ugly furniture looked out of place under the high ceiling with its intricate, hand-crafted crown molding depicting leaves and grapes.

"Ugh." Stacey covered her nose as she swooped her light around the room. "Smells like a possum died in here. And a skunk, too. Maybe it was a murder-suicide."

"It feels weird, too," I said. I was a little dizzy, and my stomach felt like it wanted to flip over. My Mel Meter detected nothing.

I clicked off my flashlight and slid my night vision goggles over my eyes. Every detail of the room stood out in stark green. I approached the wardrobe. The knobby, thick grains of cheap wood seemed to glow in sharp relief.

I hesitated, took a breath, then opened the wardrobe.

Inside hung several empty hangers and a patched, worn coat and frayed necktie from a man's suit. Whoever had owned it had lived in the forties or fifties, and had not been rich.

A thick layer of dust coated everything.

I lifted away my goggles and double-checked my meter. Nothing. I walked around the bed, then the tiny, bricked-up fireplace, and finally I circled the room. Despite my queasy feelings, I couldn't find anything.

I dropped to my knees and looked under the bed. What I found wasn't supernatural, but it was a little disturbing—a couple of broken syringes. I couldn't see any good reason to touch them or examine them further without wearing gloves, so I left them there.

"Why do you think they nailed this room closed?" Stacey whispered. She was lingering close to the door.

"No idea. Be careful on the way out."

We stepped past the door with its edge of crooked, rusty nails, then eased it shut.

The other rooms were similar to the first we'd seen, with beautiful high ceilings and arched, colored-glass windows whispering of the house's original glory, now coated in dust and grime. The walls were set at odd angles to each other, giving each room a unique shape.

The rooms were empty except for debris we didn't particularly want to inspect, plus an occasional chair, table, or bedframe. We found another bathroom, where the sink had been removed and the mirror above it smashed. We also found a second small bedroom that had been nailed shut and later pried open.

Looking inside that room, we found a decaying double bed with a rotten canopy. Lacy clothing hung in the closet, including an old-fashioned bustier and a scandalously cut red dress. We had the same uneasy feeling, but got no readings.

Back in the second-floor hall, I opened a slatted door, expecting to find a linen closet, but instead discovered a set of stairs to the third floor. It made the previous stairway look roomy by comparison. The stairs were steep and shallow, almost like a ladder.

"Should we check it out? They said the master suite is up there, right?" Stacey asked. There was apprehension in her voice, but a little excitement, too. I had to admit she was courageous. Maybe I was getting slightly less annoyed with Calvin for sticking me with a new apprentice to train. Maybe.

"There's no time," I said. "It's almost midnight. We need to go light up the trap."

Stacey looked both relieved and disappointed as I closed the door and walked back up the hallway.

# Chapter Fourteen

We returned to the foyer by the wide front staircase. I gave the broken baluster on the second floor a sidelong glance—we didn't know for sure that Mercy had hung herself on that particular baluster, but I couldn't help imagining it.

Pale spots of electric lantern light glowed on the foyer floor. The room was at least ten degrees colder than all the others we'd visited. The EMF readings fluctuated up to 2.2 milligaus, then 2.3. It was the low end of the ghost-EM range, enough to indicate a residual or dormant haunting, at least.

"So, as far as we can tell, she usually begins in this room, then steps through that door and down the hall." I opened the door to the hallway, where Stacey's thermal camera had caught the cold spirit emerging from the foyer.

I was thrown off for a moment. Apparently Dale had been working hard today—or more likely, his contractors had been working hard while he stood around with a beer giving them unwanted advice, as he'd done with the roofers.

Fresh, unpainted drywall lined both sides of the hall, giving it the appearance of something freshly built. That meant they'd finished removing the rotten old paneling and updating the wiring, but I didn't want to throw a switch and test it out. Instead, I dropped my night goggles over my eyes.

"Let's cut her off," I told Stacey. I grabbed a hammer and a couple of nails from the portable workbench set up near the locked security door.

We returned to the lobby, where I closed the hallway door and began nailing it to the door frame.

"Whoa!" Stacey said. "Won't the Treadwells get upset about that?"

"Not as upset as they'll be if we don't get rid of their ghost." I hammered in the third and final nail, then tested the door. It was sealed tight.

"You're the boss." Stacey shrugged and checked her watch. "Three minutes to midnight."

"Let's light it up." I walked over to the big pneumatic stamper and reached into the cylindrical trap. The lid was already loaded into the stamper, ready to slam down and seal the trap at a moment's notice.

I dropped the tarnished silver necklace at the bottom of the cylinder, next to an unlit white candle mounted on a little tack. Two more tacks were built inside the cylindrical trap, one halfway up, one near the top. A white candle was mounted on each.

"Want to do the honors?" I opened my toolbox and held out a box of kitchen matches.

"Seriously?" Stacey's eyes glowed like a girl receiving a pony for her birthday. "Can I?"

"Can you handle striking a match?" I asked solemnly, resisting my urge to snicker at her eagerness.

"I can." She said it back with the same solemn tone, and I laughed.

Stacey ignited a long match, then reached it into the trap and lit the three candles. I walked around the room, gathering up and switching off our electric lanterns. I left them by our "campsite" with our sleeping bags.

"Now what?" Stacey asked.

"Blow out your match and sit down." I dropped into a cross-legged position on my sleeping bag.

"I feel like I should say something."

I laughed. "You're not casting a spell. Ghosts can feed on the heat of candles. You're just setting out food for it."

"So why did we need the necklace?" Stacey sat down beside me and clicked off her flashlight, leaving the candles as the only light source in the room.

"To really draw her interest. In a bad pinch, you can try using candles and nothing else, but it's so much easier if you have something else to attract the ghost. Now stay quiet and watch."

We watched the three candles burning inside the transparent cylinder. The copper mesh didn't obscure the view any more than a screen door blocks your view of the driveway. The leaded glass, though, distorted and magnified the flickering flames.

I returned my night vision goggles to my toolbox and strapped on my thermal goggles instead, leaving them on my forehead in case we needed them. This ghost, for whatever reason, showed up on thermal much better than night vision.

"Hey, when do I get my own thermal goggles?" Stacey whispered.

"They're expensive. Maybe after your, um, probationary period."

"I didn't know I had a probationary period."

"Sh," I said. "It's after midnight now. Watch for ghosts."

We kept our eyes on the array of camera display screens. On the thermal camera, the candles showed up as glowing red and yellow spots in an otherwise blue-tinged room. On Stacey's laptop, we could see soundwaves captured by the high-sensitivity microphone, which could monitor above and below the normal range of human hearing.

I laid my Mel Meter and the remote control for the trap side by side on the floor in front of me, so I could see whether the sensors in the trap showed a lower temperature or higher EMF signature than the room around me.

Then we waited.

The big house lay silent around us, the three flickering candles casting huge, shifting shadows all around the walls, especially where the light shone through the sculptured balusters of the staircase and the second-floor walkway.

After a minute, I heard a creak, and then another. It could have been nothing.

Another creak. Stacey looked at me.

Then a single footstep on the front stairs. Just one, but clear as a drumbeat.

"Did you hear—" Stacey began.

"Sh!" I slid my thermals down over my eyes and looked toward the staircase. A flick of deep purple appeared and vanished at the foot of the stairs.

My viewpoint became more blue, and I could feel the room turning colder around me. More tiny motes of deep-cold purple appeared in the air below the broken baluster, several feet above the three glowing red spots inside the trap. They blinked in and out of visibility. More and more of them began to appear, though, until I was looking at a swirling cloud of freezing cold maybe a foot across.

"Ellie!" Stacey whispered. "The thermal camera—"

I put a finger over her lips, while her eyes were bugging out. We couldn't risk scaring away the ghost.

The fine purple mist drifted downward and backward under the walkway, as if a light breeze were blowing it to the hallway door. I tensed, ready to see Mercy's reaction when she found it nailed shut.

The mist hovered there, becoming denser, vaguely beginning to suggest the shape of a woman. Then every particle of it froze at once.

A bang sounded from the door, as if someone had knocked on it angrily.

There was a second bang. Then the mist became animated again, condensing more into a clear woman-shape.

The readout graph spiked on the audio app—the high-sensitivity microphone had picked up something, though I hadn't heard a sound.

The woman-shape flowed toward the door to the front parlor instead, which I'd closed but not locked or barricaded in any way. She moved so fast that she blurred back into a cloud shape.

She had totally ignored our trap.

"Uh-oh," I whispered, hopping to my feet and picking up the remote control. "I think she's trying to find another way around."

I ran to the trap, carefully reached past the burning candles, and drew out the necklace.

The ghost reached the parlor door, and it swung open with a squeak.

"Holy cow," Stacey whispered. She grasped her flashlight, but fortunately didn't turn it on. She couldn't see the ghost except when it was on camera, near the trap, so the rusty sound of the opening door had surprised her and made her jump a little. "Holy cow, holy cow..."

"Mercy," I said, stepping slowly toward the ghost, the way you might deal with a spooked horse. "Mercy Cutledge. Can you hear me?"

The purple mist seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then it condensed again into a woman-shape, facing me from the open parlor door.

We regarded each other for a moment, though I could just barely discern the general area of her face.

When she spoke to me, I didn't so much hear the word as _feel_ it stabbing deep into my brain like the tip of an icicle.

_Leave_. The word bored into my head a second time, making me wince. _Leave_.

"Why do you want us to leave, Mercy?" I asked.

She tilted toward me—her whole body at once, as though she were stiff as a board from her head to her feet—and drifted a little closer. She seemed to be examining me. It was an uncomfortable feeling for me, a sense of growing dread.

Then she began to dissolve into mist, the mass of her floating back toward the parlor door, tendrils of her reaching back into the dark parlor. I was losing her, as if she'd decided I was of no further interest.

"Mercy." I spoke calmly but firmly, as if I had some kind of unquestionable authority. I held up the silver teardrop. "Is this your necklace, Mercy? I found it for you."

The mass of purple mist hesitated, then drifted my way again.

"Ellie," Stacey whispered. "Ellie, I can see her. She's manifesting."

I raised my thermal goggles and parked them on my forehead. With my own eyes, I could see a wispy, transparent image of Mercy floating towards me, the hollow holes of her eyes fixated on the necklace dangling from my fingers. Her dark dress faded into nothingness somewhere around her hips, and her legs remained altogether invisible. She seemed to be wading through the air toward me.

Her face wore a blank expression at first...then contorted into extreme anger. Ghosts' facial expressions aren't limited by minor details like the boundaries of skin and muscle. They are pure energy and emotion. Sometimes they can give you a look that goes beyond the extremes of what living human faces can manage.

That was the kind of look Mercy gave me now, her eyes turning into triangular slashes that made me think of a jack-o'-lantern, the kind that's carved with the intent to scare rather than amuse. Her mouth, too, deformed into a huge angry frown that slashed down either side of her chin while also baring her teeth _and_ snarling.

She darted toward me, and I braced myself—she was fast and filled with rage. Her voice rang in my head, just a raw, wordless screech.

Then she vanished.

After a few seconds, Stacey whispered, "What happened?"

"I'm not sure." I drew the thermals back on, looking around the room. It was all still unnaturally cold, tinged with blue, but I couldn't find the dense mass of cold purple anywhere. "Oh, no. I hope she didn't pop over to the east wing to haunt Lexa again."

"Without using a door?" Stacey asked.

"Ghosts don't need doors. Sometimes they think they do, or they do it out of habit, or they just like to scare everyone with a nice slam--"

She hit me all at once, from every side—a heavy, icy cold weight that sent me sprawling on my back, hard enough to knock the wind out of me and rattle the hardwood floorboards when I landed.

The ghost trap remote skittered out of my hand, away into the deep shadows below the walkway. I closed my fingers tighter around the necklace.

"Ellie! Are you okay?" Stacey ran toward me, slicing up the darkness with her tactical flashlight.

"Lights out!" I managed to gasp, though I could barely breathe. It wasn't just getting my lungs hammered to the floor. The frigid air now seemed much too thick, choking me as if I'd swallowed about a yard of thick, scratchy flannel. The ghost was pushing in on me from all sides.

I felt the necklace bite into my fingers like a cutting wire as Mercy tried to reclaim it.

"What do I do?" Stacey asked, standing over me with her flashlight extinguished, her face full of anguish in the sputtering candlelit.

"Take it," I forced myself to croak, waving the necklace at her.

Stacey squatted beside me as I lay choking on the floor. She took my hand, then slipped her fingers under the necklace. I made sure she had a tight grasp on it before I opened my hand and let it go.

She ran to the trap and held the necklace above the glowing candles.

The ghost stayed on top of me—all around me, really—keeping me pressed to the floor while I fought to breathe.

"Hey, ghost lady!" Stacey shouted, waving the necklace. "Is this what you're looking for?"

The pressure on me continued, so Stacey clicked on her flashlight and jabbed the beam into the space above me, where the darkness seemed to absorb the light. Not a bad move this time. I doubted any flashlight would chase the ghost away at this point—Mercy seemed pretty determined to get her property back.

The pressure finally eased, and I felt the cold mass rush away toward Stacey.

I pushed myself to my feet, gratefully taking a few deep breaths. Then I ran into the dim area under the walkway, where I'd last seen my remote bouncing away.

I drew my own flashlight to help me search. The night vision goggles would have been extremely useful at this moment, but unfortunately those were across the large room in my toolbox, and I didn't have time to grab them.

Stacey lowered the necklace into the trap, and then the ghost struck her, an invisible force sweeping her off her feet and knocking her to the ground. She cried out in surprise and pain.

The necklace clinked against the lead-glass bottom of the trap.

A moment later, the first candle, the one near the opening at the top, snuffed out. Then the second, halfway down. It looked like Mercy was inside the trap, but I wasn't able to close it.

I fought back panic as I searched for the remote. I finally found it in one dusty, cobwebbed corner and snatched it up.

When I turned around, the final candle had been snuffed out, and the necklace itself was rising quickly toward the top of the trap, curling and twisting in the air like a levitating snake.

There was no point checking the readouts on the remote—the ghost was definitely in there. I slammed my thumb down on the red button.

The stamper hissed as its piston arm drove down, slamming the lid into place. The necklace slapped against it, then tumbled downward and landed on the bottom of the cylinder, draped over the blown-out candle.

On my remote, the temperature and EMF readouts turned blank. This meant the battery pack at the bottom of the trap had electrified the layer of copper mesh, creating a charged field around the leaded glass jar nested inside. Ghosts couldn't pass through it, and neither could the wireless signals from my sensors within the trap.

"Are you all right?" I asked Stacey, helping her up from the floor.

"Couldn't feel better if I tried," Stacey said, but her shaky voice didn't match her words. "Did we get her?"

"I'm pretty sure we did."

Stacey and I leaned close to the trap to peer through the side.

"It looks empty," Stacey whispered.

"That's normal. You can't always see--"

A face appeared on the glass, so suddenly there was an audible slap even through the thick inner layer of glass and the hard plastic shell on the outside. Stacey and I jumped back.

It was Mercy, a simple image of her face painted in frost, with holes for her eyes and her distended, angry frown. Her hollow eyes seemed to regard us for a moment, and then the whole face faded, like a blast of condensation melting away from a window.

"Okay." Stacey's voice was still shaky. "I'd say we got her."

And that, more or less, is how you trap a ghost.

# Chapter Fifteen

As soon as we were done, I texted Anna to tell her about it. It was approaching one in the morning, but Stacey and I had no particular desire to spend the rest of the night camped out in the old foyer, even though the room felt much warmer, lighter, and less oppressive. If Anna was asleep, she'd wake up in the morning with an explanation on her phone about what had happened and why we were gone.

Anna was still awake, it turned out. She and Dale met us in the east wing kitchen, Anna in a cashmere bathrobe, Dale unapologetically dressed in an old tank t-shirt and boxer shorts, which wasn't the prettiest sight in the world.

We sat at the kitchen table, our clients glancing between the empty-looking glass that we'd set out like a centerpiece and Stacey's laptop, where they watched our struggle to capture the ghost. Anna was pale, her hand covering her mouth, shaking her head.

"That looks terrifying," she whispered.

"I don't see anything." Dale flicked his finger against the clear plastic shell of the trap. "Kind of looks like an emperor's new clothes situation to me."

"You shouldn't have any more trouble with her," I said. "Your doors will stay closed at night now."

"They'd better," Dale grumbled. "What's this going to cost me?"

"We'll send you an invoice in a few days," I told him. "That'll be long enough for you to see that Mercy is gone."

"Lexa will be so happy," Anna said. "I feel relieved. Thank you so much."

Dale tilted the ghost trap back and forth, frowning, as if trying to shake up the ghost. He froze when a tendril of pale mist flickered inside, visible only for a few seconds before vanishing. He looked up at me with a bleach-white face, and I wondered what he'd seen from his angle.

It must have been more than a glimpse of white vapor, because he let go of the trap and leaned away from it.

"Get it out of here," he whispered. "I don't want to see it anymore."

"No problem." I stood, and Stacey stood with me. "We'll just gather up our things and go."

"Good." Dale walked to the refrigerator and cracked open a can of beer. "Sooner the better."

"What will you do with...the ghost?" Anna asked as I lifted the trap from the table. It was labeled with red tape and black marker—MERCY CUTLEDGE, plus the current date.

"We have a disposal method," I said. "She'll be very far from here. We've never had a recurrence of the same ghost after removing it. You can rest easy."

"It was so nice to meet all of you," Stacey said. "Tell Lexa we said bye. Such a sweet girl."

"I will." Anna gave a weary smile.

Dale chugged down at least half his beer, then stared coldly at us. I understood. He hadn't wanted to believe his house was haunted—he was more comfortable with the idea that his wife and daughter were going crazy. Now that it was over, he wanted us to get the heck of out his life so he could get back to pretending none of it had happened. Some people just find denial more attractive than adjusting their beliefs to new information.

I hadn't mentioned the single word we'd caught on the high-sensitivity microphone. It was the one thing Mercy had said to us. After cleaning up the audio, Stacey had determined that word to be _murder._

We cleared out as fast as we could, though it took several trips to the van. It was close to two in the morning by the time we backed the cargo van out of the driveway. Mercy's trap was in the rack behind us, alongside the empty traps.

"We did it!" Stacey looked elated rather than tired. "We actually got one."

"It's a good feeling, isn't it?"

"Think of how much better their lives will be from now on." Stacey had a warm little smile on her face. "I think I love this job. I knew I would, but knowing that I _really_ helped people, especially that little girl..." She shook her head. "I could use a drink, what do you think?"

"I could use about fifty hours of sleep," I replied.

We drove out to the office, where I parked the van inside the garage door in the back. I told Stacey to go on home, and she looked reluctant as she walked to her green Ford Escape hybrid SUV, a vehicle that made her feel environmentally friendly when she was hauling her kayak out to some national park. Stacey was brimming with excitement, and I guessed it would be a long time before she slept.

It was Stacey's first successful ghost grab, and maybe I should have celebrated with her, but I was worn down from the extremely long day.

I went to my little cubicle at one side of the workshop, where I forced myself to type out quick notes about all we'd done that day. Later, I would flesh it out into a full report to send along with the invoice. Clients like to see something for their money besides an apparently empty glass jar.

"Ellie," a voice said, making me jump. I turned to see Calvin, who'd crept up behind me as quietly as a ninja, despite his wheelchair. "How did it go?"

"We got her. Clients happy, money on the way." I hoped.

"And Stacey?"

"She did a decent job." I gave a quick recount of how she'd handled the asylum, plus the ghost in the Treadwell house.

"Sounds more than decent."

"She's good," I admitted. "She needs more training, but she's got the stomach for it. Maybe the brains, too. We'll see."

"It's almost as if I knew what I was doing when I hired her."

"She's not bad." I shrugged. I was actually a little more enthusiastic about Stacey's performance, but I knew where this conversation was going, and I didn't want to encourage Calvin too much.

"You've been avoiding me. I'm assuming it has to do with the psychic," Calvin said.

"We don't need a psychic. We just wrapped up the case without one. I think Stacey is enough."

"Technically, you're my employee," Calvin said. "I haven't died yet."

"Don't talk like that!"

"As long as you work for me, I expect you to listen," he said.

I slumped in my office chair. "Okay. What do you want?"

"You already know."

"All right." I sighed. "Next job, if it looks like a real haunting...we'll bring in your psychic guy and let him look around. Fair enough?"

"Fair enough." Calvin nodded. He looked exhausted and old, almost elderly.

"I need to go home and sleep. You should do the same," I said.

"Later. I've got some paperwork here. You go on."

He turned and wheeled away. I wondered if something in particular was bothering him tonight. Calvin was an insomniac at the best of times, but now he looked worried. Maybe it was just the strain of turning the field work over to me and a new girl. He wanted to retire, but I didn't think he seemed cut out for the crossword-and-shuffleboard lifestyle.

I finished up, drove home, refreshed Bandit's food and water, then sprawled across my bed, watching the slow rotation of my ceiling fan. It was hot in my apartment, especially as summer approached, and the window unit sucked electricity like a black hole, so I kept it on low to save money.

The rough day led to bad dreams, as they often did.

In this one, I was a kid again, in my childhood home, which was filled with smoke and heat. My long-lost dog, a golden retriever named Frank, was leading me through the fire. I kept my hand on his furry back, because the smoke burned my eyes and I could barely see him.

We descended the stairs, toward the enormous flames devouring the first floor of my house. As we reached the last step, the man appeared in front of us, cutting off our escape.

He was handsome, like movie-star handsome, with a long mop of blond hair and chiseled features, his face clean-shaven. He wore a sable frock coat with a matching silk cravat and a fire-red vest, as though he'd just stepped out of the middle of the ninetenth century.

The only unnatural detail was his eyes. The irises were red, like his vest—but not _glowing_ red or anything so dramatic. It was as if red were a perfectly normal eye color.

His grin was sly, almost a leer as he looked me over.

"You belong to me," he said, his voice a mellow, deep sound over the crackling wood of burning furniture and walls. "You will not forget me."

He opened his left hand, and a gout of flame erupted from it, like a magic trick.

"Come with me," he said. "We belong together."

Then the jet of flame swelled and billowed toward me, engulfing me and the dog before racing up the stairs toward my parents' room. I prayed my parents had already escaped the burning house.

I woke with a start in my bed, disoriented and confused until I remembered when and where I was—an adult woman now, living alone in a small brick loft lined with hex symbols.

Bandit gave a concerned yowl and bonked his head against my chin. I petted the cat and began to cry. I sobbed softly until I fell asleep again. This time, it was mercifully dark and dreamless.

# Chapter Sixteen

The next day was a Friday, and Stacey and I rode out to a potential client's home, an old brick townhouse on Oglethorpe Street. We traced the groaning, moaning sounds in their walls to a portion of the basement ceiling that had begun to sag, putting heavy pressure on the water pipes. Plumbing and electrical problems are a common source of false alarms from the ghost-happy sorts.

We called it an early afternoon, since I didn't particularly feel like typing up the Treadwell report yet. I could do that at home, anyway.

I had a pretty great plan for the evening, which was to walk down to Gallery Cafe, order an iced thai coffee, and sit out at one of the little tables looking across the street at Chippewa Park. I would catch up on some work reading, specifically the last two issues of the _International Journal of Psychical Studies_.

The journal had been published for more than a hundred years, beginning as a niche periodical for professors sharing their research into telekinesis, hauntings, and Spiritualist activities like seances and automatic writing.

Over time, the academic community of parapsychologists grew smaller and smaller—sometime in the seventies and eighties, embarrassed university administrators began pulling funding from ghost and ESP research—so the journal had evolved to appeal to a more promising market of lay people ranging from ghost-hunting hobbyists to UFO conspiracy theorists. The digital edition pulses with ads for bottled genies, ghost-detecting powder, and zombie survival gear.

Reading the journal today requires a little bit of sorting wheat from chaff—okay, a _lot_ of sorting wheat from chaff—but it's still the only place that publishes serious research into spectral activity. Right alongside the latest Bigfoot sighting, of course.

I began to read about a team who had investigated an allegedly haunted castle in England, but I ended up reading an unauthorized biography of Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders. Hey, I can't work all the time.

Saturday was not a day off. In fact, I made Stacey meet me at the office at six a.m., which was unnecessarily early—I was sort of hazing the new kid, I guess. It all backfired when I realized it meant I had to be at work early, too.

We went to work moving the heavier equipment, like the stamper, out of the van to save gasoline on our long upcoming trip. We took out the cameras so they wouldn't be unnecessarily jostled on the road. All we left inside was the array of built-in monitors and the trap rack, which had been emptied except for the one holding Mercy.

Our destination was about two hundred miles away, westward across the broad, sun-drenched coastal plain, far from modern civilization. I drove us out of Savannah and into the pine forests of the hinterlands.

"You forgot to tell me where we're going," Stacey said.

"Goodwell."

"What's that? A town?"

"It's a really lively place," I said. "Maybe we'll grab lunch at a trendy new spot."

"But you said we were doing ghost disposal."

"If there's time." I pressed the accelerator and turned on the radio.

The view alongside the highway for the next three hours went like this: trees, cows, cotton, pecan and peach groves, cows, tobacco, corn, hay, cows, cow pastures, and cows. The view was sprinkled with old barns and tin-roofed sheds, the occasional lone, scorched chimney in a field, and some cows. Many of the towns were gas-station hamlets with a couple of whitewashed storefronts, though the really bustling places featured a Hardee's or a Dairy Queen.

Amateur mistake: I'd forgotten my MP3 player for the van, so we were stuck with plain old radio. This was not easy when Stacey thought modern country was the bee's pajamas, and half the stations in the area played nothing but. Far too much Taylor Swift was heard that day.

"So how did you get into this work?" Stacey asked, when I'd turned down the radio to mouse-whisper volume. Unfortunately, by removing the music, I'd opened the floodgates for conversation instead, and it seemed she was going to lead with some personal questions.

"I saw a ghost when I was fifteen," I told her.

"Really?" Her eyes brightened. "What kind?"

"A dangerous kind."

"Where?"

"At my house. My parents' house." I looked out the window. A pair of horses, one black and one brown, grazed near a pond in a field bright with wildflowers.

"What happened? Did you get rid of it?"

"Sort of. It's trapped now, anyway. Look, Stacey!" I pointed out the window as another pasture rolled into view. "Cows!"

I guess she took my not-so-subtle hint to change the subject, because she started filling me in on the latest _Project Runway_ instead.

We turned off onto semi-scenic Route 230 through Unadilla, another town where the storefronts were empty and only the churches appeared to still be in business. That was the last town we would see.

The roads grew progressively worse, bumpy and full of potholes. By the time we reached Goodwell, there were weeds growing up through the streets.

If Goodwell ever had a sign announcing itself and welcoming folks to town, it's been gone for years, maybe fallen over and devoured by weeds along the roadside somewhere. It was a town that had grown up by a mill on the Flint River. The mill itself was now just a roofless, asymmetrical stone ruin.

I stopped at the central crossroads in town, among a handful of boarded-up brick buildings. The gas station was so old that the pumps were mechanical rather than digital, and high grass had grown up all around them. A railroad track ran through town, but given the size of the pines sprouting between the rails, it was obvious nothing had come down the track in years, probably decades.

"There's nothing here," Stacey said, looking around at the dilapidated little town.

"Almost nothing." I smiled and pulled around the corner. The old white church was crumbling, with pieces of its outer wall rotten away to reveal the timber bones beneath.

Behind the church lay the graveyard, enclosed by a waist-high brick fence with a wrought-iron gate. Rows of oaks with spreading canopies cast shadows over tall weeds and wildflowers, among which you could spot an occasional little granite gravestone, if you looked hard enough.

I parked next to the gate and stepped out of the van.

"Why are we way out here?" Stacey hopped out and glanced around. The empty town lay silent in every direction, a few of the buildings already half-eaten by kudzu vines. "This is kind of creepy, Ellie."

"I'll tell you why," I said, opening the back door of the van. "The graveyard has a good, sturdy brick wall and a gate that should remain standing for a long time. Want to grab the trap for me?"

Stacey lifted the trap out of the rack, and I slammed the door. She winced. The slam was startlingly loud in the quiet town, and few crows squawked and flew off from a nearby roof.

We walked to the cemetery's front gate, and I heard a distant rumble. The day had grown overcast, and low, ominous gray clouds filled the sky.

I thumbed through my keys to find the one marked Master Lock, and I slid it into the gleaming padlock holding the gate closed.

"Wait, how do you have a key?" Stacey asked.

"Who do you think put the new lock on there?" I pushed the gate, and it squealed open. I led Stacey into the shadowy graveyard, along weed-choked traces of gravel that used to be a path. Saplings, thorns, and other brush had sprouted among rows of headstones. "I think I'm the only one who ever comes out here. I certainly hope so."

"Do you bring all your captured ghosts here?"

"It's ideal," I said. "An abandoned cemetery in an isolated ghost town. The nearest town is twenty miles from here. It's a perfect wildlife sanctuary for ghosts." I stepped under the heavy, leafy arms of an old oak tree. A bench was barely visible beneath it. I pushed aside some thorny brambles growing around it.

Another ghost trap lay open among the weeds under the bench, its lid lying beside it. I picked it up. Written in black marker on a slice of red tape at the top was the name SAMUEL BRASWELL.

"Did that ghost escape from his trap?" Stacey asked.

"Nope. The ghosts we bring here get released."

"Seriously? Is that safe?"

"Remember, we're dealing with conscious beings here, or at least semiconscious ones. They usually can't escape the lead-glass jar at the center of the trap. Unless they're very dangerous, it's cruel to lock them in a trap forever. They could be stuck for centuries, or even longer." I tapped the empty trap I'd retrieved. "Mr. Braswell here was a dirty old ghost—he liked to rummage through women's underwear and sock drawers, or show up nude in their mirrors. Can you imagine stepping out of your shower to see a transparent, saggy old man watching you from the medicine cabinet?"

"And he's out running around?" Stacey cast a worried look at the deep shadows of the graveyard, which only grew gloomier as the heavy clouds darkened overhead.

"He wasn't violent. He never attacked anybody, never even touched anybody. As long as they aren't violent, we can release them here. Graveyards like this—an abandoned graveyard in a ghost town—have some kind of, I don't know, emotional or spiritual gravity that keeps them here. We don't know why it works, exactly, but it works."

"You don't think Mercy is dangerous?" She looked uncertainly at the sealed trap in her hands. "She attacked us!"

"Only when I deliberately taunted her. She hadn't attacked Lexa or anyone else. She acted like she was just trying to scare them away, being territorial about the house. Even when she attacked me, she didn't do any permanent damage. She's not a biter or a scratcher, or..." I hesitated, then I said it. "Or a burner."

"A burner? Is that what it sounds like?"

"Yeah. A lot of the ghosts you'll encounter have some level of psychokinetic ability. They can throw glasses or slam doors. If they can do that, they can also physically attack people. On a rare occasion, you might be unlucky enough to meet a _pyrokinetic_ ghost instead, one who can start fires. Usually, those are ghosts who died in fires themselves."

"It sounds like you've met one."

"I have." Ready for a subject change, I put Samuel the Dirtball's empty trap down on the bench and took Mercy's trap in my hands. I popped open the panel on top with my thumbnail. Inside was a little mechanical dial with numbers at the edges. I cranked it to 2, then tossed it under the bench where the other trap had been. "In two hours, a cartridge of gas is going to fire and blow open the lid. You want to be out of here before it opens, because the confused ghost might glom onto you. That's the only ride out of this cemetery."

Leaves rustled around us. The wind was picking up, and the air smelled like rain.

"So that's it? We can leave now?" Stacey asked. The graveyard seemed to be making her uncomfortable, but I understood. I definitely wouldn't want to be there after sunset, when so many of the spirits I'd captured began to stir. They'd probably react like convicts who'd found their arresting officer wandering around the prison.

"We can leave." I picked up the empty trap and examined it. We'd have to check it for water damage, but it looked reusable.

Calvin called us on the drive home.

"Ellie," he said, "I just got off the phone with Anna Treadwell. She's very upset."

"Why? I haven't even sent their bill yet."

"She says things have taken a turn for the worse, and I mean _much_ worse, Ellie. Noises all over the house, screaming, destruction of property."

"I definitely trapped Mercy," I said, looking at the trap with a sinking feeling. "They must have another ghost. A house that old—"

"You'd better get over there now."

"We're three hours away!"

"You can do it in two. Fix this, Ellie." He hung up on me.

I hate it when an open-and-shut case fails to shut.

"Let's get moving," I said, which was just in time anyway, because the clouds had begun to spill a light rain, and it didn't look like it would stay light for long.

"What's wrong?" Stacey asked, while I stomped down the gravel path to the gate. "You look like somebody kicked you in the stomach."

"We have to go back to the Treadwell house," I said. "It was more haunted than we realized."

# Chapter Seventeen

It rained and rained the entire way home, pounding on the roof of the van and sloshing down the windshield too fast for the aged wipers. Visibility was poor, but fortunately we were traveling a highway through the middle of nowhere, which makes for pretty light traffic.

The storm surrounded us all the way to Savannah, unfortunately, where it was dark as night even though it was afternoon, and raging rapids flooded the gutters.

When we reached the Treadwell home, Anna opened the door, looking tense, like a woman who'd just stepped out of a shouting match.

"You made it worse!" Dale shouted, entering the hallway behind her before she could say a word. He had an open beer in his hand, and from the slurred sound of his voice, it wasn't his first. His sixth or seventh, maybe. "It's all worse!"

Down the hall, Lexa sat on the steps, peering around the corner at us.

"What happened?" I asked, looking at Anna instead of her husband.

"The house was quiet after you left Thursday night," Anna said. "Peaceful. But on Friday, the workers were here late finishing the hallway, and then--"

"All hell broke loose!" Dale shouted, sagging and bumping his hip on the dining room table as he leaned against it. The table was blocking the security door again. He set his beer down and heaved the table to one side of the hall, audibly scratching up the hardwood. His beer can toppled over in the process, spilling foamy brew all over the tabletop.

Dale didn't appear to notice. Rather than clean up his beer, he staggered toward the security door and grasped the heavy deadbolt. Lexa watched him from the stairs nearby, saying nothing.

"Dale, don't open that!" Anna shouted, but he ignored her. I heard the rusty scream of the lock, and then Dale pulled the door open, but the hallway into the main house was too dark for me to see anything. I didn't want to go running over there until I knew what was happening.

"What happened when the workers were here Friday night?" I asked Anna.

"You may as well see for yourself." She gestured toward the doorway, and walked alongside me as I went. "They were just packing up—they're supposed to come back Monday and start on the kitchen, but I don't think they will. Just as they were leaving, they said every door in the hallway slammed shut, like something wanted to trap them inside. I heard it, too. Loud bangs that shook the house, just like after that fake funeral."

"Yeah," Dale said as we approached him. He glared at me. " _Just_ like that."

"They had to force a door open to escape," Anna said.

"Hey, Lexa!" Stacey did a big smile-and-wave, still trying to charm the little girl.

"Hey." Lexa looked at her sandals, as if trying to dodge attention.

"After the doors slammed...this happened." Anna led me through the doorway.

The hallway, which had been on its way to a new, modern look last time we'd been here, now resembled a bomb-cratered war zone. Holes the size of bowling balls dented both walls, and the new molding and a portion of the ceiling had been cracked and shattered.

"They said the holes just appeared one after the other, like something was making footprints on the walls," Anna whispered. "Something huge and invisible that didn't care about gravity. They ran out of here. I only got the story later, over the phone."

"So much for your ghost trap." Dale slumped against the door. His face said he wanted to punch my lights out, but his swaying stance said he was more likely to barf all over me. Neither option appealed.

"We did remove Mercy Cutledge from your home," I said. "It's possible that, in doing so, we awoke something else. A house like this has layers of history." I didn't exactly want to go into Captain Marsh and his love of whiskey, opium, and prostitutes—not with Lexa close by, listening in on every word.

"Yeah," Dale snorted. "Now you sound like this mechanic I knew back in Chicago. Go in for a lube job, he'll always just happen to find you need a new transmission or some expensive work like that. Like clockwork." Dale tried to punctuate this with another swig of beer, and looked surprised to discover he was no longer holding one. He wandered off into the kitchen.

"There's more," Anna said. "After they left, we heard things from the main house. Banging, crashing, yelling. Off and on all night. This morning, I found the medicine cabinet in our master bath was shattered. I walked in there in my bare feet and almost cut myself up. The sink was full of glass and pills. It looked like somebody had opened and dumped out every pill bottle, from the aspirin to Dale's prescription back medicine. All mixed in with little bits of glass. I had to throw it all away."

"I'm sorry," I said. "That sounds terrifying."

"We're still pretty shaken up."

"Have you had any more trouble with this door?" I stepped one foot back over the threshold of the security door so I could glance over at Lexa, too.

"No, but we've had it barricaded," Anna said. "The bolt did stay in place all night, I guess. It didn't keep them from demolishing my bathroom, though, did it?"

"We're dealing with a different ghost now," I said. "It might not care about that door at all."

"The other lady's gone," Lexa said softly, nodding. "These new things are worse."

"Have you seen another ghost, Lexa?" Stacey asked.

Lexa shook her head. "But I've heard them. And they're worse than the lady. They're scarier."

"Has anything else happened over here in the east wing?" I asked Anna. "Or has everything else been in the main house?"

"It's hard to say where all the sounds are coming from. It seems like they're mostly over there, but I can't be sure." Anna shivered. "The voices are the most disturbing. You can't make out the words, but they sound like people talking to each other."

"What about the main house? Was anything else damaged over there?"

"I wouldn't know. We haven't really gone exploring. The problems we already have are overwhelming. I'm scared to see what happens next," Anna said.

"We'll go exploring for you. Stacey, let's grab some gear." I gestured for Stacey to follow me out to the van.

"Can you get rid of the new ghost, too?" Lexa asked as we walked past.

"I'm sure we can," I told her. "We just have to learn more about it."

"We'll take care of it," Stacey said. She extended her hand toward Lexa. "Hey, cheer up! Give me five."

Lexa reluctantly slapped Stacey's hand. Stacey winked at her and gave her a thumbs-up, but Lexa didn't seem comforted by Stacey's attempts to lighten things up.

We didn't have much in the van, since we'd unloaded it that morning. Our tactical flashlights were there, and so was my toolbox, so I grabbed my Mel Meter night vision goggles and handed the thermal ones to Stacey.

"My own goggles! Finally!" Stacey said.

"Hey, I'm just sharing," I told her. "Be careful with my stuff."

Soon, we were stepping through the security door again, into the freshly wrecked hallway of the main house. My instruments showed a lower temperature and higher EMF activity, enough to indicate a background haunting. I could feel it, too, like cold spiders crawling under my skin.

I did not want to walk any deeper into that house, but I put on my bravest face. I'd also put on my leather jacket, because it looked like this new ghost liked to get destructive.

We did a room-by-room check, but most of the first-floor rooms looked as we remembered, though the air felt dark and heavy. We did not go down into the cellar—after the asylum basement, we wanted to avoid dark underground places as long as we could. We didn't have to say anything out loud. It took no more than a look between Stacey and me to agree on avoiding it for now.

We reached the foyer last, and found sawdust and broken chunks of wood scattered on the floor just below the walkway.

Stacey turned her flashlight beam to the second-floor walkway above us.

"Whoa, looks like somebody came through with a chainsaw," Stacey said.

Where there had been a single broken baluster, now several of them lay shattered, and the railing they supported was broken into pieces.

"Let's get a closer look," I said, and Stacey followed me up the stairs. I avoided using the railing just to be safe, though the portion of it alongside the stairway didn't seem damaged. Only the balusters along the second-floor walkway were destroyed.

"What a mess," Stacey said. The broken baluster pieces lay everywhere. It would have been easy for an unsuspecting person to trip over them and topple through the broken railing to the first floor.

On the second floor, the temperatures were lower and the EMF readings were high, two to three milligaus, a strong sign of a haunting.

The first thing we noticed was that the doors with rows of rusty nails stood wide open, making me think of Venus flytraps waiting to snap shut on an unsuspecting victim. Stacey and I had been careful to close them on our last visit, and the Treadwells said none of them had been up here since then. It was possible some of the workers had come upstairs, but it sounded like they'd been focused on the first floor.

Inside the rooms, furniture had been moved and closet doors had been thrown wide open. This was most obvious in the room with the broken syringes, where the single bed had slid from the corner to the center of the room and come to a halt in a diagonal position. In the other room that had previously been nailed closed, hangers and rotten dresses had left the closet and were scattered all over the floor, and the old blankets had been stripped from the bed and left in a tangled heap on the floor.

It looked as if some mischievous entity had run through the second floor, gleefully throwing everything into disarray, but we didn't find any major structural damage.

"I think the spirit just wants to destroy the new work, the remodeling," I said.

"Then it's probably going to hit the east wing much harder," Stacey said. "The family needs to watch out."

We reached the slatted door that opened onto the steep, dim staircase to the third floor. That door was flanked by closets on either side. We checked them both, but they held nothing beyond cobwebs and empty shelves littered with dead spiders.

"Who goes first?" Stacey whispered, shining her light up into the darkness and spiderwebs of the third floor.

"I'll do it." I clicked off my flashlight and slid my night vision goggles over my eyes. I started up the stairs, using my hands for balance. It really was more like a ladder than a staircase.

The steps creaked under my weight as I climbed up. The night vision showed me where I was going in lurid shades of glowing green. Unfortunately, it showed me a world of trundling palmetto bugs and spiders lurking in their webs. I used my unlit flashlight to clear a path for Stacey.

"How does it look?" she whispered.

"Fine. A little icky."

The stairs flattened out into a weird landing halfway up to the third floor. Weird because it was sort of like a short, narrow hallway. To my right, another steep staircase continued at a right angle to the first. To my left, the hallway extended a few feet and hit a dead end. An old end table sat there, with a vase of long-dead flowers parked on top.

"Where are you going?" Stacey whispered behind me.

"Just looking." I knocked on the dead-end wall. It sounded solid to me. I turned to start up the second flight, which was as narrow and unfriendly as the first, and possibly even steeper.

They led up to a rectangular trap door in the ceiling, as big as your average interior doorway but turned on its side. I took a breath, then pushed it open. If any inhuman things crouched in the darkness above, waiting to eat my face, then the loud rusty hinges of the trap door alerted them that I'd arrived.

The third floor had originally been nothing but the sprawling master suite. It was smaller than the second, and it had more furniture and bric-a-brac, but less graffiti, as if vandals hadn't made their way up here over the years, or something had made them leave fast.

To one side of us, we found a large, round den with wide steps spiraling away to the second floor. We were in one of the house's turrets, and narrow windows looked down on us from high above. Old furniture was pushed against one wall and draped in sheets. The large, attractive central fireplace, built to resemble a thick tree growing up through the middle of the room, had been plugged with bricks.

We checked a smaller room that might have originally been an office or other side room, but now it looked like a storage room. Antique lamps and odds and ends of furniture were crammed inside. An external lock had been added to the door, so this had probably been turned into a separate bedroom during the boarding-house years.

When we opened the door to the former master bedroom, Stacey and I both cringed and stepped back a little. The smell of rot was overpowering.

It was cold, just sixty degrees, and the EMF reading spiked up to 4.1.

The room was immense, with a very high, round ceiling, clearly the house's biggest turret, the underside painted with the remnants of a flaking mural that looked like something from ancient Greece, horned fauns chasing blushing nymphs. Or it could have been goat demons eating little girls. The painting was pretty deteriorated.

The room was still partially furnished, with a king-size canopied bed and a wing chair and a desk by the fireplace, plus an old armoire near the closet. Dark mold grew up along the posters of the bed, all over the sheets, and a huge, roughly circular patch grew on the ceiling above the bed. Runners of mold ran across the ceiling and down the closed double doors of the closet.

"Ew." Stacey pinched her nose against the stink. "This is going to take somebody a long time to clean up."

"I wonder if the roof's leaking," I said. "I thought the roofers were done, though."

"They need to recheck their work." Stacey walked to the picture window overlooking the front yard, then turned to the bathroom. "It's pretty foul in here, too."

"More mold?"

"No, just a grimy tub and a toilet and sink that haven't been cleaned in forever. Marble tiles, though, and some nice colored-glass windows. It was pretty luxurious in its day." Stacey shook her head. "That day is now long gone."

"Can you have a look with your thermal?" I asked Stacey.

"Sure." Stacey dropped her goggles and looked over the bedroom. "The cold is everywhere, but there's a particularly cold spot over the bed. The closet looks extra cold, too."

Great. I walked over to the double doors and eased them open. I had a bad feeling about it, but there was nothing inside except more mold and the ever-present spiderwebs.

"Empty," I said. As I turned my back, though, I heard something. It was like a male voice, unnaturally deep, but I couldn't make out the words it said. It lasted about three seconds. I looked in the closet again. "Did you hear that, Stacey?"

"Hear what?" She joined me. "It's cold in there, but I don't see any obvious shapes or a center to it..."

Something heavy crashed downstairs. Voices rose through the floorboards—a shouting, angry-sounding man with a deep voice like the one I'd just heard from the closet. A woman screamed, and then her scream broke into cackling laughter.

We ran to the stairs, with me in the lead. I hesitated before stepping through to the second-floor hallway, because I heard a couple of voices nearby. They were distorted, but it sounded like a fast-paced conversation between two women. Stacey took my hand and squeezed it, letting me know she heard it, too.

The voices passed by, and I glimpsed some movement in my night vision, but nothing very clear. They were like ripples in the air.

I stepped out of the doorway to watch them ripple down the hall and disappear.

We looked into doorways, trying to find the source of the crash. In the broken-syringe room, the bed had moved again, and was now shoved against the window. I barely had time to notice that, though.

A figure knelt on the floor, transparent but thinly visible in night vision. He was a scrawny, shirtless man, with track marks all over his arms and at least a dozen syringes stabbed deep into his back, his shoulders, and his arms and legs.

As he became more visible, I realized he was _licking_ at the two broken syringes on the floor, as though desperate to get something out of them.

"Stacey, are you seeing anything?" I whispered.

"Major cold spot on the floor by the wall." Stacey pointed at the same figure I was seeing. "It's starting to get clearer..."

In my night vision view, the transparent green man stopped his licking and looked up at us. I couldn't see much of his face, but a needle was stuck through his abnormally long tongue.

He vanished. That either meant he was gone, retreating into the gray zone where ghosts go when we can't find them, or he was coming for us.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter.

I felt a rush of cold wind, then an impact on my breastbone that sent me tumbling across the hallway. Stacey screamed as something pushed her against the wall, then upward along it.

I lifted off my goggles while clicking my flashlight on. I stabbed the intense white beam at the empty air in front of Stacey.

There was an irritated hissing sound, along with a partial apparition. I could see one side of his face, plus a bit of his forearm and the hand pinning Stacey against the wall. A syringe was stabbed through his wrist like a crucifixion nail.

The half-face turned to me, glaring at the light with its dark, empty eye socket.

I wished I'd been prepared for more than a quick look-see around the house.

"Leave her alone!" I shouted, because there's nothing more intimidating than a girl with thick glasses armed with a flashlight.

A second, transparent hand materialized and lashed out at me. The syringe embedded in its wrist scraped along the sleeve of my jacket. Thanks, leather.

It turned back to Stacey, lifting her higher on the wall. She kicked out at it with her tennis shoes, but there was nothing solid to kick. This is why fighting with a ghost is totally unfair.

Then, naturally, she screamed: "Ellie! Help me!"

I didn't have my iPod, or I would have shoved some "Ode to Joy" down his creepy maw. I didn't have anything I needed.

I ran back into the room where we'd found him, and I carefully picked up the broken pieces of syringe, trying not to stick myself with the needle or broken glass. That way, I'd be less likely to pick up some weird disease and die.

"Hey, did you want these?" I held out the pieces of syringe. The pale half-face turned to me, and the half of its mouth I could see plunged into a wide-open frown, as if expressing horror. One of the hands reached for me.

I turned and flung all the pieces down the hall. This brought a faint, startled cry from the ghost, who dropped Stacey to the floor, began to chase the pieces of its syringe, then vanished.

I barely noticed all of this, because I was looking at the shadowy woman at the end of the hall. She was so solid that I initially thought I was looking at Anna. The woman watched as the broken bits of syringe landed at her feet and scattered.

She was a small, mousy woman with dark hair, wearing a high-collared white dress that did not belong in this century. She looked up at me, then vanished.

I recognized her from the old photograph—Eugenia Marsh, Captain Marsh's wife, who had died in 1901.

I couldn't dwell on this, though, because I had to turn around and check on Stacey. She was recovering, or at least rising unsteadily onto her feet while rubbing her throat.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"It got me here." She showed me a red scratch near her collar bone. It looked like it had been drawn with a needle. "Can we go yet, or...?"

"We can go," I said. "We're not hanging around here without our equipment. We need to figure out what's going on." I looked back toward Eugenia Marsh, but she was gone. The syringe's needle rolled back and forth on the floor, as though someone were trying to pick it up but couldn't quite manage it. Our junkie ghost, I guessed.

We walked the other way, moving carefully around the shattered balusters, and hurried down the stairs.

Voices echoed from the second-story hall after we left. It sounded like they were arguing with each other.

# Chapter Eighteen

"You have a multiple haunting," I told Anna and Dale Treadwell. Stacey and I sat on the couch in their living room. Anna sat in the matching loveseat, while Dale occupied his usual recliner. Lexa had been sent up to her room. A golf game was muted on the television. "We encountered at least three, possibly four ghosts upstairs. And a presence in the master bedroom. How long has that mold been there?"

"Mold?" Dale sat up in his recliner. "Where?"

I told them what we'd seen.

"Roofers probably screwed it up," he said, shaking his head and looking grim. It was an expensive problem. "I'm calling those half-wits first thing, when we're done here."

"What kind of ghosts?" Anna asked.

"Some were just voices," I said. "Women. There was a man who looked like a heroin addict..." Anna grew pale as I recounted the attack, some of which had been caught on Stacey's handheld camera. Stacey had dropped it when the thing grabbed her, which unfortunately had left it pointed at a baseboard the whole time. "The other, I think, may have been Eugenia Marsh, the captain's wife. I'll look at her picture again to check."

"Can you capture all these ghosts?" Anna asked, and Dale rolled his eyes and swigged his beer. Being drunk seemed to numb him to the seriousness of their situation. Or else he was just unhappy with the quality and speed of our service.

"It will take some time and research," I replied. "The problem is that this was a boarding-house for about thirty years, and a lot of these ghosts might be transients, people who were just passing through town. That makes them hard to identify, and it's much easier to trap a ghost if you know something about who they were in life. That's why we captured Mercy so easily. Anyway, we'll comb through the police records and obituaries again to see what we can find, but that'll take a while." I was disheartened to think of how much more time it would take to clear the place out, ghost by ghost.

"How long is a while?" Dale asked.

"As soon as we can, Mr. Treadwell. We'll dig into the research today. I'd like to set up another observation for this evening, with every camera we have watching every corner of the house. There's so much going on, I need some kind of overview of what's happening here. We'll watch the house all night and see what we can find. I promise you, we'll get rid of these things as fast as humanly possible."

Neither of them looked particularly pleased by what I was saying. I couldn't really blame them.

A high-pitched scream sounded from upstairs.

"Lexa!" Anna was on her feet immediately, followed by Stacey and me. Dale was half-rolling, half-leaning out of his chair when we left the room.

By the time I made it upstairs, Anna was already carrying Lexa out of the hallway bathroom, wrapped in a large towel. Anna had moved with superhuman speed, the way mothers can when their children are threatened.

Lexa was bawling and sobbing, her face pressed against her mother's neck.

"What's wrong?" Anna asked. "Lexa, what happened?"

"It got me," Lexa said. "I was just taking a bath, and it grabbed me. It hurt."

"Where?" Anna asked.

"My leg." Lexa raised her red, crying face, then lifted the edge of her towel. Three red scratch-like marks ran from her lower thigh to her calf, and they were growing darker and redder by the second.

"Did you see what grabbed you, Lexa?" I asked.

"No. I only heard it." She lay her cheek on her mother's shoulder. "It was a man. He laughed when he did it."

I walked past them into the bathroom. The bath was full, and an issue of Seventeen magazine lay on the tile floor beside it. I saw bottles of liquid soap and shampoos that had toppled over into the bath, but nothing else out of the ordinary. The room wasn't especially cold. Whatever had attacked her didn't seem to be in the room anymore.

When I stepped out, Dale had arrived, and was sort of trying to comfort his daughter by patting her on the shoulder. Stacey was trying reassure the girl, too, but I don't think she was making much progress.

"I don't understand," Dale said, shaking his head.

"Mr. and Mrs. Treadwell, you may want to spend the night somewhere else until we can fix this," I said.

"We don't have anywhere to go," Dale said.

"We can find a hotel," Anna told him.

"That's expensive. For how many days?" Dale looked at me.

"I can't say for sure, but we'll be as quick as we can."

"It's too much money." Dale shook his head, and Anna gave him a look so sharp and angry I'm surprised it didn't leave welts on his face.

"We're going to a hotel," Anna insisted. She carried her daughter into her room. "Come on, Lexa, let's pack our bags."

Dale watched them go, then turned to look at me. I expected him to make some more remarks about how much all of this was costing him, but now I saw sadness in his eyes and droopy frown.

"Listen, my severance package..." he began, then shook his head and start over. "Most of what we've got is tied up in this house. I lost my job, and Anna wanted to do this, so...what I'm saying is, we can't afford to move. We can't afford for this bed and breakfast idea of hers to fail. We'll be busted."

He looked helpless, almost like a child. I thought of their luxury cars and the pricey designer clothes Lexa wore. This was a family accustomed to easy prosperity, not ready for the rug to be pulled out from under them. Dale had a sad, anxious look, a man worried about failing to provide for and protect his family.

"I'm sorry." I patted him on the arm. "We'll take care of the ghosts. We will. You just take care of your wife and daughter, okay?"

He nodded, sniffling a little.

There wasn't much else Stacey and I could do without our gear, so we left soon after that. Dale gave us keys to the front and side doors in case he and his family were gone when we returned.

We drove back to the office, pulled in through the garage door at the back, and started loading gear. It wasn't exactly pleasant to unload the whole thing that morning only to reload it in the afternoon. My arms ached.

As we were getting started, Calvin wheeled out of his office. A young man walked beside him, with dark hair and those glasses with the black hipster frames. He was somewhere around my age. He looked kind of cute, actually. I hoped he was a new client.

"Ellie, Stacey, meet Jacob Weiss," Calvin said.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Weiss," I said in my best meeting-a-client voice. I held out my hand and he shook it. "How can we help you today?"

"I'm, uh..." He shifted awkwardly on his feet and looked at Calvin.

"Jacob is the psychic I've been telling you about," Calvin said. "I called him in to assist on the Treadwell case."

I wanted to punch or kick something, or maybe just scream and tear at my hair, dramatic stuff like that. Calvin had sprung the psychic on me like this because he knew I was too polite to complain about it right in front of the guy. I hate Calvin sometimes.

I wanted to protest that we didn't need any help, but it was kind of hard to make that case at the moment, with everything going wrong.

"The Treadwells have a multiple haunting," I said.

"Let's talk in my office," Calvin said. "Psychics aren't supposed to get advance information."

Sounded good to me. No reason to feed the supposed psychic a bunch of info he could just regurgitate later.

When the door was closed to Calvin's office—a place lined with bookshelves crammed full of bundled clippings, file folders, and other paper randomness, plus overflowing cork billboards, like those serial-killer nests you see in movies where the killer collects all the evidence of his crimes—I said, "We don't need a psychic. Things aren't that desperate yet."

"Just tell me what happened today."

I quickly recounted what we'd seen at the house.

"It sounds like you could use a little extra help," Calvin said. "Just take him on your observation tonight. He can't hurt anything."

"He can get in the way."

"You're a pro, you can handle it," Calvin said.

I sighed. "Whatever. Do you still have that OxyContin prescription?" I knew he'd been taking it for pain at one point.

"I do, but I try to avoid using it. Why?"

"Got a couple extra for me?"

"Has the case got you down that badly?" Calvin had an amused smile.

"No, it's bait for the junkie ghost. He seemed like the most dangerous one there—I'll bet he's the one that smashed apart Anna's medicine cabinet. It would be nice if we could remove him, at least, while we try to figure out the rest."

"All righty." Calvin opened a desk drawer and rummaged through it, then found a brown medicine bottle and handed me a pair of pills. "Don't take 'em all in one place."

"Ha." I turned my back on him and walked out the office door.

"You," I said to Jacob, who stood with his hands in his pockets, like a kid waiting for instructions. "Help me load up the van. Stacey, I want you to read through all the information we have on the Treadwell house."

"I already did that," she complained.

"Do it again. But first, call up the former owners of the house and see if anyone will talk to you."

"I already did _that_ , too. Nobody called me back."

"Try again."

"Why don't any of them want to talk, anyway? I don't get it," Stacey said.

"That's normal. Most people who encounter a haunting want to forget about it. Plus, there's the guilt."

"Guilt?" Stacey asked.

"Imagine you've bought a house," Calvin said, "And later discovered it was inhabited by a dangerous or scary ghost. Now all you want to do is sell the house and escape the situation. Will you tell potential buyers about the ghost?"

"I see what you mean." Stacey shook her head and walked over to my cubicle, where there was a land line and stacks of photocopied information from the library and Historical Association, plus files sent over by Calvin's friends at the police department.

Jacob and I loaded all the equipment that would fit into the van—cameras, microphones, traps, the stamper, and other gear. I spoke to him very little beyond giving instructions, since I didn't really want him there in the first place. If he didn't like my cold attitude and wanted to leave, that would be great with me.

But the goofball just kept smiling while he worked, as if eager to help lift the heavy stuff. I had to admit it was convenient to have a guy on hand for the van-loading portion of the afternoon.

As we were finishing up, Stacey ran over, more or less hopping on the balls of her feet. I'd been vaguely aware of her voice as she used the phone at my desk. I knew from experience that calling former property owners to ask them about a ghost was typically a lot like throwing yourself against a brick wall again and again. The mansion had gone through a number of buyers over the past few decades, so she'd had a lot of calls to make.

"What are you so thrilled about?" I asked her.

"I got one!" Stacey beamed. "She's willing to talk. The staff never gave her my last message, I guess."

"Who is it?"

"Guess."

"Do I have to?"

"Aw, no fun." She raised her eyebrows. "Louisa Marsh. She said she'll tell us whatever we want to know if we go see her."

"Captain Marsh's grand-niece?" I asked.

"Technically, her father was Captain Marsh's grand-nephew," Stacey said. "I don't know if that makes her the great-grand-niece or what, but she's willing to chat."

"Good work, Stacey!" I said. It was a nice break. If we were going to speak with one former owner of the house, we couldn't do better than Louisa, who had lived there for thirty years. "When?"

"I set it up for tomorrow afternoon. She insisted we speak to her in person, though. It's kind of a drive, but..." Stacey shrugged.

"No, that's great." I slammed the back door of the van. "And we're all done here."

"So, do we go to the haunted house now?" Jacob asked.

"No, we don't go right now," I said. "What kind of experience do you even have, Jacob?"

"I've been training with Hattie Gardener. She lives off the coast of South Carolina, on one of the Gullah islands."

"She's a good woman and a strong psychic," Calvin said. "She doesn't travel much anymore, though."

"Okay. Well, Stacey and I have had a long day, so we're taking a dinner break," I told him. "You can drive separately and meet us at the Treadwell house later. There's no extra room in the van, anyway."

"Whatever you want," he said. He looked nervous.

I told Calvin good-bye, then Stacey and I drove away.

"He seems nice," Stacey said. "You don't like him, though, do you?"

"It's not even him. I don't like Calvin springing things on me. And I don't like working with psychics."

"Why not?"

I took a breath. "Well, there are three kinds of psychics: those who are genuine, those who are fake—some of them don't _know_ they're fake, though—and the ones who are kind of in between. They may have some abilities, but they aren't reliable. In the modern world, we have good scientific tools for finding ghosts. We don't need to call in the witch doctors."

Stacey nodded, taking that in. "So you don't think he'll help us?"

"I think he'll get in the way. That's one reason I wanted him to drive himself there. We'll let him do whatever he wants so I can tell Calvin we cooperated. Then we send him home before the real work begins."

"All right. Where are we eating? I'm starving."

# Chapter Nineteen

When we arrived at the Treadwell house, it was almost dusk. The family was gone.

Anna had left us a note wishing us luck, and Lexa had signed it, too. Nice girl. I hoped we could make her house safe for her.

When Jacob arrived, we led him in through the front doors instead of the side door. As far as he could see, the house might well be uninhabited, especially when his first sight of the interior was the graffiti-covered foyer with the shattered second-floor balustrade.

He, Stacey, and I each carried an armload of equipment. Stacey would be setting up cameras while Jacob toured the house gathering his psychic impressions, or at least making stuff up.

"Okay, that's weird," he said, just a few paces inside the hallway. "There's like a fading echo in here. There's really no spirits in this room, but there was something here."

Stacey made wide-eyes at me. _Lucky guess_ , I mouthed with my back to him.

Stacey gave an exaggerated shrug.

"Set something up in here," I told her. "Just one camera."

"Thermal or night?"

"Surprise me."

"So, hey, Jacob," Stacey said, while assembling a thermal on its tripod, "How did you get into being a psychic? Was it just always a thing for you?"

Great. Stacey was going to make small talk, totally wrecking my cold-shoulder approach to making Psychic Boy choose not to work with us.

"Hattie says I had to be born with it," Jacob replied. He was strolling the edges of the room, taking in the doorways, the rotten windows, the profane juvenile-delinquent scrawl painted on the walls. "She says I must have learned to close the door as a boy, but I don't remember anything like that. Maybe I closed the door _and_ blocked it out. My father definitely wouldn't have believed me if I'd started talking about ghosts."

I waited near the parlor door, my arms crossed. Stacey seemed to be taking her time.

"So what happened?"

"There was a plane crash about a year ago," he said. "I didn't die. Five of us lived. Just five. When I woke up in the middle of the Alps, still buckled into my seat, you know, I saw a crowd of people standing around me, talking. Then I saw their bodies all over the snow." Jacob shook his head. "I've been putting up with the spirits ever since. It's not what I wanted. I'm an accountant, I'm supposed to be studying for my CPA exam, not...whatever we're doing here."

"That's terrible!" Stacey looked up at him and stopped working. "Were any of your family or friends on the plane?"

He shook his head. "I was flying alone. I was going to meet some friends in Italy, but I had a layover in Berlin, and the plane from Berlin to Rome went down in the mountains."

"Wait, I remember that on the news. Only like five people..." Stacey trailed off. "I'm sorry. That's terrible."

"Yeah, I'm really sorry to hear that," I said.

"I wouldn't mind if we stopped talking about it," Jacob said, and she nodded.

We walked through the parlor and into the dining room, while Jacob kind of mumbled and nodded to himself. I held a digital voice recorder in one hand to take notes for me, and a flashlight in the other because it was already very dark inside the house.

Jacob raised his head, and his ears perked up like an alert dog's. He ran the rest of the way across the dining room, then rolled aside the door to the smoking room.

"Right here," he said, walking into the middle of it. "I can hear music, maybe a scratchy phonograph...men are talking. They're drinking, smoking, playing cards, dice...the dice are made of elephant ivory, he's very proud of that..." Jacob closed his eyes.

"Who's very proud?" I asked.

"The man at the center. Huge man, with a huge beard. They're all his guests. The men are inebriated, and there are women, too, but not their wives...they're more like. Oh. Wow." Jacob removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "I didn't know it was going to be that kind of party."

"What do you see?" I asked.

"Yeah, describe it in detail," Stacey added, with a wicked grin.

"They're prostitutes. No other reason they'd be doing _that_ with these fat old men." Jacob's eyes opened again. He strolled by the fireplace, with its elaborate scrollwork, still nodding to himself. "Yeah. I can smell the smoke, the perfume...can't you smell it?"

"Not personally." I nodded at Stacey to set up a night vision camera here.

Jacob had another strong reaction when we walked through the kitchen. He grabbed his stomach, nearly doubling over, and winced in pain.

"Jacob?" Stacey put her stuff down and ran over to put an arm around him. I hurried over.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Ugh. A woman, with a pain in her stomach. I think it killed her. I think she died here. Or she started to die here, and finished up there, in the master bedroom." He pointed toward the ceiling. "They carried her up there. The servants or whatever."

"She died in the house? Do you know her name?" I asked.

"No idea. A small woman, dark hair...very religious..."

I nodded. It sounded like Eugenia Marsh. Stacey set up another camera.

As we approached the second floor up the steep back stairs, Jacob make a sickened noise and put his hands to his head.

"What now?" Stacey asked.

"It's really bad up here," he said. "We should be careful."

"True." Stacey nodded, looking at me. She really wanted him to be a genuine psychic, I guess, or wanted me to believe it. I was still waiting and seeing, though.

"Okay. We can do this." Jacob took a deep breath, then continued up to the second-floor hallway, as though it took a great effort. We stayed close to him. I was a little better prepared for ghost attacks this time.

He paced back and forth in the hall, shaking his head and laughing a little.

"Oh, no," he finally said. "It's crazy. They're going in and out, flickering in and out of sight..." He clapped his hands. "Okay. Here's what we've got: I see a couple of drifter types, one of them's like a hobo from the 1920s...the next guy, he's a drug addict, bad, to the point that he hasn't let go of it even in death. But he can't get a fix, because he's dead. He's kind of a 1940s or 1950s guy, and he wears that kind of suit and fedora that everybody wore, even though he's basically homeless and he commits petty robberies...these guys aren't really from here, they're just passing through, only they're not, because they got caught here."

"Caught by what?" I asked.

Jacob raised a finger, telling me to be quiet. He certainly acted more commanding when he was being psychic. "You've got another big thug guy, his throat's cut...oh, and hookers, hookers, hookers. At least three of them, but they didn't know each other in life. They're from different times. Like one is kind of in a fringed-out flapper-style dress, and the other is in these, like, hot pants from the Seventies...yeah. There are a few different people here."

"Why are they here?" I asked. "What do they want?"

"They're...stuck. Oh, yeah. Something's holding them here, and it's not just trapping them. It can kind of control them, it has power over them. They're prisoners, though. They don't want to be here."

"What's holding them?"

"I can't..." He closed his eyes. "They don't want to talk about it. They're all shrinking away, back into the walls...they're running away from me." He looked at me again. "Well, they didn't like that."

He walked along, pointed to occasional rooms and saying "bad...bad...bad..." These included the two with the rows of nails in the doors. "They've all got a story. None of them expected to stay here when they came. It was like a net...a spiderweb, to catch stray people. Most of these weren't so bad in life, but now they're twisted and violent, they're under the spell of the house."

"Is there a way to free them?" I asked.

"I don't know."

We returned downstairs for more cameras, then took Jacob up to the third floor.

"Yeah, it's thick up here, isn't it? And cold," he said. "Some of the oldest ones stay up here. They barely look like people anymore, they're shriveled..."

Jacob stopped just inside the master bedroom, looking at the mold-encrusted bed, then up at the giant patch of dark mold on the ceiling high above it.

"This is that woman again, from the kitchen," he said. "She's defiant. The mold is her way of crying out, reaching out. She resists him more than the others, but she's tied here, too, by the same kind of...I want to say it's almost like a rope, a black rope anchoring each spirit to the darkness below." Jacob's head snapped around and he looked at me with a cold, solemn expression. "Does this house have a basement?"

"Yeah," I said. I didn't want to go down there.

After grabbing two more cameras, the three of us returned to the wine cellar door by the kitchen. We pushed it open. Rough-hewn steps led into the rock-lined darkness below.

"Who wants to go first?" Stacey asked, trying to make it sound funny, but it didn't. That cellar was creepy by anyone's standards.

"Let's get in and out fast." I started down the stairs, widening the lens on my flashlight so it changed from a narrow beam into a flood. This kind of made it a worse offensive weapon, as far as chasing ghosts away, but a better defensive one. Like a shield of light.

Each one of those rough old stairs just had to creak beneath me as I stepped on it. Every single one.

The cellar was unnaturally cool at the top of the steps, but felt like a deep freezer by the time I reached the bottom. My breath plumed out in front of me. I swear, if we could learn to harness and domesticate ghosts, we could save a ton on air conditioning, especially down here in the Deep South.

I wished I had my trusty Mel Meter or at least some kind of EMF meter with me, but I'd left that in my toolbox out in the foyer. I didn't want to give our supposed psychic any clues. I had to admit, though—he was hitting pretty close to home, as far as I could tell.

The walls were rocks held together with a massive amount of cement. It felt like the oldest part of the house, the one that probably hadn't been altered much since the original construction. No 1970s stovetops here, though there was an old wood-burning furnace, obviously long abandoned. Rusty tools, sheeted furniture, and crates and boxes filled the room, leaving only a few twisty paths through the clutter. A huge built-in floor-to-ceiling wine rack held nothing but dust and spiderwebs. The floor was paved with concrete and more river rocks.

I felt ill. Stacey didn't look too happy, either, but Jacob looked far worse, like he'd contracted a disease and was about to keel over dead.

"It was down here," he said. "But not exactly _here_. I can't explain. Is there a door? Another room?" Jacob sprang from his sickly slump and dashed along the walls, searching with his flashlight.

"Don't get too far away," I warned him. "I'll help you look."

As far as we could find, though, the cellar was a single large room. We even checked behind precarious heaps of boxes to see if any sort of passageway had been concealed over the years.

"I don't get it." Jacob kicked at the floor. "Maybe all the stuff was taken away, and that's why..."

"What stuff?" Stacey touched his shoulder, leaning in toward him. She was dangerously close to flirting with him, actually.

"He killed them," Jacob said. He squeezed Stacey's hand. "He brought them down here...somewhere right around here. It was a ritual thing, black magic. He thought killing them would extend his own life. The thing is...when he died, he didn't _stop_ the killing. There was a supply of people drifting through, and sometimes he would wake up and take one for his collection. Because he controls all the other ghosts." Jacob's eyes were bugging out, and he was sweating.

"Stop!" Stacey screamed. She drew her hand back from him. "Stop, I can see it!"

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"It was horrible," Stacey said, looking at me. "The migrant workers, the addicts and petty thieves, the prostitutes...people he thought nobody would miss. People he thought were no better than animals."

"Who?" I asked. "Who was he?"

Jacob shook his head. "Whatever he looked like in life, he's become so twisted and mutated. Now he's more like a festering tumor. That's how I see him. And all the other ghosts are stuck to him."

"Was it Captain Marsh?" I asked. "The man with the big beard you saw upstairs?"

"Could be," Jacob said. "He could be one of those guys from the smoking room, yeah, but he got into something dark...or something dark got into him." He stiffened. "We need to get out of here."

"Why?" I asked.

"We just do. It could get ugly."

"All right. Stacey, are those cameras ready?"

She nodded. She'd placed tripods with thermal and night vision, spacing them far enough apart that if one were to fall down, it wouldn't collide with the other. We would monitor them from the van outside.

We hurried upstairs. Stacey and I had been more or less unconsciously avoiding the basement throughout our investigation, and now I understood why. It was extremely creepy down there, and we'd both felt it. Maybe it was the center of everything happening in the house.

Jacob helped me carry the heavy stamper upstairs to the room where we'd found the broken syringes. I crushed up an OxyContin pill with the steel ridges that protruded in front of my flashlight lens, then dumped the powder into the ghost trap. I lit the three candles as an additional lure.

I set it to automatic—a ten-degree drop in temperature plus an EM spike would make it seal the trap, though I could still activate it with the remote if I wanted.

Then we walked back to the foyer, toward the front doors.

Jacob hesitated, tilting his head as though picking up a signal.

"The darkness that's here," he said. "It's welling up. Something was holding it down for a long time, but now it's been unleashed, and it's growing. The monsters will be coming out of the walls soon. I don't know who your clients are or what their plans are, but they should probably just tear this place down."

"Well, thanks for your advice," I said, after waiting to make sure he was finished. "And thanks for coming out. Have a safe drive home, all right?"

"You're not staying here, are you?" he asked.

"Not inside the house."

"Promise me you won't go in there," Jacob said. "Nobody should go in there, especially at night. Okay?"

"We promise." Stacey patted his arm. "Thanks."

Outside, where night had fully fallen now, Jacob pulled away in his fairly new gray Hyundai, the car of ultra-sensible people.

"I thought he was kind of amazing," Stacey said.

"He was okay," I said. "Let's get in the van. We still have work to do."

"Don't you ever get a chance to sleep?" she asked.

"Sure. In between cases."

She trudged after me to the van.

# Chapter Twenty

The array of monitors in our van is built behind the driver and shotgun seats. Two narrow, very uncomfortable bunks fold down from the walls, which is convenient for overnight trips, but you don't want to sleep on them unless you have absolutely no other choice. More comfortable options would include a park bench with a newspaper blanket, or a bed of slightly rusty nails.

They were good enough for now, though. We dropped them and sat down to watch the dozen small monitors, some of which periodically flipped viewpoints among cameras throughout the house.

"Do you think what he said is true?" Stacey asked. "Somebody was doing weird occult murders down in that basement?"

"I'd need more evidence than a psychic's word," I said.

"He was right about other stuff."

"Maybe." I settled back on my camping pillow.

The house was quiet for a while, but then things began to happen. First it was just small things—a door slowly swinging open or shut, a creak or a footstep, a cough. Then came the voices, here and there, murmuring too low to make out. Then a shout, a scream, and a loud crash that had no physical cause we could see.

"That poor little girl, Lexa," Stacey whispered. "Lying awake at night, hearing this from her bed."

I nodded.

A thermal camera in the second-floor hall caught the shape of an icy cold woman walk past, then vanish. Our night vision cameras showed suggestions of people moving in some of the rooms on the second and third floor, but they faded quickly.

"That's a lot of activity," I said after a couple of hours. "I don't know if I've ever seen a house this active."

Then two screens turned black.

"What were those?" I asked.

"Uh," Stacey said. "Yeah. Those were the cameras in the cellar."

"What happened? Did something knock them over?"

"Not that I saw. They just turned off."

"Okay." I stood up and stretched my legs. "Let's go check it out."

"Seriously? I thought you said it was too dangerous. That's why you're out here with me."

"Yep. And that's why we're bringing the ghost cannon." I knelt on the floor, reached under my bunk, and unsnapped the latches on something that roughly resembled a big black tuba case. "You said you wanted to see it in action."

"Yeah, but...maybe not right now, okay?" Stacey said. "Do we really have to go in there? The house is obviously crawling with ghosts."

"The basement might hold the key to everything," I replied. "And something's happening down there. I want to check it out. We need to fix those cameras."

"Ugh," Stacey said. "All right. As long as we bring the ghost cannon."

I lifted it out of its case. It looked like a big round cylinder of a stage light with a carrying handle on top. The battery pack was so heavy I had to strap it to my back. I couldn't hook the batteries to my belt if I wanted to keep my pants on for more than two seconds, which I typically do in most situations.

We closed up the van and walked through the front doors of the house. I used my regular flashlight, as did Stacey, because I didn't want to burn the house down with the cannon.

We crossed the dark lobby and entered the main hallway, heading for the kitchen and the wine cellar. Voices echoed from the floors above. Quick footsteps banged overhead, as if someone were running, then stopped abruptly.

I kept moving, slowed considerably by the heavy weapon I'd chosen to bring.

Here are several reasons you should never use a ghost cannon. First, they're painfully heavy and unwieldy. Second, they're unreliable. Third, even when they're working, they suck a lot of power and don't last long. Fourth, they get hot enough to burn your hand after a couple of minutes. Fifth, they're a major fire hazard—the intense blast of light can ignite anything dry and flammable, like paper, wood, and other materials commonly found in old haunted houses.

There's only one good reason to use a ghost cannon, and that's because you absolutely have no other choice. While a powerful flashlight beam of a few thousand lumens can startle a difficult ghost and confuse or annoy it into leaving you alone, it will never stop the real monsters when they're determined to attack you.

For guaranteed safety—for a minute or two, at least, until it overheats or the battery pack runs dry—you want a specially designed light that can cast more than a million lumens. That's the ghost cannon. Created as an offensive weapon against the most difficult ghosts, it can save your life, provided it doesn't kill you first. It puts out the kind of light and heat normally associated with the big searchlights that the military use to watch the skies, or Vegas hotel owners use to draw attention to their skyscrapers.

That's what I was lugging to the basement with us.

Stacey pushed open the wine cellar door.

The cellar air was freezing cold and much heavier now. I felt like things were watching me from the shadows, but my flashlight revealed nothing, as if the things melted back into corners and walls just before the beam hit them.

"They're dead," Stacey said.

"Who?" I asked, feeling anxious.

"These cameras." She'd walked a few feet ahead of me to check them. "Like something drained the batteries. I can't even get them to turn on."

There's the downside of using electronic equipment. While most ghosts can feed on fire, or even ambient heat in the air, more sophisticated ghosts learn to suck energy out of batteries. We'd just fed a little snack to whatever dark thing dwelled in the cellar.

Above us, the cellar door slammed shut, making us both jump.

Footsteps creaked on the stairs. It sounded like more than one person, like a group walking in slow single file.

I shined my flashlight up to the steps, but I didn't see any apparitions.

I did see the steps _themselves_ move, each one bending and squeaking again and again, as if a parade of unseen shoes pressed down on the old wood.

My heart was banging hard in my chest. I managed not to scream.

"What do we do?" Stacey whispered.

"Finish changing the batteries," I said. I was prickly and sweaty all over, despite the deathly cold of the cellar. I knew I was surrounded by invisible monsters.

I moved closer to her, holding my flashlight on the camera so she could use both hands.

A low murmuring of voices swirled in the cold air around me, encircling me.

"Leave us alone," I said, trying to sound commanding rather than terrified. I'm not sure it worked. "I'm warning all of you. Get back."

The murmuring grew louder. Shapes formed in the air around me, like simple, transparent faces stretched into exaggerated frowns.

They moved in on us.

"Stacey?" I asked.

"Almost done. Sorry, my hand keeps shaking." She slid the new battery into place with an audible click.

As if this were some kind of signal, the ghosts charged us, grabbing at my hair, my sleeves, my legs. Stacey screamed, so she was probably experiencing the same thing.

I turned on the ghost cannon.

The scorching-white beam threw the ghosts into full relief. I saw the menagerie Jacob had talked about, the transient-looking men and the scantily clad women. A few crawled on the floor like worms, their ghostly forms severely decayed. All of them were grabbing at us.

A sound like a scream echoed through the room, and it didn't come from Stacey. The ghosts scattered, retreating into walls or just vanishing where they stood. I could feel the heat of the cannon throbbing against my leg and arm.

"What did you see?" I asked. "How many?"

"How should I know?" Stacey whispered.

"Think."

"Eight? Ten? Way too many, let's get out of here."

"Did you see anyone that looked like Captain Marsh?"

"I don't think so. Hey, I didn't know there would be a pop quiz afterward. Let's talk about it somewhere outside this house, okay?"

"You're sure those cameras are working?" I asked.

"They're working! Can we please go?"

We walked up the stairs, Stacey in the lead, with me walking sideways and swinging the ghost cannon back and forth, flooding the cellar with blinding light. I hadn't seen anybody who looked like Captain Marsh, either, but they'd scattered quickly.

The cellar door at the top of the stairs was stuck. Stacey kicked it until it popped open.

We hurried back across the kitchen. The remnants of the cabinet doors banged open and shut as we passed, which only made us put on speed.

We made it out the front doors. The hot, humid night air felt like a warm bath after the freezing basement.

"That was too much," Stacey whispered, shaking her head.

I switched off the ghost cannon as we walked toward the van. I remote-unlocked the van with the key fob, and Stacey opened the back door. She groaned as she looked inside.

"It's like the house is kidding," she said.

I walked up beside her. She was looking at the monitors.

Despite the fresh batteries in the cameras, both of those in the basement had turned dark again.

# Chapter Twenty-One

For the rest of the night, our monitors picked up apparitions, sounds, voices, and occasional moving objects. The wardrobe door in the syringe room opened and closed. We had a pile of evidence to show the house was haunted, but that wasn't going to help our clients much. They needed the specters gone, permanently.

As dawn broke, we shut down our gear—Stacey could power down the cameras remotely so we didn't have to go back inside. We went into town and treated ourselves to breakfast at Clary's Cafe on Abercorn Street, where I had sourdough bread French toast stuffed with strawberries. I felt like I deserved a leisurely, carb-filled breakfast under the outdoor awning. I'd been awake for more than twenty-four hours.

That's why our next move was to go home and sleep. I skipped returning to the office for our cars and instead dropped Stacey at her apartment, several blocks from the College of Art and Design campus, then I drove to my place and crashed hard on my bed.

I awoke at noon and went to retrieve her. We had a two-hour drive south to Waycross to meet with Captain Marsh's only living relative, Louisa. Did I mention this job involves a lot of driving? Whether you're going to check out a haunted beach resort in Florida, or tracking down people who lived in a haunted house years and years ago, you're spending a lot of time on the road. I brought my MP3 player this time, so there was a little less Taylor Swift, a little more Runaways.

Louisa Marsh lived in a nursing home in downtown Waycross, a five-story institutional building whose front entrance was framed in big concrete blocks with peeling remnants of green paint. The place looked depressing before we even stepped inside.

The staff directed us to the recreation room on the fourth floor, where a couple of old men drowsily played chess at a table, a few other residents sat alone drowsing in front of newspapers, and a few more drowsed in front of a _Press Your Luck_ rerun on the TV. A guy with a checkered suit and big muttonchop sideburns kept saying "No whammies, no whammies!"

We found the eighty-year-old woman gazing out a narrow window at the dingy streets below, dust dancing around her in the yellow light. She seemed lost in thought, and the nurse had to say her name a few times to get her attention.

The woman was small and wiry, wearing a fuzzy pink bathrobe with moth holes all over it. Her hands were gnarled with arthritis. Her eyes were small and pale, sunken deep in a wrinkled face. She looked frail and moved slowly.

"Ms. Marsh, I'm Stacey Ray Tolbert," Stacey said. "I spoke to you on the phone yesterday. About the house?" Stacey added, when the woman just gave her a puzzled look.

"Oh, of course, dear." Louisa's voice was weak and shaky. "You want to buy the house. Where's your husband?"

"I'm not married, Ms. Marsh," Stacey said. "Still shopping for that, you might say."

"Good." Louisa gave a small nod. "I've seen too many women ruined by marriage. Never went for it, myself. I like my independence. I like to spend all morning in the bath if I want, or eat two pieces of peach cobbler all by myself, without worrying what some man will think."

"That sounds like a smart approach, ma'am," Stacey said.

I pulled over a couple of plastic chairs so we could sit down.

"Ms. Marsh," I said, "There may be some confusion. We're not here about buying the house. In fact, you already sold the house in 1985."

"Oh, my." Louisa touched her fingers to her mouth. "I believe you're right."

"My name is Ellie Jordan, and I'm a detective." I handed her an Eckhart Investigations card, but she didn't look at it. "Stacey is a detective, too."

"Oh, like Angela Lansbury!" Louisa smiled.

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "We're investigating a case that involves the history of your house. We were hoping you could tell us about it."

"Where to begin?" Louisa shook her head. "I did love that house dearly."

"Did you ever meet Captain Marsh himself?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. Uncle Gustus. My parents did not think much of him—he was a wild sort, you understand, who liked to have some parties for gentlemen, and there was always gossip. Still, my father believed the old man had money hidden somewhere, and we were his closest relatives, so we went to visit. Holidays, Uncle's birthday, and so on. Then you'd never know how much my parents disapproved of him. Uncle Gustus would bounce me on his lap and dangle a few idle comments about his will, like waving a string in front of a cat. My parents were the cat, you see." She laughed, then coughed, and I smiled. The woman was much more spry when discussing the past than the present, fortunately.

"I didn't care for him when I was a girl," Louisa continued. "He was scary, with that giant beard and deep voice. Even his laugh was scary to me. He would make me sit with him, and he'd pet my leg like this." She passed her hand over her knee a few times, which made me think of the strange claw marks on Lexa's leg.

"Did he ever...hurt you?" I asked, trying to put this issue of child abuse as delicately as possible.

"Not so much. And true to his word, he remembered us in his will—me, anyway! He left everything to me, which made my parents livid." Louisa chuckled. "He must have known what they said about him in private, or guessed it. Oh, there wasn't much money after all. He'd sold most of his land to pay his gambling debts. It was mostly just that big, lovely old house.

"My parents insisted I should sell it, but I had my own troubles with them. I wanted to get away. I was twenty years old, and having my own house looked like a world of freedom to me. So I didn't sell it. I moved in, but it was in such a state that I couldn't afford the repairs. That's when I started renting out rooms."

"And this was 1954? 1955?" I asked.

"Around then, I'm sure. When you've seen so many years, child, they all begin to melt together in your memories. President Eisenhower was in office, I can tell you that."

"So you inherited the house, and you ran it as a boarding house," I said. "What can you tell us about those years?"

"I can certainly tell you the house drew in all kinds of odd strangers from the road," Louisa said. "Maybe because it was always being repaired, maybe because there were warehouses and such around. It wasn't in the pretty part of town, not at all. We had dockworkers and such coming to stay, and working women, you know. My uncle probably enjoyed that."

"You mean he enjoyed it after he died?" I asked, a little confused.

"Well...yes." She fidgeted nervously and asked for water, which Stacey ran to fetch for her. Stacey returned with a large paper cup, and Louisa took a tiny sip.

"Did you encounter any ghosts during your time there? Any evidence the house might have been haunted?" I asked.

She sighed. "Yes, the house was haunted. I would occasionally see people walking around, and they would just disappear. Or you'd hear voices, or things falling down when nobody was in the room. The first I saw was my uncle himself. I was dusting the games room, or the smoking room they called it, when I began to smell something burning. I thought the house was on fire! I just about ran out of there screaming, but then I saw Uncle Gustus, sitting in his old wing chair by the fire, smoking one of those big, smelly cigars he loved so much. He was just watching me clean."

"Oh, gosh. Were you scared?" Stacey asked.

"A little, of course. Not as much as you might think. Remember, I didn't hate Gustus anymore. I was grateful to him for leaving me everything, for setting me free of my parents. I can't begin to say how much I appreciated that. So I just looked back at him, and after a little while, he faded away."

"Did you ever see him again?" I asked.

"Lots of times. Sometimes he spoke to me, told me I was always his favorite. Sometimes I'd feel him playing with my hair, or touching me on the knee. And I'd greet him like a friend. I wasn't scared of him, or any of the others, because I knew he'd keep me safe from them."

"The others?" I repeated. "Other ghosts?"

"Oh my, yes, here and there...they'd make themselves known. Some of them were as restless as a flea-bitten dog, but they never did me any harm."

"Did you wall off the east wing of the house to protect yourself from the ghosts?" I asked, taking a guess.

"Oh, dear, not the ghosts," she said. "The boarders! You've never seen such ill-bred, profane, uncultured men. The women were just as bad. Drunks, loud, behaving like animals. I carved out the east wing to give myself a little peace."

"That must have been dangerous," I said, "A woman running the place alone, with those kinds of boarders."

"Oh, yes. But I wasn't alone much. I always had a handyman or two to keep the house running—that place was always trying to fall apart. They would help me with the rough ones, too. Some of those boys loved to fight, so they didn't mind when one of the renters gave them the opportunity." Louisa chuckled a little to herself.

"Can you name some of the men who worked for you over the years?" I had my pen and pad out, ready to jot down more potential witnesses. I needed any insight into the house I could get.

"Oh, yes, but most of them have passed on. The last two were the best. Buck Kilkenny and Dabney Newton. Those boys could fix anything—including men who refused to pay rent, if you get my meaning. I'm sorry, but it was rough times, and rough folks, too."

"I understand." I jotted down their names.

"I called them my rousties," she added. "It's a word from the circus people. A roustabout, actually, someone who does all the odd jobs around the circus."

"Do you know if Buck and Dabney still live in Savannah?" I asked.

"I wouldn't know, child. They were alive last I heard, that's all I can say. Buck and Dabney..." Her eyes grew a little misty. "They were the ones who found that crazy woman's body."

"Really? Mercy Cutledge?" I asked.

"Oh, yes."

"What can you tell us about her?"

"There isn't much to say, is there? She was a...well, an escort, I suppose they call it now. She entertained men at my uncle's parties for a time, then she snapped and murdered my uncle. Stabbed him in his bed! Such horrifying news. Such a crazed woman. When I heard they were letting her out of that hospital, I just..." She shook her head.

"How did you react?" I asked.

"Well, I thought she would come after me next! The world these days..." Louisa shook her head. "Some people felt sorry for her, but I never did. She was a _murderer_."

"I understand," I said. "So the ghosts didn't scare you at all?"

"Not after I got used to them. Honestly, the house was always full of strangers coming and going. The ghosts weren't nearly so dangerous as the living."

That didn't exactly match my experience with her house, but she seemed to mean it.

"Did anything change after Mercy died there?" I asked.

"It got kind of quiet," Louisa said. "I'm not sure if I saw my uncle again after that. I didn't live there too much longer myself. The city came along and said I had to get it up to code or stop renting rooms. I couldn't afford to turn it into a modern hotel, so I had to put it up for sale. I was sad to move out, but the place felt different, anyway."

"Different how?" I asked.

"Silent. Not so lively. Like the ghosts were old and tired, and they didn't show up so often." Louisa shrugged. "You probably think I'm crazy, but after so long, they almost felt like family. Well, one of them _was_ family." She smiled a little. "Uncle Gustus used to comfort me with his presence. After that crazy woman hung herself, I just felt alone in that house. So I lived in an apartment for a time, down on East Broad Street, but it never felt like home. And this place..." She looked around. "To be honest, I don't remember moving here at all."

I thought over what she'd said, then asked for the names of anyone else who had worked at the boarding house, other handymen she'd employed over the years. I asked about people who had died there. She remembered a few violent deaths and overdoses, but nobody she'd known personally, nobody whose name she could recall after all this time. "I just let the police handle all of that," she said.

I saved the most difficult questions for the end.

"Ms. Marsh," I said, "To your knowledge, did your Uncle Augustus have any interest in the occult?"

"The occult?" She blinked, as if startled by the question. "What do you mean?"

"Black magic, sorcery, that sort of thing," I replied.

"Oh... _goodness_." She shook her head. "Where would you get an idea like that?"

"We've heard it from a couple of people," I said.

"Who? The crazy woman?" Louisa chuckled. "Uncle Gustus was not a religious man. He liked his drinking, his gambling, and his women. Most people disapproved of him. But you listen to me right now." She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, leaning toward me a little. "He had no interest in God, nor in the Devil, neither. He was only interested in pleasure—sinful pleasures, some would say. But that's the limit of it. Don't believe anyone who tells you different. And don't go around saying that about him. He doesn't deserve to be remembered like that."

I doubted she would like my next question, either—but sometimes you have to be direct.

"Did Augustus ever murder anyone?" I asked.

"Who have you been talking to?" Louisa looked deeply offended. Her face flushed, and her hand crumpled into a fist on her chair arm. "I don't think I want to speak to you women anymore."

"It's just a follow-up to something we heard," I said. "I'm very sorry if it upset you, it's really not a big--"

"I'd like you both to leave now."

"Can I just ask one or two more questions?"

"Absolutely not!" Louisa was turning red. "Do I need to call an orderly to throw you out? Because I don't mind doing that at all."

"That won't be necessary, Ms. Marsh." I stood up. "If you want to talk more about your house, or your uncle, please call me. My number's on the card."

She looked out the window and didn't reply.

"Well, that wasn't much help, was it?" Stacey asked a few minutes later, as we walked down the concrete front steps of the nursing home. "Or was it?"

"I have some hope for follow-up interviews," I said. "I want to talk to some of the people who worked there."

"I feel sorry for her, though," Stacey said. "It sounded like she had a weird, lonely life, and now I guess her mind is slipping."

I just nodded.

I made Stacey drive the van home. As soon as we were on the road, I called Anna Treadwell to update her: we'd observed a number of ghosts in her house, we'd set a trap for the dangerous one we'd encountered, we'd interviewed Louisa Marsh. I reluctantly added "brought out a psychic" to our list of concrete actions, since I needed to pad it out a little. The only accomplishment they really wanted to hear of course, was "got rid of the ghosts." I wished I could have said that.

"When do you think we can move back?" Anna asked. They were staying at the Econo Lodge by the airport, which told me everything about their dwindling family budget.

"Soon," I told her. "We're working day and night."

She didn't sound reassured.

I called Calvin to give him the names of Louisa Marsh's employees over the years. Maybe he could turn up something, or put in a call to the police department. It was Sunday afternoon, so if we were lucky, somebody would have time to talk to a retired homicide detective.

As it turned out, we were a little bit lucky.

# Chapter Twenty-Two

Buck Kilkenny and Dabney Newton were two names known pretty well to the Savannah police department. Their record of petty theft and drug offenses didn't make them particularly memorable, but they also owned a scummy dive bar by the interstate over in Port Wentworth, just a few miles inland from Savannah and part of its metro area. Interestingly, that place was called Roustie's. Calvin's police contacts advised us to stay away, but I'm not great at taking advice.

We pulled into the parking lot of the bar, which looked like a repurposed Pizza Hut, with brick walls and a flaking red roof. A few motorcycles sat outside, along with more than one dingy pick-up truck decorated with the Confederate flag. The bar looked like a place where meth-addicted rats went to die.

"You know, it's weird," Stacey said as she parked the van. "Louisa's story didn't totally match the original police report from 1982."

"Which part?"

"I've read that thing a few times, and it doesn't mention Buck and Dabney at all, or any maintenance guys discovering the body. It just sounded like Louisa walked out there one morning and found Mercy hanging from the baluster."

"That could be important," I said.

"Maybe." Stacey shrugged. "Her memories seemed pretty fuzzy to me."

"She wasn't too clear about the present, but her recall of the past seemed pretty crisp to me. I'm glad you mentioned that before we talked to these guys."

"Hey, that's what a good assistant ghost trapper is for, right?" Stacey forced a smile. She had a distracted look on her face, like something was bothering her. I wondered what was on her mind, but I didn't feel like having a heart to heart in the parking lot at Roustie's, where a biker might puke on our tires at any moment.

We stepped inside. Though it was late Sunday afternoon, there was already a scattered crowd. Acrid cigarette smoke hung in a permanent yellow fog over the room. There were a few glowing neon beer signs, a couple of pool tables, some tables and chairs you wouldn't really want to touch. A bar took up one corner of the place, with a small empty stage beside it.

The clientele was what you'd expect from the cars outside, a mix of bikers and big old boys with meshback caps. There were a couple of women among the bikers, hard-looking types in their forties.

We drew a few glances, especially Stacey. I didn't linger near the door but strode directly across the place toward the bar. I didn't know what Buck or Dabney looked like, so I addressed myself to the bartender, a man in his fifties with a heavy salt and pepper mustache and a serious beer gut. His t-shirt featured a cartoony old man on a fishing boat. The rag tied onto his head featured flaming skulls firing missiles out of their mouths.

"What'll it be, ladies?" the man asked. I assumed the question was directed at Stacey's chest, because that was where he was looking. He leaned on the counter toward us.

"I kind of wouldn't mind a mojito," Stacey said, and I cut her a look. She pouted at me. "What? Okay, a sweet tea."

"Only sweetie we got in here is _you_ , darlin'." The bartender punctuated this slice of wit with another big grin at her shirt.

"We need to speak with Buck Kilkenny or Dabney Newton," I said. "Are either of them in today?"

"Whoa, girl got serious." The man straightened up and backed away, eyeing us suspiciously. "You cops or what?"

"P.I.," I told him. "It's nothing serious. Just some background research for a client."

"What kinda research?"

"I would have to speak to Buck or Dabney about that," I said.

"I got to say, y'all ain't too good at being P.I.'s, cause one of them fellers is standing right in front of you, and you didn't even know it. Buck Kilkenny." He held out a fairly dirty hand with fingernails chewed into dangerous little points. I shook it with a polite smile.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Kilkenny," I said. I gave him my card. "I'm Ellie Jordan, and this is Stacey Ray Tolbert. Our agency actually specializes in the paranormal."

"What's that?"

"We trap and remove ghosts from haunted houses," Stacey said.

"Oh! Heck, yeah, I've heard of y'all." He glanced at the Eckhart Investigations card with renewed interest. "Yeah, must be a good trade, lots of dead folks in this city. What can I do for you pretty ladies? You sure you don't want a drink? I can put it on the house, since I'm the house." He winked at Stacey.

"I wouldn't mind a bottled water, if you have one," I said.

"Got a water glass." He grabbed a tall, badly spotted glass from the overhead rack and filled it with water using a little hose.

"Thank you," I said, though I had no intent of drinking it. The whole place was filthy, okay? I was pretty sure my jeans would make a peeling sound when I climbed off the sticky barstool. "We're looking at a very haunted house right now—the Marsh house. Louisa Marsh told us you and Dabney used to work there."

"Oh, yeah, back when we was pretty much dumb kids." He lit a cigarette and poured himself a whiskey, asking with gestures whether we wanted one. Stacey and I shook our heads. "Hell, I guess I was twenty-five, twenty-six...Dabney and I knew each other since high school, he was a year ahead of me. We always ran around together. Yeah, Ms. Marsh paid us pretty good to try to keep that old heap from falling apart. I'm surprised they haven't tore it down yet."

"It's still there," I said. "How many years would you say you worked there, Buck?"

"Hell, how I would I know? It was a lot of partying in them days, a lot of Friday nights...I'd say four or five years, off and on."

"What kind of work did you do for her?"

"Just about everything. Fixing windows, painting, patching the roof...you name it."

"Ms. Marsh told me you also did some security work," I said.

"Aw, yeah. When somebody got out of hand—starting fights, or trashing the house, wouldn't pay, wouldn't leave, whatever—we'd clear 'em out for her. Why you asking about that?"

"Just getting a complete picture. Now, here's the big question: did you ever experience anything unusual in the house?"

"You mean like a ghost?"

"Exactly."

"Bet your ass! Especially early in the morning, or when night was coming on. Sometimes we'd come in and our tools would be moved around, or just plain missing. Sometimes you'd think you saw somebody walking into a room, but the room would be empty. Heck, sometimes the _door_ was still closed, and you couldn't figure out where they went."

"Anything else?"

"The voices," Buck said. "You might hear one talking at you, and there'd be nobody there. Sometimes it sounded like a big man. One time there was a woman, I never will forget. I was changing out the lights up there in the second-floor hall, and the voice says right in my ear, 'Come on, sugar, let's have a drink.' Like she was hitting on me. Thing was, nobody was there in the hall, and plus I was way up on that ladder, so how's anybody gonna talk right into my ear, anyway?"

"Did that scare you?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, but not enough to start turning down Ms. Marsh's money. Heck, Dabney got it worse. He one time felt some guy's hands grab him and shake him, like he was mad. That was late, late at night, later than I ever worked." Buck sipped his whiskey, glanced around, and grinned. He lowered his voice and said, "Dabney spent a whole night or two there with Ms. Marsh, if you get my meaning. She was about twenty years older than us, and I don't think she was _that_ much of a looker, but she picked him, anyway." He shrugged. "That's how it goes. But I don't think that ghost liked him spending the night with her. It's the main reason Dabney stopped doing it, that ghost."

"That's really interesting," I said, returning his conspiratorial grin. He knocked back the rest of the whiskey.

"What's going on out here?" A tall, thin, acne-scarred man about Buck's age walked out from the door behind the bar area, wearing a black wife beater shirt and an old cap with the logo of the Sand Gnats, our city's minor league baseball team. He scowled at Buck. "You ain't drinking at the bar again, are you?"

"Nope." Buck moved to hide his whiskey glass with his body. "Just entertaining these pretty girls, Dabney."

"And you ain't run 'em off yet?" Dabney looked us over, smiling around the toothpick grasped in his teeth. "Hoo-wee. Y'all from out of town?"

"No, sir," I said.

"They's private detectives," Buck told him. This knocked the leering grin right off Dabney's face.

"What do they want?" Dabney approached us, looking as suspicious as Buck had.

"We're just doing some background on a house that may be haunted," I said, passing him a business card. "The old Marsh place. We've already spoken with Louisa Marsh, and Buck was just telling us about some ghostly encounters you may have had while working there."

"He was, was he?" Dabney asked. "Buck, go check the deep fryer in the kitchen. It's busted again."

"But I wanted to keep talkin'--" Buck threw a desperate look at Stacey.

"I bet you did. Now go fix it up."

Buck sighed and walked back through the door. Dabney watched him with his arms crossed, then turned back to us.

"Now what do the two of you want?" he asked.

"We were wondering if you'd ever experienced anything supernatural at the Marsh house," I told him.

"Like what?"

"Anything. Tools moved out of place, voices, apparitions...maybe something grabbing you or scratching you," I said.

"If I did, I don't see how it would be any business of yours," Dabney said.

"We're trying to remove the ghosts for our clients," I explained. "They're the new owners of the house."

"New owners, huh? Sounds like somebody had a big pile of money to burn. That place won't stay put together no matter what you do to it."

"Do you have any idea why?"

"Just an old place, that's all. Falling to pieces."

"Are you saying you never encountered a ghost while working there?" I asked.

"I ain't gonna sit here and tell you gossip about Ms. Marsh or her family, or none of that," Dabney said. "It's disrespectful to her."

"Ms. Marsh didn't mind telling us about it earlier today," I said.

"Then I guess you already heard what there is to say."

"She said there were ghosts, including her uncle, Captain Marsh."

"I won't say there was nothing there." Dabney found Buck's whiskey glass and scowled. "You'd hear bumps in the night, stuff like that."

"Did you ever spend the whole night there?" I asked.

"What are you saying?" Dabney narrowed his eyes at me.

"Just asking."

"I don't have anything to tell you," Dabney said. "I see you're not drinking, so you may as well clear out."

"All right. Thanks for your time." I slid off the stool—just as predicted, the seat of my jeans peeled away with a gross slurping sound. Stacey did the same. We started to leave, and then I turned back. "Just one more quick question, Mr. Newton. Did you ever meet Mercy Cutledge?"

"Why you asking about her?"

"She may be the one haunting the house."

"Huh." Dabney scratched his chin, as if putting together his answer very carefully. "Well, she killed that old man before I was even born. The only time I seen her, she was already a corpse. So I guess, no, I'd say I didn't know her at all."

"Did you and Buck find her body in the foyer of the house?"

"Me?" He looked taken aback. "Naw. Buck and I came in late that morning—long night before, probably. We did a lot of late nights in them days, drinking and carrying on. The police got there before we ever did."

"Okay, that fits the police report," I said. "Thanks for your time, sir."

He rinsed out Buck's whiskey glass and rubbed it with a yellowed, crusty towel while he watched us walk out the door.

"That was pleasant," Stacey said, shuddering as we left the dim bar for the low orange sunshine outside. "So it sounds like Ms. Marsh remembered things wrong, huh?"

"It sounds like it." I climbed into the driver's side this time. "Let's go get the house ready before sunset. I don't want to be in there after dark."

Stacey was very quiet as I started the engine. She had that same distant, distracted look on her face.

"Is something wrong?" I asked her.

Something was.

# Chapter Twenty-Three

"I don't know if I can do this anymore," Stacey said, while I headed east. The Marsh house, on the west side of Savannah, was only a few miles from Roustie's, so we had plenty of time before dark.

"Do what?"

"All of it. This work. I've been attacked by ghosts again and again just in the past few days. Twice in the Marsh house, not to mention that asylum basement..." She shivered at the memory. "I'm gonna lose my mind if this keeps up. I can't handle it. I'm having nightmares, Ellie. Crazy, crazy nightmares."

"It's not always like this," I said. "But occasionally it gets dangerous. The nightmares are normal, too. You get used to them."

"Just thinking about going inside that house one more..." Stacey shook her head. "Maybe my mom's right, and I need to move back to Alabama. Figure my life out. Things like that."

"Must be nice," I said.

"What?"

"To feel like you have that option." I took a long look at her, then I stepped on the gas, charging down the interstate.

"Hey, our exit's coming up," Stacey said.

"We're making a detour."

"Uh, do we have time for that?" she asked, looking at the wide orange sun sinking behind us.

"Unless there's an unexpected Sunday-night traffic jam, I think we'll be okay." I drove us south into the suburban sprawl, where Savannah's historic squares, parks, mansions, and churches give way to a more typical land of strip malls and subdivisions.

Anticipation knotted up my stomach as we drove down a tree-lined side road and turned into a neighborhood. The sign read RIVERSIDE POINT, though the neighborhood was at least a mile from the nearest river. It was surreal—I hadn't been back in at least a year, maybe more.

"Where are we going?" Stacey asked, checking the time on her phone. She looked antsy. I understood. We had a couple of chores to do inside the Marsh house before dark fell.

The neighborhood was an older one, the architecture ranging from 1950's bungalows to those asymmetrical 1970's houses with the high roofs and weird angles. The place mostly looked like I remembered, except for some taller trees, a few gardens that had been rearranged or removed, a couple of houses painted different colors. Several of the yards were overgrown and badly kept. They hadn't been like that ten years earlier, or my dad would surely have griped about it.

I parked on the side of a road, in a gap between two houses. No house stood there, just a wooden fence with a couple of KEEP OUT signs.

"Where are we?" Stacey asked again.

"This is where I grew up." I climbed out of the van and motioned for her to join me.

The fence was five feet high, so we could just look over it. I stood on my tiptoes for a better view.

Enclosed within the fence was a misshapen hump of red Georgia earth, with scattered weeds growing here and there. There weren't nearly as many weeds or wildflowers as there should have been in an open, sunlit lot like this. There was too much death in the soil.

"Was something here?" Stacey asked.

"There have been six houses here over the years," I said. "The first was a plantation house, when this was all farmland. It burned down. The last one was my house. It burned down, too, when I was fifteen. Every house built on this spot has been destroyed by fire."

"Whoa, all six of them?" Stacey shook her head, looking at the empty lot. "Was it one of those pyromaniac ghosts you were talking about?"

"Pyrokinetic. Well, I guess pyromaniac isn't wrong, either. In 1841, a family lived in the house here—wife, husband, three kids. The wife, a pretty woman named Elizabeth Sutton, grew kind of bored with her marriage, I guess. Her husband was much older than her. She had an affair with another man, an extremely handsome man named Anton Clay. He was a rich young merchant in the cotton trade. He had plenty of female admirers, but he wanted Elizabeth.

"Eventually, Anton pressured her to leave her husband and family to run away with him. Elizabeth refused and broke off the affair. Anton didn't like that at all. In fact, he kind of snapped."

"What happened?" Stacey asked.

"He came to the house very late one night, while everyone was asleep. He broke in and set the entire place on fire. Everybody died—Elizabeth, her husband, her small children, three slaves, and Anton himself."

"How terrible," Stacey whispered. "Those poor kids!"

"Since then, every house built here has burned down, with no clear cause of the fire. I guess nobody has come along to risk building a seventh one yet. But eventually they will."

"Were you hurt in the fire?" Stacey asked. "Or your family?"

"I would've died if my dog hadn't woken me up." I smiled a little, but there was no real joy in it. My heart was hurting. "Sweet little Frank. You know how golden retrievers always look like they're smiling? Anyway, he jumped on my bed and woke me up, and my room was full of smoke.

"The dog led me out. I couldn't even see him most of the time, there was so much smoke, and the upstairs hall was full of fire, just billowing up and out, a wall of flames. He managed to steer me downstairs and out of the house. Good dog. The best." I was tearing up already, and I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. "On the way out, I saw him."

"Who?"

I took a breath. "Anton Clay, I found out later. The guy was truly handsome, I mean he could be a movie star or something. You could see why a bored young wife would have an affair with this guy. His eyes were powerful, and sharp like they could cut you into pieces with a glance. In life, they were blue, but when I see them, they're fire red. He was dressed in a cravat, vest, and an old, old-fashioned coat, like he belonged a hundred and fifty years in the past. Which he did.

"I didn't know who he was back then, of course. He held out his hand, and he said something like 'Come with me. We belong together.' And I mean, in the middle of everything, I was so startled to see him there, surrounded by my burning living room. He should have been on fire, where he was standing, but his coat wasn't even singed. And his eyes and voice kind of hypnotized me, making me stay where I was. I probably would have stood right there and let the fire take me if Frank hadn't barked and nipped at my hand.

"I got going again, toward the door. When I looked back, the man was gone, but the fire was welling up toward me like it meant to get me before I could escape.

"Frank and I made it outside just before that wave of fire swept out the front door and spread out across my porch, which was all made of wood and went up fast." I shook my head. I wasn't even looking at Stacey, just staring at the desolate hump of land in front of me.

"Was your family okay?"

"My parents both died that night."

"Oh, my God, Ellie." Stacey moved close, putting her arms around me. I couldn't help resisting at first—force of habit, I guess. Then I let myself sort of half-hug her, and that much contact made me start crying. I wrapped both my arms around her, feeling broken and helpless and stupid all at once.

"I was the only one left," I whispered. "I never even saw Frank again after that night. One of the firefighters took him to a vet, but he'd breathed a ton of smoke and he had burns all over him. The vet put him to sleep, the same night he saved my life. I didn't even get to say good-bye to any of them, not my parents, not even the dog. It just happened too fast." A sob hitched in my chest, but I fought it, not wanting to totally break down in front of her. "My parents were good people _._ They didn't deserve to die like that. I miss them so much."

We held each other while I cried and tried to get myself together.

In case you're wondering, this was not at all how I'd meant things to go. I'd believed I could keep up a solid, stoic front, but I'd been wrong.

After a minute, I stepped back and wiped my eyes.

"They put me in the hospital overnight, for some first-degree burns. I was truly in shock, I couldn't process what had happened. My whole life, the people I loved the most, were gone, all vanished into smoke.

"A police detective came to visit me the next day. He was kind of a heavyset older guy, just starting to go gray. He asked me about what I'd seen, and I told him everything, even about the nineteenth-century man and how he'd kind of cast a spell over me. I was just like a robot, spitting out information, not caring whether I made any sense or whether anyone thought I was crazy.

"So this detective tells me about the history of the place. He'd been researching it. He's the one who told me about the five earlier houses that burned down in the same spot, and later, when he'd studied it more, sent me the story of Anton Clay. By then I was living with my aunt in Virginia, which felt like a million miles from home.

"I stayed in touch with that detective. I kept sending letters asking for more information. He would reply with just quick little notes if he didn't have anything new to tell me. He eventually retired from the force and started a private detective agency specializing in ghosts..."

"Mr. Eckhart," Stacey said.

"That's how I met him. All I wanted to do was the same work he was doing, getting rid of the bad ghosts so they couldn't hurt anyone. I particularly wanted to learn how to destroy _that_ ghost." I pointed to the center of the empty lot where my house and my parents should have been. "So I moved back to Savannah for college, and I insisted Calvin train me on the side. He really didn't want to, but I didn't leave him much choice. It was either take me as his apprentice or deal with me camping out by his office all day."

"Did you get rid of the pyro ghost?" Stacey asked, following my gaze. "Is he gone now?"

"The thing is, we can't really kill ghosts. They're already dead. Sometimes you get lucky and convince one to move on peacefully, but sometimes you have to trap and remove them. The really nasty, violent ghosts don't go to the refuge cemetery in Goodwell, where we took Mercy. For the truly evil ones, we bury them in a different cemetery. We bury the whole trap with the ghost still inside. That's literally the best we can do."

"So that's what we would do if we trapped that heroin-addict ghost that attacked me, right?" Stacey touched her breastbone, where the needle scratch was still visible. She'd been treating it with Neosporin. "Just bury the trap?"

"Right."

"But wouldn't the batteries run out eventually? The ones that power the electrical field around the jar?"

"Eventually, after several years," I said. "But the combination of the lead-glass ghost jar, and all the cemetery earth around it, will pretty much pin the ghost into place forever, as long as nobody disturbs the buried trap."

"Sounds hellish."

"Violent ghosts shouldn't be so violent, then. It's their own fault." I looked her directly in the eyes now. "The dead are not our concern. We're here to protect the _living._ We stand on the border between the world of light and the darkness beyond, and there aren't very many of us. The world is teeming with the dead.

"So, when I say it must be nice to have the option of going back to your parents and thinking over what you'd like to do with your life, that's what I mean," I told her. "This is what I do. This is what I am. And if I don't, who will?"

Stacey nodded slowly, a thoughtful look on her face.

"I know you got into this because you thought it was neat to capture images of ghosts with your cameras," I said. "And you're good at that, and we need that. But you're also strong. You don't run from danger, and you wouldn't ditch me if things got too hot."

"I wouldn't," she said.

"You don't just have the talent for this, you have the nerve and the guts. I've seen it. And I'll admit, Stacey, I didn't want Calvin to hire you, but I'm glad he did. It was the right call. I want you beside me in this, protecting the living against the dead. I need you. I can't do it alone."

There. That's the stuff I'd actually meant to say, more or less.

We looked at each for a moment.

"So are you with me?" I asked.

She hesitated, then nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, Ellie, I'm with you. Partners?" She stuck out a hand.

"Don't be silly. You're the new kid, and I'm totally in charge." I shook her hand. "But, yeah, eventually. Partners. Now let's go kick some supernatural ass."

Stacey grinned.

Driving away, I resisted the urge to look back. Once before, visiting alone, I'd see Anton inside the fence. He was no longer handsome, tailored, and spit-polished, but charred, his entire body a smoldering black wreck, except for his intense red eyes. Those had stared at me out of the charcoal skull-mask of his face, and I knew he was waiting for me.

# Chapter Twenty-Four

Our side trip did put us off schedule, so when we arrived at the Marsh/Treadwell house, we had less than twenty-five minutes until sunset. We had to get in and out of there fast. Our chores included changing out camera batteries and manually switching on the cameras themselves. They never had much trouble shutting down remotely, but there were always a few stubborn ones that had to be turned back on by hand. With a house so ghost-infested, it was better to turn them all on before dark rather than risk having to run inside at night.

"Let's split up to save time," I told Stacey as we walked into the foyer. It was funny how the foyer had once seemed the center of the haunting, but now felt like the safest room in the house—though that wasn't saying much.

"Isn't that what they always say in a horror movie? Right before somebody gets killed?" Stacey asked.

"Usually, yeah. So hurry."

We divided up the first floor, switching out battery packs and turning on cameras. I took the second floor, while Stacey climbed on up to third. I really can't say who had the worst of that, but we agreed to meet in the kitchen and go down to the cellar together. Nobody was going in that place alone, even if the sun was still up. The sun didn't reach down into that darkness, anyway. The cellar had no windows.

I made my rounds on the second floor, changing out camera batteries and double-checking that the cameras themselves were working. In the junkie's room, the trap remained wide open, waiting for a ghost to spring it. The crushed-up pill powder was still in the bottom, but the candles had burned down to nubs and gone out before we'd left that morning.

I reloaded it with three fresh candles and lit them up. As I did that, I heard a clear footstep in the hall.

"Almost done, Stacey." I turned, but nobody was there.

"What's that?" Stacey's voice crackled over my headset.

"Were you just out in the hall?" I asked.

"Nope, still up on three. This mold is spreading fast. The whole inside of the closet is coated with it now."

"Okay. I think the ghosts are starting to move around. I'll meet you downstairs."

A minute later, I descended the steep, narrow back staircase and walked through the laundry area into the kitchen.

Then I froze. A woman stood there, looking out the densely overgrown bay window. It was not Stacey, nor anybody else from this century, given the high, stiff lace of her dress that totally concealed her neck. The dress was dark and long, almost puritanical with its starched-straight lines.

She was smallish, with dark hair and thin lips. It took a moment for me to recognize her.

"Mrs. Marsh?" I said, turning down the volume on my headset so Stacey wouldn't distract me. "Eugenia Marsh?"

The woman turned slowly. The fabric of her dress did not move at all. It was as though she hovered just above the floor, pivoting in midair. She held a bone-white teacup on a saucer in one hand, and her turning didn't seem to disturb it at all.

She looked right at me, her eyes staring into mine—she was definitely a conscious entity, not a residual recording.

It seemed like she was about to speak, but she didn't. Instead, she raised her teacup to her mouth, took a sip, then placed it back on the saucer.

She looked at me for another moment, and then her lips turned black. Veins of black rose on her face, spreading out from her mouth across her nose, her cheeks, her chin. Some of them ran down into the collar of her dress. Two pulsing black veins grew upward toward her eyes, turning them solid black.

The flesh on her hands and face crumbled. Her dark hair shriveled and turned pale gray.

Then she crashed to the floor. By the time she landed on the scuffed, dirty old tiles, she wasn't much more than a skeleton in a dress. I watched her melt away into the tiles, feeling more than a little disturbed.

"Ellie, what's up?" Stacey dashed into the room, out of breath, waving her phone. "I couldn't hear you. What happened?"

"I just ran into Eugenia Marsh," I said. "We'd better get out of here. The ghosts are stirring."

The sun was already out of sight when Stacey and I stepped out through the front doors.

We sat out in the van that night, watching the monitors. It was similar to the previous night—lots of footsteps, voices, doors swinging open or shut. A chair slid a foot or so in one of the rooms. A few half-formed, quick-fading apparitions passed the night vision cameras. The thermals picked up moving cold spots that appeared and disappeared.

This time, Stacey and I napped in shifts, taking turns watching the array of screens and listening to the speakers. This worked pretty well for a few hours. The only downside was that I slept on one of those narrow, hard drop-down bunks.

She woke me up about three in the morning, shaking my shoulder and babbling excitedly.

"What?" I grumbled, opening my eyes. I was still half-lost in a dream where I'd been drowning in a giant bowl of Lucky Charms. Don't ask for more details.

"He sprung the trap!" Stacey said. "Junkie guy, I'm guessing."

"Really?" I sat up, more awake now, and looked at the monitor. The broken-syringe room, as viewed in green-on-green night vision, showed the stamper arm fully depressed, the cylindrical trap sealed tight. "Finally, some progress. Did you see it happen?"

"Yeah, just now. I was about to review it on thermal."

"Do that," I said, rubbing my eyes.

Stacey punched keys on her laptop. A thermal video image of the room appeared on the monitor, and she backed it up a few minutes.

"There," she said, pointing to a wispy deep-blue mist that drifted around the three bright red spots of the trap's candles. It moved slowly, as though being cautious.

One tendril of pale blue finally extended into the trap. It snuffed out each candle as it passed, sucking out the energy.

By the time the shape reached the broken syringe at the bottom, the cylindrical shape of the trap was filled with dark blue. The ghost was inside, investigating the powdered opioids.

The trap's sensors obviously picked up on it, because the stamper arm slammed down, sealing the lid.

"Got it!" Stacey said, beaming.

"Wait." I looked closer. "There's no cold spot inside that trap. It's completely ambient temperature." I couldn't double-check the sensors within the trap, of course, because the EM field blocked their little wireless broadcasts.

"I don't get it."

"Back it up and run it very slowly."

"Okay..." She frowned as she used her mouse.

In slow motion, the arm of the stamper began to fall. Just before the lid sealed the trap, something appeared on the screen beside it. It was just a thin line, like a wire, and it was solid black on the thermal, which meant it was probably cold enough to burn your fingers.

In an instant, the thin line yanked the entire dark-blue mass out of the trap like a fish on a hook. It hauled the ghost away through the floor.

Then the trap sealed.

"What was that?" Stacey asked.

"Looks like someone had a tight grasp on Mr. Junkie," I said. "And he wasn't willing to let go."

"So...does that mean our traps are worthless now?"

"For this case, maybe. We'll have to reset the trap to know for sure."

"You want to go in there again?" She glanced at the case holding the ghost cannon.

"Not tonight," I said. "It's not worth it. We're going to have to figure out a new approach. Let me know if anything else happens."

I lay back on my hard little bunk, thinking it over. I mainly thought about Eugenia. From what Jacob had said, her little manifestation to me must have taken a lot of effort and energy.

I thought about what she might have been telling me, and what it might mean for our case.

# Chapter Twenty-Five

About an hour after sunrise, I parked my old Camaro outside my apartment. I went in through the exterior door I shared with other tenants, then up the stairs to my place, where I was ready to crash, or maybe just sit and read for a while.

I stopped outside my door, because it was open.

It wasn't wide open, just an inch or two, but I was fairly certain I hadn't left it that way. I also hadn't smashed the lock and door handle on the way out.

In this situation, the smart thing to do is walk away and call the police. You don't want to make decisions based on impatience, exhaustion, or anger at having your home violated.

Unfortunately, I was feeling impatient, exhausted, and the early red twinges of anger. I drew the stun gun—now concealed in my purse, because I don't go around wearing my utility belt in public—and kicked my door to make it swing wide open. It was a good, solid front kick. My kickboxing classes finally paid off a little, yay.

"Who's in there?" I shouted. "The cops are coming now, but if you want to run, I'll give you a head start."

There was no reply. Nothing moved in there...not even my cat.

"Hello?" I stepped inside, holding my stun gun high. I had enough stress and problems in my life already. If I encountered a burglar, I'd be happy to take out my frustrations on him.

If he'd hurt my cat, I would probably zap him in the eyeballs.

I pounced into my little studio apartment, ready for a fight. Nothing stirred, so I probably looked a little ridiculous. Better ridiculous than sorry.

The apartment was trashed—the bed askew, the mattress thrown against the wall and slashed open, furniture moved, drawers pulled out, clothes scattered everywhere. It looked like they'd searched the place, then grown bored and started smashing dishes and glasses in my kitchen nook, then broken my poor, ancient TV set. The hex signs and dreamcatchers had been ripped from my walls, and someone had painted LEAVE TOWN in big red letters, along with what might have been an attempt at a skull and crossbones. They'd used red paint for added effect.

"If someone's here, you have five seconds to get out, or I'm going to start shooting." So I didn't have a real gun, big deal. He didn't know that, whoever he was.

I stalked through the apartment, checking the only places a person could hide—the kitchen pantry, the closet, under my bed. Nothing. I glanced out at the tiny balcony, but it was empty and the door was still locked.

Something rustled behind me. I spun around, holding out my stun gun, ready to pump somebody full of voltage.

"Mrow?" Bandit poked his head out from under the sofa. He looked around cautiously, as if emerging from a bomb shelter into an uncertain world.

"Bandit!" I scooped him up and hugged him, and he gave me a little purr and tucked his head under my chin. He must have been scared, because Bandit isn't usually much of a cuddler. "What happened? Did anyone hurt you?" I checked him for cuts and injuries, but it looked like he'd been wise enough to keep out of the way while they ransacked my apartment.

I placed him on the couch and looked again at the threatening graffiti on my wall. Either some long-lost enemy had emerged from my past in search of revenge, or this was related to my current case. Only a handful of non-dead people had any interest in what I was doing, so I thought the identity of the vandals was fairly obvious.

That was like the puzzle piece that reveals the whole picture. Suddenly, I understood the entire case and what we needed to do.

I took out my phone.

"Don't you usually sleep during daylight hours?" Calvin asked when he answered.

"Mercy Cutledge wasn't crazy, and she didn't kill herself," I said.

"That's a new development. I'll celebrate by continuing to drink my coffee."

"Can you give me the psychic guy's number? We'll need his help."

"So you _do_ like working with Jacob?"

"I'll let you know after tonight."

When I called Jacob, I said, "We need your help again."

"Who is this?" he asked.

"I thought you were psychic," I replied.

"Ellie?"

" _Yes._ Save my number in your phone. You need to come with Stacey and me today."

"Yeah, slight problem with that," Jacob said. "I'm employed. I'm already walking into work."

"You're an early bird."

"You gotta be, if you want to eat worms," he said. "Sorry, my boss won't let me off. They stuck me with a senior partner who's a real...well, he's very determined to exceed his clients' expectations in a time-efficient manner." The sudden shift in his voice told me he'd probably crossed paths with some co-workers at the accounting firm. "I can't just step out. He doesn't even know about my...hobbies."

"Okay, one sec." On my phone, I pulled up the weather channel. "Can you get out by five?"

"Sure, if I want people to think I'm a slacker."

"This is serious. We have to be able to depend on you, Jacob."

"Six-thirty," he said.

"Too late. Can't you bring a computer and work on the way? It's a long drive."

"A long drive where?"

I finally talked him into it.

# Chapter Twenty-Six

To save time, we picked up Jacob right from work, a tall block of a building with its black-glass windows overlooking the fountains and gardens of Johnson Square. He was on his phone, speaking rapidly to a client, a laptop case in one hand. He nodded at me as he climbed into the back of the van and sat in the bucket seat we'd had to plunk into place for him—the rear seats were usually gone to make room for gear.

He didn't finish his call until we'd reached the western edge of town.

"Mind if I compile some financial statements back here?" he asked.

"Compile whatever you like," I replied.

Once again, we made the three-hour drive to the ghost town of Goodwell. Stacey parked us right by the cemetery gate. I looked out at the overgrown graves. The sun was already below the horizon, the sky turning purple. The moon was full.

"Should I grab a trap?" Stacey asked.

"We just want to talk with Mercy and see what she can tell us. I don't think taking her prisoner is a good first step." I unlocked the cemetery gate and pushed it open. Voices seemed to whisper all around us. I tried to tell myself it was just the grass, weeds, and leaves blowing in the evening wind, but I doubted it. I kept my flashlight pointed at the ground, not wanting to startle any spirits away.

"Oh...wow." Jacob stopped a few paces inside the gate, and Stacey bumped into him from behind.

"What's with the roadblock?" she asked him.

"This place is pretty unusual," he said. "I'm feeling a lot of...loose spirits. That doesn't make any sense, but normally, in a graveyard like this, the ghosts are kind of rooted to their little spots, or hang close to them. Here, it's like a bunch of spirits who don't really belong."

"Sounds accurate." I walked to the bench under the sprawling oak and retrieved Mercy's trap. It had popped open just as programmed. If nothing else, we'd recovered one trap on this journey.

I pretended not to hear the footsteps, or to notice the feeling of being watched by unseen eyes, but chill bumps prickled all over my body. Invisible things began to touch me in a fairly unfriendly way, grabbing at my limbs. I felt one icy fingertip on my face and jerked away from it.

"They're all crowding around you," Jacob said. He held up a hand. "Wait, wait...they're all talking at once. Wow, they're really mad at you, Ellie. They're saying you took them from their homes and stuck them here."

"I did," she said. "They should have stopped harassing the living."

"They just got a lot louder."

"Can you find her or not?" I asked. There had been plenty of time on the drive over to tell Jacob about Mercy and show her picture to him.

"It's hard to...everybody be QUIET!" he shouted, as though he stood in the middle of a loud concert, or maybe the world's largest daycare center. All I could hear was leaves shuffling and sticks breaking. He pointed in the general direction of a tall, leaning obelisk. "You, right there. You're Mercy, aren't you?"

"You found her?" Stacey asked.

"She's furious. At you." Jacob pointed at me. "She looks ready to attack."

"Mercy, can you hear me?" I asked.

"She's nodding, and she's kind of stalking up on you," Jacob said.

I could feel the air growing cold and heavy around me, in a way that reminded me of the Treadwell house foyer when she was still haunting it. Probably the same temperature and EM reading, though I didn't have my instruments to check.

"Mercy, now that I understand better, I'm truly sorry I took you away," I said. "You were the one holding back the dangerous spirits, weren't you? You were trying to warn the living." I'd figured this much out after Louisa said a number of ghosts had inhabited the house, but most of the activity had ceased after Mercy's death in the foyer. "That's why you were the only one everybody saw. You were the guardian of the house, the protector of the living."

"I'd say she looks less angry now," Jacob whispered. "She's listening."

"Captain Marsh did murder people, just like you told the police. Occult, ritual murders. Jacob says Captain Marsh thought he could extend his life through black magic, which is pretty useful when your main hobbies are smoking, drinking, and consorting with prostitutes. All the other ghosts are his victims, aren't they? He's the one holding them all there."

"Wow, she's excited," Jacob said. "I almost can't focus on her. She's like a blur of energy. Ever seen the Tasmanian Devil in those old cartoons?"

"That's why you killed him, you found out what he was doing. But even stabbing him to death didn't stop him. He kept on killing people after he died," I said. "Because he _liked_ it, I guess. He liked having all those ghosts to boss around. But his first murder was his own wife. He poisoned her because her constant praying and churching didn't fit the life he decided he wanted. You can't be practicing the dark arts in a house filled with prayer. And his niece, Louisa—she knew that old ghost was killing a boarder here and there, but she didn't care. She was on his side. Maybe because he left her the house. Do I have it about right?"

"She's nodding so fast her face is a blur," Jacob said. "It's kind of sick to watch."

"Mercy, we just need to ask you something," I said. "How did you hold all the ghosts back for so long? Tell us everything you can about Captain Marsh and how we can stop him."

Jacob looked at the empty space behind me for a minute, not saying anything.

"Well?" I asked.

"She's clamming up," Jacob said. "I don't know, she just got quiet..."

"Anything you can tell us at all," I said. "We came a long way to speak to you."

"She..." Jacob shook his head. "She doesn't want to tell you anything. She doesn't trust you."

"Because I trapped her and took her away?"

"I would guess so. She...wait." Jacob squinted and tilted his head, as though struggling to hear. "She won't tell us, but she'll show us."

"Okay, show us," I said.

"Back at the house. She wants to come back with us." Jacob gave me an apologetic shrug.

"So...I _should_ go grab a trap, then?" Stacey asked.

"Not a trap," Jacob said. "She wants to hitch a ride with somebody."

"Wait," Stacey said. "It sounds she like she wants somebody to invite her to possess them? Is that right?"

Jacob nodded.

"That's your department, Jacob," I said. "She can possess you."

"Uh, what?" Jacob asked, giving me a look that indicated he didn't quite agree with my plan there. "Possess me?"

"It falls under psychic stuff, if you ask me," I replied. "That's you."

"The girl's got a point," Stacey added, taking my side.

"I'm not..." Jacob looked at the empty space beside me again, then smiled wickedly. "It doesn't matter what I want. She doesn't want to possess me. She wants...you." Jacob pointed at me.

"Me? Why?"

"Because, like I said, she doesn't trust you. She wants to keep an eye on you."

"But she trusts you?" I asked Jacob. "She just met you."

"And I haven't imprisoned or kidnapped her, so I have that going for me," Jacob said. "Those are her terms—she possesses you, Ellie, and goes back to the house, or she won't help us. She's worried you'll betray her or use the information for some other purpose than exorcising Captain Marsh."

This didn't exactly appeal to me. Possession is typically associated with nasty, twisted sorts of ghosts who want to use your body in ways that are violent, destructive, or just plain disgusting. Things I would rather do than get possessed by a ghost include eating a bucket of live leeches, swimming in piranha-filled waters while bleeding from a dozen cuts, and sticking my head into the mouth of a hungry, hungry hippo.

"What other purposes could there be?" I asked, desperate to change the course of the conversation.

"She thinks you might be working with Captain Marsh," Jacob said. "I mean, she had him trapped in his corner of the house, and you're the one who unleashed him, along with his host of captive spirits. Maybe you want to help him, or learn occult stuff from him. That's what she's afraid of."

I sighed. Time was wasting, and I didn't think Mercy would change her mind very soon. From her perspective, I was the enemy. Apparently she was a fan of the "keep your friends close, your enemies closer" philosophy—so close that she would actually be inside me.

"You know what?" I said. "We have to get moving. Just tell me what to do."

"You'll let her possess you?" Jacob asked.

"Yes! Let's just get it over with."

"I think all you have to do is invite her," Jacob said. "Out loud. State your intention clearly."

I took a deep breath, trying to steel myself against the danger I was allowing inside me.

"All right," I said. "Mercy, you can hop inside me for the ride back to the house. You cannot have control of me, though. And it's just for tonight. When we're done, you have to leave me in peace." I really had no idea whether my conditions were binding. I didn't exactly have a supernatural lawyer handy to review the terms of the contract. For all I knew, once she was in me, I would be her prisoner for life.

I felt the cold heaviness close in around me, just as when Mercy had attempted to rip the silver necklace from my fingers. For a moment, I couldn't breathe, and the world grew even darker. I shivered, thinking I would pass out.

If you've ever had an ice-cold snake slither into your head and coil down your spine, freezing your heart and guts, making the rest of your body turn as numb as a corpse, then you've had a somewhat milder experience than letting a ghost possess you. It was terrifying, sickening, and disturbing. I wanted to scream, vomit, and run away all at once.

Then she settled into me, filling my stomach with ice. I felt off-balance and cold, but I seemed to retain control of my mind—as far as I could tell, anyway.

I had my doubts once I heard myself speak through my Novocain-numb jaw.

"Let's go get that bastard," I said. The voice had a much deeper Southern accent than my own, and a bitter, frosty edge.

Stacey and Jacob shared a worried look. I turned away from them and stalked toward the van, impatient to confront the murderous monster lurking in the old mansion.

# Chapter Twenty-Seven

I had Stacey drive us back to Savannah, since I wasn't sure whether it was safe for me to drive while under the influence of an angry ghost.

Cold fury built inside me, mile by mile, and I gripped my tactical flashlight like it was a shotgun and I was on the way to settle a backwoods family feud.

Mercy's memories flickered across my mind like half-remembered nightmares. At one point, I lost touch entirely with the world around me. I found myself fearfully descending rough-hewn plank stairs into a dark, freezing space framed by rock walls.

In the darkness, I saw a girl, maybe nineteen or twenty years old, lying on a mound of smooth river stones. I felt like I knew her. Her short dress had been cut open, and so had her arms and throat, as if someone had intentionally drained her blood. Strange symbols were carved all over her body. Her eyes were open and lifeless.

She was my friend. He'd killed my friend.

I started in my seat, back in the van now, the dream vanished.

"Ellie? Ellie?" Stacey was saying.

"What?" I snapped, rubbing my aching head.

"Okay, good," Stacey said. "You looked really tranced out for a minute there. You were even drooling."

"I was not!" I protested, before finding my chin and shirt slippery with my own slobber. How embarrassing. Fortunately, I had other things on my mind, so I wiped my mouth and glared at the road ahead. It was midnight, and we were almost to the house.

When we arrived, I jumped out of the car, opened the back of the van, and made sure my utility belt was fully loaded. Then I popped open the ghost cannon case, strapped the battery pack onto my back, and stomped toward the front door of the house. I hadn't said a word. I was completely focused on the job at hand.

"Uh, hey, Ellie?" Stacey said, jogging up beside me. "What's the plan here?"

"We go in and get him." My voice was a low growl, not entirely my own. Mercy's hate for Captain Augustus Marsh filled my body like cold fire.

"But the cannon just chases him away, right? Ellie, slow down!"

I leaped up the steps, despite the heavy and unwieldy ghost cannon in my hand. Mercy's ghost seemed to lend me supernatural strength, while also taking away control of my mind and body. I was more like a passenger along for the ride.

I unlocked the front doors. Apparently Mercy didn't feel like stopping to answer Stacey's question.

I stepped into the dark foyer. Despite the almost total lack of light, I could see fairly well, which I also credit to Mercy. Ghostvision. I didn't need my night vision goggles, or even my flashlight. I holstered the flashlight and hefted the cannon in both hands.

Stacey and Jacob followed me inside, standing behind me. I didn't say anything to them. I was too busy looking up at the row of shattered balusters. I snorted.

"That was his pathetic way of getting back at me," I said, but it wasn't really me. It was Mercy's voice. "Trying to dishonor my space. But I don't care about that at all."

"Where do we go now?" Stacey asked.

I hesitated, then led them down the hall, into the kitchen. I could hear voices above me, and for the first time they weren't distorted beyond audibility.

"They're back," someone said, a female.

"He's not going to like that," a male voice replied.

"We'll stop her," hissed another female.

I didn't care. I walked through the kitchen and threw open the rickety wooden door to the cellar. I looked down into the freezing darkness...then I hesitated, suddenly filled with doubt.

"Okay," Stacey sighed, pointing her flashlight into the darkness below. "If we have to. I just wish you'd tell us what's going on, Ellie—"

"This isn't right," I said. I spun, almost knocked Jacob over with the big ghost cannon, and dashed to the narrow back stairs. I jogged up, not looking back.

"Okay, wait!" Stacey ran up the steep stairs with me, while Jacob reluctantly followed.

The second-floor hallway was crowded with ghosts.

It was the gang I'd seen in the cellar two nights earlier, the drifters and prostitutes from across the decades, the transient people Captain Marsh had been able to kill without drawing too much interest from local authorities. I recognized Mr. Junkie, now in his 1940s fedora and patched coat, syringes planted all over his arms and back. A faceless blond woman wore the fringed red dress I'd found in one of the wardrobes. The seventies hooker girl in the hot pants lingered in a shadowy corner, smoking a phantom cigarette and watching us with hollow, empty eye sockets.

They fell silent and turned toward us. I hefted the ghost cannon.

"She's back," Mr. Junkie said.

I advanced, and the herd of ghosts drew back from me as one, retreating to their shadowy doorways, repelled as though they were water and I were a dense drop of oil flowing past.

I can't say whether they were driven back by me with my ghost cannon ready to fire, or by the presence of Mercy inside me, the formidable ghost who had made it her mission to keep them trapped and powerless all these years.

I felt a kind of kinship with Mercy then. We'd been doing the same job, protecting the living against the dead. We approached it from slightly different angles, of course.

"Stacey, the stairs," I said. She dashed ahead and opened the door to the very steep and narrow staircase that twisted its way up to the master suite.

"I don't mean to slow you down there," Jacob said, "But there's a bunch of spirits staring at you. I don't think they wish you well."

"I know," I said. I ran up the steep stairs, somehow keeping my balance while holding the hefty ghost cannon ahead of me.

I reached that weird hallway landing, where the stairs to the third floor led up to the right. To the left, the hallway extended a few feet and dead ended into nothing.

I turned left.

I ran up to the wall and smacked it hard with my fist, then I kicked it. I snarled in frustration—actually _snarled_ like a wild animal. That had to be the angry ghost inside me. I set down the ghost cannon, drew my flashlight, and banged the butt end against the wall, trying once again to find a spot that rang hollow.

The raised steel ridges around my flashlight lens, designed to help SWAT raiders and soldiers break down windows and doors, swung dangerously close to my eyes again and again, but I didn't seem to care about hurting my face. Or Mercy didn't care, at least.

I knocked over the little antique table that decorated the dead-end hall, ignoring the vase on top as it crashed to the floor and shattered. Then I kicked low on the blank wall, still trying to find a hollow spot.

"Didn't we already check there?" Stacey asked, coming up behind me. "There's no hidden panels or anything."

"Because she walled over it," I growled. I holstered my flashlight and pointed at the ghost cannon on the floor beside me. "Stay here," I ordered her, meaning for her to watch over our most powerful piece of equipment.

"Stay here? Where are you going?" Stacey asked.

I didn't reply as I hurried past her, dodging around Jacob as he tried to join us.

"What's up?" he asked.

I didn't answer him, either. My ghost-haunted brain was entirely focused on the task at hand.

I dashed down the steep stairs three at a time, then ran through the kitchen into the first-floor hallway, aiming directly for the security door into the east wing.

It was locked, bolted on the other side, but this was no major obstacle for Mercy, who'd opened the door so many times in her attempts to make the Treadwell family move out, away from danger.

I pressed my hand against the door. I felt a portion of her flow out of me like cold smoke through my fingers. I heard the rasp and clack of the heavy bolt drawing aside.

The door creaked open.

I walked on through, to the closet where Dale and Anna stored their home-restoration tools. I decided the sledgehammer had a nice heft to it and would do nicely.

The second-floor ghosts eyeballed me again as I passed them on the way to the stairs, whispering among themselves, a sound like dry leaves scratching their way down the street in a gust of wind.

Captain Marsh clearly hadn't given them the order to attack me—not yet.

I stalked up the stairs, my lips peeled back into an insane grin. Inside me, Mercy was exultant.

"Whoa," Stacey said, when I reached her and Jacob. "Don't you think we should maybe call our clients before we bash apart their house?"

I wasn't looking at Stacey. I was looking at the fourth person on the landing, the small, dark-haired woman in the high lace collar whom Stacey could not see.

The ghost of Eugenia pointed to the blank wall I was about to demolish.

"Destroy him, Mercy," she said. "For both of us. For all of us."

I nodded.

"Can you see her?" Jacob asked me.

"Yes. She's okay. She won't hurt us."

"Maybe not, but I'm feeling some bad stuff creep toward us." Jacob pointed up the second flight of stairs, the one that ended in a trap door to the master suite.

I saw them pass right through the door, dark and rotten shapes crawling down the stairs on their hands and knees. Because of Mercy possessing me, I now understood that these were among Captain Marsh's earliest victims, people he'd killed in his first ritual sacrifices. There were about six of them, and they'd mostly been hobos and vagrants in life, but one had been from a fairly prominent local family, a personal enemy of Captain Marsh after some business deal gone sour. Now, as long-decayed ghosts, the rich man was indistinguishable from the homeless.

"The crawlers," Eugenia said. "My husband sends them to torment me. You must hurry."

I turned and swung the hammer, bashing a hole through the center of the dead-end wall.

The entire house seemed to rumble. The rotten crawlers slithered down the stairs, some of them crawling sideways on the stairwell walls.

"It's getting worse." Jacob pointed down the stairs to the second floor, where the ghosts had so far been content to watch and whisper. Now the entire crowd advanced up the stairs toward us, their faces twisted with rage and hate. Some of their faces had gone transparent, giving a ghostly view of the skulls beneath the pale skin. "They're all ganging up."

Every ghost in the house had come out, except for Captain Marsh himself, waiting down in his lair. Waiting for me.

Eugenia threw herself at the shadowy crawlers. One grappled with her, but the other five continued their relentless advance.

"Try to slow them down," I said. "Jacob, you get the ones from downstairs. Stacey, you get the crawlers."

Stacey swung her flashlight beam up the stairs. The crawling apparitions didn't scatter or vanish, but I could now see them in greater, more grisly detail.

"How do I slow them down?" Jacob asked. "Jabbing this flashlight at them?"

"That would be a good start, yes," I said. We'd given him one of our high-powered tactical flashlights for the mission, but I doubted they would slow this mob very much. "Stacey, music?"

"Oh, yep. Get back, crawlers! Last warning!" Stacey touched the iPod on her belt.

Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" blasted at about ninety decibels from Stacey's portable speaker on her belt. The timbers of the house seemed to vibrate around us. I have to admit, it seemed to give the ghosts some pause.

"Maybe something a little holier!" I shouted. Then I swung the sledgehammer again, bashing a second hole into the wall.

"Sorry," Stacey said, fumbling with her iPod while the ghosts recovered and began to advance on us again from both stairways, clearly ignoring Taylor Swift's firm rejection of pursuing any further relationship.

A relatively fast-paced Gregorian chant replaced the pop song. I had somewhat better hopes for that.

I didn't look back, though. I kept pounding the wall, punching four, five, six holes. Mercy urged me on with her spectral energy, swinging the hammer with the same righteous fury that had driven her to grab that butcher knife from the kitchen after finding her dead friend, the fury that had sent her up these same stairs to stab the murderous Captain Marsh in his sleep.

The wall splintered and cracked. I broke through plaster, masonry, studs, and joists. Chunks of wood piled up at my feet, and I swept them aside with the head of the hammer. Then I kept swinging, first high over my head, then low like the hammer was a massive golf club of destruction. I was bashing myself a new doorway.

"This isn't going to work much longer!" Stacey shouted. I turned to see the ghosts from above and below crowding into the hallway. "Ellie, I need to use the ghost cannon!"

"No," I said. "We have to save the full charge for _him_."

"Then I need a Plan B. You have one, right?"

"Um," I said. "Jacob, can't you, like, lash out at them with your psychic medium powers?"

"Not that I'm aware of!" Jacob was doing his best to stay between Stacey and the ghosts, while she was doing her best to stay on the front line and protect me while I hammered. I appreciated both of them, especially since their flashlights and music weren't doing much to hold back the horde.

"Just push out some intense emotion or something," I said. "Ghosts are all about drama and emotion."

"Would fear work?" he asked. "I've got plenty of that hanging around."

"Not fear! You'll start a feeding frenzy. Use anger or something."

"Like being angry at myself for being here?" Jacob asked.

"Think about...think about how it felt when you woke up in that plane crash," I said. "There had to be some big feelings there, right?"

"So you want me to throw months of intense suicidal depression at them?" Jacob asked.

"That would be perfect, thanks!" I turned back and began bashing the wall again, widening the crevice I'd carved out so far. I was beginning to see something beyond it.

Behind me, I heard Jacob take a few deep breaths, then let out a long sigh, like something buried deep in his gut had been set free. I took another swing at the wall, knocking aside a skeletal frame of wood. I could see where we were going now.

When I turned back, the ghostly horde had slowed greatly. Jacob faced them, clutching his hands to his head, grimacing as though in intense pain. He was protecting us for the moment, but it looked like it was hurting him pretty badly.

"Good, keep it up, Jacob," I said. I turned to look through the gaping, jagged hole I'd made.

On the other side was a door carved from dark ebony, which is pretty heavy, expensive stuff. The door handle was ornate, silver-plated, gripped in the teeth of a devilish gargoyle face.

"Here it is," I said. "We made it."

Then I slumped, as if my body had turned to rags, and Stacey had to catch me so I didn't crack my head against the wall. The sledgehammer crashed to the floor beside my feet.

Mercy's fury and energy had driven me on until that moment, powering me up like a shot of steroids, or a can of Popeye's spinach. Now I sensed she was exhausted. I could feel her deep in my gut, curled up in a depleted ball of energy. I didn't think I would get much more help from her tonight.

Now my arms and back ached from recklessly swinging the hammer, and blisters had formed on my fingers. Mercy had worn me out, too, and the job was just beginning.

"Are you okay?" Stacey whispered.

"I'm great," I panted, wiping sweat from my face. Weak-kneed, I approached the ebony door.

"What's that?" Stacey asked.

I reached a hand toward the silver gargoyle latch. I was definitely trembling, but I couldn't say whether it was from too much exertion or from the dark batch of fear boiling up in my belly.

Before I touched it, the silver gargoyle's jaw flexed with a sharp squeak. The black door swung open silently, revealing the darkness beyond.

As with the stairs into the wine cellar, these were rough planks of wood surrounded by rock walls. They descended into pitch blackness. Cold radiated from the darkness below, along with a kind of reverse wind, seeming to tug things toward it like a black hole. The air temperature plunged into deep-arctic range. I could feel my lips and nose chapping in the sudden freeze.

Marsh, the master ghost, had opened the door for me. He wanted me to come down and see him.

The fear that struck me then was profound and total, the kind of awful dread that starts deep inside the pit of your stomach and grows up your spine to blossom into a black bloom of total horror inside your skull. It wasn't the kind of fear that makes you run and scream. It was the kind that makes you die of fright, because you know the end has come.

I swallowed.

Down in the darkness, a deep voice gave a long, rumbling moan, as if in response to my gulping sound.

"He's there," I whispered.

I picked up the ghost canon and started toward the doorway, ducking under the remnants of the wall I'd bashed to pieces.

"Ellie?" Stacey asked, touching my arm.

"Stay with Jacob," I said. "Do not let any of those minions through this door."

"But, come on, you're not going by yourself--" Stacey looked into the horrible, freezing darkness below.

"Mercy is coming with me," I said, not mentioning that Mercy had more or less collapsed inside me and might not be heard from again. I still had some of the ghostvision going for me—I could see the horde coming to kill us all. I guess that was a good thing. I couldn't see in the dark anymore, though, so I drew my flashlight and clicked it on. "Cover my back. That's, like, an order. Seriously."

Stacey nodded and turned to face the ghosts, blasting them with a tactical flashlight in each hand while they trudged their way through the melancholy blue haze of Jacob's sadness. It looked like they were attempting to cross a swamp while wearing heavy boots. Jacob's hands covered his eyes, his teeth bared in pain.

I turned my attention to the evil waiting below, and I started down the stairs, the ghost cannon in one hand, my flashlight pointed ahead of me.

"Captain Marsh!" I said. When in doubt, act like you're in control. Showing fear to a ghost is like feeding a stray cat—once they get a taste, they'll never leave you alone. "I know you're down here. It's time for you to leave this house."

The stairwell did not immediately widen to give a view of the room below, as the wine cellar stairs did. The raw rock walls stayed narrow, brushing my shoulders every step of the way. I wondered how Captain Marsh, a man of some height and girth, had fit through here. I suppose he sucked in his gut.

My heart beat faster every step of the way. The stairs below me creaked and groaned under my weight—which isn't _that_ much, people—and the whole rickety staircase structure felt much weaker than the one in the wine cellar. I was tense, waiting for it to collapse below me. Nobody had walked down these stairs in many years. They could easily have been rotten through, or even eaten by termites.

The cellar seemed completely silent. I hadn't heard the moaning sound again.

The walls finally flared out as I reached the bottom stair, but not by much. My flashlight found rock shelves built into the walls on either side, like stone bunk beds stacked three high. A skeleton in decomposed clothing lay on each one.

I'd walked into a crypt.

"Captain Marsh?" I said, shining my flashlight forward. Across the roughly oval-shaped room, opposite the stairway, a little alcove had been carved halfway up the wall. Its lower lip was framed by layer after layer of black-wax stalactites, as though countless black candles had been burned there over the years.

Inside the alcove squatted one of the ugliest pieces of art I'd ever seen, a black volcanic-rock sculpture of a rotund little humanoid with cloven hooves, a pot belly, and a flat face adorned with tusks and horns. It was about a foot tall. Its clawed hands were clasped as though in prayer, but its bugging black eyes looked straight ahead, and its neck was stiff and fully erect.

Below that, on the floor, lay something I'd seen in Mercy's memory: a mound of smooth river stones. She'd found the body of a friend there, another regular working girl at Captain Marsh's nonstop party.

Now a mold-encrusted hardwood coffin lay on top of the rocks, the lid closed.

_That's him_ , Mercy whispered in my mind. _He told Louisa to move his body here._

"Whose bodies are these, Captain Marsh?" I asked. "These are the people you killed when you were still alive, aren't they? You sacrificed them to that tiny little idol in the corner. Where'd you find that? One of your trips to New York? Or across the ocean?"

I could feel something watching me from all sides, but I couldn't see anything but shadows and skeletons. The presence was heavy in the air, which was beyond foul and hard to breathe. I tried not to think of how much corpse-dust I was sucking up with each breath.

"It's an ugly little thing, isn't it?" I asked, shining my flashlight onto the idol again. "It looks so wimpy, too. Couldn't protect you against one angry girl with a knife. Hey, a little bird told me that's you in there." I kicked the foot of the coffin, jostling the rotten wood.

The low moaning sounded again, all around me, a deep bass far below the normal range of the human voice. The cement-rock floor seemed to shudder, or maybe I was just losing my balance.

A shadow formed on the wall, right in the center of the glowing puddle of light cast by my flashlight. It swelled to swallow up most of the light, taking the shape of a larger-than-life man with an enormous beard, most of the head projected onto the ceiling.

There was nothing in front of me that would have cast such a shadow.

"You didn't like that, did you?" I asked. I kicked his coffin again, then again. Portions of the rotten lid cracked away and tumbled inside, and I glimpsed a skeletal arm in a rotting suit jacket.

He roared now, swelling out from the wall in three dimensions. He spread through the room like inky black smoke, engulfing the idol, his own casket, and the crypt bunks on either side of him.

The darkness billowed forward, diminishing my flashlight beam until it was no more useful than a paper match.

I holstered the flashlight.

I faced a wall of solid darkness, which had swollen to fill the entire back half of the cellar. Its surface pulsed and wavered organically, like the flesh of a massive, oily black tumor.

It bulged toward me.

"Okay, Augustus," I said. "I know you're a big, bad monster of a ghost, but right now I need you to get out of my way."

I put on my sunglasses, raised the ghost cannon, thumbed it to the highest possible setting, and pulled the trigger.

The underground crypt lit up like a dive bar at closing time. The cannon flooded the room with scalding hot light, and I could see every detail of the skeletons on their rocky bunks. The back half of the room remained dimmer, as though some kind of dark veil were drawn across it, but I could still see Marsh's rotting coffin and the idol in the wall beyond it.

An angry-sounding groan shook the room as the darkness seemed to retreat into the walls.

From my own experience, I had a pretty good idea that if we moved these bodies out of the house, we might knock out the haunting altogether, sending the restless spirits on their way to wherever they're supposed to go. We would start with Captain Marsh's remains.

"Hey, Stacey!" I shouted.

"What's up?" Stacey leaned through the doorway above, looking down at me while pointing her flashlights in the opposite direction. She looked pretty pale and terrified, which is the proper reaction to trying to stave off a horde of attacking ghosts.

"Give me a hand with this old corpse," I said.

"I knew you were going to say something awful," Stacey replied. She leaned out of sight, I assume to pass Jacob a flashlight, then started down the stairs holding her one remaining light, though she didn't need it at the moment. The room could not have been any brighter.

Then I heard something snap behind me. A scorching heat scalded my back, and I cried out in pain. The ghost cannon blew out like a candle, plunging the cellar back into darkness. I fiddled with the switch, but the big light-blaster was dead.

"What happened?" Stacey asked, shining her flashlight toward me.

"The battery pack malfunctioned," I said, grimacing in pain. "Marsh might have—watch out!"

I drew my regular flashlight and pointed it toward her. The crawlers were following Stacey into the cellar, scurrying like rotten spiders on the walls and low ceiling all around her.

"What is it?" Stacey asked.

"Get back! The crawlers are surrounding you."

"I don't see anything." Stacey shined her flashlight around, then reached for the thermal goggles on her forehead.

The crawlers slithered down the wall, into the stairs below her.

"Get off the stairs!" I shouted, but Stacey had no time to react.

The crawlers tore into the rickety old staircase, ripping away the railing, the steps, and the support beams all at once. The cracking of a hundred pieces of wood filled my ears, sounding weirdly like grease sizzling in a pan.

Stacey screamed as the staircase collapsed beneath her. She crashed down to the cellar floor in a storm of broken wood and rusty nails. I heard her cry in pain, then fall silent as a stout beam and a few chunks of railing and stairs crashed down on top of her. Her flashlight rolled away and thumped against the wall. The Gregorian chant ended abruptly, as though her iPod had cracked.

"Stacey!" I screamed, starting toward her.

Dark, cold laughter echoed all through the room. I can't say there was much mirth in it. I felt ill.

I turned to see the wall of pulsing, flowing darkness had returned, swelling even bigger, and I had to step back a few paces as it grew toward me. My flashlight beam didn't penetrate it at all.

I tried the ghost cannon again, but it didn't respond. If Marsh had sucked all the power out of the battery pack, then he'd only grown stronger while putting my best weapon out of service.

_A bushel of my enemy's grain is worth twenty of my own_ , I thought. That's from the _Art of War_ by Sun-Tzu, which is the sort of thing Calvin makes me read. I'd just given Marsh twenty bushels' worth, then.

I shivered as the darkness expanded and thickened. I tried desperately to think of what I could do to avoid getting killed in the next five seconds. If Marsh got me, I would become another of his slave ghosts, haunting and terrorizing anyone who tried to live in the house. He might even make me kill for him.

I wanted very badly to check on Stacey, but if I turned my back on Marsh's malevolent presence, it could mean death for both of us.

Placing the ghost cannon on the floor, I raised my flashlight toward the darkness again. That was when Marsh lashed out at me. Something huge and hard, like a giant's hand adorned with brass knuckles, smashed into me head-on, flinging me across the room.

I slammed into the rock shelves at one side of the crypt, banging my rib cage pretty hard, followed immediately by my head. Little bursts of light exploded behind my eyelids.

Then I tumbled and crashed to the rock floor, another hard impact that felt like a slap across my entire body. I shuddered in pain and tasted blood in my mouth.

Though I felt like I couldn't move, I forced myself up to my knees. I grasped the nearby rock shelf. In the darkness, my fingers bumped against an old thighbone.

" _Don't touch me,"_ a voice whispered in the air near my throbbing, spinning head.

The deep, almost subsonic laughter rumbled again, so deep and powerful it made my joints ache. I could barely hear it over the screaming pain in my head and ribs and back.

I pushed myself to my feet, but I wobbled and swayed, my balance still out of whack. I almost fell over, but then a hand grabbed me.

It felt deep-freezer cold _and_ wet and squishy, an unnatural combination. In the light from Stacey's flashlight, and my own flashlight held loosely in my stunned and weakened fingers, I could see what was gripping me.

The wall of darkness had pushed close. From it had emerged the head, arms, and torso of Captain Marsh, but they didn't quite match the pictures taken of him when he was alive. He was made of dense darkness—it looked like he was carved entirely out of liquid petroleum, the surface of him flowing thick and slow. I could see every detail of his face, which looked like a monstrous version of his portraits, every detail gleaming and black, the beard stretching out from his face all the way back into the wall of darkness behind him, the liquid-black locks tangled and writhing like blind serpents.

His eyes, pure black like the rest of him, stared into mine. His mouth opened in an unnaturally large grin, like the jaws of a crocodile, the teeth widely spaced and sharpened into points.

Marsh pulled me toward him. I resisted with all my remaining strength, which wasn't much. I planted my feet on the floor and leaned back away from the horrible specter, while dark laughter burbled out of his maw. If he'd let me go, I would have fallen and smacked into the rock floor, but I guess he didn't know about judo and turning your opponent's strength against him.

I called out Stacey's name, but my voice was weak. She didn't respond. I couldn't see her, but as far as I could tell, she hadn't moved since the staircase collapsed around her.

I heard Jacob shouting in pain upstairs, but I couldn't help him, either.

The hideous shape of Captain Marsh gave me another hard pull, and I stumbled. I just barely managed to plant my feet again and resist getting drawn into the inky black wall.

His face grew larger, expanding to more than twice the natural size of a human head. His jaws spread open, and he laughed again.

" _Come to me,"_ his black-oil mouth said. _"I'll make you eternal."_

I didn't know how much longer I could hold out—his strength was massive, while my own was currently somewhere around the level of a kitten drowsy on too much warm milk.

I dragged my feet as far from him as I could, so I was leaning toward Marsh and the darkness from which he'd half-emerged. If he let go of me, I would fall right on my face, probably breaking my nose on that stone floor.

My grip tightened on my flashlight.

"Okay," I told him. "You murderer. You want me to come to you? I'm on my way."

I pushed hard with both feet, leaping toward him while he yanked on my arm with all his force. His liquid-black jaw dropped in a wide open frown, and confusion wrinkled his forehead.

I flew right through him, into the blackness beyond. My guts turned instantly sour, and I was both nauseous and dizzy. The air was cold and thick as polluted water, almost impossible to breathe.

This was the belly of the beast.

I managed to land on my feet, only to stagger forward and trip over the rock mound at the center of the room. I crashed face first into Marsh's coffin, feeling the rotten lid rip beneath me like old paper.

Cold, sharp hands grabbed at my legs. At first I thought it was Marsh's skeleton seizing me, but there were too many hands for that. I heard a few male voices—they were panting, with a lusty sound I didn't like at all.

The crawlers, I realized. They'd taken out Stacey, and I was next.

I felt a frigid tongue lick the back of my neck. It felt like the rotten skin was sliding off, leaving a residue on my flesh.

I shouted and swung my flashlight at them, which didn't help much, but it got me moving again. I kicked, then pushed myself forward on my hands and knees. The crawlers grabbed at me everywhere, keeping me from standing. Between the thick, heavy pressure of the air and the grisly ghosts, I was barely able to move...but I _did_ keep moving, inch by inch.

It was eerily silent now, like the dark depths of the ocean where no light has ever been. Even my own breathing was muffled.

Pulling myself across the rocky floor with my fingers, knees, and toes, I finally reached the wall. Hands grabbed my hair and ripped at my clothes. My jacket was torn away, and unseen claws and teeth sank into my arms, back, and neck.

Biters and scratchers. I detest them all.

I drew myself up the uneven rock wall. At least one of the crawlers was right on my back, his arms locked around my waist in a disgusting embrace, so I wasn't able to stand.

I didn't need to stand, though.

My hands scrabbled over a slick, crumbling surface. Years of accumulated black candle wax.

I managed to reach a little higher, and my hands closed around the base of the ugly little idol.

With an angry grunt, I pulled it out of its niche and brought it crashing to the ground. It slammed into the rock floor beside me.

The entire house shook now, as if a major earthquake had struck it from below. Dust and grit rained down all over me from the ceiling, and I thought I could hear timbers creaking and groaning in protest. The whole cellar roof was about to come crashing down on top of me, bringing the full weight of the house with it.

A deep snarl thundered and echoed through the room, making my eardrums pop. The thick, foul air rippled and splashed around me.

A swarm of tiny glowing orbs appeared in the darkness around me like luminescent fish. They quickly grew, taking the forms of the second-floor ghosts, the ones who weren't quite as decayed as the crawlers, like Mr. Junkie and the assorted prostitutes.

They all had a pale glow, their mouths downturned in exaggerated expressions of fury, their skulls still visible through their faces. By their glow, I could also see the dark crawlers on the floor around me.

The ghosts closed in around me like a pack of hungry hyenas, grabbing and slashing at me from all sides. I didn't have long to live.

I pressed one hand against the fallen statue to hold it in place. Then I raised the other, which still held my flashlight. The light was useless deep in this spiritual darkness, but those little raised steel ridges around the lens...those would work just fine. I hoped.

I brought the flashlight down as hard as I could and smashed into the bug-eyed face of the statue. I heard an audible cracking sound—I'd chipped it, at least.

Marsh's roar sounded again, and the cellar floor rumbled. Was that a trace of pain in his voice? I hoped so.

I smashed the idol's face a second time, then a third. The house was shaking and creaking, spilling more dust all over me, making me cough.

The next time I brought my flashlight down, there was a much louder crack. Half the idol's head broke away and hit the floor. The broken chunk of god-head looked like one of those big stone flakes cavemen used as knives and hand axes.

Marsh's voice howled again, and there was _definitely_ pain in it this time.

The ghosts closest to me vanished, as though someone had grabbed them all and flung them aside.

In their place rose the black-oil head and torso of Marsh, emerging again from the darkness. Both his large hands plunged toward my throat. His face twisted in inhuman fury.

"Captain Augustus Oliver Marsh," I gasped, still choking on dust. "You are forever banished from this house."

I seized the broken flake of the idol's head. As Marsh's form reached me, I stabbed the sharp chunk of the idol directly into his oily black heart.

Marsh's face melted into an expression of horror. His freezing hands grabbed at mine, but I wasn't budging. I managed to slide the stone fragment in a little deeper.

"There," I whispered. "You believe in the power of this idol—now I turn it against you."

He gave a long, shrieking howl that rattled the skeletons on the walls, knocking one out of its bunk and onto the floor, where it smashed into pieces.

The heavy darkness shrouding the room began to lift and scatter like a thunderhead breaking apart. The horde of ghosts backed even farther away from me.

Marsh shrank away from me, too. The oily black surface of his skin ruptured, and the darkness shrank into patches all over him. Beneath that surface, he was a pale ghost like the others. He no longer seemed bigger and stronger than the rest.

He clutched his thick gray hair in his hands and let out a keening wail as he looked at the broken idol.

"Your power is gone," I said.

He looked at me with his transparent pale eyes going wide, his jaw dropping, his enormous beard drooping around his face like that of an elderly, defeated lion.

"No," his voice rasped. Then, pathetically, he pleaded, "Don't hurt me."

"It's not me you have to worry about," I replied.

Rustling, whispering voices rose all around us, like the last dead leaves of fall. The ghosts were closing in, some walking, some crawling—but not toward me this time.

Augustus Marsh, steamship captain, mass murderer, and part-time occultist, watched warily as they approached.

"Get back!" he ordered them. "I am still in command. Get back!"

"That's not exactly true anymore," I said. "You know it. And they can feel it."

The horde encircled him slowly, closing in around him. They still seemed hesitant to step too close.

"No!" he said, holding up one hand palm out. "I command you, I command..."

"You thought you'd live forever," I said. "But you're already dead. It's time to accept it."

The horde moved closer to him. One crawler, a badly rotten hobo ghost, was the first soul brave enough to reach out and grab Marsh. Marsh flinched and leaped back, right into the arms of more of his former captives.

Expressions of wrath twisted all their faces. As they pounced on him, I was reminded again of a pack of starving hyenas leaping on a carcass.

Apparently they'd taken it easy on me, maybe resisting Marsh's orders to stop us with whatever shred of individual will they'd had. While I couldn't see Marsh through the crowd, but I heard snapping, ripping, gnashing, and a lone voice screaming as they tore him apart. There was so much pain in it that I almost felt sorry for him, until I remembered he'd personally murdered every ghost in the room.

Well, almost every ghost. He hadn't killed Mercy himself, either when he was alive or when he was a murderous spirit.

Now I felt Mercy rising in me, glowing with the thrill of victory.

She didn't leave my body then, but that was okay. We still had unfinished business.

The swarm of ghosts began to swirl faster and faster. Marsh screamed as they ripped into his essence. They became a moaning, biting whirlwind of pale, misshapen faces and hands, no longer looking human at all.

They dragged Marsh down to the rocky floor, next to his own coffin.

I caught one last glimpse of him there, shriveled and bitten, whimpering as his freed prisoners tore away what little he had left.

Then they took him down through the floor, deep below the ground, hopefully all the way to Hell. I pointed my flashlight and watched the last curls of ghostly mist fade among the cemented rocks, making sure they were really gone.

Then the room was quiet. The temperature was already rising, from deep freeze to mildly cool.

"Stacey?" I ran over to the collapsed staircase, where she lay among broken heaps of wood and exposed rusty nails. She bled from her nose, she had several large bruises, and her eyes were closed.

I touched her shoulder and rubbed it gently, not wanting to disturb any injuries she might have sustained.

"Stacey? Stacey? Are you awake?"

"Ugh." She squinted her still-closed eyes. "I'd rather not be."

"Are you hurt?"

"What do you think?" Stacey asked.

"Where? Is anything specifically bad?"

"No, just..." Her eyes opened. "My arm. Oh, my freaking _arm_. I think it's broken."

"Which one?"

"The one I landed on," Stacey said. I moved my flashlight around and saw her left arm tucked and twisted beneath her. "Good thing I'm a righty," she added. Spunky girl.

"I'm sorry," a voice groaned above us. It sounded like another ghost. I pointed my light up there.

Jacob knelt in the doorway over the collapsed staircase, barely able to grasp his flashlight. The poor guy looked like someone had dunked him in gravy and thrown him into a pit of lions. His clothes were shredded, much like mine, and red scratches crisscrossed all the bared flesh, as well as his face and neck.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I tried to hold them back, but..."

"Don't apologize," I told him. "We would have been dead ten minutes ago without you. You saved us. Are you hurt? Can you walk?"

"Only if I really have to," he said, then he slumped against the doorframe. "What do we do now?"

"I guess we'd better call an ambulance," I replied. I brushed my fingers across Stacey's head, kind of an attempt to comfort her. It was less awkward than it sounds. She gave me a pained smile.

"Don't forget the coroner," she added, glancing at the skeletons in the wall. "I wonder if funeral homes give discounts for mass murder."

# Chapter Twenty-Eight

The next afternoon, Stacey and I sat at the dining room table in the east wing of the house, facing the Treadwell family, just as we had on our first visit. It was a sweltering June day outside, and golden summer light flooded the house. All the dark shadows had been chased away.

Jacob was back at work, where hopefully he had a good explanation for the numerous scratches on his hands and face. Attacked by a pack of feral cats who'd dragged him through thorn bushes, maybe. Anything was more believable than the truth. He hadn't exactly advertised his unwanted psychic-medium abilities around the accounting firm, since he did not want to get fired or sent on mental health leave.

All of us had stitches. Stacey had fractured her wrist, and the hospital had splinted it before releasing us early that morning.

It had been a busy day, with the police gathering reports about the dead bodies we'd found. The coroner's office was still at work in the main house, exhuming bodies from the crypt.

Now, Stacey and I finally had a chance to sit down with our clients.

I laid out the story for the Treadwells, leaving out some of the more scandalous or scary details for Lexa's benefit. Everything would be in my final written report...which, I suspected, they were no more likely to read than they were to watch the DVDs Stacey had prepared of ghostly apparitions and activity all over their home. Still, people liked to get a hefty package of stuff for their money.

"So the ghosts are definitely gone this time?" Dale asked. He wasn't drunk or cocky now. He seemed chastened and humbled by the experience. "They aren't going to come back?"

"They've all moved on," I said.

"Even from the crypt?" he asked, still looking worried.

"Definitely," I replied, and he got a reflective look on his face. I imagined Dale changing the newly-discovered room into some kind of man-cave, with a hideous couch and beer signs. The evil old idol might be replaced by a shrine to the Cubbies. I held back a laugh. "After last night, I'd say this is now probably the least haunted house in all of Savannah. Call us if you have any trouble, but I don't anticipate any. We can do a follow-up in a few weeks if you'd like."

"Then we can keep going with the renovations? The rooms will be safe to rent?" Anna asked.

"Yep, as soon as you clean up the mold and broken syringes, you can make this a really nice place," I said. "You'll probably find that the remodeling goes much faster and cheaper, with fewer problems than before. That's normal."

"Thank goodness," Anna said, sighing a little. She smiled at her husband, and he smiled back. It felt like ice breaking in the sunlight.

"What about Mercy?" Lexa asked. "Did she move on, too?"

"She's leaving the house with us," I said. I hadn't mentioned the part where I was possessed by Mercy's ghost. I could feel her inside me, restless.

"Can you thank her for me?" Lexa asked. "She was just trying to warn us about the bad ones. She was really a good ghost."

"She was, but she's ready to leave now," I said. "You don't have to worry about any ghosts anymore, Lexa. Good or bad."

Lexa nodded silently. She'd been through a lot.

As we left the house, stepping out onto the driveway shaded by oak and moss, Stacey took a last look at the sharp peaks and high roofs of the Gothic-style house.

"You know, once you get rid of the ghosts and spiders, it is a pretty nice mansion," she said. "I bet it will make a cute little hotel."

"Yeah. I think they'll be fine," I said. "I hope their check clears."

We drove away.

# Chapter Twenty-Nine

"So, does that thing really have black magic or not?" Stacey asked.

We were at the office, in the basement. I was carefully sliding the two pieces of Captain Marsh's broken idol into a ghost trap. I sealed the lid.

"I have my doubts," I said. "The important thing is that Marsh himself believed in it. It was the focus of his powers."

"Yeah, but he killed those people to lengthen his own life, and that worked, right? I mean, he lived to be a hundred and six."

"Some people have longevity on their side." I placed the trap into a giant steel safe, eight feet tall, on a shelf alongside similar sealed traps. The one next to it held an old voodoo doll bristling with needles.

"If you don't believe in the occult stuff, why are you stashing that thing? Why not just toss it in the trash?" Stacey asked.

"It's Calvin's policy." I shoved the steel door shut. "Better safe than sorry."

"And keeping a vault full of supernatural bric-a-brac from old cases counts as safe?" she asked.

"Maybe not, but that's our job. We face the dangers so other people don't have to."

"Hey, you should put that on our business cards!" Stacey said.

A whirring and clanking sounded above. Calvin descended from the ceiling, caged inside the little industrial elevator that connects the three floors of the building. His bloodhound Hunter stood beside him, languidly wagging his tail. Hunter liked riding the elevator.

When it reached the floor, Calvin opened the cage door and rolled out. The dog stayed loyally at his side, but drifted in Stacey's direction, knowing she was good for a long scratch under the chin.

"Case closed?" Calvin asked, glancing at the safe door, and I nodded. "Good. That sounded like a tough one."

"It was," I agreed.

"What do you think of the psychic kid? Any good?"

"Better than expected," I said. "He helped us break the case, and he also held back a swarm of attacking ghosts. We may as well keep his number on file."

"Or maybe invite him out for lunch," Stacey suggested. I looked at her, and she blushed. "Or, you know. Coffee?"

"What about this one?" Calvin inclined his head toward Stacey. "Are we keeping her or throwing her back?"

I gave Stacey a long look.

"It's up to her," I finally said. "Personally, I'd like to keep her."

"I'd like to stay," Stacey said. "This work matters. And there's almost nobody willing to do it."

Calvin nodded. There wasn't much left to say, and only one thing left to do.

# Chapter Thirty

I walked into Roustie's the next night, accompanied by Jacob and Stacey. They lingered near the front door while I walked up to the bar—I just wanted Dabney and Buck to see I wasn't alone. I didn't know how Jacob would fare in an all-out brawl with these people, but maybe he could make them all miserably depressed or something.

The bar hosted a much bigger crowd than it had on Sunday afternoon, and David Allen Coe played loud on the jukebox. As I approached the bar, Buck was entertaining a couple of hefty biker guys while pouring their drinks.

"...so the sign says, 'Liquor in the front, poker in the rear'!" Buck was shouting to be heard, or just shouting because he was drunk. The bikers laughed, and one of them pounded his fist on the bar as if he couldn't control himself. Then they asked for more drinks.

"Hi there, Buck," I said.

He looked up at me, and the drunken smile vanished from his face.

"Maybe you want to talk at the end of the bar?" I sat down a few stools away from the nearest customer, under the rack of drinking glasses and next to the cash register.

Buck stared at me, saying nothing. He clearly didn't know how to react, because he ran back to the kitchen door and shouted for Dabney. Dabney scowled when he saw me.

The two of them approached with fairly hostile looks on their faces. Buck muttered something to Dabney and pointed at my two friends by the door.

"Hi, boys," I said. "You two were such a big help with my investigation, I thought you'd be curious how the case turned out."

"Yeah, all right," Buck said, nodding rapidly until Dabney elbowed him to stop.

"First, I should remind you that I'm not the police," I said. "My job is to serve my clients, which is usually about removing the ghosts from their homes. It's not my job to dig up old criminal cases and prosecute them. Are we clear on that?"

The two of them just stared at me. Dabney narrowed his eyes a little, while Buck actually gulped, then poured himself a drink.

"I have to tell you," I said. "Captain Marsh—Louisa's great-uncle, you know—he was a real monster in life. He liked to murder passing strangers, rootless people, anybody the authorities wouldn't notice had gone missing. But after he died, he _really_ became a monster. He kept on killing the same sorts of people. I think Louisa knew about it and helped him. She definitely covered up for him. She walled up the crypt under the house where the bodies of his victims were stored."

Dabney and Buck glanced at each other, Buck's jaw dropping open. They probably didn't know about that. It would have been done soon after Louisa took over the house, when Dabney and Buck were still children.

"So that gives you some idea of why the place was so haunted," I continued. "Just think about Louisa for a moment, living alone there, seeing nobody but strangers, while serving the murderous ghost of her dead uncle. Maybe she was just really grateful to him for leaving her the house. Maybe Louisa's a little twisted herself. You have to wonder whether she was crazy when she got there, or whether the house and that evil ghost made her that way.

"Anyway, when she heard her great-uncle's killer, Mercy, was being released, she decided she wanted Mercy dead. Maybe she was afraid for her own life, but I suspect Captain Marsh's ghost wanted it done. He wanted revenge, and he wanted Mercy to die right there in his house so he could torment her for years to come.

"There was one problem. Mercy wasn't some drifter staying at the house. She wasn't going to show up on her own. That's why Louisa sent you two to kidnap Mercy after she got out of the hospital. You brought her to the Marsh house, you put a noose around her neck, and you threw her over the railing."

"That ain't...hey, that ain't..." Buck tried to come up with something to say.

"Shut up, Buck," Dabney said. "You ain't got no proof of that, lady."

"Actually, I've heard it from the victim herself, Mercy," I said. "I work with ghosts, remember? But I figured it out before she told me. The two of you gave yourselves away by ransacking my apartment and threatening me. That's when I knew you had something to hide. Add together the inconsistencies between what Louisa told us a few days ago and what she told the police thirty years ago, and I pretty much figured it out."

"Dang it, Dabney, I told you we ought to leave her alone--" Buck began.

"Shut up!" Dabney actually slapped Buck across the face, and Buck cringed like a long-abused dog. Then Dabney turned to me. "Nothing you're saying could hold up in court."

"Hey, I told you, I'm not the police." I held up my hands defensively. "I'm not trying to put together a case for the prosecution here."

"Then what are you trying to do?" Dabney asked.

"I'm just getting to the part y'all don't know about," I said. "You see, Captain Marsh had power over almost every ghost in that house, because he'd personally killed them. When he was alive, he first poisoned his wife to get her out of his way, then he ritually sacrificed the others down in his cellar—the crypt cellar, the one y'all maybe didn't know about. He sacrificed them to this ugly little demon idol. Lord knows where he got it, but there it was, surrounded by old candles.

"Anyway, he didn't kill Mercy. You two did. In fact, Mercy had killed _him_. So, by the rules of that household, Mercy's ghost actually had power over Captain Marsh's ghost. She used it to stand against him, to protect the living against him and trap him down in his lair. For the longest time, Mercy was the only ghost anyone encountered there, and her only goal was to drive people away for their own safety.

"Now, Captain Marsh was a powerful ghost, so you can imagine how strong and powerful Mercy's ghost became, fighting against him all those years. Like a bodybuilder in heavy training, I guess. That's something to think about.

"When I take a ghost out of a house, I usually do a catch and release. I look for the proper place to let the ghost free. Mercy had a particular place in mind."

"Where'd she want to go?" Buck asked.

Behind them, a neon Michelob sign glowed brighter, then fizzled and died. The entire sign slipped off the wall and crashed to the floor.

"What was that?" Dabney jumped and turned to look.

"She wanted to come and stay with you two, her murderers," I said. "I can't imagine why, but I thought it would be nice to honor her last request, don't you?" I slid off my stool, my jeans peeling away from the sticky cushion. "So I've brought her here. Maybe she can help around the bar, if she isn't too focused on revenge."

"Wait," Buck said, "You can't leave a ghost here!"

"She's just babbling," Dabney said. "There ain't no ghost, Buck."

Then the glasses in the rack over their heads began to explode, one by one, raining down shards on Buck and Dabney at high speed. They screamed and backed away.

The cash register opened, and all the cash and coins leaped out onto the floor.

I turned and walked away. All around me, an unseen force toppled unoccupied chairs and sent tables sliding across the room. More beer signs exploded and spat out showers of sparks. The bar patrons stood up, shouting in surprise at the wave of unexplained destruction.

I didn't know whether Mercy would kill Dabney and Buck right away, or keep them alive to torment for years to come. I leave such matters in the hands of higher powers than myself.

"Well?" Stacey asked me when I reached the door.

"I think Mercy is going to be very happy with them," I said. "Might be bad for business, though."

"You can't please everyone." Stacey smiled and touched Jacob's arm.

"Thanks for all your help, Jacob," I said.

"It was fun," he told me. "This part right here, anyway. The rest of it was unspeakably horrible."

"Welcome to the job," I said. "Now let's get out of here. I heard this bar is haunted."

We walked out the door while Mercy's ghost tore the place apart behind us.

# COLD SHADOWS

### Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper,

### Book Two

by

J.L. Bryan

Copyright 2014 J.L. Bryan

All rights reserved.

# Acknowledgments

I appreciate everyone who has helped with this book. Several authors beta read it for me, including Daniel Arenson, Alexia Purdy, Robert Duperre, and Michelle Muto. The final proofing was done by Thelia Kelly. The cover is by PhatPuppy Art.

Most of all, I appreciate the book bloggers and readers who keep coming back for more! The book bloggers who've supported me over the years include Danny, Heather, and Heather from Bewitched Bookworks; Mandy from I Read Indie; Michelle from Much Loved Books; Shirley from Creative Deeds; Katie and Krisha from Inkk Reviews; Lori from Contagious Reads; Heather from Buried in Books; Kristina from Ladybug Storytime; Chandra from Unabridged Bookshelf; Kelly from Reading the Paranormal; AimeeKay from Reviews from My First Reads Shelf and Melissa from Books and Things; Kristin from Blood, Sweat, and Books; Lauren from Lose Time Reading; Kat from Aussie Zombie; Andra from Unabridged Andralyn; Jennifer from A Tale of Many Reviews; Giselle from Xpresso Reads; Ashley from Bookish Brunette; Loretta from Between the Pages; Ashley from Bibliophile's Corner; Lili from Lili Lost in a Book; Line from Moonstar's Fantasy World; Lindsay from The Violet Hour; Rebecca from Bending the Spine; Holly from Geek Glitter; Louise from Nerdette Reviews; Isalys from Book Soulmates; Jennifer from The Feminist Fairy; Heidi from Rainy Day Ramblings; Kristilyn from Reading in Winter; Kelsey from Kelsey's Cluttered Bookshelf; Lizzy from Lizzy's Dark Fiction; Shanon from Escaping with Fiction; Savannah from Books with Bite; Tara from Basically Books; Toni from My Book Addiction; and anyone else I missed!

# Chapter One

"That's where the bodies are buried," Stacey said, pointing to the low, swampy depression in the center of the back yard. It looked like it was still flooded from yesterday's rain.

"What bodies?" I asked. I parked behind a tan Jeep Patriot, a surprisingly cheap car if it belonged to the owner of this big old Georgian mansion. The house had a symmetrical, well-kept face, but the sides and back were closer to ruin, with missing and broken shutters and mold growing between the bricks. It was as if the graceful front of the house were nothing more than a mask of rationality and order, disguising decay and incipient madness beneath.

"The bodies of the restless ghosts, duh," Stacey said.

"We haven't even determined whether this house is haunted, Stacey." The driveway was uncomfortably narrow, barely wide enough for our cargo van.

"I'm just taking early bets. Twenty bucks on us eventually finding dead bodies there. Who'll take me on that?" Stacey glanced into the back of the van, as if somebody else were sitting there. She smiled, kind of suddenly. "So...when do you think we'll call Jacob in on this one?"

"I hope the case won't be difficult enough to require psychic help," I said, and her smile fell. "Psychics never come to the initial consultation, anyway."

"Never?" This seemed to disappoint her somehow. "Why not?"

"Because they're not supposed to have any details of the case. They go in with a blank slate, with as little information as possible."

"Don't you think psychics are fascinating, though?" Stacey asked.

"Not really. Their results are usually pretty mixed."

"So...when _would_ we call Jacob, theoretically?"

"You know, you can just call him if you want," I said. "It doesn't have to be about work."

"Then what would my excuse be?" Stacey asked. I think she'd developed a crush on Jacob Weiss right around the time he saved us from a horde of attacking ghosts. He was a reluctant psychic, his powers awoken after he'd nearly died in a plane crash. Jacob didn't mainly think of himself as a psychic medium. He mainly thought of himself as an up-and-coming young accountant at a CPA firm downtown, who happened to speak with the dead in his spare time because _they_ wouldn't stop talking to _him_. It was just therapy for him, learning to cope with his unwanted new abilities.

Jacob was reasonably cute, if you forced me to have an opinion, and he also dressed pretty well, which probably scored him a lot of points with Stacey.

"We'd better introduce ourselves before our clients start wondering about the weird van in their driveway," I said.

A man sat painting at an easel on the brick patio behind the house, but he apparently hadn't noticed us. A straw hat shaded his head, and he wore headphones. He was hefty, badly overweight, maybe in his thirties or forties.

Stacey and I climbed out, me with my black toolbox of basic ghost-hunting gear, Stacey with her camera bag slung over her shoulder. I was the lead investigator and Stacey was the tech manager, my assistant. She'd only been with Eckhart Investigations for about eight weeks, since graduating from the College of Art and Design with her film degree. I'd been working with Calvin Eckhart for almost eight years, having foisted myself onto him as an unwanted apprentice during my freshman year of college.

A ghost killed my parents when I was fifteen, a nasty pyrokinetic monster named Anton Clay. Calvin was still a homicide detective with the city police, and he'd unraveled the case for me—it wasn't the first time he'd encountered dangerous ghosts around the ridiculously haunted city of Savannah. I'd stuck with him since he retired and opened the agency, because I'm determined to protect the living against the dead.

Stacey and I strolled up the brick walkway past garden plots that alternated between thriving blossoms and dead yellow stalks, as if the irrigation and the automatic sprinklers weren't functioning so well. Thin marble columns framed the front door, supporting a little half-circle balcony with a wrought-iron railing on the second floor.

I climbed the brick steps under the shade of the balcony above. The tall door was painted a cheerful white, matching the window trim all over the house.

I rang the doorbell.

The woman who answered was short, round-faced and chubby, with an earnest look in her brown eyes. She wore a pastel purple blouse and pinstriped pantsuit bottoms.

"Yes?" she asked, glancing between us.

"Hi, I'm Ellie Jordan, from Eckhart Investigations," I said. "Are you Mrs. Paulding?"

"Thank the Lord." She breathed out a slow sigh, as if our presence alone removed some kind of long-suffered weight off her back, and ushered us inside. "Y'all want some sweet tea? Chex mix?"

"No, thank you, ma'am." I followed her into the entrance hall, which was tall and ran all the way to the back of the house, but was also narrow and cluttered with furniture. A squarish staircase with three flights wrapped around the very back of the hall, above a pair of glass doors that led into the back yard.

Polished antique sofas, chairs, and lamp tables lined the walls, under assorted landscape and seascape paintings in heavy, dark wooden frames that seemed more suited to portraits of notable dead ancestors.

Despite the big twelve-pane windows at each end of the hall, it was gloomy, and the dark air felt heavy on my skin. The place already felt haunted to me, but I don't go by my feelings. I'm an evidence-and-empiricism kind of girl. As far as this line of work allows, anyway.

"This is such a beautiful house!" Stacey gushed. "How old is it?"

"They say it was built in 1841," Mrs. Paulding replied. "Some of the furniture's even older, I guess."

"Mind if I take some video?" Stacey asked, unzipping her camera bag.

"If you have to," the woman said. "The place looks a sight. Well, it always does, to tell you the truth."

"Mrs. Paulding, this is our tech manager, Stacey Ray Tolbert," I said.

"Just call me Stacey!" Stacey gave her an enthusiastic handshake, which seemed to startle the woman.

"And you can call me Toolie," Mrs. Paulding said. "That's short for Theodora, but nobody's called me that since Momma died. Come on back, Gordon will want to see you. That's my husband." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "He has some breathing problems, just so you know."

As we followed her down the hall, I glanced through an archway into a family sitting room, furnished with more antique sofas, plus one big La-Z-Boy recliner aimed at the big-screen TV. The walls here were decorated along a sort of pop-art theme, I guess you'd call it, bright paintings depicting candies with names I didn't recognize—Munchmallows, Nickel Naks, Fizzy Lizzys. The only ones I did recognize were Pink Fairy cupcakes, which my mom had occasionally included in my school lunchbox as a cellophane-wrapped treat.

I noted some family pictures on the wall. The Pauldings were a family of four, their daughter a few years older than their son. The husband looked like a virile man, bearded and tanned in the family beach pictures.

We stepped out onto the rear patio, where the man we'd seen earlier was still painting. He still wore his headphones, and from this angle, I could see the portable oxygen tank by his feet, the tube running up toward his face.

"Gord!" Toolie Paulding tapped her husband's shoulder, startling him. He was painting an old-fashioned candy tin, similar to those in the living room. This one advertised COCO-MARSHIES! and the candy's mascot, which dominated the lid of the tin, was a creepy-looking ventriloquist's dummy in overalls and a straw hat, waving one arm and giving a gaping smile.

A color picture of the original tin, printed on regular paper, was attached to the side of the easel with a clothespin. It looked like he was using it for reference.

Gord, as she apparently called him, turned to look at us with an uncertain smile under the plastic tubing that fed oxygen into his nose. Never mind the living room photos of the virile man at the beach—he was pale, overweight, his beard scraggly and graying. He moved slowly.

"These are the ghost detectives, Ellie and Stacey," she told him, while helping him remove his headphones. "Ladies, this my husband Gord."

"Very nice to meet you, sir," I said.

"Nice...to meet you," he replied, with a long gap to draw extra air. Stacey and I shook his hand gently.

Toolie invited us to sit on the deck chairs.

"So what can you tell us about your problems?" I asked. I took out a legal pad and a digital voice recorder.

"Where to begin?" Toolie brushed her hand through her hair, shaking her head.

"How long have you lived in this house?" I asked.

"Oh...two years, a little more?" Toolie said. "It actually belongs to my cousin Mary, but she said we could live here rent-free as long as we maintained and repaired it."

"That sounds awfully nice of her," I said. _Unless she knew the place was haunted_ , I thought. "Does she live here in town?"

"Oh, no, she's lived over in Beaufort for several years," Toolie said, referring to a pretty ritzy beachside town over in South Carolina. "She inherited this house from her family—the other side of her family, obviously. Nobody in _my_ family ever had a spare mansion to worry about." Toolie chuckled.

"Can you give us your cousin's contact information?" I asked. She was an obvious source for background information.

"I'd rather not," Toolie said, frowning suddenly. "When I've asked her, she says she doesn't know anything funny about the house. If you go talking to her, it might upset her...and we can't afford for her to get sore and throw us out..."

"I understand, ma'am. Where did you live before this house?"

"Just outside Raleigh, North Carolina," Toolie said. "The move meant Gord would have to travel a little further for work, but he was always traveling anyway. He was a sales and relationship representative for Pink Fairy Bakery. You know, the cupcakes?"

"Sure," I said. "I saw the paintings inside. They're really good." It never hurts to compliment the client. Besides, I kind of liked the old-fashioned candy boxes he'd painted. Wouldn't mind hanging one in my apartment, actually.

"Thank you," Gord said. "I started out painting...what I sold. Cupcakes. Chocolate Wands. Sparkle Wheels." He paused to breathe some more. "Then I got interested in vintage candies. Brands nobody...remembers." He gestured at his work in progress, the _Coco-Marshies!_ tin with the creepy puppet.

"That's really neat," Stacey said, smiling at him.

"Gord has to paint outside now, because of the fumes," Toolie said. "It's a shame. We'd just set up a nice studio for him upstairs, and then he got sick."

"Do you mind if I ask...?" I asked.

"Emphysema," Toolie said. " _Severe_ emphysema. He had to go on disability."

Gord scowled a little, as if he didn't appreciate her sharing this information.

"Did that begin before you moved here, or afterward?" I asked.

"A few months after we moved," Toolie said. "Gord used to smoke, but he quit ten years ago."

"Ten years?" Stacey asked. "That's not fair! He quit for ten years and then he gets sick from it--"

I gently motioned for Stacey to shut up, and she closed her mouth.

"Sorry," Stacey mumbled.

"The doctors can't figure out the cause," Toolie said. "Breathing just started to get difficult for him one day, like his lungs were drowning." Her mouth wavered, and for a second she looked like she would cry, but she forced herself to smile instead. She patted his arm.

Gord looked at the patio's brick floor tiles, as if ashamed of himself for getting sick. I felt sorry for him.

"Do you work?" I asked Toolie.

"Oh, yes. I used to be a sales associate at Napmaster Outlet back home. After we moved here, I got a job managing the Sir Sleepmore Mattresses by the mall. Everything was looking up at first, with the new job and this amazing old house, and I thought it would be nice for the kids to live here..." She frowned.

"How many kids do you have?" I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

"Two. There's Juniper—she's thirteen now—and Crane, who's about to have his eighth birthday. The time goes by so fast. One minute, they're babies, and then they're rushing toward adulthood."

"How did they adjust to living here?" I asked.

"Well, it was good...at first. Then the strange things started happening."

_Here we go._ "Can you tell us what you and your family have experienced?"

"It started with small things—so small I blamed them on the kids, to tell you the truth. My keys would be missing, and I'd find them somewhere strange, like on the stairs or at the bottom of the kitchen sink. Or a faucet would be left running. Don't even get me started on those plumbing problems! We had moaning, banging pipes, and we've had three plumbers out here to fix them. One changed out the the master valve, another installed a water hammer arrestor, but the problem kept coming back.

"In fact, the more the plumbers worked, the more trouble we had. We'd wake up and find water damage in the walls or a leaking pipe in the basement. Then it got strange—ceilings would leak in spots where there weren't any pipes. They couldn't find where the water was coming from, and half the time the spot would be all dried up before the plumber even arrived."

"That sounds stressful," I said.

"And expensive!" Toolie said. "The yard started to go to all-heck around then, too. The sprinkler system's always breaking down, and we can't seem to drain the low spot there..." She pointed to the pool of swampy, greenish water that had collected in the depression in her back lawn. "The rainwater just sits and sits. We hired a landscaper to make a little drainage pipe for it, but mud clogs it up so fast, it's just about useless."

Stacey snapped some pictures of the swampy yard. A small cottage sat in the rear corner of the lawn, built in imitation of the main house—brick with white trim, the two windows and the front door a perfect match with the features on the front of the mansion.

"What's that building?" I asked.

"Just an old shed," Toolie said. "We keep the lawn mower in there. It's mainly the yard man who uses it. I don't like going in there."

"Why not?"

"Too many spiders."

"Have there been any other events, or is it all water-related?" I asked.

"Oh, goodness, where to begin?" Toolie shook her head. "The first time I _knew_ we had something strange in our house was when I was mixing up a pitcher of iced tea, right around Christmas. I was in the kitchen alone. I turned my back for one second, to fetch a lemon from the fridge, and something went _whap!_ Well, I looked back to see my pitcher flying to the floor, spilling out the tea everywhere, just like someone had come along and knocked it off the counter. I was lucky it was the Tupperware and not my good glass pitcher."

"Is there any way it could have fallen on its own?" I asked. "Was it close to the edge? Sometimes, the condensation can make the counter slick--"

"No, no!" Toolie said. "It was moving fast, like somebody hit it."

"That must have been scary."

"Oh, yes."

"Have you ever seen anything else like that happen in this house?" I asked.

"Of course. Chairs slide, doors slam, clothes fly out of the closets..." Toolie shook her head. "It's been going on for months now."

"It knocked over my....easel," Gord said. "One time. Paints spilled all over...the bricks. I've seen it...move things around the house."

"So many things have happened, I don't know where to begin," Toolie said. "And the kids have seen things, too, especially Junie."

"Maybe it would help organize your thoughts if you showed us around the house," I said. "Then we can identify any possible paranormal hotspots."

" _Hauntspots_ , we call them," Stacey added with a grin. That wasn't true. We'd never called them that, but I guessed Stacey would make it a point to use that word in the future, now that she'd gone and coined it.

"I'll...wait here," Gord said. "Want to finish...painting."

"It's looking really good," I told him. He smiled after us as Stacey and I followed Toolie back into the high, narrow central hall that bisected the house.

"I didn't want to say it in front of Gord," Toolie whispered after closing the door. "But I've seen it."

"What did you see?" I asked. I was pretty sure she meant an apparition, but I try not to ask leading questions.

"The ghost." Toolie glanced down the hall and up the stairs. I could hear something like thumping and screeching from the second floor. "Never mind that, it's just Juniper's music. She's in that teen rebel phase. Sounds scary, doesn't it?"

I nodded. "Where did you see the ghost?"

"In the craft room upstairs," Toolie said. "Listen, can y'all really get rid of ghosts?"

"In most cases, yes," I told her.

"Good. Cause I can't live in this house with this thing for one more day. I've had about enough."

"Do you feel like your family is in danger?" I asked.

"Heck, yes," Toolie said. "If it can throw furniture around, then it can throw us around, too."

Then she led us into the spacious living room to tell us more about her ghosts.

# Chapter Two

The living room, though enormous, was cluttered with too many antique chairs, tables, cabinets, and hutches, making it difficult to navigate. The walls were paneled in light blond wood, and the ceiling was fourteen feet above us, trimmed in thick but simple molding. A pair of tall windows looked out on the back yard, through sheer curtains that dampened the bright sunlight. Pilasters flanked the broad brick fireplace.

I noticed a giant, greenish stain on the ceiling, not far from the slowly revolving ceiling fan. Whatever had dripped down from the ceiling hadn't exactly been Crystal Springs water. It was the color of slime topped with scum. Stacey took a picture.

"Was that one of the leaks you were talking about?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. There's no pipes up there to cause any leaks," Toolie said. "But that's not all that's happened in this room. The ghost's been very busy down here." She opened a door in a dark oaken cupboard, revealing a stack of board games. They had _Monopoly_ , _Candy Land_ , _Risk_ , _Clue_ , and a few other classics. "One night, I heard a ruckus down here about two in the morning. I found all these games pulled out, all over the floor. All mixed together. You had the _Risk_ cannons rolling across _Candy Land_ , the candlestick and revolver from _Clue_ stuck into that red-nosed guy from the _Operation_ game, the Community Chest cards scattered from here all the way to the windows."

"You're sure it wasn't one of your kids?" I asked.

"Crane was sleeping over at a friend's house," she said. "Juniper said she didn't do it, and why would she, anyway? She was up in her room, playing video games with her headphones on."

I nodded, but the thirteen-year-old girl still sounded like a possible suspect to me.

"Anything else?" I asked.

"We'll find the couch cushions all over the floor when nobody's been in here. And the pictures! Look, it did it again!" Toolie gestured at a heavy mahogany end table full of framed pictures, mostly of their immediate family members, along with a few other people I assumed to be relatives or friends. Two of them were turned backward, facing the wall.

Toolie turned the pictures to face front again. Both were of her daughter Juniper, one in an elementary-school cheerleader uniform when she was six or seven years old, and another one showing her at ten or eleven, with braces, posed with a fist tucked under her chin. Like her mother, the girl had long brown hair and was a little pudgy. She looked like a friendly kid.

"It moves the pictures?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. Some mornings, they'll all be turned around, or they'll be lying flat like somebody came and slapped them over in the night. It's one of the things I used to blame on the kids, before I saw it for myself."

"You saw the pictures move?"

"They do it when my back's turned," Toolie said. "But I'll hear it. And I'll be the only one in the room. Oh, and sometimes this T.V. turns on late at night, all by itself, and I have to come switch it off." She gestured at the flatscreen on the wall. "Before that, it was the phonograph. It's hand-cranked, so how could it go on by accident?"

"Can I see the phonograph?"

Toolie led me toward a reddish wooden cabinet with a crank built into the side and a thick layer of dust on the engraved lid. She raised the lid to show me the turntable within.

"We never use this thing," Toolie said. "But the ghost does."

"It plays records?" I asked.

"It used to, until it figured out how to work the TV." Toolie shook her head and opened a drawer at the base of the cabinet, full of records dating back to the 1910's, their paper wrappers yellowed and crumbling. "We'd hear this scratchy music in the middle of the night and have to come cut it off. Always these old records, this big-band stuff. It happened a few times. It stopped after the T.V went to flipping itself on instead."

"And you're sure none of this is done by the kids?" I asked.

"Not after the other things I've seen. And not after that night I came here and saw the T.V. switching channels all by itself, just clicking through one after another. I turned it off, but I didn't tell nobody about it. Not for a while."

"What else have you seen in here?"

"That's the main things that have happened." Toolie led us through the open double doors into a small library, the shelves crammed full of old volumes and small statues. Leather-upholstered chairs flanked the little brick fireplace, and a thickly piled ornate rug covered most of the hardwood floor. "Books sometimes fly off the shelves. Makes a racket."

The library ceiling had two large, green stains, and the rug below it was discolored in the same areas.

"More of the strange leaks from nonexistent pipes?" I asked, and Toolie nodded.

The next set of double doors was closed—each room in the house seemed connected to the next by these double doors, but most of them were propped open like window shutters.

Toolie opened one door, but didn't step through.

"This is a guest room, but Gord's been sleeping here. The stairs are so hard on him."

The room was crammed full of more antique tables and chairs, plus a four-poster bed with thick, dark columns of cherry wood.

"Does anything happen in there?" I asked.

"Sure. Things move. And the ceiling." She pointed to more of the ugly green splotches. "Oh, but the biggest thing to happen on this floor was the dining room." Toolie led us up the central hall to the long, tall room, lit by a row of high windows. An open pair of double doors led into the kitchen beyond.

The polished birch table could have seated twelve. A large copper and crystal chandelier hung above the table, and paintings adorned the walls, featuring men and women in fancy dress wear of the nineteenth century.

"One time we were having supper in here," Toolie said. "We usually eat in the kitchen, but it was my husband's birthday, so I was trying to do something nice, have a nice family meal together. Right in the middle of supper, all the paintings come crashing down off the walls. Some of the plates and things jumped right off the table and hit the floor. Smashed the china gravy boat to pieces—I haven't mentioned that to my cousin. The china came with the house."

"Everybody was sitting down?" I asked. "There was nobody out of the room, nobody else in the house?"

"Well, Juniper, she was running out the door in a huff," Toolie said. "But she wasn't nowhere near the paintings. And her plate jumped off the table, her silverware, along with the gravy boat and mashed potatoes. She was out in the hall by the time that happened."

"Why was she running out?"

"Oh, she was upset about this boy...I guess it's her boyfriend, but I don't like to call him that. Dayton. He's fifteen, for one thing, two years older than her and goes to high school, and Junie's just going into the eighth grade in the fall. And he dresses like a thug, wears his sunglasses indoors, and he always smells like cigarettes. I mean, he's a bad kid."

"So you were fighting about her boyfriend?" I asked.

"Well, we was trying to tell her...again...that she wasn't allowed to see him." Toolie shook her head. "I knew supper was ruined as soon as we started talking about that boy."

Stacey and I shared a look. We were probably thinking the same thing.

"What is it?" Toolie asked.

"Sometimes, when you have a young person, especially an adolescent girl, and there's drama and stress, along with psychokinetic activity, objects moving by themselves...it's not actually a ghost," I said. "It's a poltergeist."

"Poltergeist!" Toolie's eyes widened. "Like in the movies?"

"Sort of," I said. "A poltergeist is created by a living person, usually a young person or child. It's not created intentionally. Their emotions can create a psychic discharge, if that makes sense."

"It doesn't, really." Toolie scratched her head.

"It's like a ghost, but of a living person instead of a dead one," I said. "It's usually destructive, lashing out with all the feelings that person is suppressing. Anger, frustration, sometimes grief."

"Wait, now. You're telling me Juniper made this poltergeist? She's the one who's haunting this house?"

"That's just one possibility," I said. "But from your description, it's something we have to consider. Have there been any other incidents with your daughter?"

"She says things move around in her room all the time," Toolie replied. "Of course, I didn't believe her at first."

"Can we speak to her?"

"Come on up." Toolie led us to the staircase, with three short flights that wrapped around the back end of the hall in a squarish spiral shape. The sound of angry industrial music grew louder as we climbed.

The stairs brought us to the upstairs hall, which had the same narrow, cluttered-with-furniture feeling as the one downstairs, but with a lower ceiling that had a number of the ugly green splotches. Tall windows from the stairwell area brought light into the hall from the back of the house, but there were no matching windows at the far end, just a solid doorway. The hall grew darker as we walked down it, toward the blasting music.

"You saw the ghost somewhere up here?" I asked Toolie, keeping my voice to a whisper since she hadn't told the whole family about it.

"The...crafts room," Toolie said. She pointed to the closed door at the very end of the corridor. The room beyond it would have been located directly above the foyer, at the front and center of the second floor looking out over the front garden. "Well, that's what it was supposed to be, a place for Gord to paint and me to do my sewing and make decorations, but...it never really took off."

"What do you mean?" I started toward the door, and Stacey walked with me. Toolie followed us slowly.

"Gord stays downstairs, mostly," she said. "And I...I don't know, I guess I never felt right in there."

We crossed an intersection with a smaller, narrower hallway, which ran from one side of the house to the other. Both ends of that cross-hall featured a window and a flight of steps down to the first floor. The loud music came from a door down the hall to our left, which was decorated with construction paper featuring a skull and crossbones and the words EVERYBODY STAY OUT! in angry red letters.

"Do you think the shadowy man I saw in the craft room is a poltergeist?" Toolie whispered.

"A male-energy poltergeist?" I asked. "That would be very rare. I'm not sure I've heard of one before, actually, but it's theoretically possible. Can we have a look?"

"Go ahead." Toolie trailed behind us as I approached the door. As I drew close to it, a feeling of dread began to fill me from the inside out, from the pit of my stomach to the tips of my shaking fingertips.

_Calm down, Ellie_ , I told myself. _It's just a freaking sewing room_.

I looked at Stacey, and she nodded and swallowed. She felt something, too.

The handle was abnormally cold as I turned it and pushed the door open.

On the surface, the room beyond should have been fun and whimsical, and possibly the coolest room in the house. A row of windows looked out onto the front gardens and the street beyond, and a pair of tall, narrow glass doors led to the half-circle balcony out front. Floor-to-ceiling shelving and large cabinet doors were built into the other three walls.

Despite the copious amount of sunlight, shadows filled the room. I flipped the light switch, but nothing happened.

"Lights hardly ever work in there," Toolie said from where she stood, several feet behind us in the hall.

Boxes and furniture were stacked along the walls. A big Singer sewing machine sat on a work table, surrounded by dusty fabrics. Little plastic bags of buttons and beads, also coated in dust, occupied a pigeonhole rack next to the sewing machine. Everything looked abandoned.

The room was cold. I wished I'd brought my Mel-Meter to check the temperature and electromagnetic energy in the room. My instincts told me something dark and malevolent dwelled here.

"What exactly did you see?" I asked Toolie, who still remained in the hall, clearly not wanting to enter the room.

"A couple weeks ago, I was carrying a basket of laundry up to my bedroom." Toolie gestured at a door on the right side of the hall, which was the only door on that side, indicating that the master suite took up one quarter of the entire second floor. "When I came down the hall, I saw the door to the crafts room was open. That was strange, since it's always closed and none of us ever go in there.

"So I looked inside, thinking I might see Crane getting into some mischief. My little boy wasn't there. Somebody else was—or something else, I mean. It had the shape of a tall man, but it was all darkness, like it was made of smoke or shadows. No face, nothing, just darkness. He held something long and black in one hand. I can't say for sure what it was, but it was like some kind of leather strap. Little bits of metal glinted all over it.

"Well, I froze right there on the spot. I should have been running or screaming to see a strange man in my house, but I also knew it wasn't really a man, neither. I could feel him looking back at me, and I thought if I moved at all, he'd attack me like a startled snake. Or a hungry wolf. I can't explain why I didn't run, really, but the fear drained out all my go-juice."

"That sounds terrifying," I said, looking around the dark corners and the big cabinet doors. Some of those doors were big enough to conceal a person inside.

"After a minute—it couldn't have been much more than that, though it seemed to last hours, me and that thing staring at each other—he just up and vanished. Didn't move one way or another. He was gone so fast it made me wonder if it was all in my mind, and maybe I was going crazy. Then that door slammed itself shut!" Toolie pointed at the doorway between us. "That's when I could finally run. Just dropped the laundry basket and scooted off downstairs, but I didn't know how to explain it to anybody else. That was the last straw for me, though. I knew there was something bad in this house, something that meant to hurt us. That's when I got on the stick about finding some help, and I ended up getting in touch with y'all."

"Have you seen the dark figure again?" I asked.

"No, but I always get a bad feeling from that room now. Always kind of did, come to think of it, but of course it got worse after that."

I looked up at the ceiling. "I don't see any water stains here."

"Huh?" Toolie stepped closer to the doorway and looked up. "Yeah, I guess we haven't had any leaks in there. About the only room in the house where that's true."

"What else has your family experienced up here?" I asked.

"I've heard things in the attic a few times." Toolie backed up and pointed to one of the doors on her left, across from the single door to the master bedroom. Stacey and I joined her, closing the door behind us and trying not to look too eager to run out of the cold, creepy room.

"Bumping, a couple of footsteps...laughing, one time," Toolie continued. "High-pitched, like a woman or child. The worst was a few months ago, March or so. I was lying in my bed, and I heard a crash in the attic, and then a bunch of little bumps. It sounded like something was coming down the attic stairs. Then it got quiet. I don't believe I got back to sleep that night, but I didn't dare get up and try to see what was happening.

"The next morning, I came out here for a look." Toolie pulled open the door, revealing plain wooden steps ascending into darkness above. "There was Christmas ornaments all over the steps, red and green and some snowglobe ones we got at Wal-Mart a couple years ago. Something had picked up the box of decorations and threw them down the stairs. I knew it wasn't one of my kids, because I would have heard them walking up and down the hall. Even if they tried to tiptoe, I could hear it, cause the floorboards are so old and squeaky. Didn't nobody come down out of that attic all night."

"Did you look for any kind of animals up there?" I asked. "Squirrels, maybe?"

"I called out a pest removal man, but he didn't find nothing. No nest, no animal poop...Besides, what kind of animal laughs?"

"A hyena?" Stacey said.

"Well, there's no hyena up there!" Toolie said. "Not even a rat. We did find a lot of boxes overturned, and that was about it."

"Do you mind if we go up?" I asked.

"Suit yourself."

I reached for my flashlight, but it wasn't there. I hadn't loaded up my utility for this quick daytime walk-through of the house.

"How are the lights up there?" I asked Toolie.

"They work sometimes. Sometimes they cut off by themselves."

"We'll check it later. I'm more interested in speaking with your daughter right now."

Toolie took a deep breath. "We can try. Sometimes she don't want to talk much. Teenagers, I guess."

She led us back to the hallway intersection at the center of the second floor, then led us toward the door with the skull and the warning. The music thudded through the walls. The lyrics sounded something like _Massacre! Massacre! Yeah yeah yeah!_ Deep stuff.

Too much stuff was happening at this house, and it made me feel overwhelmed and clueless. After what I'd felt in the disused crafts room, though, I was worried that at least one of the entities was malevolent. Friendly ghosts don't present themselves as shadow figures.

Toolie knocked on her daughter's door.

# Chapter Three

Juniper's room was chaos, but not particularly unusual for a thirteen-year-old girl with rebellion on her mind. The heavy curtains were drawn across the windows, blotting out any sunlight. Posters hung on the walls, mostly bands of young boys with black clothes and pale skin. Laundry was everywhere.

The girl herself didn't look exactly like her pictures downstairs. Her hair was dyed an unnatural jet black, her eyeshadow and lip gloss were a dark purple that bordered on black, and the rest of her face was done up in stark white. A silver chalice pendant hung on her necklace, and she wore a long-sleeved black shirt and shredded jeans.

"What do you want?" Juniper snapped when she opened the door. Then she looked at us. "Who they hell are they?"

"Watch your language!" Toolie snapped, and the girl rolled her eyes. "This is Ellie and Stacey. They're professional ghost investigators."

"Ooh, they look really tough." Juniper scowled as she looked us over.

"Just tell them what's been going on in your room, Junie. Don't be rude."

"Right, because _now_ you believe me," Juniper said. "Now that it's bugging you, suddenly you care about what happens to me."

"I always care about--" Toolie said.

"You thought I was lying!"

"Juniper," I said, "Can you just tell us what you've seen?"

The girl gave me a sullen look, then sighed.

"Like I've been telling Mom _forever_ ," Juniper said. "It moves stuff around in my room. Jewelry or whatever." She opened her door wider and pointed to a dresser jumbled with nail polish, mascaras, lipsticks, half-melted candles, and a stick-incense burner overflowing with ash. "It opens my drawers. Sometimes it does it quietly and I trip over them. Sometimes the whole drawer comes out and lands on the floor. Sometimes it rips down my posters, or my window curtains will move for no reason. Then there was the time my closet attacked me."

"What happened?" I looked at the open double doors to her closet, which was crammed full of clothes and shoes.

"I was just sitting here one night texting with Dayton. That's my _boyfriend_." She punctuated the word with a triumphant look at her mother, who shook her head and sighed. "My closet was shut tight. The doors flew open, and then everything started coming out, like flying through the air. The clothes landed wherever, but the hangers flew right at my head. I had to keep ducking while they banged into my headboard, and then I jumped on the floor. I was totally screaming. I mean, seriously, one of those things could've hooked me through the _eye_ or something. Then I'd be _blind_."

"She was very scared," Toolie added.

"Yeah, and then Mom came in and _yelled_ at me for making a big mess. She didn't believe me."

"I believe you now, honey."

"Yeah, so this house is haunted," Juniper said. She gave me an appraising look. "Can you really do something about it?"

"That's our job," I told her. "Has it ever hurt you?"

"No, but it totally could."

I glanced up at Juniper's ceiling. There were four green splotches scattered across it.

"Has your ceiling leaked?" I asked her.

"Yes! And it's so gross! It smells like puked-up piss," Juniper said.

"Watch your language!" Toolie snapped.

"Tell me more about the time your closet erupted," I said. "Was anything else happening that day? Something that might have upset you?"

"I was fighting with Dayton," she said. "But it was all his fault. He was totally flirting with my friend China, like right in front of everyone at this party."

"What party?" Toolie asked.

"It's none of your business!" Juniper snapped.

As she shouted, a few paperbacks tumbled off her shelf and thudded to the floor. They looked like vampire-romance novels.

We all jumped and looked over at the fallen books.

"See?" Juniper said. "All the time."

"Mom, who are those ladies?" a new voice asked. A boy with dark, rusty hair like Gordon stood in the hallway, wearing a Captain America t-shirt. Crane still looked like his pictures downstairs—he hadn't reached the corruption of his teenage years yet. The seven-year-old had stepped outside of his room, which was decorated with Marvel superheroes and a few space rockets.

"They're here to help with the strange things around the house," Toolie said.

"You mean the ghosts," Crane said.

"It's nice to meet you, Crane!" Stacey said.

Crane studied Stacey, then me, his green eyes very bright, as if trying to take in every detail of us. Then he turned to his mom.

"Luke and Noah don't like them," Crane told her.

"Who are Luke and Noah?" I asked.

"Just his imaginary friends," Toolie told me. "They don't seem to like much of anything that goes on around here."

"Can you tell me what they look like?" I asked.

Crane shook his head.

"How old are they?" I asked.

"They don't want me to tell you about them," Crane said.

"Why not?"

Crane looked at me again, then backed into his room and closed the door.

"He's going through a difficult phase, too," Toolie said.

"You mean a dorky-weirdo-freak phase," Juniper said.

"You're one to talk!" Toolie snapped.

"Whatever." Juniper rolled her eyes again. "Can you two get rid of the ghosts or not?"

"I think we can," I said.

"Then please do it," she said. "And leave me alone. I have, like, homework to do or something." She turned to look at the video game paused on her television as she closed the door.

"Those kids." Toolie shook her head. "You wonder how things got like this, with everybody fighting about everything. We all used to get along so good."

"The energy in a haunted house can be negative," I said. "Anger, depression, and anxiety are common. We'll do what we can to lift that dark cloud."

"I hope you can."

We returned to the back patio on the first floor to rejoin Gord.

"How did it...go?" he asked.

"I think I talked their ears off," Toolie replied, sinking into a wooden deck recliner next to him.

"You have a lot of activity here," I told them. Stacey and I dropped into lawn chairs. "I think there's a good chance of a multiple haunting, with complications. We have an entity obsessed with water, creating problems inside and outside the house." I glanced at the stagnant unwanted pool at the center of their back yard. "We have something that seems attracted to games and toys. I'm guessing that may be the entity in the attic, the one that laughs and threw the Christmas decorations down the stairs."

"Is it a...kid's ghost?" Gord asked.

"It could be," I said. "You may have something dark and disturbing in the craft room upstairs, too."

"I always got a...bad feeling there," Gord said.

"We could be talking about at least three separate entities, based on the different behavior patterns," I said. "On top of that, there's a good chance you have a poltergeist." I quickly reviewed what Toolie and Juniper had told us, including the books that had jumped off Juniper's shelves while we spoke with her.

"Good Lord," Toolie said. "We knew it was bad, but...that's four ghosts?"

"What do we do?" Gord asked.

"I want to approach this in three different ways," I said. "First, Stacey and I will need to set up our cameras and microphones for an overnight observation so we can get a better look at the entities causing the problems. In my experience, that might take a few nights to get more complete results. In the meantime, I want to bring in a psychic medium for a walk-through, just to get some extra impressions and a clearer idea of what we're dealing with here." _Because there's way too much going on for me to sort it all out,_ I thought. I prefer the hard numerical data gathered by my instruments to the vague, sometimes misleading information provided by psychics, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Stacey naturally grinned at the news that we would be calling Jacob.

"We'll research the history of the house to see if we can put some names and faces with these unwanted inhabitants," I said. "Is there anything you can tell us? Any reason the house might be haunted? Murders, suicides, and other strange deaths are usually involved, or at least a great deal of misery and suffering."

"We don't know much about the house's past," Toolie said. "My cousin might know things. I've asked her before, but she said she never lived here, just inherited the place from her aunt. But I felt like she was holding something back."

"Like she didn't want to admit that she'd invited you to live in a haunted house," I said.

"Exactly!" Toolie nodded. "Now that you put it that way, that might just be it. Or maybe she just don't really know anything about it."

"I'd like to speak with her if I can."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Toolie said. "She insists she's never seen a ghost here. Thinks I'm going crazy."

"There's one other step I'd like to take, if it's okay with the two of you," I said. "I'd really like to do some ESP testing with Juniper. It could help us determine whether she may have latent psychic abilities that would enable her to create a poltergeist."

Stacey's eyebrows raised—this was new to her.

Toolie and Gord traded puzzled looks.

"It's perfectly safe," I said. "My boss, Calvin Eckhart, would administer it, since he has more experience with that. If Juniper shows no signs of those abilities, then it's much less likely we're dealing with a poltergeist."

"And what if she did make that poltergeist? Then what?" Toolie asked.

"Then we teach her to stop feeding it," I said. "A poltergeist, once it's active, is a spiritual parasite. It will keep draining energy from its creator, making itself more powerful and its creator weaker and weaker."

"Oh, goodness! That's awful!" Toolie said.

"Do...whatever you think will help," Gord said. "We need some peace...around here."

I nodded. "We'll get started right away. Tomorrow's Friday—is that a good night for us to set up our gear?"

"Any night's fine," Toolie said. "Sooner begun, sooner done."

"How long...will it take...to get rid of them?" Gord asked.

"We'll work as quickly as we can, Mr. Paulding," I said. "When we understand more about your haunting, we can put together our eradication plan."

He smiled a little, as if he liked the sound of _eradication plan_. "Thank you," he said. "I just want my...family to be safe."

"So do we," I said. "We're here to make this house safe for all of you."

As we walked away from the house, through the patchy front garden, Stacey said, "Lots of crazy stuff happening there."

"It's an old house," I said. "I think we might have layers of hauntings built up over the years. That could get messy."

"Do you think the ghosts are dangerous?" she asked, while we climbed into the van.

"The poltergeist sounds like the most dangerous one." I started up the engine.

"How do we remove poltergeists? Does a normal ghost trap work?"

"It can be easier than that, or much more difficult," I said. "It really depends on how cooperative the poltergeist's creator is."

"Juniper doesn't seem too cooperative about anything," Stacey said. "What about the shadow man in that crafts room upstairs?"

"He worries me," I said. "That room felt dark and cold to me. And...malevolent."

"Me, too," Stacey said.

"We need to figure out who he is. Then we'll know how to kick him out. Or trap him."

I drove through the city as the night crept in, bringing darkness to the old mansions and the tree-shrouded streets. Savannah is a city of graveyards, including countless graves, even ancient Indian burial grounds, that have been paved over to make room for new streets and buildings over the years. The whole city is really a cemetery, and the dead are everywhere, haunting the gardens and marble colonnades of the Historic District. I really love it here.

# Chapter Four

The next morning was all about research. Stacey and I headed down to the Bull Street Library, a lovely marble-columned temple of knowledge with a large collection of local history and genealogy documents. Our clients' home had been built in 1841, so we had to search through almost two centuries of deed transfers and obituaries related to their address, trying to find the sort of tragedies and deaths that can lead to hauntings. Some of this data has been digitized, some is on microfilm, and some is only available as crumbling yellow paperwork.

It was going to be a long day of digging through old information, but Stacey found a way to make it even longer.

"So...do we call Jacob today?" Stacey asked, while we sat at the big microfilm machines looking at old newspapers.

"Not yet. I want some hard facts before I start trying to interpret any psychic impressions."

"But we could let him know we're going to need him, right? Maybe tomorrow or Sunday?"

"Go ahead and call him," I said, mainly to prevent her from going on and on about Jacob and how fascinating his psychic abilities were. "Just remember that dating a psychic can get complicated."

"Who's dating?" Stacey's brow furrowed. "Complicated how?"

"Do you want a boyfriend who can read your mind?"

"Uh...can he do that?" Now she looked worried. "I thought he only communicated with dead people."

"Who knows? Maybe he's listening to your thoughts right now." I gave her a somewhat evil grin.

"Seriously?" Stacey glanced around the quiet library room, as if expecting to see Jacob there. "Have _you_ ever dated a psychic? Not that I'm dating Jacob or anything."

"Nope." I scrolled through more obituaries from the 1850's.

"Are you dating anyone now?" Stacey asked, giving me a little smile. "You don't talk about yourself very much."

"Probably because there's not much to say. I work, I read books, I have a cat."

"No boyfriend or anything?"

"I think that's pretty obvious from my last statement."

"I know plenty of cute college guys if you want one," Stacey said.

"I'm twenty-six, Stacey. They're probably a little young for me."

"Young, handsome, energetic..."

"Immature, obnoxious..." I countered. "Come on, most guys _my_ age are immature."

"So what kind of guy are you looking for?" Stacey asked.

"Right now? I'm looking for one who died tragically in our clients' house and might be haunting it to this day."

"Pfft, all business."

"Exactly," I said. I didn't feel like reviewing my fairly empty romantic history with Stacey right then. I just don't like to get too close to too many people. Saying that out loud would run a dangerous risk of talking about Anton Clay, the antebellum pyromaniac ghost who had burned down my house and killed my parents. No, thank you.

I managed to steer our attention back to the work at hand. Stacey was actually quiet for a full twenty minutes before she said, quite a bit too loudly for the library: "Holy cow!"

"What is it?" I whispered my words, by way of reminding her to keep her voice down.

"Read this," Stacey said in a not-so-quiet stage whisper. She pointed to a blurry article on the screen before her, printed in the less-than-pleasant blocky font of newspapers from the mid-1800's.

This one was dated January 1853. The headline was: _MOTHER, CHILDREN LOST IN DROWNING ACCIDENT_ _._

"Catherine Ridley, thirty-six, died on Tuesday after drowning in the pond behind her house. Also deceased are her sons Noah, 12, and Luke, 10, and daughter Eliza, 8," Stacey read aloud.

"Noah and Luke?" I leaned over for a closer look. Those were the names of the invisible friends mentioned by Crane, our client's seven-year-old son.

"Exactly. And this is just crazy. What are the odds of four people drowning in a pond at once? You'd think they'd suspect murder," Stacey said.

"And this," I said, and I read aloud: "'Catherine's husband, Isaiah, died tragically on December 26.' We'd better find that obit. And any subsequent reports about these deaths."

We searched forward and backward in time. Stacey quickly found the death notice for Isaiah Ridley, who "died unexpectedly and tragically at his home" the day after Christmas. He was described as a prominent attorney who'd been very involved in public life.

"What the duck?" Stacey asked, having been trained by her mother to avoid actual swearing. "What does that mean, unexpectedly and tragically?"

"It means the newspaper wanted to be discreet and was worried about damage to the family or their reputation," I said. "Something happened they didn't want to put into print."

"Stupid tactful newspaper editors!" Stacey said.

"Let's see what else we can find."

Despite the strange, vague manner in which the newspaper initially described the family's deaths, there were no follow-up articles to shed more light on what had happened. The closest we could find was a notice, two months after the wife and kids died, that the house had been put up for auction to pay debts and back taxes. The Ridley family must have had some financial trouble towards the end.

We kept digging, but found nothing else about their deaths, though we found other articles that mentioned Isaiah Ridley in connection with assorted legal actions by cotton and shipping concerns. He was also mentioned as a city council member at one point, as well as an investor in the Georgia Canal and Railroad Company, which quietly failed about a year before Isaiah's death.

The genealogy librarian helped us find the family's death certificates. Fortunately, they had been digitized, so there wasn't a lot of digging around in old boxes and sneezing out dust. The librarian printed out paper copies for us, and we returned to our table to study them.

For Catherine Ridley and her three children, the cause of death was listed as "asphyxiation." No huge surprise there, if they'd drowned in a pond. There was no additional information, though, no hint of why all four people had died at once.

Isaiah's death certificate offered a new tidbit of information. His cause of death was given as "gunshot."

"What?" Stacey asked. "If he was murdered, the papers would have said something about it, right?"

"Right. But the newspaper chose to be discreet instead...so I'm guessing it was suicide," I said.

"Oh, that could make sense. So maybe he loses all his money on this bankrupt railroad company, then he shoots himself on the day after Christmas." Stacey shook her head. "That's always kind of a depressing day, anyway, am I right?"

"It all fits, but the real mystery is the wife and kids."

"Do you think..." Stacey glanced around the library, which had few patrons at the moment, then lowered her voice to a whisper. "Do you think his ghost killed them? Like drowned them in the pond somehow?"

"I wouldn't jump to any conclusions," I said. "People who commit suicide are turning their violence inward, not lashing out at other people. Why would he want to return from the grave and murder his entire family?"

"Maybe he was crazed," Stacey said. "Maybe it was like one of those murder-suicide cases, only he got the order wrong."

"Maybe," I said. Stacey's theory didn't sound very compelling to me, but I understood that she was just trying to glue together the random pieces of data we'd uncovered so far.

"Then what do you think happened?" she asked.

"I don't have any idea. We're going to have to dig a little deeper."

Stacey sighed. The historical research clearly bored her—she was much more about finding the ghosts in person and capturing their images and sounds. Long hours at the library made her fidgety.

"Let's stop for lunch," I suggested.

"Great idea!" Stacey leaped to her feet so fast the chair toppled back behind her. As she picked it up, she said, "Can we go to Butterhead Greens Cafe? It's right down the block and they have this great quinoa salad."

"I've been there. I'm not that into quinoa, though."

I dropped our little stack of printouts and photocopies into a folder as we walked toward the exit. It was a miserably thin stack, without much evidence for our case.

As we strolled up the sidewalk, shaded from the pounding summer sun by ancient oaks dripping with Spanish moss, I took out my cell phone and called Grant Patterson, one of my boss's old friends and a fellow at the Savannah Historical Association. Grant is a semi-if-not-mostly retired attorney, though he's only fifty-two, with a passion for history and finely tailored suits. He's the confirmed bachelor scion of an old banking and shipping family. His specialty is sordid gossip from our city's long and sometimes dark history, which makes him valuable when we're investigating old murders and mysterious deaths.

"Tell me the restless undead are marching up River Street," he said when he answered the phone. "We could all use a little excitement."

"Nothing that big, unfortunately," I said. "Can you check up something in the Historical Association archives for me?"

"I hope you don't mean today," Grant replied. "It's nearly the cocktail hour."

"I've got two p.m."

"Precisely. What long-forgotten horror will we be exploring this time?"

"The Ridley family," I said. "Five of them died within two weeks of each other. Two parents, three children. Ever heard of them?"

"I have not. How did they die?"

"The father, Isaiah, died of a gunshot the day after Christmas. The papers didn't report the manner of death, and they didn't call it a murder."

"Suicide," Grant murmured.

"That's what we're thinking. Apparently the mom and kids all drowned together in a pond on the property not long after that."

"How strange. Were _they_ murdered?"

"That's what we need you to figure out," I said. "It doesn't make any sense to me, and it was like the newspaper didn't want to publicize the details. It sounds like Isaiah was kind of prominent in town, so maybe they were trying to protect his family's reputation."

"This sounds scandalous," Grant said. "How interesting. Let's have the details, dear, and I'll see what I can turn up for you."

I gave him the address of our clients' home and all the names of the family members and the dates of their deaths—everything we'd found so far.

"Any idea of when you can have something for us?" I asked.

"So impatient! I'll have what I have when I have it, and not a moment before."

"Tomorrow?" I suggested.

"Working on a Saturday violates my most treasured values and beliefs," Grant replied, "But I may make an exception for you, Ellie."

"Thank you, Grant."

By this point, Stacey and I had reached the cafe, which occupied the first floor of an old house on Bull Street. The cafe was painted an eye-catching solid black with screaming green trim at the windows and doors, which made it stand out in a neighborhood defined by the massive brick Savannah College of Art and Design building across the street, two blocks wide and surrounded by old trees. The customers were largely students—at twenty-six, I felt a little old for the crowd, but Stacey was four years younger and fit right in.

I ate a big, fancy salad with blue cheese, avocado, and almonds, while Stacey had her quinoa and again offered to try and spice up my love life, nodding at a cute college boy eating a grilled chicken sandwich at another table, a boy she claimed to know. I considered it—the guy _was_ cute—but I declined Stacey's offer. For the moment, anyway.

Then we each went home to rest so we could stay up all night. It was time to see the ghosts for ourselves.

# Chapter Five

We returned to the Paulding home on Friday evening, about an hour before sunset. Stacey and I had only had time for quick naps at our respective apartments, so we picked up some potent, espresso-laced coffee from Goose Feathers Cafe.

A big downside to this job is the hours—you spend a lot of time at libraries and archives, which are open during the day and close early, and a lot of time doing overnight observations at haunted houses. Sometimes I'll find myself awake for twenty-four or forty-eight hours at a clip, especially when there's a dangerous ghost involved and I'm worried about my clients. So coffee is pretty critical to my existence.

Stacey and I sat with Gord and Toolie in the first-floor living room that was cluttered and overfurnished with its accumulation of antique divans, settees, and other fancy sorts of sofas and chairs. The late-in-the-day sunlight through the tall back windows painted everyone a bloody shade of orange, like a gentle omen of death for us all. The two kids were upstairs, presumably occupied with their tablets, phones, and televisions.

Toolie had set out cups of iced tea and a plate of some really great chocolate chip cookies for us. There's no greater hospitality than offering your guests chocolate.

"We found a number of deaths over the years," I told them, catching them up on our research. "You expect that with a house this old. One family in particular interested me." I quickly filled them in on Isaiah Ridley's probable suicide and the as-yet-unexplained deaths of his wife and three children two weeks later.

Not surprisingly, they had a visible reaction when I told them the names of Ridley's two boys, Noah and Luke. Toolie flinched in her overstuffed brocaded armchair, while Gord's eyes widened and he gasped noisily through his oxygen tubes.

"Crane's invisible friends," Toolie whispered.

"The boys' ages were twelve and ten when they died," I said. "Does that match Crane's friends?"

"He does say they're...older boys," Gord said.

"Did he have those invisible friends prior to moving here?" I asked.

"No," Toolie said, and Gord shook his head. "They showed up right after Crane's sixth birthday. We'd just moved here, and we didn't know any kids to invite for him, so it was just his parents and his sister for his little party. Kind of sad. We figured he made up his invisible friends because of that."

"But you think...they're real," Gord said.

"That's the reason we're looking at the Ridley family in particular," I said. "That, and the drownings. Ghosts are obsessed with their own deaths. Your constant water problems could be related to that." I glanced up at the green stains on the living room ceiling.

"So we have two ghosts," Toolie said.

"At least two," I said. "We should have much more information after tonight, but there's still the possibility of a poltergeist with your daughter, Juniper. Young people tend to create them in times of high stress, and when the house is already haunted, the psychically charged atmosphere makes it easier for them to generate a poltergeist. It's all unconscious and unintentional, of course. The young person has no idea that she's created it and is continuing to feed it. Did you speak to her about the ESP tests?"

"Yes..." Toolie said, but her tone didn't exactly fill me with hope.

"What did she say?" I asked, after it was apparent Toolie wasn't going to continue on her own.

"She didn't seem to like the idea," Toolie said. "She says 'no' to just about anything I ask her to do these days, though. She wasn't always like that. Even a year ago, she was still a sweet little..." Toolie shook her head.

"Maybe I can speak with her, Mrs. Paulding," Stacey said. "I'm good with kids, and I'm not that much older than Juniper."

"Yeah, you guys can talk boy bands together," I said, and Stacey gave me a subtle annoyed look, narrowing her eyes just slightly.

"You may as well try, but she's stubborn as a mule in quicksand, like my daddy used to say." Toolie snorted. "He was usually saying it about Momma. Maybe Juniper inherited that."

"We'll speak to her," I said. "There are a couple of other interesting deaths. A woman drowned in an upstairs bathtub in 1915. Her name was Mathilda Knowles. I gather the Knowles family eventually sold it to your cousin's folks, Mrs. Paulding. She wasn't that old, only about forty-five and in good health, as far as we could tell. Since there's the connection with water again, we're going to look more closely at her, but I think the Ridley family ghosts are probably the main issue here."

"This certainly is interesting," Toolie said. "Do you think the boys are the ones messing around with the games and the TV?"

"It's possible. We'll set up cameras in here tonight." I gestured toward the antique cupboard housing the board games. "Maybe we'll pull some items out to try and draw their attention. We'll need cameras in several places, upstairs and down...if y'all don't mind, we should probably get started with our set-up. Unless you have other questions?"

Gord and Toolie looked at each other.

"I'm sure we have a thousand," Toolie said. "But I wouldn't know where to start, so go on and do what you need to do."

"Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Paulding," I said, and Gord gave us a worried frown as we stood up and walked out toward the van.

We started downstairs, positioning thermal and night vision video cameras in the living room so we could see the game cupboard and the phonograph. Stacey set up a high-sensitivity microphone in the middle of the room, on a rosewood end table crammed between two hefty old chairs with wide wings and high backs.

We stuck a thermal camera in the downstairs powder room to watch the sink, which frequently turned itself on at night. Most of the reported activity was upstairs, though, so we concentrated our gear up there.

Thermal and night vision cameras went into the cold, unpleasant-feeling crafts room at the front of the second story, where Toolie had seen the dark apparition. My skin crawled in that room, and I thought about how she'd described it—the tall male figure staring at her, silent and unmoving, and then the door suddenly slamming itself closed.

The crafts room was full of cardboard boxes as well as the dusty sewing machine and its forgotten shelves of beads and cloth. I opened a few cabinet doors, which were as big as regular doors between rooms, and found most of them crammed full of assorted junk, too. I didn't know how the family could stand living in a house so cluttered, but I supposed it wasn't their stuff in the first place, so they weren't free to throw anything out.

I tried the doors to the front balcony, but they didn't budge. It was strange how a room could have so many big windows yet remain so dim. That's a haunted house for you.

Stacey and I were happy to get out of that room as quickly as possible.

We placed another night vision camera in the hall, angled to watch the sink in one of the bathrooms.

"What's next?" Stacey glanced down the intersecting hall at the closed door to Juniper's room, from which more harsh, angry music leaked out. Our options were to go talk to the moody teenage girl or go set up in the creepy attic where Toolie had heard strange thumps, crashes, and footsteps.

"The attic," I said. "It sounds easier than talking to the girl."

The door to the attic steps creaked as we opened it. I felt around the dim wall until I found the light switch, then I flipped it.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then there was a crackling sound, and a little weak yellow light glowed overhead. I turned on my high-powered tactical flashlight to ward off any curious ghosts. A concentrated three-thousand-lumen beam will send pesky spirits back into the shadows, but it doesn't hurt them, and it certainly doesn't help you capture them. Still, you should never go into a haunted old attic without one.

I led the way up the stairs, built in the uncomfortably steep and narrow fashion of the olden days. It was better than climbing a ladder, though. It's hard to run for your life down a ladder.

The attic was gloomy and spacious, a musty wooden cavern full of dust and spiderwebs. Three bare bulbs spaced along the ceiling gave a little light, but one was buzzing and flickering, like it would burn out at any moment or explode and rain glass and sparks on our heads, if we were really lucky.

Heavy timbers crisscrossed the attic at steep angles, many of them conveniently positioned right at head-bashing height. Stacey and I had to duck under them as we explored the attic. First we passed through a couple of holiday areas, including a big plastic tree with a string of lights still tangled in it, next to a grinning, life-size stuffed Santa Claus with his mitten raised in greeting. One of Santa's glass eyes was missing, giving him a freakish pirate look. Our flashlights found Easter baskets still packed with plastic green grass, then a box overflowing with Halloween masks and plastic kid's costumes.

Ghosts like attics and basements for several reasons. For one thing, those areas are usually left dark, quiet, and deserted most of the time, so they can obsess over their issues undisturbed.

Another reason, though, is that the attic, the basement, the storage crawlspace, sometimes the garage, are like the house's subconscious. We store away the seasonal items, and we store all the things we don't really need but can't throw away because we feel too attached to them. Ghosts are drawn to those accumulated geological layers of memory and meaning. They're emotional beings more than rational ones.

"See anything?" Stacey whispered. We'd reached an area of deeper storage, with dust-coated antique furniture, a grandfather clock with a broken face, and wooden crates full of who-knows-what. Old wooden pull toys and puppets were heaped in one corner, along with a rickety rocking horse and a tricycle with a rusty seat promising tetanus to any child who sat upon it.

"Just a couple centuries' worth of junk," I said. "This attic is an ideal ghost habitat, lots of hiding places, lots of old stuff that had emotional significance to somebody."

"Where should we set up the cameras?"

I considered it. The room was enormous, running the full width and length of the house below, all the walls still deep in shadow even when the dinky overhead light bulbs were lit.

"Point them in different directions, try to cover as much area as you can," I told Stacey. "Definitely get the stairs in the shot. We might catch something coming or going."

Stacey began setting up the tripods. I let her handle the work, since she has a bachelor's in film, and her job title is tech manager. My job title is lead investigator, so it was my job to stand around and lead, I guess.

I closed my eyes, trying to get a sense of the room. It was unsettling, but not cold and scary like the craft room. There might have been something there. I don't go by feelings, though, so I brought out my Mel Meter, a device that measures both temperature and electromagnetic energy.

While Stacey prepared and tested the cameras, I did another slow lap around the attic, ducking under timbers and weaving through furniture. The EMF readings spiked a few times for no obvious reason—no electrical outlets or anything like that. They were strong, five to six milligaus, indicating an active presence.

The attic wasn't particularly cold, but it wasn't as roasting hot as it should have been, considering it was July in Georgia. It was actually a pretty pleasant temperature, like the presence was just there to help cool the house.

"Are you feeling anything weird up here?" Stacey asked when I returned. She'd finished the cameras.

"I got a few energy spikes," I said. "The temperature is lower than you'd expect."

"But it doesn't feel creepy," she said. "I felt like something was watching me, but it was almost benign, like a house pet. I didn't see anything."

"If there's anything up here, the worst it's done is throw a box of Christmas ornaments down the steps," I said.

"I thought that was the poltergeist," Stacey said.

"Or it might have been the poltergeist. There's too much going on here. Come on, let's get moving. Maybe you can dazzle Juniper with your charm and personality. I really want her to do those psychic tests with Calvin."

# Chapter Six

Stacey knocked on the door with the skull and bones warning us away. There was no answer, so she knocked a little louder.

"What?" screamed an angry banshee voice. The door flung open, and Juniper stood there scowling, ready to snap. Then she saw her mother wasn't present, and she relaxed a little. "Oh. Yeah. You're the vampire slayers or whatever."

"That's us," I said, my voice barely audible over the blasting music behind her. "We just wanted to ask you about--"

"Go away!" Juniper screamed, and I recoiled, a little startled.

She was looking past me. Her little brother Crane had silently opened the door behind us and leaned out to watch.

"But I want to know what you're doing!" Crane shouted back.

"Leave us alone!" she shouted.

"Hey, buddy, we can talk later if you like." Stacey patted Crane's shoulder. "We're just going to talk about boring girl stuff with your sister."

"You're gonna talk about the ghosts," Crane replied with a pout. Well, the kid was right.

"Stop being such a buttbone!" Juniper said, and he stuck out his tongue at her. She sighed and turned to me. "You want to talk in my room? He's being a total nozzle today."

"What's a nozzle?" Crane asked.

"You are," Juniper informed him.

"Yeah, let's check out your room, Juniper!" Stacey said, nudging her way inside.

Crane continued staring at us until Juniper closed the door behind her.

"Sorry, that's so embarrassing." Juniper sat on the bed and gestured to a small armchair strewn with dirty laundry and old candy wrappers.

"Go ahead, Stacey." I gestured for her to sit on the laundry chair, suppressing a grin. Stacey, trapped by a sense of manners and hospitality, reluctantly took her seat, perching herself on the front edge of the cushion.

"Can you turn that music down a little? It's kind of hard to talk," Stacey said. That was Stacey, relating to Juniper and connecting to her on her own level.

Juniper gave an overblown sigh, grabbed a thin black wafer of a remote, and turned down the stereo.

"What's going on?" Juniper asked, dropping to sit on her bed again. "Did you find any ghosts yet?"

"We'll be watching for them all night," Stacey said. "Do they freak you out?"

"I guess." Juniper shrugged. "Stuff's always bugging me. If it's not the ghost, it's my brother--"

Her stereo turned itself up to ear-punching maximum volume, rattling the room with the screeching voice of an angst-filled boy-band singer. Juniper shouted and pointed the remote at her small, sleek stereo, but the volume didn't drop. She shook her head and crossed the room to turn it off manually. When that didn't work, she yanked the plug from the wall, and the stereo finally fell silent.

"You see what I mean?" She dropped the stereo plug to the floor like a comedian ending her act. "This is my life."

"Juniper, do you know what a poltergeist is?" Stacey asked.

"Yeah. My parents told me you think I have one. But I already knew what they were. Do you think I made the poltergeist? You think it's all my fault?" Juniper looked at me, as if she didn't quite trust Stacey as an authority on the subject. It's the glasses, I think. They sometimes make people think I'm smarter than I am.

"I don't think it's your fault," I said. "Nobody creates a poltergeist on purpose. Why would you? They hang around harassing you, breaking your stuff, feeding on your energy. Who would want that?"

"I don't know." She shrugged and looked at the floor. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It just feels like I did it."

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

She shrugged. "How can I stop it?"

"First, we're not even sure it's definitely a poltergeist," I said. "Maybe we'll learn more tonight. One way you can help us would be to take a test to evaluate any latent psychic powers you might have."

"My parents told me. What kind of tests?"

"Just some standard things—Zener cards, hidden objects, maybe a PK test."

"Is that like with needles?" Juniper asked. "Like taking blood?"

"Huh? No," I said. "It tests whether you can move objects with your mind."

"Weird. I don't know." She shrugged.

I approached her bookshelf, where I'd noticed a few volumes about Wicca and Tarot cards tucked among the vampire romances and horror comics. Some of them were books I'd read as a teenager, Llewellyn Press books on spell-casting and divination, and some of them were darker, their black covers adorned with lurid pentagrams. It looked like Juniper was going through the same kind of phase. I think it's perfectly natural to be obsessed with the occult for a while after you see a nineteenth-century ghost burn down your house and murder your parents—or anytime you have ghosts infesting in your house, I suppose. Juniper was trying to cope with restless spirits and a troublesome poltergeist.

"This was one of my favorites as a kid," I said, pulling out a book called _Earth Magic and Your Kitchen_. "I tried to cast a spell on my algebra teacher."

"Did it work?" Juniper asked, leaning toward me with sudden interest.

"I don't know. I wanted him to stop picking on me in class. He ended up having a heart attack. He didn't die, but he was gone the rest of the year. I stopped messing with it after that. Do you ever try to do the things in these books, Juniper? Or do you just read them?"

"Just read," she said quickly. "I mean, who's going to sit around and do that stuff with me?" Juniper looked between Stacey and me. "How do you get to be a ghost hunter, anyway?"

"You have to go to college," I told her, since I figured her parents wouldn't mind that answer. "So, what do you say? Will you do the test?"

"Can I help with your ghost hunting stuff, too?" she asked.

"Definitely!" Stacey said, hopping to her feet. "We'd like to set up some gear to monitor your room. Can you help us carry it from the van?" Clever Stacey, roping the girl into doing some free labor.

"What kind of stuff?" Juniper asked her.

"Special cameras and microphones to help us find the ghosts."

"Oh, yeah." Juniper slid off her bed. "Whatever I can do."

"Does that mean you'll do the tests, too?" I asked.

"If they say I'm psychic, does that mean I made the poltergeist?" she asked.

"It means it's possible," I said. "But you have to understand it's not your fault, either way."

Juniper nodded.

A few minutes later, her mother looked surprised to see the girl carrying equipment in with us.

"You aren't getting in the way, are you?" Toolie asked.

"No, Mom, I'm not."

"She's a big help, ma'am," Stacey said, flashing a smile. Toolie just gave us a worried look, like she didn't want her daughter to get too chummy with the weirdo ghost investigators. She frowned as we went upstairs together. I wondered if she was thinking about her daughter's apparent interest in witchcraft.

We set up a pair of video cameras and a microphone in Juniper's room. I doubted we would get anything on the microphone—poltergeists are creatures of action, not words—but I didn't stop Stacey from setting it up, since Juniper seemed so interested in our process.

"Have y'all ever really seen a ghost on these things?" Juniper asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Stacey said. "Sometimes they're just cold spots or little orbs, but sometimes you get an image so clear it makes you jump out of your socks."

"Would tomorrow afternoon work for the testing?" I asked Juniper.

"Whatever, I'm not busy," she said, looking between the cameras. "Should I try to make the poltergeist do something?"

"Are you able to do that?" I asked, surprised by the idea.

"Uh, I don't know. Can I? I mean, it's my poltergeist. It should listen to me."

"They typically don't," I said. "But...honestly, trying won't hurt anything." I couldn't say whether I was humoring the girl or genuinely curious whether it might work.

"Okay. Um..." Juniper stood at the foot of the bed, took a deep breath, and pointed at her laundry chair. "Poltergeist...attack!"

All three of us watched the chair. Not a single dirty sock or spiky black belt stirred.

"Maybe I need a better target." Juniper grabbed a stuffed animal from the floor and tossed it into the chair. It looked like a zombie rabbit, about two feet high, bright green, with yellow button eyes and lots of visible Frankenstein's-monster stitching.

"Hey, that's pretty cool," Stacey said. "A zombie bunny."

"There's a bunch of different Zombie Zoo animals," Juniper said. "I really want the kangaroo. It has a zipper pouch with a zombie joey inside. So ugly and cute." She balled her fists on her hips and stared at the stuffed rabbit, her jaw clenched.

I couldn't help sharing an amused smile with Stacey. The girl was dedicated.

"Okay, poltergeist!" Juniper stabbed all ten fingers in the air toward the zombie bunny as if trying to cast a spell. "Go, poltergeist! Sic him!"

Stacey and I couldn't help bursting into laughter at the words "Sic him!" and, after a second, Juniper laughed with us.

"What on Earth is happening in here?" Toolie walked into the room, frowning even more as she looked at the three of us laughing at the apparently hilarious stuffed bunny rabbit.

"I was trying to get my poltergeist to attack," Juniper said.

"Oh, my word." Toolie gave me a questioning look.

"Don't worry, Mom, it didn't do anything," Juniper rushed to say. "Maybe I just need to tell it to bug me, and it'll leave me alone."

"I think it's getting to be bedtime, Juniper," Toolie said, but she was still looking at me.

"Nine o' clock? On a Friday?" Juniper asked.

"We'll get out of the way," I said. "Juniper, if you could do us a big favor, just go about your night as you normally would."

"Okay." Juniper nodded as we left.

"Listen," Toolie said in the hall, after closing her daughter's door. "We've had some trouble with her getting into, well, black magic and occult nonsense. We do not want to encourage her. I hope you understand."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Paulding," I said. "We're only trying to understand the problem. What kind of trouble did you have?"

"We found her up here with a friend one night," Toolie said. "They were doing _Tarot_ cards. By _candlelight_." She shook her head. "It was troubling."

"We'll be sure to avoid anything like that," I said as we walked toward the stairs. "The psychic tests we're doing tomorrow were developed by parapsychology departments at major universities." I didn't mention that most of said parapsychology departments had since been closed down.

"So she agreed to do them? And she offered to help you with your work?" Toolie shook her head. "Miracles, miracles."

Downstairs, we prepared the living room in a way we hoped might draw the ghost's attention. Stacey and I set out a game of _Monopoly_ for four players, and we arranged the _Candy Land_ game with the little plastic children at random points on the board, as if a game were already in play.

At the phonograph machine, we carefully slipped a record of a song called "Cheyenne" by somebody named Billy Murray out of its stiff yellow sleeve. We placed it on the turntable in case the ghost felt like cranking it up again.

I walked with Stacey to our van outside, which is our mobile nerve center for all the cameras, microphones, motion detectors, and other gear we spread throughout the haunted houses we investigate. The rear of the cargo van has a couple of narrow, extremely uncomfortable drop-down bunks, plus racks and bins to hold our equipment. An array of small, built-in monitors enables our tech manager—that's Stacey—to sit and watch activity all over the house at once.

As the lead investigator, I would go back inside and watch for ghosts in person. Sometimes they don't show up on camera, but are very clear to living eyes.

"All ready?" Stacey asked me while we strapped on the little headsets that would keep us in voice contact all night. I don't really like wearing the headsets, because they remind me of some nightmarish orthodontic gear I wore as a teenager.

"Yep," I said. "I'm not too worried about this house yet. As long as Mr. Creep stays upstairs in the crafts room."

"Yeah, that was the worst place in the house," Stacey agreed.

"I think there are different ghosts that play with the games," I said.

"Noah and Luke?"

"If I see them, I'll ask." I double-checked my toolbox for all the gear I might need, then started inside.

"Testing," Stacey said over my headset as I approached the back door of the house.

"Copy," I replied. Because we talk like that sometimes.

The Pauldings had gone to bed. I sat down in a comfortable overstuffed chair in a corner of the living room, right behind the thermal and night vision cameras so I could watch their display screens. My job was to stay quiet, observe, and hope for a ghost or two to pass by during the night. I would make a few rounds with my Mel Meter to pass the time, looking for unusual energy or temperature patterns. In case nothing happened, I'd brought a paperback of _The Road_ by Cormac McCarthy, because I'd been meaning to read that one for a while.

I didn't get to read much, though, because a few things did happen, and they weren't altogether pleasant.

# Chapter Seven

Sometimes when I do overnight observations, I bring an inflatable mattress or sleeping bag to kind of camp out in the house. This is usually because I'm in some creepy basement or some long-neglected room where the ghost has taken up residence.

The Paulding house was already so jammed full of antique furniture accumulated over the generations, though, that it seemed absurd to bring in one more item. I was perfectly happy to take the corner chair in the living room, which was so big that I could comfortably sit cross-legged in it.

I made a few rounds of the first and second floor, noting EMF spikes right around the door to Juniper's room. Maybe it was the poltergeist or another spirit, but it wasn't doing much to make itself known so far.

The electromagnetic readings spiked again when I peeked into the crafts room with the unused sewing machine and overflowing closets. The room was cold and filled me with dread, but I didn't see anything happening in there.

The action really started at about one in the morning. I was back in the living room, and I heard a thud somewhere far above.

"Did you hear that?" Stacey asked over my headset.

"I heard something go bump in the night," I replied. "Did you see anything?"

"The attic. A cardboard box toppled off a stack of boxes and landed on the floor. Saw it on night vision. It was right next to that old rocking horse."

"Anything else happening up there?" I asked.

"I think I saw...wait, let me back up the video...yep. A little orb sailed through the box right as it fell. Just a tiny circle, like the size of a penny. Nothing else...wait. Now there's something on thermal. It's a cluster of little cold spots, blue spots. Not really a cloud, just a jumble. It's moving toward the attic stairs." Stacey gasped a little. "I think I picked up something on audio."

"What did you hear?"

"A little...squeak, maybe? I'll have to analyze...oh, the cold spots are gone now, Ellie. They drifted down the stairs."

I sat upright in my chair. "Where are they going now?"

"I can't see anything yet. Watching the hallway cam now...here they come. They passed right through the attic door. They're...uh-oh."

"What, Stacey?"

"They just went into Crane's room. We don't have a camera in there."

I stood up, but then Stacey spoke again.

"They came back out already. It looks like they're moving toward the main stairs," she said.

I walked to the living room door and peeked out. On the second of the three flights of steps, a dim figure flicked across the window, barely visible for an instant and then gone. It seemed like a pale, thin, short person.

"It's on the steps," I whispered.

The front hall where I stood grew noticeably colder. My trusty Mel Meter confirmed something was happening—the temperature dropped four degrees, and I saw exactly the same kind of electrical anomalies I'd observed in the attic. They were short, strong pulses of five to six milligaus each.

I heard something like a whisper. The entity was halfway along the first-floor hall now, and it seemed to be approaching me.

I gripped my flashlight just in case.

The whispering sounded again, much closer, and I felt a cool breeze brush against me, rustling my shirt. I jumped back, but I kept my flashlight off. No need to panic just yet.

"Ellie, the cold spots moved into the living room," Stacey whispered in my ear. "I think they're going for the games."

I stepped in front of the nearest camera, the one pointed at the downstairs powder room, and gave Stacey a nod and a thumbs-up. I didn't want to speak out loud and startle our ghost into leaving. It seemed to tolerate or ignore me for the moment. Ghosts aren't always conscious of your presence—they can easily get completely absorbed in their own activities.

I returned to the living room and did my best to skirt around the walls, weaving through furniture on my way back to my chair. The board games sat out on a coffee table in the middle of the room, near the high-powered microphone.

Easing into my chair, I looked at the little display screens of the thermal and night cameras mounted on their tripods, pointed right at the game boards. On the thermal, I saw the patch of cold blue motes Stacey had been talking about. They converged around the board games and grew denser, bits of coldness drawing together into larger blue spots.

On the _Candy Land_ game board, the red player token, smiling and cartoony with its hand upraised in eternal greeting, advanced without regard to the brightly colored squares of the path, sliding heedlessly through the Lollipop Woods and directly to Candy Castle without even bothering to pass through Molasses Swamp.

The red player flopped onto its face, then flew off the board and landed on a chaise lounge halfway across the room, as if someone had thrown it.

Giggling voices sounded from the coffee table, and the cloud of cold dots condensed into two small, blurry figures on the thermal.

Two ghosts. I thought these might be Luke and Noah, the boys who had drowned and now seemed to be reaching out to seven-year-old Crane, who refused to tell me anything about them at all. I could not see anything as distinct as facial features—even their hands looked like shapeless mittens on the thermal camera. Of course, I hadn't seen any pictures of Luke and Noah Ridley from when they were alive, either, so I had no way of knowing how they'd looked.

They didn't seem particularly menacing, but that didn't stop icy dribbles of fear from creeping up my spine. Living creatures, including dogs and cats, have an instinctive negative reaction to encountering the spirits of the dead. It's a good instinct to have, because the bad ghosts can do truly horrifying things.

The _Monopoly_ money Stacey and I had carefully counted out according to the rules—fifteen hundred bucks per player—now erupted into the air above the _Monopoly_ board. The brightly colored bills rained down like confetti, and the otherworldly child voices laughed again.

The ghosts of young kids might seem harmless, but you can't count on that. The bad ghosts are stuck in some kind of psychological hell. Otherwise they wouldn't be here, they would move on. A person who was basically innocent in life can mutate into something twisted and dark over years of existing as a restless ghost. It's true of children, too—a little kid who was just a bit mischievous when alive might turn into a dangerous prankster ghost, one who thinks it's funny to push people down stairs or knock over a ladder when you're standing on top of it. Murder can be just another game to them.

Knowing this, I intended to proceed with caution.

The blue boy-shapes on the thermal camera grew clearer as they played, becoming a little sharper at the extremities. On the night vision camera, I saw a pair of little orbs appear over the _Monopoly_ board and vanish into the wheelbarrow and dog tokens, which then raced each other across the board, tumbled off the coffee table, and landed on the rug. The orbs had been about the size of the boys' fingertips, which they seemed to represent.

"Ellie?" Stacey said over the headset. "Hey, Ellie? Ellie?"

I scowled. She should have known I wouldn't want to speak and draw the ghosts' attention. She would have been watching the feeds from the two cameras in front of me, and I assumed she was getting overexcited about it.

"Ellie?" she said again.

"What?" I finally whispered, sounding just as annoyed as I felt.

On the thermal camera, the blue boy-shapes fell suddenly still. Great. My voice had disturbed them.

Over my headset, I thought I heard Stacey say something about a bathroom.

"Did a faucet turn on?" I asked. That would indicate a third entity getting active, maybe the poltergeist, maybe somebody else.

"Not the bathroom," Stacey replied. "I said something's happening in the _bad_ room. You know, the sewing room? Serious temp drop there, like down to forty-six, forty-five degrees. And I can see him on night vision, Ellie. I mean, just an outline, a green shadow surrounded by green and black--"

"What's he doing?" I whispered. The two boy figures trembled strangely on the thermal screen. If I didn't shut up, I was going to chase them away.

"He just...opened the door. Now I lost sight of him. The hallway's turning dark blue, though, and I mean he's going through there like an ice-cold thundercloud—"

A heavy footstep echoed from the front hall.

On the thermal camera, the two blue boy-shapes raced up into the air above the coffee table, moving all at once as if they'd been sucked away by some paranormal vacuum cleaner.

I looked at the night vision camera in time to see a pair of pale orbs, each as big as a bicycle training wheel, fly into the ceiling and vanish. I'd lost both ghosts.

"Where did they go?" I whispered.

"Right back to the attic," Stacey answered. "They're shrinking away into the corners there. It's like they're hiding."

I thought I saw a discolored area on the ceiling where they'd vanished. I walked over to the coffee table and looked up. A big, wet circular patch was spreading there.

A thick drop of scummy, foul-smelling water splatted against my cheek, and I quickly wiped it away. The plumbing wasn't leaking through the ceiling at all—the boy ghosts were leaving pond-water snail-trails behind.

"Ellie," Stacey said, her voice trembling. "The cold is spreading downstairs, fast. I think it's coming your way. It's like a purple-black fog. It's freezing."

He was staring at me from the doorway.

The man was tall and barrel-chested, his entire form wrapped in shadow. I felt a wave of dread like the one I'd felt in the crafts room upstairs, but it was worse now, more charged, like disaster was imminent.

He walked into the room, his face so encrusted with dirt that I couldn't make out his features. I could hear him breathing, though. His breaths were deep and ragged, with a strange whistling sound when he exhaled.

"Ellie, he's right there. Do I need to come in? I'm coming in," Stacey whispered.

I shook my head just slightly, so she could see my answer on the camera.

Then, in a blink, he was across the room, standing on the opposite side of the coffee table from me. I couldn't have moved if I'd wanted—fear had locked up every nerve and joint in my body, trapping me in place less than four feet from the apparition. I was seeing it with my bare eyes, no special goggles or cameras needed.

I studied the dark figure as he looked over the game boards and pieces. I had no choice but to stare at him, really—I didn't even want to breathe for fear the tiniest movement would draw his attention to me.

He wore an old-fashioned gentleman's coat with tails, but everything was crusted over with dark earth, from his shoes to his face. The room grew darker, as if a black cloud had passed in front of the moon outside, absorbing the pale light.

Intense cold seemed to radiate from him, as if he were an enormous block of ice chilling the room. Of course, cold doesn't actually radiate. In reality, he was drawing all the ambient heat out of the room, feeding on it for energy.

He raised his dirt-encrusted right hand over the game boards, palm down, almost as though he intended to say a benediction over Marvin Gardens. He said nothing.

A long, narrow organic shape, almost like a tongue, extended out of his hand toward the game boards. It was leathery, and despite the lifelike way it nosed among the scattered pink bank notes, I slowly realized that it was a kind of bizarre belt. Sharp buckles, prongs, plates, and hooks jutted out all over it, like some kind of awful torture whip from a dungeon museum.

The shadow man raised his arm, then brought the belt down on the game board with a crack. The belt grew as long as a bullwhip, sprouting new buckles and prongs all along the way, the metal gleaming in what remained of the moonlight.

He swept his belt-whip back and forth, and it snapped like a snake, its buckles jingling as it knocked the game boards and all the pieces onto the floor, as if this ghost were out for vengeance against Uncle Pennybags and King Kandy.

When all trace of the games had been removed from the coffee table, he fell still, and again I could hear his heavy, uneven breathing.

Then his head tilted up toward the wet green stain on the ceiling. I heard a sound that reminded me of a dog sniffing a dead animal.

His head lowered, and he looked at me.

In a blink, he was standing on my side of the table, less than a foot away from me. I could hear his breath, but I couldn't smell him at all, for which I should probably count myself lucky. He looked like a corpse that had clawed its way free of the earth. From this distance, I saw the right side of his head was misshapen, as if part of it had caved in.

Now he was staring right at me with the empty pits of his eyes.

My heart pounded in my ears. I wanted to scream. You never get used to seeing monsters like that.

With as little movement as I could, I tilted the lens of my flashlight toward his head and lay my finger on the power button.

He raised his right hand with the long, buckle-studded belt, and I had a feeling he meant to whip me with it.

I turned on my flashlight, blasting a narrow three-thousand-lumen beam right at his head. His heavy breathing turned to a choking, gagging sound as the concentrated light struck him full force.

His whip arm twitched, jangling all the metal pieces on the elongated belt.

I widened the iris of my flashlight lens, bathing him in a flood of light. A wet, angry snarl gurgled in his throat, and he slowly turned away from me.

As he rotated, I saw a hole in the left side of his head. I could see all the way through it, right through his head. I thought of Isaiah Ridley, dead of a gunshot wound.

He kept turning away, and he was kind of turning inward, twisting in on himself in the relentless glare of my light. Then he was gone. Into the gray zone where we couldn't follow, maybe, or perhaps getting ready to leap at me from another angle.

I turned back and forth, widening the iris even more so my flashlight was more like a searchlight.

"Ellie?" Stacey whispered.

"I think he's gone," I said. "It's getting warmer in here."

"What did you see?" she asked.

"What did _you_ see?" I asked her in return.

"A huge cold spot...like a column of cold, eight feet high, purple and black. On the night vision, it seemed like some kind of silhouette, fading in and out."

"I saw him, full apparition," I told her. "I think it's Isaiah. And I don't think he's friendly."

# Chapter Eight

Gord was the first member of the household to awaken. At about six a.m., he rolled out of his first-floor bedroom and into the kitchen to brew some coffee. He invited Stacey and me to join him. I accepted but tried not to drink too much, since I was hoping for a nap at my apartment this morning. I figured a few sips of coffee wasn't going to stop that from happening.

"How did it...go?" he asked, while Stacey and I sat at the kitchen table with him.

I gave him a quick summary of what we'd seen, including what we'd discovered about the ceiling "leaks" and the two figures who'd played with the board games. Stacey opened her laptop to show him the relevant bits of video—the thermal images of the boy-sized ghosts, the little orbs moving the game pieces.

"We've figured out the wet spots on the ceiling, at least," I said. "These two ghosts leave them behind when they travel between the floors. I think they were running from another ghost, the one upstairs in the crafts room. We caught some glimpses of him on camera, but I saw him in person. He...doesn't seem very nice."

"Who doesn't seem nice?" Toolie walked into the room wearing a blue pantsuit, full make-up, and a tag that identified her as a manager at Sir Sleepmore Mattresses. "I saw somebody made a mess in the living room."

"Two ghosts did that," I said. "I think they might be your son's invisible friends."

"Are they dangerous?" Toolie poured herself a cup of coffee.

"It's too early to tell, but they didn't act that way," I said. "On the other hand, there's a ghost in that room upstairs--"

"Stop!" a boy's voice snapped, and I jumped a little in my seat.

Crane stood at the open door to the dining room, wearing Buzz Lightyear pajamas. His hair stuck up in clumps, and he stared at me with dark, angry eyes.

"Crane? How long...have you been there?" Gord asked.

"You have to leave," Crane said, staring at me with a fairly creepy intensity for a seven-year-old.

"That's very rude, Crane!" Toolie said. "You apologize."

"They're making it worse." Crane looked from me to Stacey.

"Making what worse, Crane?" Stacey asked, in the measured tone of a guidance counselor.

"All of it. Noah and Luke say you're making him mad."

"Making who mad?" I asked.

Crane glared at me, then stomped away into the dining room.

"Crane! Come back and apologize to these ladies!" Toolie called after him.

"No!" he shouted from somewhere deeper in the house. I heard his footsteps stomping up the stairs.

"I am so sorry," Toolie said. "We've all been snapping at each other lately..."

"No need to apologize," I told her. "Anyway, it looks like his invisible friends really might be ghosts. That's more than a kid should have to deal with." I'm really defensive about kids having to face the supernatural, probably because of my own history. I hate to see ghosts stalking or threatening children.

"Oh, goodness," Toolie said. She glanced at the time on the microwave. "I need to get to work, but I want to hear more..."

"We'll be back later this afternoon," I said. We'd also caught some poltergeist activity in Juniper's room, but there wasn't time to go into that. "We can go over everything then."

A big crash sounded upstairs, followed by a scream, startling everyone. Stacey, Toolie, and I ran upstairs to find Juniper in her room, sitting up in bed. Her bookshelves had toppled over, spilling paperbacks and comic books everywhere. The shelves were only about four feet high, but they were heavy enough to do some damage if they'd landed on somebody's leg or foot.

"Are you hurt? What happened?" Toolie ran to embrace her daughter.

"What do you think?" Juniper pointed at the shelves. "That could have killed me!"

"Were you asleep?" I asked.

"Yeah. I guess I'm up now." Juniper sighed. "It was so loud."

"I wish I wasn't running late for work..." Toolie said.

"We'll help her straighten this up, Mrs. Paulding," I said.

"Oh, thank you," Toolie said, sounding genuinely grateful. "Junie, call me at work in a couple of hours, will you?"

Juniper nodded, still staring at the mess made by her possible poltergeist.

Stacey and I hung around long enough the heave the bookshelves back against the wall. Fortunately, Juniper didn't worry about organizing or alphabetizing her books at all, so it didn't take long to clean up the fallen books.

We got out of there as quickly as we could, because precious sleep time was dribbling away. We left our cameras and microphones turned off but still set up for the following night.

"What do you think?" Stacey asked me as we drove away.

"I think they have a ghost or two."

"Duh." She looked at me expectantly. I'd given her a brief idea of the shadowy man I'd encountered in the living room, but she could obviously tell I'd held something back. Now that we were out of earshot of our clients and their children, Stacey clearly wanted the gory details.

I quickly recounted the man and his bizarre belt-whip loaded with a crazy number of buckles and prongs, and how he'd used the whip to angrily slap the games off the table.

"No wonder the two kid ghosts ran away," Stacey said. "Maybe they're afraid of him. I can't believe you stayed in there by yourself the rest of the night."

"I feel more comfortable with you out here in the van, monitoring the whole house for me," I said. "I think you're right about the two ghosts. If they're Noah and Luke, and Whippy McHalf-Face is Isaiah, that would mean they're in fear of their father. The belt would be an extension of his will to punish, probably representing something he used in life."

"So...you're saying he used to beat the boys with a belt when they were alive?"

"Possibly. And now they're caught repeating that drama after death."

"For a hundred and sixty years," Stacey said, looking a little distraught at the idea. "That's terrible."

"And it must have grown worse and worse," I said. "Isaiah's turned into this monstrous entity with a crazy weapon. The belt's grown link by link over the years, like Jacob Marley's chains."

"So creepy," Stacey whispered. "So what about the two boys? How would they have changed over the years, suffering that?"

"I don't know. They could be dangerous by now, too. But so far all we've seen them do is play with toys and run away in fear. Maybe they threw some Christmas ornaments down the attic stairs. They don't seem malevolent so far. Mischievous, I'd say."

"It must be awful for them," she said. "Like a prison, but it's worse than a life sentence. You don't get to escape even when you're dead."

"If we can find any evidence that Isaiah whipped or abused his kids in life, that would really help tie this together," I said. "At least we're getting some insight about what's going on in that house. And here's _your_ house." I stopped at the curb in front of a three-story U-shaped brick building with a few of its exterior walls covered with carefully groomed mats of ivy. The apartment building was a short walk from the College of Art and Design campus and inhabited entirely by students. "Any plans to move now that you've graduated?" I asked.

"Why, do you want a roommate?" She cast her smile on me. She had an easy, charming smile that I wish I could copy. My smiles always make me look like I'm scowling, or else working up the steam to bite your head off about something. Which I'm not. Usually.

"I already have a roommate," I said.

"You have a cat."

"The two of us barely fit into the apartment at the same time," I said. I had a narrow little brick studio in a somewhat-refurbished factory loft.

"I haven't thought about it. My lease runs a couple more weeks...so...maybe I should. Because I'm adult now, not a college kid. Totally an adult. It's weird, because I still don't feel like it."

"You still don't _act_ like it, either," I said, and she stuck out her tongue before climbing out of the van.

I had enough time to drive home, feed my cat, and lie on the bed for twenty minutes before my phone woke me up. I'd forgotten to turn the ringer off. It usually doesn't matter, because I don't have tons of people calling to chat, and most of the ones who do call are trying to sell me magazine subscriptions or something.

"Grant, it's my bedtime," I said when I answered the phone. It was Grant Patterson, my usual contact at the Savannah Historical Association.

"Are you busy?" Grant asked.

"Just going to sleep," I said, thinking I'd already hinted pretty strongly at that when I'd told him it was my bedtime.

"Are you having insomnia, too? I've hardly slept this week."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Have you ever tried Ambien? I'm considering it," he said.

"I don't have insomnia, Grant. I spend my nights chasing ghosts in creepy old mansions." My cat Bandit jumped on top of me, purring and bashing his head into my face, so I gave him a petting.

"A fantastic job description," Grant said. "Enviable."

"Yeah, it's a real resume-stuffer," I said. Between Grant and Bandit, I gave up sleeping and sat up in bed. "Did you find something about the house?"

"My loss of sleep is your gain, dear," Grant said. "I let myself into the Association archives last night, and after thumbing through index after index, I did find a few items that should interest you. There are a number of boring public records about Isaiah Ridley's business and political activities, but one box is particularly tantalizing."

"So tantalize me, what is it?"

"Letters and family records, including correspondence from one Catherine Ridley—your woman who drowned along with her children—sent to her sister in Port Royal. Including the last several weeks of her life."

Grant hesitated, in a way that usually meant he had more gossip but needed more attention before he would relinquish it.

"That's an amazing find," I said.

"I think you'll find her final letters _very_ interesting, Ellie."

"Why? What's in them?"

"They are the thoughts of an increasingly distraught woman, suffering the terrible strain of her husband's death, and finding her home...disturbed by inexplicable events," Grant said.

"Haunted?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. You'll have to come and read the letters for yourself. They cannot be removed from the archives."

"Can they be photocopied?"

"I am a research fellow, not a copy boy," Grant said. "There's a good bit of material, so come and see what you want. Visit me in my domain."

"All right. Wait. We have to test this girl for psychic powers this afternoon."

"I'm sure there's something similar on my schedule."

"Can we meet at the archives at...about seven? Ish?" I asked.

"You assume I have no plans for the evening?" Grant asked, but he sounded amused rather than annoyed.

"Seven p.m. sounds a little early for you."

"True. I'm not quite among the early-bird-special crowd just yet. Give me a few more years..."

"Thanks. That should give us time to see our clients first."

"Do what you must. I'll be here, attempting to put this box of letters into something resembling chronological order."

"I really appreciate it, Grant. Can't wait to see you." Not as much as I couldn't wait to sleep, though.

"I'm sure it will be delightful, dear."

After he hung up, I closed my eyes. I immediately saw the big, shadowy man, encrusted in dirt, half his face misshapen by the lead ball of an old-fashioned pistol, probably a flintlock. The whip writhing in his hands like a serpent, its buckles jangling. The entire room turning ice cold around him.

It seemed clear to me that, of the ghosts infesting our clients' home, Isaiah was the one we needed to worry about the most.

# Chapter Nine

Eckhart Investigations is located in an industrial area a few miles west of the actual city, next to a junkyard where they crush old cars. It's in a cinderblock building we share with a couple of other shady businesses. Well, I'd like to think we're not shady ourselves, but plenty of people treat us like scam artists. Lots of folks just don't believe in ghosts until one is in their house, creeping into bedrooms and smashing Hummel figurines.

I arrived there in the middle of the afternoon to find Calvin, my boss, in the big workshop in the back of our office, loading boxes into the back of his truck. Calvin is a retired police detective, paraplegic and stuck in a wheelchair. He drives a big old forest-green Chevy Blazer with a camper shell over the truck bed.

"I said I'd help," I told him.

"Too late," he said. He wheeled around to the driver's seat. Calvin wore a tie, which was extremely unusual for him, but I guess he didn't get out much in the professional sense anymore.

He opened the door and hauled himself up into the driver's chair, refusing my attempts to help him. "If you want to help, fold up my chair and shove it in back," he said.

By the time I did that and closed up the tailgate, Calvin was already positioned in his seat, the engine rumbling, his hand on the accelerator handle. The truck had been modified to enable him to drive without his legs.

He pressed the remote clipped to his sun visor and the garage door rattled up behind us. "Now, fill me in," he said as he backed out.

I told him everything we'd observed the night before.

"You're still thinking poltergeist?" he asked.

"Maybe. Stacey recorded some movement in Juniper's room last night, but I don't think she's analyzed it very thoroughly yet. Little stuff on the dresser or floor would move around, and Juniper would stir in her sleep. We were kind of distracted by the three actual ghosts we saw."

"Sounds to me like you've got a couple of missing ghosts," Calvin said.

"What do you mean?"

"The wife and the girl. No sign of them?"

"Not so far..."

"If the father and boys are haunting the place, and the mother and daughter died in the same way alongside them, there's a good chance they're still around, too."

"We're definitely keeping our eyes open."

Calvin drove too fast into town, as he typically did, probably because of all his years as a police detective who didn't really have to worry about speeding tickets. Or maybe it was compensation for his inability to walk.

He slowed down as we reached the downtown area, heavy with pedestrians and bicyclists. It was about three-thirty when he pulled into the driveway of the old Georgian mansion. The unwanted, stagnant little pond at the center of the backyard seemed a bit larger to me, and a swarm of nasty mosquitoes hovered over it.

I grabbed the wheelchair for him. After Calvin lowered himself into it, we approached the back doors on the brick patio, since that meant I didn't have to haul Calvin backwards up the front steps. I can do that, as long as I don't mind a sore back for a couple of days.

I introduced Calvin to our clients—Toolie, Gord, Juniper. Crane was nowhere to be seen; apparently he preferred to be barricaded in his room, away from everyone. I was worried about the kid, even more so than Juniper. Who knew what the ghosts of Noah and Luke wanted with him? Maybe just a playmate, but I felt uncomfortable with the boy's situation. It didn't help that he didn't want to talk about it beyond telling us to go away.

"Do you give a lot of these tests?" Juniper asked Calvin, eyeing him warily.

"I've done my share," he said. They waited in the dining room, on opposite sides of the tables, while I brought in the boxes of testing materials, including an automatic shuffler for the Zener cards.

"Do most people turn out to be psychic, or not?" Juniper asked.

"Almost nobody does," Calvin told her.

Juniper gave a half-smile at that. "Do you think I am?"

"I'll tell you my opinion in about two hours," he said.

I set a wide, tall balsa-wood divider on the table between them. I would slide it into place at the beginning of the test so Juniper wouldn't be able to see the cards.

Stacey arrived, very conveniently, just after I'd finished carrying everything inside. She'd driven separately.

"Isn't this exciting?" Stacey asked Juniper, who responded to Stacey's overflowing enthusiasm with a half-hearted shrug. Stacey set up a camera behind Calvin, at a slight angle, to capture the cards on video as he drew them from the shuffler.

"Are you going to show this to people?" Juniper asked, frowning at the camera.

"It's just for our records," Stacey said, while setting up a high-powered microphone near the head of the table.

"Someone has to double-check the accuracy of my notes, especially at my age," Calvin said, and that actually made Juniper smile a little.

"So you're a ghost detective, too, right?" Juniper asked.

"He's the _boss_ ghost detective," Stacey said. "We both work for him."

"How did you get to be one of those?" Juniper asked him.

"I used to be a city homicide detective," he said. "I ran into more than one case that turned out to involve ghosts, and that led me to research them. After a while, other investigators would bring me their 'oddball' cases. I developed a sort of unwanted reputation for solving the ghostly ones."

"So the ghosts were _killing_ people?" Juniper's eyes widened. Oops, Calvin was freaking her out.

"That's very rare, I promise," he said, trying to put her at ease.

"Do you think the ghosts here will kill me?" she asked.

"I don't think so," he said, but he had no basis for saying that. Not after Whippy McHalf-Face and his Belt of Doom had put in their appearance. "We're going to get rid of your ghosts, so you don't need to worry about a thing."

Juniper didn't look like she believed him.

"Do poltergeists kill people?" she asked.

"Poltergeists are usually just pests," he told her.

"If I'm making the poltergeist, how do I stop doing it?"

"They feed on unbalanced emotions—anger, fear, hatred," Calvin said. "We usually prescribe a regular activity that will keep your energy calm and centered. You can study meditation at the Zen center, or take yoga or ta'i chi at several places around town."

"That doesn't sound so bad," Juniper said. I wondered what she'd been imagining. An elaborate exorcism, maybe.

"I know a great place for hot yoga! I've done it once, and it was awesome!" Stacey volunteered. I knew a good place, too—I went twice a week, just to keep myself sane—but it was small and out of the way, and I didn't want to run into clients there if I didn't have to, so I didn't mention it.

"It's a good practice, anyway," I offered. "Good for your health."

"Are we ready to begin?" Calvin asked, opening a small cardboard box beside him.

"I guess." Juniper gave a partial shrug.

He passed her a laminated sheet with five symbols on it.

"Each card has one of those symbols," he told her, while feeding a couple of decks into the automated shuffler. "Wavy lines, circle, square, star, or a cross. You won't be able to see me, so each time I draw a card, I'll ring this." Calvin touched the button on the sort of little bell you might find on the front desk at a hotel. It gave off a little _ding_. "Any questions?"

"Nah, sounds easy." Juniper looked over the five symbols from which she had to choose. "So I'm trying to read your mind?"

"Exactly right." Calvin nodded.

"Do I concentrate really hard, or what?"

"You can just relax," he said. "Say whatever comes to your mind."

"You'll be fine, sweetie," Toolie said. She stood in the doorway to the main hall, watching us set up in the dining room.

"I _know_ ," Juniper replied, looking annoyed.

"Everyone clear the room now." Calvin nodded at me, and I slid the tall balsa-wood divider into place, separating Calvin and Juniper.

Stacey, Toolie, and I walked over to the kitchen, where Gord was already sitting and watching Stacey's laptop. On the screen, we could see Calvin and the card he'd drawn. It had a circle on it.

"Star?" Juniper guessed. We couldn't see her, but the microphone picked up her voice.

Calvin made an "X" on his worksheet to indicate a wrong answer, then dropped the card back into the shuffler and drew another, which had the wavy lines on it. He dinged the little bell.

"Uh...square?" Juniper guessed. She was not off to a very accurate start.

She got the third one wrong, too.

"She doesn't seem very...psychic to me," Gord breathed.

"While the kids are busy, we wanted to catch you up on some details from last night," I told Toolie and Gord. I glanced around to make sure Crane wasn't eavesdropping from some little nook—the kid moved as quietly as a ninja. "Stacey, can you pull up one of the poltergeist videos from Juniper's room?"

"Of course." Stacey opened a second laptop and drew up a few clips of interest she'd put aside to show our clients.

On the screen, we saw Juniper asleep in bed. After a few seconds, the clothes and jewelry heaped carelessly on her dresser shifted, as if someone had pushed them, and a few items fell to the floor.

"That kind of thing happens all the time," Toolie said. "I'm always on her to clean up her room, but it can't be easy when something else is always messing it up."

"Here's the same timeframe from the thermal camera," Stacey said.

The next video clip showed Juniper as a red-orange shape in her bed.

A blurry shape the size of a soccer ball appeared near her door. It was green, speckled with blue, an unfocused blob shape with no discernible face or limbs.

It rolled across Juniper's dresser like a misshapen ball, pushing and knocking items aside, only to vanish at the far end.

"I saw that! Did you see that?" Toolie asked Gord, who nodded.

"Back it up and pause it," I told Stacey. She found a frame with a decent view of the green shape, though there wasn't much to see, no details at all. "Most ghosts show up in the blue-to-black spectrum on thermal," I told our clients. "They're constantly sucking heat out of the room to power themselves. This entity is a little warmer than a ghost but, as you can see by comparing it with Juniper, still colder than a live person. Poltergeists tend to have more energy because they're regularly feeding on the living. It's usually unfocused, destructive, kinetic energy, drawn from their human host."

Toolie looked at the other laptop, where her daughter continued trying to guess the cards behind the balsa barrier.

"Poor Juniper," she said.

"We've identified four separate entities," I said. "The poltergeist is one. Two of them we believe might be Noah and Luke Ridley, because your son came up with their names without knowing the history of the house. They seem like small-scale vandals and troublemakers, but not particularly threatening as far as we know. And the fourth..." I recounted my encounter the night before, not sparing any details this time. Gord and Toolie's eyes widened, and Toolie, who'd encountered the shadow-man before, turned pale. Gord looked horrified as I described the man's long, metal-spiked torture belt.

Stacey showed the scene on her laptop. First, she ran the night vision clip, where all we could really see was the game objects moving by themselves. I pointed out the little orbs that winked in and out around the moving objects.

When the tall shadow-man arrived, it barely registered on camera. Toolie and Gord watched me stand, frozen in fear, while a vague outline of a man faded in and out of view. At one point, a greenish thread blinked over to the _Candy Land_ game board to flip it off the coffee table, and that was the only hint of his bizarre weapon on the night vision.

Then Stacey played the same clip in thermal, so they could see the bluish boy-shapes and hear the snatch of laughter she'd caught on the microphone.

"My word," Toolie whispered. "Those are the boys Crane's been talking about this whole time?"

"We believe so, but we can't be one hundred percent certain yet," I said. "We're going to visit the Historical Association in a little while for some more research on the Ridley family." I checked the time. We needed to meet Grant in about an hour and a half.

On the screen, the two light blue shapes flew up into the ceiling. The shadow-man we believed to be Isaiah Ridley entered, a tall purple-black shape that filled the living room with deep blue cold.

"That's him," Toolie whispered. "Isn't it? The one I saw upstairs?"

Gord gave her a questioning look, but didn't say anything. I guessed a private conversation about Toolie's encounter would happen a bit later, when Stacey and I weren't around.

"He came from the crafts room, Mrs. Paulding," Stacey said. "I don't have that clip separated out for you yet, but I watched him open the door and walk toward the stairs. Well, he kind of drifted..."

"There was a hole in his head." I pointed to my left temple. "And the right side of his face was shattered. He was all covered in dirt, so it was hard to see very much, but that seems consistent with a man who shot himself. So I really think this is Isaiah."

"Four ghosts," Toolie said, shaking her head.

"You mean three and a...half," Gord said. "The poltergeist isn't really a...ghost."

Stacey and I smiled at his little joke, which seemed to cheer him up for the moment.

"That's right, Mr. Paulding," I said. "I have to say that I'm most concerned about Isaiah himself. Clearly, he can interact with physical objects in a forcible way. The other two ghosts, possibly his own sons, seem afraid of him. He has that odd weapon, which to me indicates he may have beaten his children with a belt. I'd like to go ahead and construct a trap for him, try to get him out of your house and on his way."

"Oh, yes, please." Toolie all but sighed the words, and she looked relieved. "Can you do that tonight?'

"Stacey and I will need to poke around in your attic," I said. "If we can find any objects of personal significance to Isaiah, it would help us bait the trap."

"Oh, yes, do what you need to do," Toolie said. "Let me know if I can help."

"Do you know if there might be anything left from the Ridley family?"

"If there is, it must be in some of those old trunks at the very back," Toolie said. "It's a mess up there. I usually only go far enough to grab the Christmas stockings or Easter baskets."

"We'll have a look," I said.

On the screen, we watched Juniper take her tests. After the Zener cards, there was a test where Calvin spun a color wheel with a pointer on one side, Wheel-of-Fortune-style, and she had to guess which color the pointer indicated when the wheel stopped. After a number of repetitions, they switched to a test involving a series of little boxes, each with an animal figurine inside, and she had to guess which animal was in which box.

Finally, there was a telekinesis test. After sliding the screen out of the way, Calvin placed one tiny object after another on the table—a shirt button, a thimble, and so on—and encouraged her to focus on them and try to move them with her mind.

None of them budged.

The testing lasted for more than an hour, after which Calvin and Juniper joined us in the kitchen. Juniper looked exhausted, like she'd just completed a thousand-page math test filled with convoluted word problems.

"How did it go?" Toolie asked. Juniper shrugged and grabbed a Sprite from the refrigerator.

"I haven't compiled all the numbers yet," Calvin said. "I'll need to add up—"

"I sucked at it," Juniper said. "I totally failed."

"There's no reason to get upset," Toolie said.

"This won't take long." Calvin added up the scores from the Zener-card test. "Since there are five cards, a score of twenty percent is considered the same as random chance. Yours was..." He tapped the numbers into his calculator. "Twenty-four point three seven...just a bit above average."

"Yay," Juniper said sarcastically, leaning against the counter. "Watch out, everybody, I'm slightly above average."

"So what does that mean?" I asked. "You don't think she's creating the poltergeist?"

"It seems less likely than before," Calvin said. "What about your other child? I understand he may have interacted with two of the ghosts."

"You mean Crane?" Toolie asked. "You think _he's_ making the poltergeist?"

"I'm just gathering information," Calvin told her. "As long as I'm here, it might be a good thing for me to test him, if y'all don't mind."

"We have to meet Grant soon..." I checked the time on my phone. "Should I tell him we'll be late?"

"Let's see if I can even get Crane to work with us," Toolie said while pushing herself to her feet. "He's been in a mood lately."

"He's a little pest," Juniper said.

"Juniper, do you fight with your brother very often?" Calvin asked.

"Like feral cats and rabid dogs," Toolie muttered as she left the room.

"Well, it's his fault! He's always bugging me and trying to take my stuff," Juniper said. "I just want him to leave me alone."

"If he has some unresolved anger toward you, that could explain why the poltergeist seems to be focused on you," Calvin said.

"Whoa, wait." Juniper scowled. "You mean my little brother is attacking me with a poltergeist? I swear, I'm going to give him the worst Indian burn ever."

"It's not intentional," I said.

"If the poltergeist is drawing energy from Crane, and Crane is angry at you, it could simply be absorbing that anger. And harassing you as a result," Calvin said.

"I knew it wasn't my fault!" Juniper looked triumphant as Toolie returned with a very reluctant Crane. The seven-year-old frowned at all of us, his dark eyes odd and solemn.

"Crane, this is Mr. Eckhart, a detective," Toolie said. "He's going to play some games with you."

"Why does he want to play games with a little kid?" Crane asked. I admit, I had to bite my lip to avoid laughing.

"It's a kind of test, like in school," Toolie said. "Only you don't get a grade. Just try for me, sweetie."

Crane gave a big sigh, but he accompanied his mom and Calvin into the dining room.

Stacey and I had to leave in a few minutes, but we watched the beginning of the session along with Toolie, Gord, and Juniper, who leaned over my chair to watch over my shoulder.

"Star," Crane said on the screen, correctly identifying the card my boss had just drawn. "Waves. Square. Square. Circle."

The five of us grew silent and still. We could see the cards on the video.

"Cross. Waves." Crane said. We could hear some rustling on his side of the balsa-wood screen, but we couldn't see him. His voice grew more and more agitated. "Star! Cross! Waves!"

"Is he...?" Toolie asked, clearly unsure how to finish her sentence.

Crane had correctly identified eight of the ten cards. He kept going for three or four more, then announced "I'm done!"

"We still have a few more--" Calvin began.

"I don't want to play anymore!" We heard his footsteps thumping rapidly toward us, and then the dining-room door opened and Crane ran to his mom. "I'm all done!"

"Crane, maybe you should go back and finish," Toolie said.

"No. Luke and Noah want me to come play with them. They're in my closet." Crane dashed away. His footsteps echoed through the hall as he ran upstairs.

"That's a shame." Calvin rolled through the open door to join us.

"I'm so sorry," Toolie said. "I think he got uncomfortable."

"He said Noah and Luke called him away," I told Calvin.

"Eleven out of fourteen." Calvin shook his head. "That's about seventy-nine percent. Of course, the test is inconclusive, the sample size too small--"

"But you're thinking yes," I interrupted.

"I'm thinking yes," Calvin agreed, looking at the parents. "Added together with his apparent ability to see and hear at least two of the ghosts, I'd say your son is psychically gifted."

"Oh, come on!" Juniper snapped. "What does he have to beat me at this?"

"It's not about beating you, Junie--" Toolie began.

"It shouldn't even count! He didn't even finish the stupid test, and I sat in there forever!" Juniper gave the fed-up _ugh_ grunt of a deeply annoyed teenage girl as she left the room, shaking her head.

"So..." Gord said. "Time to sign Crane up...for tai' chi?"

"It wouldn't be a bad idea at all," Calvin said. "This may get complicated, though."

" _Get_ complicated?" Toolie asked. "When was it simple?"

"Poltergeists are most commonly associated with adolescent girls," Calvin said. "We can speculate about why, but that's what the data shows. Those associated with teenage boys tend be less pronounced, less high-energy, as if there's less emotional power behind them. Now, it's very rare for a child of Crane's age, seven or eight, to produce a poltergeist—but when they do...it can be unusually powerful."

"What does...that mean for us?" Gord asked.

"It still means we need Crane to stop feeding the poltergeist, through the methods we mentioned earlier, but it could take longer to accomplish," Calvin said. "If you stop feeding it, the poltergeist _will_ go dormant or dissipate in time. Your boy will have to cooperate, though."

"We'll do what we can," Toolie said.

"Holy cow, we're running late, Ellie!" Stacey announced, pointing to the time on her laptop screen. "We have to meet Grant in five seconds...and....now we're late."

"Sorry, we need to run," I told them. "We'll be back tonight to observe, and to rummage around your attic." I turned to Calvin. "Are you ready to go, too?" I was really asking whether he wanted me to help him load the wheelchair into the truck again.

"As long as I'm here, I'd like to ask a few more questions," Calvin said. "And maybe we can convince the boy to come back down."

"I'll do my best." Toolie wished us well before leaving the room to go after him.

Calvin nodded at me. He could fold up his wheelchair and pull it up into the truck with him, but it was a little extra trouble.

"Okay, good luck," I said.

Stacey said cheerful good-byes to both of them. We'd had a small break in the case, at least. Maybe Grant would have something more for us.

We took Stacey's car, and she drove to the old mansion housing the Savannah Historical Association as fast as she could.

# Chapter Ten

The Association occupies a three-story Federal-style mansion on Drayton Street, its front door looking out onto the sprawling lawn of Forsyth Park, the largest of the many parks downtown. It's a beautiful structure, gray brick with white and black trim, a little reminiscent of the Paulding family house but much larger, without the ornate touches of pilasters and columns. A practical place for serious scholarship. A widow's walk on the roof, surrounded by black iron railings, offers a fourth-floor view of the park and the city around it.

The house was donated to the Association by one of its founders, a woman named Mariel Lancashire, who never married or had children and spent her days fighting against demolition of the city's more historic buildings. She left the mansion in her will with the stipulation that it be devoted to "sober research and learning for the ennobling of the human spirit."

We parked on the shady side street behind the old mansion, walked through a garden planted with roses and hydrangeas in full bloom, and climbed the steps to the back porch, where we rang the rear doorbell. The Association was closed on the weekends—and wasn't open very long on weekdays, either, unless there was an event or you had an appointment. Grant, fortunately, had his own key and could come and go as he pleased.

Grant opened the door with a smile, dressed in a white summer suit with a baby-blue silk tie and matching handkerchief. In his late fifties, Grant was always spotlessly dressed and impeccably groomed, his shoes polished into black mirrors, each graying hair on his head in place as if an invisible hairdresser ghost followed him around at all times.

"Good evening, ladies," he said, stepping aside for us to enter. "Fashionably late. I approve."

"Sorry, Grant," I told him. "We were tied up with a client."

"Sounds like quite an adventure." Grant locked the back door behind us. "Worthy of Indiana Jones himself."

"Very funny. It's always so nice in here." We'd stepped into a rear gallery hung with portraits of city notables, like town founder James Oglethorpe, Girl Scout founder Juliet Gordon Lowe, writer Flannery O' Connor, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The air was cool from the air conditioning, but also unusually crisp and light because of the mansion's dehumidifiers, which help preserve the vast collection of old books, maps, and papers against the heavy, damp Georgia air.

"Let's hear your story," Grant said. He led us up the back stairs, made of wide hardwood steps polished to a high gleam, much like his shoes. "I want all the spine-tingling details."

While he led us into an archive room, with shelves and shelves of paperwork stored in plastic bins surrounding a few round cherry work tables that were probably worth thousands of dollars each, I gave him some details of our current case and the ghosts we were facing.

"A poltergeist?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "How dark and Germanic." Grant gestured to one of the tables and lifted the lid off a clear plastic tub. "I know, these plastic containers aren't as romantic as the old chests and crumbling leather valises in which the old documents tend to arrive...they're a bit Hobby Lobby, in fact...but they're much more useful for preservation."

Grant eased out a few yellowed documents, while Stacey and I sat in the high-backed chairs at the table.

"Your friend Isaiah had a busy life before it was cut short," he said, easing into the chair across from us. "Here we have a variety of legal documents...there's an investor's prospectus for the Georgia Canal and Railroad Company, for instance...Isaiah was described as a tall man with a severe look. Fond of horse racing, apparently. Merciless in his business dealings."

"What about the letters?" I asked. "You mentioned his wife's letters."

Grant sighed. "Always trying to skip to the juicy parts. Can't I present this in my own melodramatic, drawn-out fashion?"

"Normally that would be great, but we have to get back to our clients' house and dig around in their haunted attic," I said. "I'd like to do that before sunset if we can."

"You don't have much time," Grant said, checking his watch. It was an antique wind-up, no doubt some expensive heirloom one of his ancestors had probably purchased in Switzerland. "How unfortunate for me. I wish I had clients with such interesting problems, instead of dowagers endlessly revising their wills to punish this or that grandchild." Grant is a semi-practicing attorney, trading on his old family name to do business with other old-money types in town.

"Come with us on a ghost hunt sometime," I offered.

"I'll consider it." He brought out an old folder tied with string and carefully opened it, revealing a stack of yellowed, hand-written pages. "Catherine Ridley's letters to her sister," he said. "As promised, I've made an attempt to arrange them in order. The papers were scrambled, and of course only the first page of each letter actually has the date inscribed upon it..."

"I really appreciate it, Grant," I said. "You mentioned the last letter in particular?"

"I believe it's the last letter. Towards the end, she takes less care about little niceties like dating the letters, and her handwriting grows more frantic and difficult to read." Grant pulled on latex gloves and used rubber-tipped tweezers to gently draw the last few pages out of the folder.

"What are the gloves for?" Stacey asked.

"To avoid damaging the paper with my wonderful natural oils," he said.

"Does that mean we have to wear them, too?" she asked.

"Only if you intend to touch anything in this room." Grant turned the pages to face me, then passed me the tweezers. I opened and closed them nervously while I read.

Or _struggled_ to read, I should say, because Catherine's handwriting really was difficult. The faded cursive letters, leaning sharply forward as though she'd scrawled out the letter in a blind panic, weren't easy to decipher, especially on yellowing old paper. Grant clicked on the high-powered desk lamp built into the table, which was mounted on a movable mechanical support arm alongside a big magnifying glass. For just such occasions, I assumed.

"Thank you," I said, leaning forward to adjust the glass and peer through it.

"What does it say?" Stacey asked.

"You might begin with the second paragraph," Grant suggested.

The scrawled letter didn't appear to be organized into clear paragraphs, but I found what Grant was probably talking about, and I read aloud for Stacey's benefit.

"'The disturbances I described in my last letter have grown worse,'" I read. "'There has been a darkness on this house since Isaiah's death, I am sure of it, a curse of evil. I pray for relief but the Lord sends none. I told you before of the strange knocking from Isaiah's office—as though someone stood inside, requesting to be allowed out of the room. Two nights ago it began again. I took my candle and walked into the hall, thinking first to check on the children, and found them all sleeping, as though the knocking was heard only by me. I fear I may be going mad.

"'I went to Isaiah's office. The rapping had stopped by now, the house silent and cold. It has been a bitter January in so many ways for us. I opened the door, which creaked badly, as it has taken to doing in the past month. I saw nobody in there, but someone could have hidden behind his desk, or in one of his closets or cabinets.

"'I spoke—I cannot recall my specific words now, but spoke to ask if anyone was there, and that they show themselves promptly. The room was dreadfully cold, more so than the hall had been. This might owe to the lack of a fire, which I have not bothered to restore since he died, as it would entirely be a waste of fuel to warm his office now—yet it seemed cold even for that, and I checked the windows but could find no draft. The cold burned through my night clothes, into my very bones.

"It was when I inspected the windows that the voice spoke to me. It was only one word, my name, _Catherine_ , but clear and loud as a branch breaking under the weight of ice in the winter. I turned and said his name, because it was his voice, you see, I knew it so well, hearing it day and night these many years. Isaiah. He spoke to me, but just that once, just that word. I searched all through the office and did not find him. I even looked in the little cabinet where Eliza used to hide, thinking she might be the one who'd done the knocking, but it was empty.

"I closed the door and have not entered the room since. There is worse to report. I told you of strange events that would happen, the dish that leaped from the table, the time Eliza's drinking glass shattered though no one had touched it. It continues, sometimes in the daylight hours as well as at night, items and furniture moving on their own as though by some restless spirit—and it seems to follow Eliza particularly. An hour before sitting to write this letter—it is night time—I heard a scream from her room.

"'I do not know how to put this in words without sounding feeble. I found Eliza in her corner, poor thing, her hair a yellow tangle, weeping and screaming, her face red and smeared with tears. She was being tormented. Toys floated before her—her favorite doll, the boys' jacks, a wooden rabbit with wheeled feet. They spun and rose and fell as through carried by some evil whirlwind, and Eliza held up her arms to protect herself.

"'I lifted the poor girl and clutched her tight—and I was deeply afraid myself—but the thing passed, and the toys dropped to the floor, as if the wind had died—but there was no wind, I promise you, and besides, what wind could do that?

"'Eliza is in my bed now, just steps away from me, asleep again by some miracle, but I do not know if I shall ever sleep in this house again. I have a mind to call on Mr. Humphries, our pastor, but fear he will only think me an hysterical woman.

"'I do not know if this spirit is truly Isaiah or not—though it was his voice I heard, he would never torment poor Eliza. He was hard on the boys, as you know, a strong believer in discipline, but he doted on the girl, in his way. He was never so rough with her. I fear it is some devil of vengeance, here to torment us all—and just when it seemed the long darkness had finally lifted. I am filled with guilt, and do not know how to live with these horrors, nor how to banish them from our home.

"'I must sleep now, but will write again soon when my wits have returned. I do hope you will keep your promise of a longer visit when the weather warms, and please give my love to all. Yours, Catherine.'"

"So, wow," Stacey said. "Isaiah started haunting them right away. Do you think he drowned them in the pond?"

Grant looked to me, eyebrows raised in definite interest. "Do we think that?" he asked.

"I can't say," I said. I was still feeling bad for the little girl Eliza. "Well, if the crafts room is Isaiah's old office, it sounds like he's been haunting it since his death. But she says he wouldn't torment the little girl, he'd be more likely to go after the boys."

"Like he's done again and again for the past hundred and sixty years, right?" Stacey asked.

"I also wonder whether Eliza may have been dealing with a poltergeist," I said. "Something following her around, throwing objects, loose psychokinetic energy whirling through her room..."

"Wait," Stacey said, sitting up and scrunching her forehead as she thought it over. "But it wouldn't be the same poltergeist that Juniper's dealing with now, would it? Or would it?"

"That...would be a very unusual case," I said. "Poltergeists usually burn out. The emotional makeup of their creator shifts as they grow up, and even without realizing it, they've stopped feeding the poltergeist their emotional energy."

"So our advice for Juniper would just speed up that chilling-out-as-you-grow-up process?" Stacey asked.

"Right. Nothing chills you out like yoga or Zen," I said. "The average lifespan of a poltergeist is six to eighteen months. Then they just kind of dissolve from lack of energy."

"Or go dormant," Stacey said. "Right? Calvin said something about going dormant. So what if something happened to wake it up?"

"Then we'd be talking about a poltergeist that's a hundred and sixty years old," I said. "I don't know how an entity like that might grow or evolve over time, what powers it might gain, how self-aware it might become, what would motivate it..." I shook my head, overwhelmed with thoughts and possibilities. "It's still entirely possible Crane created the poltergeist himself. The boy has some psychic talent."

"He seems troubled," Stacey said. "Like really, really troubled, to me, anyway..."

"His two best friends are ghosts from the nineteenth century," I said. "That's a pretty lonely life. I hate it when kids have to deal with this kind of stuff. Life's hard enough without it." I leaned over the magnifying glass again. "Grant, do you have any of the letters leading up to this one?"

He used the tweezers to gently move the yellow papers around.

I read backwards in time, letter by letter, moving slowly as I deciphered Catherine's faded handwriting.

Her previous letter described more instances of things moving on their own, like a teapot rising from the stove and flying across the kitchen, very poltergeist-y stuff. The knocking sounds at night, a sound like moaning from the home office where her husband had died.

It wasn't hard to imagine the terrible emotional toll it must have taken on Eliza, just eight years old, her father blowing his brains out after losing all his money. The darkness that would have hung over the house. That could have been enough of an emotional crucible to make a small girl generate a poltergeist, I thought. I felt so sorry for the girl, now long dead, and the mother frantically trying to cope with unseen, ghostly forces in the house on top of all the other weight that her life had put on her—broke, three children to support, widowed in a most horrible way, her husband choosing to abandon them all for the cold comfort of the grave.

I managed to hold back some tears.

The tone and content of the letters shifted immensely when we moved backwards in time to her mid-December Christmas letter, detailing with enthusiasm her holiday preparations, new dresses she'd had made for herself and Eliza, presenting in every way the picture of a happy family. There was no hint in that letter of the horror to come.

Darker shadows appeared in her earlier letters to her sister, though. She fretted that her husband was too harsh with their boys, much too quick to punish and reprimand, that her daughter was always disappearing into hiding places around the house, and her husband was reducing the household budget yet again...In one, she mentioned how her husband had left their son Noah's legs peppered with bloody welts from his iron belt buckle.

"That fits," Stacey said, nodding. "That fits everything."

"What time is it?" I'd completely lost track. I checked my phone—we were more than an hour late. Reading through Catherine's letters had been a slow, time-eating process, but I felt like we'd picked up a few puzzle pieces for our case. It definitely confirmed for me that removing Isaiah was our top priority. If he'd abused his own children, then he could be working his way up to attacking Crane and Juniper, too. From the letters, it sounded like Crane, as the boy, would be in greater danger.

It would have helped a great deal if we could get the kid to talk to us.

"Can we take these letters with us?" I asked Grant. "I need to study them all."

"Absolutely not," he said.

"I need to come back and make copies tomorrow, then," I said.

"I'll make them for you," Grant said.

"I thought you said you weren't a copy boy."

"I'm not, but if I were acting as a junior ghost investigator..." He smiled.

"I deputize you a junior ghost investigator," I said, mockingly gesturing on either side of his head, like a queen bestowing a knighthood, using rubber-tipped tweezers in place of a sword. Dorky, I know. "Go forth and copy." Super-dorky.

"I will proceed immediately to the fearsome Canon multi-purpose machine." He gingerly lifted the letters in his gloved hands.

We thanked him and ran out the door into a rainy evening. We'd been so engrossed in the letters, we hadn't even noticed the sound of rainfall on the roof.

Stacey drove as fast she could, but we still had to go by the office and pick up the van, and it was already dark by the time we reached our clients' haunted home.

# Chapter Eleven

It was a good thing we'd set up all our gear inside the Paulding house the night before, because the rain was pounding by the time I nosed the van into their driveway. Stacey was worried the bad weather might interfere with reception to her monitors inside the van.

"Look at that." I pointed at their back yard, where the downpour sent gushers of water to collect in the low depression. It looked like a true pond now, almost a third of the grass totally flooded. "How much do you want to bet that's exactly the location of the pond where Catherine and her children drowned?"

"I told you that's where the bodies are buried," Stacey said, snickering a little. You can't do this job without developing a somewhat morbid sense of humor. Stacey's was coming along fine.

The wind and rain billowed sideways under our umbrellas, drenching us on the brief walk to our clients' front door.

"Oh, my goodness," Toolie said when she greeted us. "You look like a couple of wet kittens. Come on in. Would you like some hot tea? Or I could brew some decaf."

"If you could brew some caf, that would be better," I said. "Thank you."

She brought us towels, and Juniper came down from her room to peer at us.

We joined Gord in the living room, where I gave a quick recount of what we'd learned from the archives. I didn't mention the outside possibility of a hundred-and-sixty-year-old poltergeist; it still seemed far more probable that Crane had created a new one. I wanted to consult with Calvin and do a little research before even broaching that subject. We were able to confirm the identity of the three non-poltergeist ghosts, though, which felt like some progress.

"I'd recommend you have keep a close eye on Crane," I told Toolie at one point. "From what we've learned, Isaiah is more likely to harm him than Junie."

"This is just awful," Toolie said, shaking her head. "Well, he's already gone to sleep tonight. This whole thing hasn't seemed to bother him too much. Not like Junie."

Juniper nodded. "It only comes after me. Like I...like it wants to bother me or hurt me for some reason."

"That's the poltergeist," I said. "Not Isaiah's ghost."

I wished my quick summary had gone a little quicker, because it was almost ten-thirty by the time Gord and Toolie finished asking questions and let us get to work. They retired to their separate bedrooms, Gord downstairs because the steps were too hard on him, Toolie upstairs to stay near her children.

Juniper hung around, watching us while Stacey swapped out the batteries in the downstairs hallway camera, the one meant to catch any activity around the powder room faucet.

"I don't feel like sleeping," Juniper said. "Can I hang out with y'all for a while?"

"Maybe," I said, unable to resist smiling a little. I have to admit, the girl kind of reminded me of a younger version of myself. She also reminded me of Grant, jokingly calling himself a junior ghost investigator. Sure, my job's all fun and games until an evil presence lurking in the cellar tries to kill you. "How well do you know your way around your attic?"

"I've been up there a few times." Juniper shrugged. "Mom makes me get the Christmas decorations and stuff."

"Good enough for me," I said.

She watched as we made our rounds of the house, changing out battery packs on the cameras and making sure they were recording. Stacey turned the cameras in the upstairs hallway to face the closed door to the crafts room so we could monitor whether Isaiah left it during the night.

The three of us shivered as we stepped into the cold crafts room itself. My Mel-Meter showed an unnatural low temperature of forty-two degrees—compared to about seventy-eight degrees in the rest of the house—and the EMF reading spiked up by eight milligaus. There could have been a dozen ghosts in that room, with readings like that. Isaiah's presence was a strong one.

We didn't speak in that room, just hurried to swap out the camera battery packs. It felt like something was watching us from the shadows, that same uncomfortable feeling you get on the back of your neck when you sense someone looking at you from behind.

We relaxed a little after leaving and closing the door.

"I hate that room," Juniper whispered. She was shaking a little. "I always have."

"For good reason," I told her, patting her on the back. "But we will help you. I promise." I felt the greater responsibility of my job at moments like these—not just nabbing ghosts and collecting a paycheck, but protecting the lives and sanity of people who've been troubled by the supernatural, especially the kids. "Maybe you shouldn't come up into the attic with us."

"I'm totally coming." Juniper straightened up. "I'm not scared of the attic."

Before heading up there, I opened my toolbox, strapped on my thermal goggles and perched them above my eyes. They're heavy, boxy things, so this is about as comfortable as duct-taping a brick to your forehead.

Stacey placed the night vision goggles, which were also pretty annoyingly cumbersome, on her head.

I opened the door to the attic, flipped on the lights and led the way upstairs, into the flickering gloom created by the dying bulb above. Juniper followed, carrying a spare tactical flashlight, and Stacey was behind her—the order was meant to keep our client safe if anything happened. The ghosts in the attic were not threatening, so far as we knew, but it's wise to be cautious.

We climbed the steep steps, emerging near one end of the attic, where an old wooden railing surrounded the stairwell area, and the heaps of old stuff extended out into the dim distance under three widely spaced bulbs overhead.

Rain pounded the roof just above us. Water dashed constantly against the high, narrow dormer windows, which brought us no light at all, not even a glimmer from a streetlamp.

I checked my Mel Meter and found similar readings as before, the EMF markedly high, the temperature low but not chilly or freezing.

"What's that?" Juniper asked, pointing to the device.

"It's a handy tool for detecting possible paranormal activity," I said. "Unexplained low temperatures and electromagnetic spikes can tell you if there might be a ghost."

"Cool. What's it telling you now?"

"The same thing it told me yesterday—there could be a presence here. From our observations last night, we're guessing it's...those two boys." I avoided saying their names. I wasn't here to stir them up or grab their attention, not at all. I much preferred they leave us alone in our rummaging.

We ducked under those annoying low beams while we walked toward the far end of the attic, where cardboard boxes gave way to wooden crates and old chests. Dust and spiderwebs were everywhere. I lowered my thermal goggles and saw a pretty unnerving number of little glowing-yellow spider bodies scattered all over the room. It seemed unusually infested, but maybe some of them had crawled inside to escape the rainstorm.

I used my flashlight to clear the little critters out of the way before Juniper or Stacey could walk into their webs.

"What are we looking for?" Juniper asked.

"Anything to do with the Ridley family, especially Isaiah Ridley. They lived here mostly in the 1840's, up until 1851, so...look for the oldest stuff you can find," I said.

Stacey and I started lifting chest lids, while Juniper opened drawers in an old bureau squatting near the back corner of the attic. The contents were jumbled, as if somebody had hastily thrown things together—a dress, a man's jacket, assorted kitchenware that looked a little bit primitive, a painted doll with yarn hair. I wondered if this was the same doll with which the poltergeist had menaced little Eliza.

"I found it!" Juniper announced. "Or some stuff with that Isaiah guy's name on it. It's mostly a bunch of papers and junk, but..." She shrugged, looking to me for a response.

"Good work," I said. "Let me take a look."

What she'd found in the old desk was mostly an assortment of Isaiah's tax papers and legal records. One drawer contained a few brochures and one-sheet ads about the failed Georgia Canal and Railroad Company. Under these, I saw something that made me smile.

I drew it out: a little iron locomotive, about as long as my finger, patchy with rust, with the insignia "GC&R" on the side.

"Here we go." I held it up in the light from the bare bulb above. " _Great_ find, Juniper."

"What is it?" Stacey asked, stepping closer and lighting the little object with her flashlight.

"It looks like some kind of promotional item for the Georgia Canal and Railroad," I said. "The company that ate Isaiah's investment money. The bankruptcy may have led to Isaiah's suicide."

"Sh," somebody said.

"What?" I looked at Juniper.

"Huh? I didn't say anything," Juniper said.

"Me, either," Stacey said, glancing around. "I heard it, though. Right after you mentioned Isaiah's death--"

" _Sh,"_ the voice repeated, and it definitely wasn't Stacey or Juniper this time, because I could see them both.

"What was that?" Juniper whispered.

The three of us shined our flashlights around the attic, our beams crossing back and forth over the old furniture and storage chests.

I saw something flicker for a moment, but it was just a shadow on the wall. I thought it was my own shadow, cast by somebody else's flashlight. Then the shadow turned and stepped behind a tall, dusty bookshelf, out of the glare of my light. Goose bumps rose all over my skin.

"Noah? Luke?" I asked, which made Stacey and Juniper turn their heads. "Who's there? I saw you. We're not here to cause you any trouble--"

" _Sh!"_ the voice sounded a third time, louder and more insistent now, enough to make Stacey jump.

"What the cow?" Stacey asked, pointing her flashlight in the direction of the voice.

The flickering light over the stairs finally went out, leaving only two bulbs to push against the deep gloom. Then the light bulb at the center of the room crackled and fell dark, followed by the final bulb, the one closest to us, leaving us with only our flashlights for illumination.

"What's happening?" Juniper asked.

" _Sh,"_ sounded a fourth time, but now it was very quiet, hardly audible at all.

A footstep fell on one of the attic stairs, and the wooden step seemed to groan under the weight of a large person.

The attic grew cold. I could feel the freezing air hit me like a moving wall, and I saw Stacey and Juniper wince a little as it struck them, too.

"What do we--?" Juniper began.

"Sh," I told her, then I whispered, "That was me that time."

I pulled the thermal goggles down over my eyes.

The room was so deep blue, it looked like we were underwater. A dark purple head, mottled with black, rose up from the steps and peered right at me through the railing. I could feel it staring, just as I'd felt it down in the crafts room.

Now I understood why Noah and Luke's ghosts might be shushing us. They didn't want us drawing Isaiah's attention up to the attic, which seemed to be the boys' domain.

Oops.

I jabbed my flashlight in Isaiah's direction, trying to punch him through the head with a solid blast of white. It seemed to work—he actually ducked down out of sight. The attic still felt like the inside of a refrigerator.

With gestures, I told Stacey to accompany me and Juniper to stay put. Juniper nodded with wide eyes, clutching her flashlight. If I had to risk either leaving Juniper with the boy ghosts or bringing her closer to Isaiah and his crazy torture belt, the choice was obvious to me.

Stacey and I advanced across the attic, the floorboards creaking beneath us. My heart was thumping somewhere near my esophagus as we approached the railing and leaned over for a look. We shined our flashlights down onto the two flights of steps below.

As far as we could see, there was nothing. The air was cold and blue in my thermal goggles, but there was no dense concentration of cold, no purple-black mass in the shape of a large man.

I lifted my goggles away to look with my own eyes. Dusty stairs, nothing more.

Stacey breathed out a little sigh of relief.

"Looks like he stepped out," she whispered. "Maybe into the gray zone?"

"Maybe."

"What's the gray zone?" Juniper asked. Despite the fairly clear instructions I'd given with my hands, she'd tiptoed after us and now stood just halfway across the attic instead of at the far end. I shined my light into the shadows around her, checking for any trouble.

"The gray zone isn't really a definite thing," I explained. "It's just our word for where ghosts go when we can't track them down--"

Something snatched my ankle. Fingers as sharp as vulture talons dug into my boot.

I was pulled backwards by a great force, right off my feet. The old railing cracked and shattered beneath me, no more sturdy than if had been made of toothpicks and popsicle sticks.

I fell through and into the empty space over the stairs. I seemed to hover there, just a moment, like Wile E. Coyote after running off a cliff...then I dropped hard onto the steps below, banging my knee, hip, ribs, and head against the stairs. My flashlight clattered away in a swoop of light, rolling down the steps and across the landing below.

I had landed upside down on the stairs, my feet near the top step, my head pointed down toward the landing. The impact knocked the air from my lungs, and I couldn't move.

That moment of breathless paralysis seemed to stretch on and on, as if I were in a place where time barely flowed at all.

A heavy footstep clomped on the stair just below my head. The air turned so cold it seemed to freeze solid around me.

I craned my neck back, rolling my eyes up to see him. From where I lay, he seemed like a giant, crusted in filth and dark earth, head half-collapsed, like a pumpkin two weeks after Halloween. The long belt quivered in his hand, its crust of buckles and studs clacking together like metallic teeth.

With my head thrown back like that, my throat was dangerously exposed, only inches from the cluster of long, sharp prongs at the tip of the belt. If he hit me as hard as I'd seen him strike the game boards in the living room, he could kill me right there.

I urged the muscles in my arms and legs to move, but they remained useless, as if flash-frozen into place by the rapid temperature drop. His raspy breathing continued. Ghosts don't need to breathe. It was a sign of mental disorder on his part, a failure to fully accept his own death.

I felt as if I lay on a frozen tundra somewhere near the Arctic, with a beast hungry for meat and blood pinning me down and sniffing at my neck. All I could hear was my own heartbeat, nothing else. The rest of the world had fallen silent.

Isaiah leaned forward and peered at me, his eyes sunken deep in their sockets, giving them a hollow look. I could smell him now, sour earth and decay, and I could have gagged. I could taste him in the back of my throat like a pungent splash of chunky sour milk.

The belt crawled onto my face like a rotten, leathery millipede with sharp steel legs. Its prongs poked at my cheek.

I heard shouting voices, Stacey and Juniper, but they sounded distant and tinny to me, as though I were listening to them from the far end of a long, echoing pipe.

I felt like I'd be trapped there forever, Isaiah slowly flaying me to death with his belt.

Then a pair of lights erupted from overhead, through the broken ruins of the railing. Stacey and Juniper had twisted their flashlight irises to create the wide floodlight beams, and suddenly the dark stairwell was lit up like a stadium.

Isaiah and his belt were gone.

The door to the hallway slammed below me, as if someone had just fled the attic stairs.

_Yeah, run away, Whippy_ , I thought. _Your time's almost up._

Then I drew a deep breath and the pain came, erupting at every spot on my body that had slammed against the steps. Time seemed to speed up again, and I could hear Stacey and Juniper's voices clearly now.

"She's not talking! Why isn't she talking?" Juniper asked, shining her high-powered beam right into my face.

"Ellie!" Stacey shouted my name as she rounded the last cracked post of the railing and came down the stairs. Juniper copied her, and soon they were helping me sit up. "Are you hurt?" Stacey asked.

"I'll live," I said, but I was gritting my teeth in pain. A growing sense of anger began to displace my shock. Isaiah had just tried to kill me.

Stacey stood and pointed her flashlight at the landing. She walked down and checked the lower flight.

"I think he took off," I told her. The temperature had risen to its previous level already.

"We have to get him," Stacey said.

"We will." I looked at Juniper, who was pale and clearly terrified. "We can take care of it, Juniper. I promise. This is what we do."

She looked at me for a long time, as if thinking that over, and then she nodded.

I opened my hand, which still clutched the tiny model locomotive. The little iron smokestack and cowcatcher had gouged holes in my palm, drawing blood, as I'd crashed into the stairs. Not the most child-safe little toy.

As I stood, I slid the locomotive into my jeans pocket, and I started planning my ghost trap.

# Chapter Twelve

I set up my air mattress at the intersection of the two upstairs halls. This gave me a view of the doors to the kids' rooms, plus the attic and master bedroom doors. Most importantly, it afforded a straight-on view of the door to the crafts room. My top priority was to keep the family safe from Isaiah if he emerged again.

As usual, I positioned the thermal and night cameras so I could see their display screens at a glance from where I sat. I added a motion detector in front of the door, too, with lights that would flicker if anything moved. I wanted to monitor that door as closely and in as many dimensions as possible.

Even closed, the door was a bluer hue on thermal than all the other doors in the hall, as if a deep freezer lay on the other side.

Stacey and I strapped on our microphone headsets so we could stay in touch, and we gave them a quick test. Juniper hung around, watching us.

"Good luck," Stacey said.

"Good luck seeing the ghost, or good luck not getting attacked again?" I asked.

"Both of those. You sure you don't want me to stay here with you?" Stacey asked.

"I'm sure I want you in the van watching the whole house."

"If you see him again, just scream."

"If _you_ see him anywhere in the house, you'd better scream at me," I said.

"Done." Stacey smiled at Juniper. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. A little freaked out." She glanced at the door to the attic, now tightly closed.

"You'll be fine. We're watching out for you." Stacey winked at her before leaving.

Juniper still didn't seem eager to go to bed—not surprising. It was a little past midnight, the rain was pounding outside, and she had just seen a ghost attack me in a potentially lethal way. Oh, and that small matter of a poltergeist tossing things around her room at night. The poor kid.

"Want to hang out?" I asked, since it was obvious she did. I sat down on my mattress, and she sat cross-legged on the hallway floor in front of me.

"Okay. So what do we do now?" she asked.

"We call this the observation period," I said. "We just soak up information about what's happening in the house. Tonight, it's kind of guard duty, too. We don't want Isaiah sneaking around causing trouble."

"How do we stop him if he comes back out?" Juniper glanced at the crafts room door, chewing her lip, then quickly looked away again, as if afraid staring at the door too long might cause it to open.

"Light is your first defense against ghosts." I gestured to the pair of tactical flashlights laid out in front of me, already pointing toward the crafts room door. "Ghosts don't like light. It doesn't hurt them, but it scrambles them and slows them down. Usually that's enough to send a ghost into hiding, unless it's really focused on doing something."

"Like trying to hurt you," Juniper said.

"Or some little task of their own. Ghosts kind of repeat the emotionally charged moments of their lives, their personal tragedies, again and again. Obsessive-compulsive. A lot of the time, they're lost in their memories and aren't even aware of the living people they're disturbing. Some of them have no idea they're even dead."

"What if the lights don't work?"

"Sound," I said, touching the little portable speaker on my belt. "I've got a massive orchestral performance of Stravinsky's _Symphony of Psalms_ ready to fire. The right kind of music is like hitting them with a big emotional blast that can drive them back."

"That's pretty cool. But what if that doesn't work?"

"I have a few other tricks up my sleeve," I said, though I really didn't have many. "Tonight I just want to keep Whippy McHalf-Face in his own room--"

Juniper laughed, and I realized I'd let slip the nickname Stacey and I had given Isaiah. We usually don't talk like that right in front of clients. Clients wouldn't necessarily like to hear us using silly nicknames for the dark things that torment them in their home. But sometimes you can't help it. I guess it helps you feel like you've got a handle on the monster you're facing.

"\--and tomorrow, we'll try to trap him," I said.

"Okay. Sounds cool." Juniper looked around awkwardly for a minute, taking in my gear—flashlights, cameras, black toolbox containing those highly overrated "other tricks" of mine. Then she looked at me and smiled. "Hey, want me to read your fortune?"

"How would you do that?"

"Tarot. I'm pretty good at them. One time, I did it for Dayton and they said money was in his future, and then he found like twenty bucks in an old jacket. So that was kind of cool. I'll go get 'em!" Juniper rose to her feet.

I wouldn't have minded at all—anything to keep the girl calm and get her mind off the ghosts in her house—but I glanced at Toolie's door and remembered how the woman had told me not to encourage her daughter in the occult. I could imagine Toolie stepping out into the hall and finding me facing her daughter over a spread of major arcana.

Then I could imagine the Yelp review that would come afterward: "One star: Eckhart Investigations encouraged my daughter to practice black magic and worship Satan!"

"Thanks, but maybe not tonight," I said. "I'm kind of in the mood for avoiding the supernatural if possible."

"Okay." Juniper frowned, then smiled again. New idea. "Do you want some snacks?"

Actually, I did.

I accompanied Juniper down to the kitchen, notifying Stacey so she would keep a closer watch on the upstairs crafts room while I was away.

Juniper made us nachos from scratch—modern scratch, anyway. A bag of Tostitos, a bag of pre-shredded cheese, a jar of sliced jalapenos. My stomach was rumbling.

"What are you doing in there?" Stacey asked over my headphones. There weren't any cameras in the kitchen, since there hadn't been very much activity there. We'd stuck one night vision camera into the dining room where the pictures had fallen from the walls during a family argument, but nothing had happened there so far.

"We're making nachos," I told her.

"Oh, no fair!" I could hear her pout over my headphones, as clear as a bassoon. "I'm starving out here."

"We'll leave you a bowl by the kitchen door," I said. "When we're back in position, you can dash inside and grab it, then return to base."

"Aye aye, Roger," Stacey said. "'Base' just means the van, right?"

I sighed. "Jalapenos or not?"

"Jalapenos. And sour cream, if you got it?"

"Sour cream?" I asked Juniper. She nodded. Excellent.

When the nachos were done, we left the promised bowl sitting out for Stacey. It felt weirdly like leaving out cookies for Santa Claus.

"Hey, want to use my spirit board?" Juniper asked as we returned to the downstairs hall.

"No, never!" I said. "Those things are dangerous."

"Just asking. You don't have to get deranged about it."

"Have you ever used one in this house?" I asked.

"Yeah...kinda," she said. "With my boyfriend Dayton."

"How many times did you do it?"

"Mainly just once...or twice." She frowned and stopped walking. "Is this all my fault?"

"Definitely not all of it, but you might have stoked up the fire with that. What exactly happened?"

Juniper sighed. "It was Halloween. Dayton and me went out to the shed out back, you know, and lit some candles and stuff. To see if we could summon any spirits."

"What happened?"

"Nothing, we were just kind of fooling around." She blushed. "I mean, you know, playing around. Then it started to move, but it didn't really spell anything out. It just went in circles. Then we heard this banging on the door. And I screamed, I totally screamed. And Dayton grabbed a lawn thingie, you know, a hoe, and he went to the door. I told him not to open it, but he did."

"What did you see?"

"Nothing. There was nobody around at all. That was the spooky thing. And then...stuff started happening around the house. The faucets turning on at night and everything. And my poltergeist." Her shoulders slumped as if a great boulder had just settled onto her back. "It _is_ all my fault."

"It's not your fault the place is haunted," I said. "But promise me you won't play around with those things anymore, okay?"

She nodded.

"Seriously, promise," I said.

"I promise." She rolled her eyes just a little bit, then she smiled.

"How about a board game?" I pointed to the living room. " _Candy Land_?"

"That's a kid's game."

"It's okay to be a kid sometimes."

When we returned to the hall, armed with both nachos and a _Candy Land_ set, I noticed a plinking sound, distinct from the rain hammering the roof and windows of the house.

"Oh, no," Juniper said.

I stepped past our thermal camera and looked into the powder room. The faucet was trickling, so I turned the water off. The metal handle felt like ice, burning my fingertips with cold.

"Stacey," I said, looking at the cameras. "This downstairs faucet turned itself on. Can you back up the footage and look for anomalies?"

"Okay, could take a minute," she replied over my headset.

"Make it fifty-nine seconds." I nodded at Juniper. "Let's head back upstairs."

We sat down at the crossroads of the two upstairs hallways again, and I tried not to think about the old folklore that says if you have business with the devil, you can meet him at any crossroads at midnight.

Juniper and I started our _Candy Land_ game while the rain poured outside. _Candy Land_ is kind of pointless—you draw cards that tell you where to move your little plastic-person token until somebody reaches the end. The main draw is the candy-themed scenery along the way. It was fun and silly enough to distract Juniper from her fears for the moment. We left a light on at the end of the kids' hall so we could see the game board.

"I found something," Stacey said over my headset.

"Go ahead," I told her.

"On thermal, I could see a little cloud of blue cold around the faucet just before it turned on. It drew back inside the faucet after the water started dripping. We also caught a couple of orbs on night vision."

"A couple? Do you think more than one entity was involved?" I could definitely imagine Noah and Luke turning on faucets at night as a prank.

"No idea," Stacey replied.

There wasn't much I could do with that information—we already knew _some_ ghost was turning on the faucets at night—so I kept playing _Candy Land_ with Juniper.

"Aw, licorice!" Juniper complained with a smile after moving her little yellow plastic guy onto one of the dreaded licorice spaces. "Lose a turn."

Then the lights went out. Juniper gasped in the darkness.

I immediately grabbed a flashlight and pushed my other one into Juniper's hands. I pointed mine right at the crafts room door.

Still closed.

The display screens of my cameras didn't show anything new—just the door, firmly in place. No new cold spots, no shadowy figures, not even the tiniest orb flitting past. The motion detector lay dark, not a single one of its tiny lights flickering.

"What happened?" Juniper whispered.

"It might just be the storm," I said, and then thunder rattled the house.

It sounded again a few seconds later, then a third time.

"There's no lightning," I whispered.

"Ellie, I'm picking up some loud bangs downstairs," Stacey said. "Are you hearing that?"

"I'll go check it out," I said, standing up. "Stay here, Juniper."

"Stay here by myself?" Juniper cast a worried look at the crafts room door.

"Okay, come with me, but stay close." I took her hand as we walked down the dark hallway, afraid something might grab her. She didn't protest at all, but instead clenched my hand tight in her own.

The loud boom sounded again as we descended the front stairs. I still hadn't seen any lightning.

We followed it to the kitchen. Something as pale as a dead fish smacked hard against the big window by the kitchen table.

"Wait here." I left Juniper standing by the counter while I approached the window. The pale, fleshy thing slapped the window again.

I pointed my flashlight through the window.

A white, transparent figure stood outside in the rain. I could just discern that it was a woman with pale, soaking wet hair clinging to her scalp and face. Some of her hair was buried under a kerchief, also soaking wet. She wore a heavy woolen dress with a high, lacy neck, also wet and plastered to her body in the rain. She was all blacks and whites, like a faded old photograph.

When she saw me—her eyes were hollow, twin windows to the rain-filled night beyond—her mouth opened wide as if screaming. I heard nothing.

She slapped the window again, harder this time, three quick blows, with that screaming look still frozen on her face.

A loud series of crashes sounded behind me.

I spun to see Juniper hunching forward, covering her ears. The row of cabinet doors above the counter behind her had opened all at once, by themselves. Dishes, glasses, and coffee mugs flew out and shattered on the kitchen floor, wave after wave of china and porcelain breaking on the tiles until the cabinets were entirely empty.

I grabbed Juniper and stood between her and the falling kitchenware, but the event was already over.

The girl was panting and shaking badly, and swaying on her feet as though suddenly exhausted.

"Is it over?" she whispered, rubbing her eyes. I turned to look at the window. The pale figure had vanished and ceased her banging.

"Maybe." I approached the window again, shining my light through it, but all I saw was rain, grass, and the swollen pond in the middle of the back yard.

"What in the name of Jesus Jones is going on down here?" Toolie swept into the room in a fuzzy green bathrobe and matching curlers. She took a sharp breath when she saw the destruction in the kitchen, then grabbed her daughter and looked her over. "Was anybody hurt?"

"We're okay," I said. "I need the two of you to stay right here."

"Where are you going?" Toolie asked. "Somebody needs to explain--"

"I'll be right back." I ran into the hall, unlocked the glass doors under the stairs, and ran out onto the patio, swinging my light everywhere. I was instantly drenched in cold rain.

She stood by the pond, watching me. She was still transparent, just barely visible, as though she wasn't strong enough to form a more complete apparition. She was dripping wet, which wasn't shocking in the rain, but ghosts aren't really affected by current physical weather. The _ghost_ was soaking wet, as if she'd died by drowning.

"Catherine?" I asked, keeping my flashlight pointed at the ground so it wouldn't disturb her. I approached slowly across the grass. "Catherine Ridley?"

She opened her mouth in a silent scream, then pointed at me.

No. Not at me—past me, at something above my head.

I turned to look, but visibility was extremely poor, with the heavy rain and the rainclouds themselves blocking out the moon. I swept my flashlight across the house, trying to look into the upper windows.

There. My flashlight skimmed over it, and I brought it back for a closer look.

She wasn't pointing to a window, she was pointing to the roof.

A boy stood at the back corner of the roof, pale, soaked, and shivering. At first I guessed it was Noah or Luke, but the boy seemed solid, not a fragile-frost apparition like Catherine by the pond. An attic dormer window was wide open, several feet above and behind him.

"Crane?" I shouted. "Crane, is that you?"

I dropped my flashlight beam down and to one side of him, because I didn't want to risk the glare blinding him into a misstep. He was already right at the edge, the very corner of the roof, with a twenty-five foot drop to a brick patio below. His toes had to be in the rain gutter already.

"Crane, don't move!" I shouted. What was the kid doing up there? My heart raced in fear—if he fell, there was a good chance he would die.

"Ellie, what's happening?" Stacey's voice crackled.

"Stacey, go into the kitchen and get Toolie," I said. "Right now. Crane's on the roof and he might fall."

"Holy cow!"

The van was parked in the driveway, on the far side of the back yard from where I stood. Stacey leaped out and raced to the back door I'd just left.

On the roof above, Crane stood silently. He'd done nothing to acknowledge my presence, as if he were sleepwalking.

"Crane!" I said. "Listen to me carefully. You need to sit down right where you are. Don't move."

"Leave me alone!" Crane shouted back. Right, like I was just going to wander off and make some popcorn while he stood on the brink of death.

Stacey, Toolie, and Juniper ran out from the glass doors, sloshing through puddles as they crossed the patio toward me.

"Where is he?" Toolie asked, squinting up at the roof through the rain.

Juniper pointed her flashlight right at Crane, and he swayed a little. I grabbed her flashlight and changed its angle.

"Don't blind him," I told her.

"What do I do? What do I do?" Juniper asked.

"You and Stacey stay right here, keep talking to him!" I said, shouting to be heard over the ever-growing downpour. I grabbed Toolie by the shoulder. "Follow me!" I shouted.

I turned and ran for the door, not waiting for a response. Toolie was kind of husky and probably wouldn't be able to keep up with me, anyway.

I ran through the kitchen, down the hall, and up the stairs, leaving behind muddy bootprints. Each second felt like an hour, and I was certain Crane had already slipped and fallen, that I was already too late.

The upstairs hallway also seemed to take far, far too long to traverse. I bolted up the attic stairs, past the spot where I'd fallen and gained some nasty bruises earlier that night. I stumbled over debris from the broken railing.

As luck would have it, I then had to run all the way to the far side of the attic to reach the open dormer window. Rain slanted in through it, collecting in a puddle on the attic floorboards.

The window sill was at shoulder height for me—how the heck had the kid managed to get up there? I had to find a sturdy wooden chest and drag it over. I might have been able to do a pull-up and heaved myself over the sill, but it was slippery, and so was the steep roof outside. I didn't want to slip and die if I could avoid it.

I placed one foot on the chest. As I brought up my other foot, the entire chest slid sideways and slammed into a roof support post. I lost my balance and toppled to the floorboards, banging my elbow so hard that my left forearm turned numb and tingly.

I thought the chest had simply slipped in the water beneath it, but then I heard the laughter of an unseen child in the air nearby.

"Stop!" I shouted, pushing myself to my feet.

" _You stop,"_ a childish voice whispered back at me.

I didn't have time for this kindergarten-level debate. I shoved the chest back into place, clambered on top of it and up onto the windowsill.

The pitched roof below did not look welcoming. A sheen of water ran down it, turning it into a slick ramp that would take me straight into oblivion. The rain was still falling hard and heavy.

I eased my leg out into the rain. My calf boots weren't the worst things I could have been wearing, I guess, but I would've traded them for cleats in a second. Or those clawed shoes worn by the guys who work way up in the tree tops. Yep, a pair of those would've been great.

I climbed out legs first and stayed on my hands and knees, since it seemed less likely I'd break my neck that way.

"Crane!" I called out, not too loudly, because I didn't want to startle him. I crawled slowly toward the boy, feeling like I'd slip and fall any second. Maybe charging onto the roof after the kid wasn't the best plan, but it was all I had.

He turned to look at me, and that was when I saw the shape standing beside him on the roof.

The figure was made entirely of a strange hollow space where no raindrops fell, like the Invisible Man standing out in the rain. This looked more like a boy than a man, just a little taller than Crane himself. Noah or Luke, I assumed—whichever one hadn't been hanging around in the attic, waiting to shove the chest out from beneath me.

If the ghosts could push that heavy chest, then they could push me, and it wouldn't take much to send me sliding down over the edge.

"Crane, back away from there," I said, still inching my way toward him.

"But they'll call me a chicken," Crane said.

"Who?"

"Noah and Luke. They dared me to do it."

"Crane, you're in a dangerous place right now. You could die," I said.

"They said it doesn't hurt that much." He looked down at the patio below, maybe at his sister, who was shouting at him to back up and go inside.

I had a hard time swallowing while I digested what he'd just said.

"You mean Noah and Luke want you to die?" I asked.

"So I can be like them." Crane nodded.

"You can't do that, Crane." I was easing closer and closer on my hands and knees across the roof, but I didn't want to rush. I could have startled him, or lost my footing. "You still have a long life ahead. And your family will miss you."

Crane looked at the invisible boy-shape in the rain beside him, as though listening.

"I'll still be in the house," Crane said. "I'll just be a ghost."

"That's not the same. And remember, your family can't see and hear ghosts like you can. They'll barely know you're there." This was cutting into my heart a little, trying to talk a seven-year-old boy down from suicide. "Believe me, you don't want to die, Crane."

The boy-shape in the rain beside him turned toward me.

Then it charged.

It became an odd roundish shape, like an elongated ball, as it flew at me through the sheets of rain. I didn't have time to grab my flashlight from my holster. I didn't have time to do anything except try to tighten my grip on the slick shingles, the rainwater coursing around my fingertips in a rushing creek.

The thing struck me hard, striking me like a bowling ball launched from a catapult. I toppled and slid down the steep roof, my arms and then my head going right over the edge.

Stacey turned her flashlight on me, shouting my name, and Juniper pointed.

The bricks far below shimmered in the light from the kitchen windows, coated in a sheen of water that would do nothing to soften my face-first impact against the patio.

I grabbed onto the overflowing gutter and felt it creak under me. I tried to dig my toes into the shingles. I'm not sure if that helped, but I'd stopped sliding, and my skull had not bashed open on the hard red surface below.

I looked over at Crane, who remained right at the corner of the roof, staring at me. He looked scared now, where before he'd had more of a distant, hypnotized look on his face.

"It's okay," I said. "Don't move."

I pulled myself back from the edge and crawled toward him. I held out my hand.

"Come on, Crane," I said. "Come inside with me."

He glanced from me to the bricks below, as if indecisive now. I looked out for the ghostly boy-shape in the rain, but I couldn't find where he was. Not exactly comforting.

"Crane!" his mother's voice shouted. Toolie had finally made it up the stairs and to the attic window. I wondered if the other boy-ghost had delayed her somehow, or maybe she'd been there shouting the whole time, but the high winds had eaten up her voice.

He turned his head at the sound of Toolie shouting for him. Now he looked flat-out terrified, not indecisive at all, as if the craziness of what he'd done was finally sinking in.

"Come on, Crane," I said. "Take my hand."

The boy slowly reached out to me. His fingers were cold.

I helped him to his hands and knees and pointed him back to the open window. Then I crawled along behind him. If he slipped, I would either stop him from falling, or I would cushion him when we slammed into the bricks below. Too bad there was nobody to cushion me—that was one major flaw in my idea.

He inched his way up the roof. I was tense, waiting for one of the boy ghosts to strike at him, or at me.

Crane made it up the window, though, and Toolie grabbed him as soon as he was in reach. She grunted as she lifted him inside.

I crawled in after them, easing my feet down onto the chest, watching the shadows suspiciously.

Toolie was shouting at Crane, who cringed, and then she hugged him.

Outside the window, two hollow boy-shapes stood in the rain, watching me. Noah and Luke might have been children when they'd died, but we couldn't afford to think of them as benign, mischievous little Caspers anymore.

They had tried to convince Crane to kill himself. They were now the enemy.

I closed the window and latched it shut, and the boy-shapes vanished.

# Chapter Thirteen

A little while later, Stacey and I sat in the living room along with the entire family—the excessive clutter of furniture meant everybody had comfortable seating.

Toolie had made Crane change his clothes, and now he sat beside her on an antique Edwardian chaise while she dried his hair with a SpongeBob towel. Gord watched his son from a nearby chair, clearly worried. Juniper drowsed in one of the high-backed chairs, looking drained.

"I still don't understand why you'd go up there," Toolie said to Crane. "Have you lost your mind?"

"They said it would be okay," Crane whispered.

"Who said?" Gord asked his son. "Your invisible...friends?"

Crane shrugged. "They're not invisible to me."

"Crane, those boys are not your friends," I said. "Nobody who wants you to die is your friend. That's a good general rule of thumb in life."

"They just want me to be with them," Crane said. "They want me to help them."

"Help them with what?" I asked.

Crane fell silent.

"Answer her, Crane," Toolie said. "I mean it."

"Just help them," he whispered. "They don't want me to talk about it."

"I don't give two saltines and a bowl of soup what they want," Toolie said. "Promise me you'll never do _anything_ like that again, Crane. Promise me." She turned his head to make him look her in the eyes.

"Okay," he said, but there wasn't a lot of conviction.

"Can you tell me anything else?" I asked Crane.

He shook his head.

"Would it be okay if Juniper took him into the library for a minute?" I asked Toolie.

"All right." She sighed. "You keep an eye on him, Junie. Junie?"

Stacey reached over and shook the girl awake.

"Huh?" Juniper looked around, blinking. "What did I miss?"

"Take Crane into the library and watch him," Toolie said.

"Oh." Juniper rubbed her eyes. "Yep. Come on, Crane, let's find a book to read." Juniper took her brother's hand, gently escorted him to the next room, and slid the door closed.

"What do we do?" Toolie asked.

"First, someone needs to be with Crane at all times," I said.

"Obviously." She nodded. "Do we take him to a...therapist or something?"

"Calvin knows somebody who's sympathetic to ghost stories," I said. I didn't mention that I'd gone to the same person for therapy when I was younger, on Calvin's advice. "Also, we have a friend who's a psychic and consults on our cases. He might understand Crane's situation better than any of us could. He might be able to speak with him."

"Oh, yeah, Jacob would be great at that," Stacey said, flashing a smile that was a little too wide for the situation.

"I was going to call him in for a look around, anyway," I said. "We're still trying to piece together the full situation here. I think we should definitely go ahead with our plans to trap Isaiah tomorrow night."

"What about the two boys?" Toolie said. "They need to go. Right now."

"They're trapped in a drama with the ghost of their father," I said. "It's very likely that Isaiah's presence is keeping them here. If we get rid of him, the boys might leave on their own."

"What if they...don't?" Gord asked.

"Then we'll trap them, too," I said. "I should mention that I also encountered another ghost."

"Oh, goodness' sake," Toolie said.

"I believe it was Catherine, Isaiah's wife, the mother of Noah and Luke," I said. "I recommend we not take any action to remove her at this point."

"Why not?" Gord asked.

"Because she's the one who alerted us about Crane tonight," I said. "I think she was banging on the window to tell us. Then I saw her outside by the pond...I mean, in your back yard...and she pointed him out to me. She saved his life."

Gord and Toolie looked at each other.

"Well," Toolie finally said. "It's good to feel like one of them's on our side in this thing, at least. Now if we could just get rid of the others."

"We will," I told her. "We won't stop until this house is safe for your children again."

# Chapter Fourteen

Stacey and I left the house right at daybreak, exhausted. On my way home, I forced myself to take a detour by the Historical Association mansion. Grant had left me a package on the back porch, a manuscript box filled with photocopied letters and other documents surrounding the Ridley family. Fortunately, no document burglars had stolen it during the night.

I went home and crashed.

When my alarm woke me at one, I took my time making breakfast—a banana, a hard-boiled egg, some jelly I pretty much ate off a spoon. I was moving slowly and stiffly thanks to old Whippy throwing me down the attic stairs. Son of Whippy had done a number on me as well, slamming me hard against the roof. I was starting to hate that whole undead family.

I did a little bit of yoga stretching, keeping to the easy stuff like sun salutations, but I still winced each time I changed poses. Then I ran a bath and climbed in with a sheaf of the papers Grant had prepared for me.

Catherine's letters were much harder to read without the big magnifying glass, but I managed to dig my way through them, taking in all the stuff I hadn't read yet. Catherine tried to put up a good front, but there were multiple asides about Isaiah's "rough discipline" approach to the boys.

I got the sense that Catherine might have been a little abused, too, from lines like: "Isaiah is strict enough with Eliza and me when we step out of line, but he reserves his worst for the boys." Or a few comments like: "Some days I feel so dark, I wish the earth would open and swallow me whole."

A couple of weeks after Isaiah's death, when the family began to experience the haunting, there was a reference to "just when we'd thought the darkness had lifted," a strange sentiment for a woman whose husband had just died.

And she felt a great deal of guilt about the ghost tormenting the family and wrecking the home.

I began to wonder. Isaiah wielded his horrible belt-whip with his right hand, but the bullet hole I'd seen was in the _left_ side of his head. If he was right-handed, wouldn't he have been more likely to shoot himself in the right temple?

It was hardly solid evidence, but it indicated another possibility. Maybe he hadn't committed suicide. Maybe he'd been murdered, and the gun placed in his hand afterward. The state of forensics in the eighteen-fifties had been nonexistent, making suicide much easier to fake.

What if he'd been murdered? Catherine might have grown fed up with his abuse, with watching him lash his belt across her children, and decided to kill him. Or maybe there was some third party I didn't know about, something to do with his business or political interests.

I flagged those ideas for later consideration and continued reading.

I sat up when I discovered the coroner's reports, which Grant had tracked down and helpfully included.

Isaiah was declared a suicide, shot through the left temple, just as I'd observed when I saw his ghost.

Catherine, Noah, and Luke had drowned in the pond out back.

Eliza, however, had _not_ drowned. She'd been found inside the house, in a cabinet in the upstairs office, with abrasions all over her throat. The death certificate had given the cause of death as "asphyxiation," just like her mother and two brothers. It hadn't specified that she'd been asphyxiated in an entirely different manner.

That new information hit me like a mini-bombshell, altering my already vague and confused picture of what had really happened to the family.

The coroner had concluded that Catherine had first strangled her daughter, then drowned herself and her sons in the pond. This struck me as a little doubtful—Noah had been twelve years old. Unless he'd been particularly sick or weak, it seemed like it would be difficult for an average woman to hold him underwater until he died. Maybe he had been sickly. I had no way of knowing.

It was beyond macabre to imagine Catherine doing all of that, including forcing herself to stay underwater until she drowned.

"Why would she have done it?" I whispered. My cat, lying on the fuzzy bathroom mat, turned his patchy black-and-white head to look at me. "That doesn't make any sense, Bandit. If she killed her husband to protect the children, why would she kill the children?"

Bandit lost interest and looked away, deciding the tag at the edge of the mat was more interesting. He idly pawed at it.

"Maybe she didn't kill her husband, then," I said. "Maybe she thought it was suicide. Maybe it really _was_ suicide. Still—why the daughter first, then everyone else dies in a different way?"

Bandit rolled to his feet, approached the tub, then rose up and put his front paws on the edge of the bath. For a second, it looked like he was actually going to say something. Then he lowered his head and began lapping up bath water.

"That's the last time I call you in for a homicide consultation," I told my cat. He didn't even glance at me.

After my bath, as I was drying off, my Aunt Clarice called from Virginia. I'd lived with her from the time my parents died when I was fifteen until I moved back to Savannah for college.

She told me about some gossip from her bridge club, and some gossip from a ladies' group at church, and I pretended to be really interested. She was just calling to talk. The more I encouraged her to talk, the fewer questions she would end up asking me.

The questions were usually the same: was I still doing that same sort of work (asked with distaste)? Had I met a nice young man yet, and when were the babies due? I wasn't getting any younger and definitely didn't want to end up a useless old maid at the age of thirty. Well, not in so many words, but that was what she meant.

She was mainly just checking to see if I was okay, living alone "in that big city." Right. I assured her I was, and avoided mentioning how two different ghosts had nearly killed me in the past twenty-four hours. No reason to worry her.

With my family duties squared away for the week, I got ready for work and headed to the office.

While I loaded a few traps into the special rack built into the back corner of the van, Calvin dropped down in his elevator cage from his apartment on the upper floor. His bloodhound Hunter jogged out, wagged his tail at me, and stopped at my feet for some petting.

"Trap time?" Calvin asked.

"Yep." I caught him up to date on the case. "It looks like you were right about our missing ghosts. Catherine definitely made an appearance."

"And the little girl?" he asked.

"No sign of her yet," I said. "Maybe that's something Jacob can find out about."

"You're really softening on the issue of psychic consultants, aren't you?" he asked.

"I'm softening on the subject of Jacob, at least. He was a big help last time."

"But you're not softening on that subject as much as Stacey," he added, with a little smile. "Should I make us sandwiches?"

"No, thanks," I said. Calvin usually buys those ultra-discount deli meats, the ones that stick out because of their unnatural color. "Can I have a dime?" I walked over to an old metal card catalog we'd salvaged from a local library. A ring thick with keys hung on a nail in the wall beside it.

"What decade?" Calvin asked.

"Eighteen-forties, eighteen-fifties." I sifted through the keys until I found the one I needed, and then I unlocked one of the rows of miniature metal doors. I slid out the drawer. Instead of index cards, it had little Tupperware containers, labeled by decade. I picked up one holding coins from the eighteen-fifties.

Since money can be one of a person's obsessions in life, a certain number of ghosts are still attracted to it after death. Unfortunately, we deal with a lot of ghosts from past centuries, and they don't really respond to coins made of tin and zinc.

Calvin collects old silver coins, searching the internet for the most worn, chipped, and dented ones, those barely worth more than melt value. They can come in handy.

I lucked out and found one dated 1851. It was a Seated Liberty, a very common design, the goddess Liberty with stars and a shield. The goddess's image had been worn down and tarnished until she was little more than a shadow.

The coin had been struck the same year Isaiah had died. Its deteriorated condition made it seem even more like suitable money for the dead.

"In mint condition, that would be worth eight hundred dollars today," Calvin said.

"What's this one worth?"

"About fifteen bucks."

"We might have to bury this one," I said. "Isaiah seems a little vicious. With, you know, the studded torture belt and trying to kill me and everything." When we remove a not-particularly-dangerous ghost from a house, we do a catch-and-release. A walled cemetery in a ghost town makes an ideal wildlife refuge for ghosts, and we know where several of those are.

With the more dangerous ghosts, though, the violent and hostile ones, we never release them from the trap. We bury the trap with the ghost inside, which means we bury the bait inside the trap, too. That's why we use cheap junk silver instead of shiny gold, even though gold might be more alluring and effective bait. You don't want to bill the clients for a coin worth hundreds of dollars if you can avoid it.

"Do you have _any_ thoughts about what might have happened in that house?" I asked Calvin. "To me, the only scenario that makes sense is the obvious. Isaiah lost his money and killed himself, and then his widow, crazy with grief, kills her three kids and herself."

"But you don't believe that one," he said. "Or you wouldn't have a problem with it."

"Catherine saved our clients' little boy, Crane," I said. "He might have died without her."

"Perhaps she's trying to atone for her sins in life," Calvin said.

"Maybe."

"What's a scenario that makes less sense?" Calvin asked me.

"One where Catherine kills her husband _and_ her kids. The only motive for killing her husband was to save the kids from him. And why strangle the little girl upstairs, separate from the rest?" I asked.

"Perhaps Eliza's death was more of an impulse, and the death of the boys required more planning," Calvin said.

"And where does Eliza's poltergeist fit into it?" I asked. "Between her father's death and his ghost haunting the house, I could see how she might be stressed enough to create one, if she had the psychic ability to do it."

"I suppose the poltergeist might have increased the stress on the mother," he said. "She would have figured it was her dead husband harassing the household."

"Which it might have been, but it was more consistent with poltergeist activity focused on Eliza," I said. "It even happened during the day, all over the house, wherever Eliza was. That's more like a poltergeist than a revenant like Isaiah. Ghosts are mostly nocturnal..."

Calvin nodded.

"But I still don't think Catherine did it," I said. "I saw her. She didn't seem malevolent. I just didn't get that feeling from her."

"Aren't you always telling Stacey that we should act on observable evidence and logic, and not our feelings?" Calvin asked me with a little smile.

"Yeah. True. Speaking of putting feelings ahead of logic, I could really go for a pizza right now."

"You sure you don't want a bologna sandwich instead?"

"Pretty sure, but thanks for asking."

We ordered the pizza, and it arrived about the time Stacey did. She was finally, reluctantly, learning to dress in a way that was less likely to get her scratched or bitten by a hostile ghost. Tonight it was canvas pants and a long-sleeved, high-collared shirt.

Stacey and I loaded the big stamper, the device that slams the lid down onto the trap at high speed, into the van. With the heavy lifting done, we sat down and ate.

Mushrooms and garlic. Crunchy, buttery crust. Yum.

Then we were off to work.

On the way to the Paulding house, we caught a view of low black thunderheads spitting lightning into the ocean. According to the Weather Channel, we could expect another dark and stormy night in the ghost-infested old mansion. Hooray.

# Chapter Fifteen

We arrived at our clients' well before dark, because we wanted to set the trap before the sun went down.

Gord and Crane were in the kitchen, watching _Pokemon_ on a digital tablet. Toolie was home from work, making some kind of chicken and broccoli casserole in the kitchen. Juniper came downstairs soon after we arrived to see what was happening. The family seemed like they were trying to act normally, maybe for Crane's sake, but Juniper and her parents were clearly uneasy and nervous under their forced smiles.

I noticed they kept flashlights and electric lanterns near them now, to help defend against any ghost attacks. Assorted religious items had been set out in the family room—a cross, a print of Jesus standing in the dark with his hands glowing, an old Bible, and a Christmas Nativity scene on the coffee table—as if to ward off evil spirits.

If I did my job right, those spirits would soon be gone. The most dangerous one, anyway.

Clients usually have a few questions about the ghost traps, and I don't generally like explaining them in the house where the ghost might hear, so after a few minutes I led Toolie, Juniper, and Crane outside to the van.

"Here's the basic trap," I said, lifting a two-foot-high hard plastic cylinder from the back of the van. I explained it quickly: the innermost layer was a jar of thick, heavily leaded glass, very difficult for ghosts to penetrate, impossible for most. The second layer was copper mesh electrified by a battery pack concealed at the bottom—this created an electromagnetic cage for the ghost. The outer layer was just clear, hard plastic to insulate the wiring.

"What do you do with ghosts after you trap them?" Crane asked. It was the first thing he'd said since we'd arrived.

"It depends on the ghost," I said. "If they're not dangerous and don't hurt people, we can release them into a special kind of sanctuary, an old graveyard where they can wander free within the walls. If they are dangerous, we bury the trap so they can't bother anyone else."

Crane seemed to think this over a minute, then he nodded.

"We bait the trap with candles to draw them inside, because ghosts can feed on the heat," I said. I pulled the little Ziploc baggie of ghost-bait from my pocket. "We also have some special bait for Isaiah. Here's a little train toy, a promotional item from his business that failed. And here's a silver dime from the year he died, since he was so worried about money. These other two items are a couple of cufflinks Stacey found in the attic, which we think belonged to him."

"So he's not going to haunt our house anymore?" Crane asked. "You'll make the bad one go away?"

"That's right," I told him.

Without another word, Crane turned and walked inside. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to explain the trap to him. He was in direct contact with the ghosts, and I didn't want him spilling the beans to Noah and Luke, in case the spilled beans would then somehow pass to Isaiah himself, warning him away from the trap.

"Don't tell any of the ghosts what I just showed you," I called after Crane while he approached the back door to his house. He glanced back over his shoulder, but didn't say anything before walking inside.

Juniper helped us carry some of the gear upstairs to the crafts room—as I instructed, we didn't say a word while inside the cold, unpleasant-feeling room. Stacey and I carried the big stamper upstairs. We set up the cumbersome, four-foot-high structure in the middle of the room, not far from the sewing machine. The stamper is a pneumatic device that sends the lid of the ghost trap down at high speed, sealing the top before the ghost has a chance to sneak back out. Usually.

We set it up in silence, with the same heavy feeling of something watching us from the cold shadows of the room. I slid the trap into place and checked my remote. The little liquid-crystal display screen on the remote told me the temperature and EMF reading inside the trap. They matched the rest of the room—inexplicably cool, about ten degrees lower than the rest of the house, with high electromagnetic readings. No surprises there.

Stacey checked the thermal and night vision cameras, which now pointed directly at the trap. Everything was ready to go. The bait was still in my pocket. I would save that for the last minute, when we were finally ready to light the trap, then sit and watch it for hours.

Stacey and I shivered as we left the room and closed the door. Juniper had watched silently from the hall.

"Okay," I said, feeling relieved. "Let's go make our rounds."

We checked the cameras and microphones all over the house. Jacob arrived at sunset—Stacey almost bolted to the door when the doorbell rang, but she slowed down and let Juniper open it.

"Hey, are you the psychic?" Juniper asked.

"Are you the one with the ghost problem?" Jacob gave her a half-smile. He wore his black retro-framed glasses and a white button-up shirt of the type that normally goes with a coat and tie. Some mildly distressed skinny jeans, new sneakers.

"Hey, come on, Jacob!" Stacey hurried forward and took his arm. "You're late. Almost."

"Almost late? Doesn't that mean I'm exactly on time?" he asked, allowing himself to be towed into the house.

"Do we show him where the ghosts are?" Juniper asked.

"No, remember, we don't tell him anything," I said. "We let him walk around and see what he finds."

We introduced Jacob to the rest of the family—well, Stacey handled the introductions, staying fairly close to him. The Pauldings were sitting down for a late dinner, the table set with paper plates and mismatched plastic cups.

When Jacob and Crane looked at each other, I could almost feel something click in the air between them. Psychics. I guess it takes one to know one. I imagined them sending rapid telepathic messages to each other, though I doubt that was actually happening.

"Juniper, take your seat," Toolie said.

"Can't I hang out with them?" Juniper asked, pointing to me.

"Sit down and eat your casserole!" Toolie said, and Juniper huffed and sank into her chair.

"Okay, show me around," Jacob said.

"This way." Stacey took his arm and led him out of the room. As he left, Jacob gave Crane a quick nod. That was all the communication that had passed between them, as far as I could tell, but Crane stared at Jacob with intense interest while we left to explore the house.

I felt impatient as we walked around the first floor, Jacob pausing here and there.

"I'm feeling some residual stuff down here, but nothing huge," he said, and that was the gist of his comments until we walked upstairs.

"That kid has something, doesn't he?" Jacob asked in a low voice, now that we were farther away from the family.

"Like what?" I asked, cutting off Stacey's obvious rush to agree with him.

"He has some ability," Jacob said.

"Way to be vague, Jacob," Stacey told him with a little grin. "Do you mean juggling ability? Ventriloquism? Playing the violin?"

"He's probably the one who's seen the ghosts more than anyone else," Jacob said. Stacey smiled and nodded.

"Let's keep moving," I said.

I can't say Jacob had any huge revelations for us inside the house, but what he found did fit with what we already knew.

In Juniper's room: "Yeah, there's something in here," he said. He kept looking up at the corners of the room. "It's not exactly a spirit, not exactly a dead person. It's something else. Demonic, maybe?" He shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think it's human."

It sounded to me like he was picking up on the poltergeist.

In Crane's room: "A lot of stuff happening here, in and out, but I don't sense anything _dwelling_ here, if that makes sense."

"It totally does," Stacey said. I cut her a look to be quiet—we didn't want to confirm or deny anything, because that could interfere with his own clarity. I'm skeptical about psychics, anyway. I know some people do have ability, and Jacob is clearly one of them, but you still don't want to lead them with too much information.

In Toolie's room: "The woman living here is very troubled, I think."

He didn't find much in the lesser-used rooms of the second floor, including two spare bedrooms connected by a bathroom hung with bright decorative towels embroidered with puffy flowers. It was a guest bathroom, with a scented candle and a basket of colorful soap balls, but no actual personal items like toothbrushes or make-up. No activity reported here, either by the family or by Jacob.

When we reached the crafts room, though, he had an obvious reaction. Of course, the trap sitting in the middle of it might have been a clue.

We hadn't yet lit the candles inside the trap to attract the ghosts. Ghosts tend to be most active in the darkest and quietest hours of the night, from about midnight to four a.m. Each one is different, though, and there are ghosts who appear during the daytime, as well as ghosts who pop out at full steam the moment the sun goes down.

Jacob took one and a half steps into the crafts room and froze. It's kind of funny when he does that, like those pointer dogs that go completely still, using their whole body as an arrow to indicate where the prey was hiding.

"Well?" I asked.

"You don't need me to tell you this room is a bad place," he said, his voice low. "Ugh. I can feel it everywhere. This thing...this male thing that used to be human, a long time ago. His presence just fills the room like smoke. I think he died here. Violently."

Stacey shuddered and moved closer to Jacob, touching his hand. Using fear as a cover to flirt with him, I'm pretty sure.

"Is he dangerous?" she whispered, looking into Jacob's eyes. Overdoing it. I mean, come on, she'd been in scarier situations than this.

"I think he is," Jacob replied. He was gazing right back into her eyes.

"If you could both quit moon-goggling each other for a second, I'd like some more specific details from Jacob," I said.

"Yeah, sorry." He let go of Stacey's hand and looked around. "Very cold in here, and I mean that in every possible way. Okay. I think this ghost kind of goes out and patrols the house a little bit, very late at night. He's looking for troublemakers. He wants to punish them. He has some kind of weapon he carries. He's angry, and he takes it out on the others..."

"The others?" I asked.

"The other ghosts. There must be more in this house, or at least he thinks there are, because he hunts them. He..." Jacob stopped and his eyes widened. "He knows I'm here. Unless you want to fight him now, we should maybe..." He backed toward the door, pulling Stacey along with him.

I couldn't see anything unusual in the room, aside from the heavy shadows, but I could definitely feel Isaiah watching me. For a second, I could smell him, too—wet earth and rotten leather.

"Let's go," I whispered.

I wasn't looking forward to my inevitable return visit to this room, to bait and light the trap. The little bits of bait remained in my pocket. I didn't want Whippy to see them just yet.

We closed the crafts room door firmly behind us as we returned to the warmer, brighter hallway.

"I assume that guy's the problem," he told Stacey, pointing to the room we'd just left.

"He's a real monster," Stacey agreed. "Ready to see what's behind door number three?"

She opened the attic door, and he leaned through the doorframe and looked up the stairs.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "We're not done yet."

We flipped on the attic lights—two bulbs came to life, but the one above our heads stayed dark. Stacey and I drew our flashlights from their holsters as we accompanied Jacob up the stairs.

We'd cleaned up the splintered chunks of broken railing, just as we'd helped clean up the thousands of glass and china fragments in the kitchen. Jacob eyed the upright remnants of the railing as he passed around them.

"Watch your step," he said.

"You have no idea," Stacey whispered.

He was quiet for a minute, looking around the heaps of old decorations, boxes, and toys.

"Don't mind me," he murmured. Maybe he was talking to the creepy life-size Santa Claus lying under the plastic tree hung with tinsel.

He advanced deeper into the attic, ducking under the low beams.

"A lot of energy up here," he said, a little louder. "More than one. They feel young, male. They're kind of mischievous, but they're also turning dark. Tortured souls. They're always running and hiding from the other guy, the one on the second floor. They hide up here. So many hiding places..." Jacob removed his glasses and squinted at a shadow melting across the wall in the moving glow of my flashlight. "Yeah. The other one, the bad one, he sees these two boys as his property, somehow. Slaves, maybe?" Jacob frowned.

"What do they want?" I asked.

"They want to get rid of him," Jacob said. "That's pretty clear to me. End his nightly hunts, how he beats them when he catches them playing. But they're not strong enough to do it. They want help."

"What kind of help?" I asked. It reminded me of what Crane had said, of course, about them wanting his help, wanting him to become a ghost like them.

"To free themselves from him, to finally overthrow his rule of the house," Jacob said. "Strength in numbers. That's what they're thinking. Strength in numbers." He shrugged. "That's all I'm getting from them. They aren't very open with me. They want us out of here. They don't like for the living to come into the attic at all, because it could draw his attention up here, into their hiding place. I guess he normally avoids coming up here...he patrols the rest of the house, but the attic's like his blind spot. It must be." He nodded. "They want us to leave right now."

"Ask them how they died," I said.

"Okay. How did...?" He looked off toward the far end of the attic, where we'd found a few of the Ridley family possessions.

A creaky, rusty sound echoed from the direction.

Stacey and I pointed our flashlights toward it. She stepped in front of Jacob, as if ready to protect him from any dangerous spirits.

Our lights found the heap of old toys near the back. The rusty, spring-mounted rocking horse nodded up and down, just slightly, the springs screeching with each little movement.

My heart beat a little faster, and I was ready to escape down the attic steps. Not that those had offered me much such safety in the past.

"Noah! Luke!" I snapped, trying to sound as tough and firm as I could manage. I widened the iris of my flashlight and swept it back and forth, chasing away flickering shadows. "Stay away from us!"

"Wow, they hate you," Jacob told me. "They look angry now. You can really see their dark and tormented side now."

"I'd rather not see that if we can avoid it," I said.

"What about me?" Stacey asked. "Do they hate me?"

"They've barely noticed you're here," Jacob assured her. "They aren't paying any attention to you, don't worry."

"Oh." She frowned a little, as if slightly disappointed.

"How did they die?" I asked again.

"Choking," Jacob said. "No, wait. I'm seeing water. Drowning, maybe. It was violent, not accidental. Somebody killed them."

"Who?" I asked.

"Now they won't tell me. They're retreating." Jacob shook his head. "That's all they're going to say to me right now. They want us out of here."

"Good enough for now, I suppose," I said. Jacob hadn't told us much that was new. I was eager to get him out of the house. By which I mean into the back yard, around the pond area.

"I think he's doing great," Stacey said, with a smile for Jacob.

I turned away and rolled my eyes just a little as I led the way down the attic stairs.

We walked out into a drizzling rain—nothing too heavy, but I knew there was a lot more on the way.

Jacob wandered in a slow circle around the pond, keeping clear of the marshy mud at the edges. Stacey and I stood back, letting him do his thing.

"There's a woman here," Jacob said as he returned toward us, looking into the water. "She's confused, she's trapped somehow." He cocked his head as if listening. Stacey watched him with a little bit of awe, still fascinated by his abilities. "She's trying to get inside the house, but she can't. She's worried about her children. They're stuck inside the house with the bad one...I think the ghosts in the attic are her children. She knows he's treating them badly, attacking and abusing them. She'd do anything to stop him. Even kill him." He shook his head. "Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. They're already dead, but...that's how she feels, I guess."

" _Did_ she kill him?" I asked.

Jacob hesitated for a minute, then nodded. "It's possible. I wouldn't be surprised. She's pretty confused, like I said. I think her death came as a shock, and she never really got over it."

"How did she die?" Stacey asked.

"Drowning." He nodded at the pond. "Just like the two up in the attic. They all drowned right here."

"How exactly did they drown?" I asked.

"I believe their lungs filled with water and they died," Jacob said, lifting an eyebrow. "That's how it usually goes."

"I'm not joking," I said. "Did she kill herself?"

"Oh! No, no. Somebody held her underwater. She died struggling and kicking."

"Who did it?" I asked. My heart skipped a little. I really needed that answer.

Jacob closed his eyes. A few expressions crossed his face—something like confusion melting into frustration and then horror.

"She doesn't know," he finally said.

"How could she not know?" Stacey asked.

"She didn't see anything. She was out here with her boys, gathering logs from the firewood heap there..." Jacob, his eyes still closed, pointed to a flower bed that featured no firewood at all. "It was cold, so cold, definitely winter. Then they were all in the pond, being held down, choking on water that was almost freezing." He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.

"All three at the same time?" I asked.

"She never saw what killed them," Jacob said, his voice low. He finally opened his eyes. "It was like something invisible."

"Like a ghost?" Stacey suggested, a little too helpfully.

"I think it could be," Jacob said. "She doesn't know, so I don't know."

Stacey and I looked at each other.

"So either a group of people slipped in here, unnoticed, grabbed Catherine and her sons and drowned them all at once, or a powerful entity did it," I said.

"Isaiah," Stacey asked. "It fits. She kills him, then he kills her a couple weeks later..."

"And he kills the three kids?" I looked at Jacob. "What about the little girl?"

"Little girl?" Jacob shook his head. "I haven't seen one."

"Maybe she managed to move on, and she's not trapped here like the others," I said. "I hope so, for her sake."

"What's this?" Jacob walked to the little cottage at the back of the yard, the one that looked like a one-story model of the main house.

"Tool shed," I said. "I don't think it's locked."

He opened the front door, flanked by thin little fake columns that mimicked the ones by the real front door to the big house. They supported a little mock balcony above the door, just big enough for a cat or small dog.

He stepped inside, not flipping on the light, and stood there quietly, as if absorbing otherworldly vibes from the leaf blower or the hedge clippers.

"Anything?" Stacey asked. I was curious, too. Maybe Eliza's ghost had wandered over to the small version of her former home. It was certainly much calmer and quieter than the real house.

"Something happened here," Jacob said. "I want to say a ritual or some event that opened a door."

I nodded a little, thinking of Juniper and her attempted séance with her boyfriend on Halloween. I didn't say anything, though.

"Yeah." Jacob walked to the back, where there was an open space in front of a tool bench. "Right around here. It really jolted the spirits awake. Especially the woman by the pond, but also everything inside the house." Jacob walked back to the mini-front-porch of the tool shed and pointed to the pond. "She's been trying to get inside ever since, trying to reach her children. She uses...this is weird, but she tries to use the water lines to get inside. Like she can't use doors or windows, those are blocked to her, so she tries to sneak in through the pipes. Still, it won't let her inside."

Maybe the mystery of the dripping faucets had been solved, I thought.

"What's blocking her?" I asked, since he hadn't yet made that clear.

"Something strong," Jacob whispered, fairly dramatically.

"Is it the big, scary evil guy from the second floor or not?" Stacey asked, looking impatient.

"Maybe."

"That's her husband," Stacey said. I shook my head—as with zoo animals, you're not supposed to feed the psychics. Not information, anyway. Jacob's psychic check-up of the house was just about done, though, and I sympathized with Stacey's frustration.

"Interesting," was all Jacob said. He took a deep breath and stretched. "That's about it, guys. Unless there are secret rooms somewhere you haven't mentioned."

"Not this time, I hope," I said. "There's always bad stuff in the secret rooms. Let's go inside. Maybe Crane can tell us something new before he goes to bed."

"Can you try to talk to him, Jacob?" Stacey asked. "I bet he'll talk to you."

"I don't know. I'm not like a child psychologist over here." He looked worried as he returned inside with us.

"You'll be great," Stacey said, with so much confidence that even I half-believed her.

# Chapter Sixteen

The family had gathered in the living room after dinner, and they were arguing about what to watch on television when we walked inside. Something about a malevolent, dangerous ghost infesting a house can really bring the members of the household together, at least in a physical sense. It's safer for the family to camp out together by the living room fireplace than to sleep separately and face the darkness alone. You get a glimpse of what life may have been like for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, everybody huddled near the communal hearth, scared of unnamed things in the dark world beyond their little spot of light—trying to entertain each other with stories and music so they forget about the predatory dangers lurking in the night outside.

"What'd y'all figure out?" Toolie asked, glancing from me to Jacob.

"He saw the same entities we've encountered," I said. "The Ridley family, I think."

"Did you see Noah and Luke?" Crane asked him.

"Are those the two boys in the attic?" Jacob asked.

Crane nodded. "Did you see the bad one upstairs?"

"Yes. I think Ellie and Stacey are going to get rid of him," Jacob said.

"I hope so." Crane was being extremely talkative tonight. Everyone else fell quiet, listening to the psychic boys talk. It was as if the stage lights had gone down for a moment, leaving just the two of them in their own world.

"Have you ever seen the little girl?" Jacob asked him.

"That's their sister," Crane said. "Did you see her?"

"No, where is she?"

"She likes to hide. She hides _all_ the time."

"Have you ever seen her?" Jacob asked. "Or heard her voice?"

"Nuh-uh." Crane shook his head, extra-emphatically. "They talk about her. She's a scaredy-cat."

"Do you have any idea where I could find her?" Jacob asked.

"No. Do you like dragons?"

"Sure."

"I have three dragons in my room." Crane slid off the couch and dropped to his feet. "Can I show him my dragons, Mom?"

I gave Toolie a big nod. Crane might open up more with fewer people around.

"Just pick up your Legos while you do it," Toolie said. "I'm tired of stepping on them."

"Come on." Crane grabbed Jacob by the sleeve and tugged him out of the room.

"What kind of dragons do you have?" Jacob asked.

"A green one and a red one. And a blue one."

"Have fun," Stacey said, with a great big smile. I wondered if she was watching him with the kid and thinking about how he might be as a father, possibly to the psychic children they might one day have together. Oh, Stacey.

"Well, he certainly seems to like your psychic friend," Toolie said, and her husband nodded.

"Jacob confirmed a lot of what we've found," I said. "I now think there's a good chance Catherine Ridley murdered her husband, probably to stop him from abusing their boys. And it may have been a spirit who drowned Catherine and her two boys, instead of a mom-and-kid murder-suicide situation. When Jacob spoke to Catherine's ghost, she said the attacker was invisible."

"Stars and stripes!" Toolie gasped, covering her mouth. "That's horrible. Is that ghost still here?"

"There are really two suspects," I said. "Isaiah Ridley's ghost, out for revenge. Or a poltergeist created by Eliza Ridley, the little girl. Any poltergeist Eliza created would have dissolved or gone dormant after her death, because it feeds on its creator's energy. So the original plan still seems best—get Isaiah out of the house and go from there."

"I like...the sound of...that," Gord said.

"Stacey and I will go up and light the trap," I said. "I have to recommend that the whole family sleep down here tonight, together, unless you can go and stay at a hotel or a relative's house." I couldn't risk Isaiah deciding to murder everybody out of anger at our intrusion.

"There's nobody nearby except my cousin over in Beaufort," Toolie said. "The hotels around here are too expensive. And...it's difficult." She glanced at Gord's oxygen tank. "We'll stay down here, and we'll pack a couple of suitcases so we can leave if things get too bad."

"Then Stacey and Jacob can stay down here with you," I told her.

"Where will you be?" Juniper asked me.

"Upstairs, ready to slam the trap."

"I can hang out with you if you want," she said.

"Thanks, but I'd rather you help keep an eye on your brother," I told her.

Juniper frowned and looked down at her hands.

"Sorry, it could get dangerous up there," I said. "So I don't want to worry about anybody else running around.."

She shrugged a little.

"I'll let you know if you can help with something, though," I added.

"Whatever. I don't care that much." She returned to reading the werewolf romance paperback in her hands. I could tell I'd hurt her feelings, but I didn't know what else to do. I wasn't going to put her in danger.

Stacey set up her laptop so she could monitor the cameras inside the crafts room, and she handed me a tablet so I could watch the trap, too. Then she headed upstairs with me.

"I had no idea dragons could fly spaceships," I heard Jacob saying from the open door to Crane's room.

"Dragons aren't real," Crane said. "Spaceships aren't real, either."

"There are real space shuttles and rockets," Jacob said.

"Yeah, but not _good_ ones like in the movies."

Stacey grinned at the sound of Jacob's voice, but her smile faded when we approached the crafts room door. A soft, icy draft leaked out on all sides of it.

We clicked on our flashlights, and I pushed it open.

I stepped into the dark room and tried to turn on the overhead light, but nothing happened. I panned my flashlight back and forth as I approached the trap. Stacey kept close behind me, walking backwards, shining her light in the opposite direction so nothing could creep up behind us.

I laid my four little pieces of ghost bait inside the open trap, at the very bottom of the cylinder. One tiny iron locomotive, one very tarnished 1851 silver dime, two cufflinks.

Then I drew a long-nosed fireplace lighter from a strap on my utility belt, and I lit the three candles spaced in a descending spiral around the interior of the trap. The fire would attract the ghost, since they're usually hungry for energy, and the bait would pull its attention into the depths of the trap and hold it there for at least a moment.

It was all pretty standard ghost-removal procedure.

As I lit the third candle, I heard deep, ragged breathing from the shadows just ahead of me.

The dark shape shuffled toward me, more than a foot taller than me and smelling of earthy decay.

I swung my lit fire-starter at him, since I was already in the middle of using it. The flame cast a scattered red glow into the rough caverns of his broken face.

He took a ragged, throat-blown-open gasp and sucked all the fire from the lighter, turning it cold and dark.

I raised my flashlight with my other hand, slamming the bright white beam into his dark, sunken eye. His iris was a clear, lifeless color, and the pupil didn't even react to the sudden blast of light. It should have shrunk to a pinpoint.

He snarled with half his mouth, since the other half was mostly missing. He didn't like the light, but I didn't get the feeling it was going to chase him away this time.

With my elbow, I nudged Stacey in the back.

"What's up?" She turned around and sucked in a frightened breath, but she held her light steady while she added it to mine, torching the ghost as best we could.

"Back," I whispered. "Out."

Stacey clung close to me, holding her flashlight over my shoulder to keep it trained on the hideous apparition. We eased our way backward toward the door.

The ghost of Isaiah flickered out of sight.

Then it reappeared right in front of me, only inches away.

Stacey and I both took in a breath, but we kept moving.

Isaiah watched us, keeping himself completely, unnaturally still in a way that only dead things can. Then he opened his right hand and unrolled his long, leathery belt, encrusted with sharp buckles and prongs.

He advanced on us as we stepped out the door. Stacey and I backed down the hall, shoulder to shoulder, our lights held out in front of us.

The ghost crept all the way to the threshold of the open door, his belt lolling in his hand like a dog's tongue on a hot summer day.

We tensed, waiting for him to attack. My hand was on my iPod, ready to soak him in some Viennese choir music.

He stopped, and I could hear his ragged breathing. His presence in the doorway turned the entire hallway cold and gave the air a clammy feeling.

He watched us for a moment more, and then the door slammed. He'd stayed inside his lair, as far as we could see.

I ran to check the two cameras pointed at the door. If he'd stepped invisibly into the hallway with us, we weren't seeing any thermal evidence of it.

I finally had time to notice how hard my pulse was racing, and I made myself breathe deep to calm down.

"He's still in there." Stacey picked up the tablet she'd given me, with a splitscreen showing the thermal and night vision cameras pointed at the trap in Isaiah's room. She pointed to a vague profile that slid in and out of visibility. "He's pacing. I guess that's what he does when he's not out hunting the boys."

The moving purple-black mass was more obvious on the thermal camera, where it seemed to roll back and forth, very slowly, on a field of deep blue, since the whole room was cold.

"Go get Crane," I said. "Take him and Jacob back down with the family."

"Then I'll come back here with you," Stacey said.

"No, I want you with them until they go to bed," I said. "Then I want you out in the van."

"Ellie, it's too dangerous to be by yourself."

"It'll be even more dangerous if I get blindsided by the Attic Twins or the poltergeist, or anything else," I said. "I need your eyes all over the house."

"Okay. I'll use the cameras in the living room to keep watch over the family while they sleep."

"Good idea."

"Maybe Jacob should sit in the van with me, too," Stacey said.

I raised an eyebrow at her.

"And help me watch all the monitors," she added. "I mean, the clients just met him, they won't necessarily feel comfortable with him hanging around while they try to sleep."

"You've made your case," I said. "Is he planning to stay all night?"

"He told me he'd stay as long as we need him. He has to work tomorrow, but..."

"All right. Get moving. I need all my attention on the trap."

While Stacey went to collect Jacob and Crane, I arranged myself on my handy air mattress. I kept the tablet on my lap, and I held the trap's remote control in both hands. The remote's display screen told me the temperature and EMF readings inside the trap. So far, the temperature still matched the rest of the room, about forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Very chilly.

It had been risky to light the trap so late, but I'd hoped it would help draw Isaiah's attention to it. Sometimes ghosts take a very long time to notice things. They tend to be backwards-looking beings, focused on the drama and trauma of their own lives and deaths, seeing their own memories instead of reality.

It turned out I wasn't so lucky. While Stacey and Jacob kept the Ridley family company downstairs—it sounded like they were watching some kid's movie, probably trying to keep Crane calm—I sat at the crossroads of the upstairs halls and watched while the ghost faded in and out of sight on the night vision, pacing and pacing, passing back and forth before the burning candles inside the trap.

# Chapter Seventeen

Stacey eventually told me over the headset that the family members were ready to sleep on their temporary campground down in the living room. She and Jacob went out to the van to keep watch on everyone and everything.

We were particularly concerned about Crane slipping off again in the middle of the night, but I doubted that the parents would really be able to sleep well under these conditions, anyway. They'd probably be up most of the night, worried and afraid.

I sat at the hallway intersection, watching my trap on camera. The remote control for the trap has one big red button you really can't miss. That's the only feature besides the little screen with the temperature and EMF readings from within the trap.

The trap can be automatically set to close once it detects signs of a ghost inside, but I'd set the parameters pretty high—a twenty-degree drop in temperature combined with an electromagnetic spike of six milligaus or more would make the trap slam shut. I intended to keep watch all night and close the trap myself. This ghost was much too dangerous for me to just set it and forget it.

The house grew quiet except for the rain pounding the roof and windows, plus occasional claps of thunder. The flashes of lightning grew brighter, the thunder louder and closer, but nothing distracted Isaiah from his pacing. I worried he wasn't going to notice the trap at all.

Stacey checked in...occasionally. Nothing much was stirring. The boys had barely appeared in the attic, much less strolled downstairs for some late-night activities. The poltergeist, wherever it was, remained silent and calm.

I drank Red Bull and waited.

I wondered what Stacey and Jacob were doing out in the van together. Sitting awkwardly? Chatting? Maybe the combination of boredom and attraction had led them straight into some actual kissing. I tried not to imagine them making out on the uncomfortable, narrow little drop-down bunk in the back of the van.

Maybe Stacey was right, and I would be better off dating somebody instead of spending my Saturdays with old novels and Uncle Ben's microwave rice. Who would I even date, though? And what kind of person? Most people look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them my job.

Still, a cat wasn't always the most fulfilling company. Maybe I could get another cat. Maybe, in just a few short years, I could become a full-blown crazy cat-collector lady.

Around one-thirty in the morning, I stood and stretched. Then I walked to the hallway bathroom for a quick break.

As I looked up from washing my hands, I saw a small girl standing in the mirror beside my reflection. She wore a dress with a pattern that looked like calico, but was all white. Her skin was pale white, too, and her colorless hair fell in curls around her face. She was elementary-school age, maybe eight or nine.

I immediately glanced to my side, but nobody was there. The girl only existed as a reflection.

"I know why you're here," she whispered, staring at me with white-on-white eyes.

"Eliza?" I asked.

"I want to show you something." She pointed toward the tub, where the blue shower curtain was drawn tight.

Feeling more than uneasy—my stomach was tying itself in knots, in fact—I walked sideways toward the closed curtain, keeping an eye on the little girl in the mirror.

I could hear water running, fast and hard, behind the curtain. That sound hadn't been there before. The bathroom had been silent.

I grasped the edge of the shower curtain with a trembling hand, then hesitated, trying to mentally prepare myself for whatever horror lay on the other side.

"Go on," the image of Eliza whispered from the mirror. "Look."

I pulled the curtain aside. The shower rings on the curtain rod clicked together, one by one, above my head.

The water was running at full blast. The tub was already filled to the top, though it had only been running for a few seconds, as far as I'd heard.

It was so full that when I pulled the curtain aside, a flood of water sloshed out onto my boots and splashed across the bathroom floor like a wave crashing onto a beach.

I leaned down to turn off the faucet, knowing how much damage the overflowing water could do to my clients' antique home. As I did, the bathroom lights went out.

I stood and turned, trying not to lose my balance in the inch of water on the floor.

The image of Eliza remained in the mirror, now the only source of light in the room. She looked ghastly, as if her form were woven from a thousand glowing filaments, with her eyes, nostrils, and mouth left as blank black holes.

Those black-hole eyes were looking right at me.

She began to rise, as though levitating off the floor over there in mirror-world.

"This is how I killed all the others." Her voice echoed from the stone-tiled walls around me. Her words came out flat and monotone, the voice of a long-dead thing.

"Did you kill your family, Eliza?" I asked. That made no sense to me, unless the girl had extraordinary psychokinetic ability. Judging by how she'd been able to create a menacing poltergeist, though, maybe she really _had_ possessed other abilities.

"Just like this." Her voice was an echoing whisper.

She vanished from the mirror, leaving me in darkness, and I quick-drew my tactical flashlight like an Old West gunslinger.

She hit me before I could click it on. Her energy slammed into me like a solid brick wall mounted on the grill of a runaway freight train.

My feet slid out from under me on the soaking-wet floor. I toppled over backwards.

Right into the water.

The cold hit me hard as I landed on my back on the tub. My hand banged against the stone-tile wall. If the water had been just a notch colder, I would have been crashing into solid ice.

Her voice echoed again, but it didn't sound dead and flat this time—it was a gleeful shriek, ricocheting off the bathroom walls.

Something slammed into my chest, just below the base of my throat, and shoved me under the frigid water.

My face went under, and I barely managed to take a breath on the way down.

An invisible hand pressed down on the crown of my head, holding me there as I tried to flail my way up and out of the water. It was too strong. I was trapped, and the meager sip of air in my lungs was fading fast.

I lashed out with both hands, having dropped my flashlight somewhere along the way. I could feel a patch above where the air felt unnaturally cold and thick, but my fingers trailed right through it. There was nothing solid to grasp. This is why you don't want to get into a wrestling match with a ghost.

A painful pressure built in my chest and my head. I could feel my struggles weaken and my arms start to go limp.

My lips wanted to open and suck in air, but I'd die instantly, my lungs filled with near-freezing water. I had to resist.

Spots floated behind my eyelids. This was it, killed by an evil child-ghost in a bath tub. Aunt Clarice from Virginia would never understand.

For a moment, I thought I saw the chiseled, high-cheekbone face of Anton Clay, the ghost who'd killed my parents in a house fire. His irises were red, and a devilish smile played on his lips.

"Now," he whispered.

I felt a sudden electric jolt in my ears, followed by a searing pain in my right ear that spread to engulf that whole side of my head.

My headset. It must have shorted out underwater and fired a nasty shock from the right earphone, where the microphone and battery wire were located.

Now I'd learn what it was like to drown _and_ get electrocuted at the same time.

All the pressure holding me in the tub evaporated. I pushed my head out of the water and took a deep gulp of sweet, cool, fresh air.

Maybe the electric shock had stunned the ghost, too, interfering with her electrical field somehow. If so, I wasn't going to count on it to last long.

Feeling my way around in total darkness, I found the faucet and hauled myself up until I was sitting on the edge of the tub. The girl was no longer providing a helpful unholy-white glow to help me see.

She shrieked again, her voice echoing.

I dropped to the flooded floor and rolled onto my stomach. I wasn't eager to regain my feet on the slippery tiles, which would just make it easy for her to shove me into the water all over again, especially in my current weakened state. I was still gasping desperately for air.

She grabbed at my limbs, but I hugged the floor. It's a classic act of civil disobedience—refuse to obey or cooperate, no matter what. If they want to move you, turn into dead weight, make them use as much of their energy as possible.

I began to advance through the water, flat on my belly like a Marine in boot camp.

She seized a big handful of my hair and twisted it, sending shooting pains all through my scalp. I cried out in pain, but she had bigger plans than just hurting me.

She slammed my head face-first into the water on the floor, which was just deep enough to cover my mouth and nostrils. They say a child can drown in less than an inch of water. I guess I can, too.

With a great effort, I managed to turn my head sideways. I could now breathe out of one corner of my mouth, but I couldn't open my lips wide enough to scream for help.

I kept wriggling forward, wondering which device on my belt might short out next. I was guessing the iPod speaker. It could hit me with a nice shock right to the torso.

At last, my fingers found the rough wooden surface of the door. All I'd done was crawl across the bathroom, but it felt like I'd just swum the English Channel.

With all my strength, I shoved myself up to a swaying position on my knees, then felt my way up to the doorknob.

The door opened all by itself, the edge of it cracking into my face at high speed. I heard a pop in my nose, then tasted blood on my lips.

I tumbled back against the bathroom vanity. She'd hit me pretty hard, but she'd also let the water out and allowed in a little bit of light from the hallway. The pool of water spread out across the hallway floorboards and lapped against the baseboard on the far side.

I grabbed the edge of the door, determined not to let it close again, and crawled out into the hall.

She screeched a third time. I felt a cool breeze as she flew over my head, but I didn't see her. She'd turned invisible.

The night vision camera that had been sitting on its tripod in the hallway, pointed at the faucet inside the bathroom, lifted from the ground and flew at me. I rolled to one side before the heavy camera smashed into the floor where I'd been.

Further down the hall, a kind of whirlwind swept up all my gear. The thermal and night vision cameras pointed at the crafts room door exploded as if they'd been blasted with a high-caliber shotgun at close range. Their tripods clattered to the floor.

Everything else—my mattress, my toolbox, my tablet, my purse, my spare flashlight—slid away down the least-used hallway, the one that housed the two guest bedrooms. They stopped just before they reached the narrow side staircase that led down to the first floor.

I tensed, waiting for her to swoop back and attack me. By habit, I reached for my flashlight, but of course it wasn't there. I wasn't sure I could count on the music-blast approach to work, either. The speaker on my belt seemed waterlogged and would probably fry if I tried to switch it on.

My flashlight was still in the bathroom somewhere, and I definitely wasn't going to do her the favor of putting myself next to the Overflowing Tub of Death again. If she wanted me to return to that room, she'd have to drag me kicking, screaming, and biting.

Footsteps echoed on the narrow steps at the end of the hall. More than one person, as if Eliza had invited her murderous big brothers to join her.

I tensed. Virtually unarmed, I figured my best move was probably going to be running like crazy.

"Ellie?" a voice asked. Female, and not ghostly.

Stacey and Jacob clambered up the stairs, Stacey looking a little scared. She relaxed the instant she saw me.

"Oh, sweet!" she said. "I lost your signal." She tapped her headset, then seemed to notice I was dripping wet. "What happened?"

"I decided to take a quick bath." I untangled my headset from my soaked hair. My right ear still had a tender, burning feeling from the shock, and it also had a ringing sound that made it a little difficult to hear what she was saying.

"You had a bath, seriously?" She frowned a little, confused. "You look pretty banged up."

"No, not seriously. That was just me being hilarious. I met Eliza's ghost and she tried to drown me."

"Holy cow!" Stacey gasped. She and Jacob walked carefully around my stuff scattered all along the hallway. "Are you okay?"

"I'm still breathing."

"Good." She embraced me. Stacey's more of a hugging type than I am.

"Looks like the ghost did some redecorating, too," Jacob said, stepping around my mattress.

"I think these two cameras might have malfunctioned or something, because I lost the signals..." Stacey pointed to the cameras monitoring Isaiah's door, and she noticed they were broken into a hundred pieces. "Oh, yeah, that'll do it," she said.

"She's a nasty one. Murdered the whole family." I finally returned to the bathroom and recovered my flashlight. The remote control for the trap, which I'd set down on the bathroom counter while I washed my hands, now lay facedown on the wet floor. I hoped it hadn't fried like my headset.

I picked up the remote and turned it over.

The display screen was blank.

"I guess this one's ruined," I told Stacey as I returned to the hallway. She and Jacob were headed straight for Isaiah's door. "Stop! What are you doing?"

"Oh, did you miss the whole show?" Stacey asked.

"What show? I was busy with my own show. It was about bathroom safety."

"We got him," Stacey said. "He took the bait."

"When?"

"Just a minute ago. The trap sealed up—I thought you'd done it."

"It had to be the automatic sensors," I said. "Isaiah was inside? You're sure?"

"I can show you the video," Stacey said. She opened the door, and we followed her inside.

# Chapter Eighteen

The crafts room still felt cold and clammy to me, but Isaiah's presence had been strong, and it would leave residual energy for a while even if he was gone. It was a dark spiritual residue, like a layer of rank oil coating everything. The light switch still didn't work, so all three of us held flashlights.

"See?" Stacey pointed at the stamper, which had slammed down the lid and closed the trap.

"It's definitely been sprung," I said, leaning closer to inspect it. "I'd like to have a look with my thermal goggles."

"We saw it all on thermal," Stacey said. "That purple-black cloud shrank and condensed into the trap. He totally took the bait."

I looked at the little items on the bottom, the rusty miniature locomotive, the old silver dime.

A thin curl of darkness hovered in the air just above the locomotive, like a loose thread taken from a black thundercloud. As I gazed at it, it twisted and disappeared, in a way that reminded me of how Isaiah had turned away and vanished the first night I'd seen him. He'd made himself invisible.

He could hide, but he couldn't run.

I lifted the trap out of the stamper.

"We still have a few more ghosts to hack through," I said. "But job one is to get this monster out of our clients' house. Let's take him down to the van. Then I want to review that footage, Stacey."

"It's good stuff. We should put it on our website," Stacey said.

"We don't have a website."

"We should have one!" Stacey said. "And a Facebook page, and definitely Flickr. And a YouTube!"

"Let's talk about it later," I said. Much, much later, I thought.

We carried the trap down the hall, past the camera wreckage strewn all over the floor.

"Jacob, sensing anything?" I asked. "Hit me with some psychic news."

"I think you got the nasty thing out of that room," he said. "It's still pretty bad in there, but it'll clean up. I can't say anything else in the house has changed..."

"We're not done yet," I told him.

As we reached the main stairs to the front hall, the trap slipped out of my arms. I thought I'd dropped it at first, and felt my heart sink a little as it banged against one of the steps below. I was still damp from the bath tub, so I was the last person who should have been carrying that trap.

It's the kind of detail that only becomes obvious once it's much too late.

Then the trap bounced up high, above our heads, until it smashed into the ceiling. That wasn't natural. It smashed itself along the molding, then careened downward through the air, bashed a hole in the wall, and then banged itself several times against a lower stair over on the middle flight of the stairway. It rose into the air and shook back and forth.

"It's like a Mexican jumping bean," Jacob said, watching with a slightly amused smile.

"Um, Ellie?" Stacey asked. "Have you ever had a ghost break out of a trap before?"

"That...really shouldn't be possible," I said.

The trap slammed against the wall again, then spun over the railing and sailed high in the air all the way down the hall, finally smashing into the wall above the front door.

Toolie, Juniper, and Crane already stood at the living room door, drawn by all the noise. They looked at the three of us charging down the stairs.

"What in the Lands' End catalog--?" Toolie began.

"Everybody duck!" I shouted, while Stacey and Jacob followed me down the last flight.

The trap hurtled down from the ceiling, rushed toward us, and crashed into the hardwood floor right in front of Toolie, giving the floor the kind of deep dent you might expect from an angry, stamping elephant. Then it flung itself against an old high-backed chair hard enough to crack the armrest.

It spun toward us, and we ducked as it sailed past and smashed through the glass pane of the back door under the second flight of the wraparound stairs.

Stacey and I reached the shattered door fast enough to see the cylindrical trap slam into the brick patio.

The lid blew off, and it was as if someone had smashed open a tank of liquid nitrogen.

Cold white smoke flooded the patio in an expanding circle, turning the layer of rainwater coating the bricks into a thin sheet of ice. More ice encased the wet patio furniture, and rows of icicles formed on the slats of the wooden chairs and tables.

A powerful gust of freezing air rushed in through the broken door, blowing my hair straight back. It felt like a blast of wind from an arctic hurricane.

It carried with it countless little raindrops frozen into glittering beads of ice. These pelted Stacey, Jacob and me like buckshot, nicking our hands and faces while we tried to dodge aside.

When the wind stopped, we glanced around the hallway, waiting for the next attack.

Toolie and Juniper stared at us open-mouthed from the threshold of the living room. Gord approached them, rolling his oxygen tank, and leaned against the wall.

Crane wasn't looking at us at all, but up at the wraparound staircase behind us. He slowly raised one pointing finger.

I turned to see Isaiah's ghost flicker up the second flight of steps, visible only for half a second before it vanished again. It flickered again on the third flight, then it was gone, probably down the upstairs hall and back to its lair.

"He escaped your trap," Crane said. A flat, toneless declaration.

"It looks like..." I didn't really know what to say, so I opened the shattered door, stepped over the broken glass, and retrieved the trap and lid from the rapidly dissolving layer of ice that covered the brick floor of the patio.

The lid was distended and puckered. It had taken great force to do that, twisting the hard plastic and the copper mesh until the trap was uncorked. The dangerous ghost had escaped like a genie from its bottle.

I carried the ruined trap back inside.

Everybody was looking at me—the family, plus Stacey and Jacob—obviously expecting me to have some answers.

I didn't have any. The best I could do was try to play it off and hopefully keep everyone from panicking.

I took a deep breath and sighed, trying to look frustrated rather than afraid.

"Looks like we'll have to do this the hard way," I said.

"What's...the hard way?" Gord asked.

"There's really no time to explain," I said, which was better than stating the truth: _I have no idea what to do right now_. "Stacey, we need to grab some gear from the van. Jacob, can you hang out here and keep an eye on the family?"

"Did that ghost really get out of the trap?" Toolie asked me.

"It did," I said. "But we're going to take care of it."

I tried to look as confident as possible while Stacey and I grabbed our umbrellas and walked out the door.

"What are we actually going to do?" Stacey asked while we trudged through the heavy rain. Sheet lightning illuminated the yard around us. The pond had grown to swallow most of the grass and now lapped at the brick patio like the edge of a lake.

"I sort of have an idea," I replied. "I don't know if it will work."

We gathered back in the living room, by the light of our flashlights, since all the power in the house was still off.

"Stacey, let's see if the camera in the hallway caught anything," I said. It was the only camera that the trap might have passed on its path of destruction, but it was aimed at the faucet in the powder room, so I didn't have a lot of hope.

Stacey grabbed the thermal camera itself from the hall, and I watched the display screen as she reversed the recording. She stopped when something flickered across the screen, then played it in slow motion.

The trap tumbled past in midair, its interior purple-black, filled with the ghost of Isaiah Ridley.

A greenish blob accompanied it. Blue spots speckled the green blob, growing larger as it expended energy flinging the trap around the hall and trying to pry it open.

The blob and the trap tumbled out of sight.

"It was the poltergeist," I said. I felt a little relieved—we hadn't met a ghost who could break free of a trap, at least. If we had, it might mean the traps were getting obsolete.

"Why would the poltergeist want to break him out?" Stacey asked.

"It's hard for me to find its motivation," Jacob said. "Since it was never human..."

"Maybe it needs the ghost of Isaiah." I looked up at the ceiling over the front door. The crafts room, Isaiah's lair, was just beyond the ceiling. "This is starting to make some sense."

"It is?" Stacey asked.

"Stacey, you're going to hang onto the ghost cannon." We'd brought the enormous, powerful, generally unstable and unreliable device in from the van. It was a hefty but allegedly portable source of light, bigger than a bazooka, with as much lumen-power as a Vegas spotlight.

"Cool," she said. I helped her strap on the heavy battery pack, which she had to wear on a harness on her back. "We're going up to his room, then?"

"You're staying down here to protect our clients," I said. "I'm taking Jacob with me."

"But I want to come with you," Stacey protested.

"That's an _order_ , Stacey."

"Affirmative, generalissimo." Stacey gave me a mock salute.

"I can come with you and help out," Juniper offered.

"I'll call you when I need you," I told her, just to pacify her. I had no intentions of bringing her upstairs until the house was safe. The girl could be mad at me later, but at least she'd be unharmed.

I took Stacey's speaker and iPod, since she had the ghost cannon to protect herself and the others. I made sure I had two tactical flashlights on my belt and Jacob had a third.

"Are you going to...go after him?" Gord asked me, while I strapped my thermal goggles onto my forehead.

"You can't beat him," Crane said. "He's too strong."

"Thanks for that big vote of confidence," I said. "Don't worry, I've faced tons of ghosts like this before." Not exactly tons. Maybe a handful as scary as Isaiah Ridley. That's why I still preferred to think of him as Whippy McHalf-Face. "Come on, Jacob."

"Good luck," Stacey said, looking between both of us. She looked like she wanted to hug us, but fortunately she didn't—it would probably give the clients the idea that we were in lots of danger and weren't entirely sure what to do. We wouldn't want them thinking that, especially if it was true.

Later, there would be time to tell the family about the girl I'd seen and how she'd tried to kill me, but for now I wanted to hurry up and act, wanted to just deal with the problem without explaining myself every step of the way.

I grabbed the final big piece of gear I needed—a new ghost trap, taken from the rack in the van. The one wrecked by the poltergeist could probably never be trusted again.

Jacob and I started up the wraparound staircase together, shining our lights into the waiting darkness above.

# Chapter Nineteen

There's something about walking through a house, any house, at night by the glow of a flashlight. It makes you feel like an archaeologist discovering some forgotten place, maybe the home of people who fled to escape a disaster like Pompeii during the eruption of Vesuvius.

The upstairs hallway was silent. Our footsteps creaked and echoed on the old hardwood.

Ahead, I could see our smashed gear strewn all over the hallway, spread much wider than it had been before, as if the poltergeist had come through in another big whirlwind.

"So, Jacob," I said, in the quietest voice I could manage, "Do you have a girlfriend?"

"What?" he asked. He gave me a surprised, curious look.

"Does 'what' mean yes or no? Or are you asking me for a definition of the word?"

"Should we be talking about that right now? Aren't we on our way to face some dangerous killer ghost? What are you expecting me to do?"

"I'm always on my way to face some dangerous killer ghost," I said. "I'm allowed to have conversations about other things. So which is it?"

"Which...? Oh, no. No girlfriend." He paused at the crossroads of the two hallways, looking at my stuff scattered along it, my mattress and camping pillow blocking the head of the stairs now, as though someone had decided to make a fort there. My guess would be the two boys from the attic.

"Do you date girls?" I asked.

"In theory. Not really since the plane crash..." He was talking about an airline crash in which he'd been one of very few survivors, and had awoken to find himself seeing ghosts everywhere.

"Are you going to ask Stacey out?"

"I...maybe. Do you think she's interested?"

I scowled. "Aren't you psychic?"

"Not about everything. Or I'd be winning lotteries all day long."

We stopped talking as we approached the final door at the end of the hall. The air was noticeably colder and thicker, and I could almost see the darkness slithering out around the edges of the door. Isaiah was wide awake, an angry beast waiting for us in its own nest.

"You're going to search the room for another ghost," I whispered to Jacob. "I'll keep Whippy McHalf-Face distracted."

"Keep _who_ distracted?"

"The ghost who just escaped. Isaiah Ridley. I'll keep him busy. You're going to look for the little girl ghost."

"So we're not trying to capture Whippy McFadden?" he asked.

"Mc _Half-_ Face...it doesn't matter. There's nothing I can do about him right now. The best I can do is try to hold him off. You're looking for an eight-year-old girl named Eliza Ridley. I think you'll find her in one of the cabinets, but I'm not sure which one. She used to hide there when she was alive, and they found her body there, too."

"Good thing there's only about twenty cabinets in that room. What will I do if I find her?"

"Just let me know. Ready?"

He looked at the door. "There's nothing to be gained by waiting five or ten minutes, is there?"

"Nothing at all."

"That's what I figured." Jacob approached the door and grasped the handle.

"Wait," I said.

"I'm going first. Don't worry, the evil spirits will cower before our flashlight beams, am I right?" Jacob pushed it open and led the way inside.

A heavy, ice-cold shroud seemed to hang inside the room, darkening all the walls in spite of our flashlights. Even a flash of lightning outside brought barely a glimmer through the balcony doors and tall windows.

"Okay, go," I whispered.

Jacob opened a cabinet. It was crammed full of cardboard boxes and old shopping bags.

He sighed and began pulling the junk out, piece by piece, until he could touch the inner wall of the cabinet with his fingertips.

"Nothing here," he whispered.

A deep, ragged breathing sounded in the air behind me. I turned and pointed my light directly toward the shadowy corner where I'd heard it. I couldn't see anything, but Isaiah was definitely there, or somewhere in the room, watching me with a palpable feeling of loathing and hate.

I slid my thermal goggles down over my eyes.

While Jacob rummaged through another cabinet, I looked back and forth in the sea of dark blue air and saw the purple-black shape of Isaiah. He seemed to be pacing on the other side of the room, back and forth, back and forth, watching us like a wolf in a cage. Unfortunately, there was no actual cage to hold him away from us.

I heard footsteps approaching and turned my head toward them, but I kept my light on Isaiah's ghost.

The door creaked open.

"Ellie, are you in here?" a voice whispered, while a glowing red-and-yellow shape looked in at us.

"Juniper?" I asked. "What are you doing?"

The purple-black mass of Isaiah surged across the room, straight toward the warm-blooded shape of Juniper.

"Get behind me!" I shouted. I drew my second flashlight and pointed it at Isaiah, joining its beam to the first one.

Juniper obeyed, running over to stand between Jacob and me.

"What's happening?" I whispered, assuming something had gone horribly wrong downstairs.

"I told them I was going to the bathroom and I snuck up here," Juniper told me with a triumphant smile.

"Why?"

"I thought you were kind of telling me to do that."

"What?" I asked. "No, definitely not."

"Do you want me to go back?"

_Not with Isaiah lingering near the door, watching you_. "You'd better stay with us. Point this right where I show you." I passed her a flashlight.

Juniper took a sharp breath.

"What is it?" I whispered.

She didn't answer—she was tense and still beside me.

"Can you see him?" I asked.

"Uh-huh," she whispered back. She was looking at the narrow stone fireplace where the cold form of Isaiah stood.

I raised my thermal goggles onto my forehead. Isaiah was visible in our overlapping beams, coated in dark earth, his chest rising and falling with his ragged breaths. The whip dangled from his right hand, its strange array of buckles glinting.

"Keep your light on him," I whispered, but it was obvious the flashlights wouldn't be enough this time. He was telling us that by standing there, making himself fully visible to us. Isaiah's ghost wasn't much of a talker, but he was sending us a threatening message with this apparition.

Blasting him with some loud orchestral holy music might have chased Isaiah away, but Jacob was still searching for Eliza's ghost, and I didn't want to startle her or send her deep into hiding.

"I found her," Jacob whispered. "This is the one."

"Okay. Juniper, come on." I took Juniper's arm, and she jumped a little bit, but then let me guide her backwards to the wall. "Keep your light on him. Can you do that?"

Juniper nodded, her mouth open, not daring to make a sound or even to look away from the dark ghost.

I glanced at Jacob, who knelt by a deep, empty cabinet, having dumped out the boxes and garment bags that had filled it. His palm rested on the cabinet's worn wooden floor, his fingers splayed.

"This one," Jacob whispered. "Definitely."

"Can she hear me?" I asked.

"She might, but you won't hear her. She's very faint, barely there. She's fragile, no strength at all, the most fragile ghost I've ever—"

"Get up and hold my light," I whispered.

As I passed him the flashlight, our fingers brushed together. Something jolted me, as if he were filled with static electricity.

Then—

I lay in my hiding spot, my knees tucked up against me. I hold my doll.

Through the door, I hear Mother and Father shouting. It's strange. Mother yells at us, but never at Father. Usually Father does all the yelling.

" _Put it down!" Father was shouting. "A pistol doesn't belong in a woman's hand."_

" _We've had enough," Mother said. She was not yelling anymore. Her voice was calm and flat, but somehow that sounded much scarier. "Noah, Luke, and me. We've all had enough."_

Then the explosion.

Then the silence.

Finally, I ease the door open. Mother has left the room.

Father lies on his desk. His face is half gone, and his papers are drenched in blood. His eyes are open and staring at me, lifeless.

I scream.

Later...many days later...I see them gathering firewood by the pond. Mother. Noah. Luke. None have wept for Father. None care that he is gone.

But I care. The pain rips at my insides, day and night. He is gone, and she killed him, and nothing is being done about it.

Then I feel it rise, the faceless thing that's tormented me. I feel it sweep out towards my mother and my brothers, as if carried along on the river of hate, fear, and sorrow that flows out from me.

Standing in the yard, I watch them drown, flailing in the water. My heart fills with fear. What is happening?

I run inside, upstairs to my hiding place, and close the door.

He's waiting for me. Father. He's seen what happened. His rage seethes in the air around me.

He's come to punish me, as he punished Mother and Noah and Luke, with his belt.

I feel it on my throat, leathery and cold, like a snake's skin—

"Ellie!" Jacob shook my shoulders, staring into my eyes. "Ellie, wake up!"

"Huh?" I blinked as if waking from a dream. "You did something to me."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know what happened."

I turned to see Isaiah shuffling toward me, his steps jerky and unnatural. I'd glimpsed Eliza's memories, of course. That belt had just been at my throat, ready to strangle me.

I finally understood. Isaiah's ghost had murdered Eliza.

"Keep your light on him!" I told Jacob. "Now!"

Jacob took my place, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Juniper and soaking Isaiah's ghost with white light.

I grabbed the new ghost trap and crouched down by the open cabinet.

"Eliza?" I whispered. "Eliza, can you hear me? I'm here to help. You can choose to escape this place forever."

"He's coming closer," Jacob said.

I slid the thermals down over my eyes again. At the very back of the deep cabinet, a few feet away, I could just discern a very faint, very pale blue shape, almost indistinguishable from the background cold of the room.

"Eliza," I said. "I understand you. I know what happened to you. All you have to do is step inside this jar. I'll light the way." I pointed the fireplace lighter into the trap and lit the three candles. "Just follow the candles to the bottom and rest there. I can take you to a safe place, full of trees and sunlight. You won't have to hide anymore."

Juniper let out a long, strange sigh, then collapsed to the floor. The flashlight rolled out of her hand.

"You okay?" Jacob turned his flashlight on the girl.

"Keep it on Isaiah!" I told him.

Jacob swung the light back toward the fireplace, but the dark figure was gone.

"I can't--" he began, and then a long, dirty leather belt, studded with buckles, cracked across his arm. It coiled around his forearm, lashing him hard enough to draw blood.

Then Isaiah snapped the belt, sending Jacob crashing into the sewing machine table, which toppled over in a heap of bright yarn and loose needles. Jacob went down in a heap of sewing and knitting supplies.

I was failing everyone tonight.

I checked Juniper, lying quietly beside me. She was unconscious, and her pulse felt weak.

The cabinet door slammed beside me. The girl I'd seen in the mirror earlier stood in front of it, arms crossed, giving me a petulant look. She was still white-on-white skin, hair, and calico dress, glowing with a soft, eerie light.

"What are you doing in there?" she said, in a whiny sort of tone. "Stay out of there."

"Leave us alone," I replied.

"You don't tell me what to do. This is my house."

"You're not Eliza," I said. "You wear her face because you were made from her anger and grief, but you're a thing that shouldn't exist. You're a poltergeist."

"What did you call me?" she whispered.

"A poltergeist. Normally, Eliza would have grown up, and you would have dissolved. But she never grew up, and her ghost was trapped in this house, so you still exist. But you shouldn't."

The girl scowled. When she spoke again, her voice echoed from all the walls. Chairs and boxes overturned, cabinet doors opened and slammed, and the window curtains flapped and snapped like sails in a storm.

"You do not know what I am," she said.

Something like a large, invisible hook stabbed into me, just under the ribcage, and hauled me upward. I howled in pain, and then I was flung hard against the ceiling.

Being pinned against the ceiling by an angry spirit is a situation from which there is no easy escape. If I somehow managed to get free, I'd still fall about twelve feet to the floorboards. Unpleasant.

Isaiah himself was busy tormenting Jacob. Jacob was backed up against the wall, taking a bad lash across the chest. Then he stepped forward and shouted something at Isaiah, which made the ghost stagger back a step or two and disappear. Isaiah appeared several seconds later on Jacob's other side.

I couldn't see much more of their fight, because the poltergeist rose close to me until her face filled my vision. She looked almost angelic...and then her lips twisted down into a hideous scowl, the corners of her mouth reaching all the way to her chin.

"You do not understand me at all," she said, her voice hitting my ears with a force that made them ring, especially my already-injured right ear. "I am older than you. You think I am nothing, but I have had years to watch and listen. For so long, that was all I could do."

"You should leave this family alone," I said. " _Both_ families, the living and the dead."

"They are mine!" she snapped. "Because of you, I must kill everyone in this house tonight. You'll die first." She bared her teeth, and strange, guttural giggling burbled up from within her.

She reached her small, glowing white fingers into my throat.

I felt pressure, and I couldn't breathe. I struggled, but my whole body was pinned into place, the back of my head flush against the pressed-tin ceiling.

"You are so arrogant," she hissed. "You thought of me as nothing but an animal."

There was a gurgling sound in my throat, then a painful pop. Was that my larynx crushing or my windpipe rupturing? Only my coroner would know for sure.

"I've been watching and listening to you, too," she whispered. "I will collect my new family, and I will collect your friends. But I won't kill _you_ inside my house. You can haunt the front garden. I'll keep you outside like a stray dog, just like _her_." I assumed she meant Catherine Ridley, the lady of the back yard pond.

I couldn't ask, though, because my vocal apparatus wasn't exactly free to function. In fact, there was a distinct lack of oxygen in my brain, and things were going dark. I wanted to tell the poltergeist that if she didn't want me to die inside her house, she would need to alter the situation fairly quickly.

As if hearing my thoughts, she pitched me across the room. I crashed into the glass double doors and out onto the balcony. I hit the rough brick floor and kept sliding.

I didn't stop until I slammed into the iron railing at the front.

Actually, I didn't stop then, either. My body was pushed against the railing, then began to slide upwards. She was trying to drag me up and over the top so I could fall to the brick steps below.

I grabbed one slender post of the railing, but it was slick with rain, and my grip barely slowed my ascent. I grasped it tighter as I reached the top of the railing. I hung there, barely clinging in place, while the rain pounded down on me.

A flash of lightning illuminated the house. When it faded, the poltergeist floated before me, softly glowing, still in the innocent little-girl shape of Eliza. She was on the outside of the railing, and she was gripping my arm and leg with her little hands.

"Let me go," I croaked, fighting her as she tried to pull me up and over the edge. My legs slid up to the top, but I managed to hook one foot under the railing. My heart was pounding too fast, like it was going to break right out of my ribs.

"You should have left me alone." She leaned in close, an expression of evil glee on her face. "Now you'll be my prisoner. My most hated pet."

She gave a hard tug, and I flipped over the top of the wet railing. I managed to cling to the outside. The drop below was at least fifteen feet, and I had a feeling she'd give me an extra push on the way down, just to make sure my head split open against the front steps.

She floated alongside me, obviously not worried about the long drop below.

"I will torment you for years," she said. "For centuries. That will be your punishment."

"That's all you can think of, because you're nothing but leftover anger and wrath," I said. "You have no soul. You are _not real_."

"How dare you." She hissed as she floated above me. She gave me a hard downward shove, with crushing force.

I tried to resist it, but all I had was a feeble grip on the slick railing.

She grabbed my little finger and peeled it back. Then my ring finger. She was prying my fingers loose, one by one.

Thunder crashed again. The poltergeist-girl looked perfectly dry, every white-blond hair in place, the rain falling right through her.

With another weird, throaty giggle, she pried my middle finger loose. Now I was only holding on with my thumb and forefinger. My foot was still hooked under the top of the railing, but she'd be able to pull that loose with a little more effort.

My other hand grasped the railing from the outside, and I didn't think it would hold my weight if I suffered another hard push from above.

I couldn't believe I would die like this, dragged off and killed by a poltergeist. They're typically the mindless puppies of the paranormal world, knocking things and breaking them with no real sense of direction or purpose—just disorganized, chaotic kinetic energy.

This one had lived far too long, become self-aware, and created some plans of its own.

"I will enjoy watching your skull shatter," she said, her face twisting in a mask of anger and hate. "I will enjoy...enjoy..." She made a gagging sound and reached for her throat.

"Having problems?" I asked, feeling the first glimmer of hope.

"What...what..." Her head snapped back and forth, as if she were emphatically saying "no" and having a series of muscle spasms at the same time.

"I told you, you shouldn't exist," I said. "You only endured so long because Eliza's ghost was trapped in this house. That's why you've been protecting Isaiah. He keeps people out of that room, and he scares Eliza into staying right where she is. A hundred and sixty years in that closet, with you sucking out whatever strength she had. That's all over now."

The poltergeist twisted at the waist, her body elongated as she turned to look back at the open doors behind her.

"It's too late," I said. "Eliza is beyond your reach now." From the way the poltergeist was suffering, I could only assume Jacob had convinced Eliza to enter the trap, then sealed her inside.

The poltergeist turned back to me. Cracks spread all over her face, torso, and arms, as if she were a cheap plaster statue breaking apart in the rain.

"Now you've been uprooted," I said. "Your time is over."

The poltergeist screeched and lunged at me, moving so fast that her face and body blurred and distended. Her hands reached for me like little claws.

If she was going out, she was going to take me with her.

I tightened my grip on the railing, for what it was worth.

As she reached me, she exploded.

I don't know how else to describe it. The cracks in her face and body widened, then blew open altogether, shattering her.

She let out a high-pitched wail that could have made my ears bleed. My ears had been through way too much tonight.

A huge pulse of light erupted from her core, lighting up the stormy night like another bright flash of lightning. It swelled, pushing out force in all directions, nearly knocking me off the railing anyway. One end of the railing snapped loose, and the section where I clung tilted out and away from the balcony, leaving me dangling over the bricks below.

The glowing explosion swept over me and over the house, too. The unleashed poltergeist energy blew off window shutters, cracked panes on every floor, and dug deep furrows into the roof. Broken shingles sprayed into the sky.

The house shook as if a powerful earthquake were striking its foundations. This did not help with my slippery grasp on the loose, swinging railing, which bounced and shuddered while I hung on for my life.

The air felt stiff and hot, as though filled with static electricity.

Then the house ceased its quaking, the explosive light faded, and all was calm.

I started the pretty scary process of trying to climb back over a loose, slick iron railing in the middle of a pounding storm.

# Chapter Twenty

I had just eased my toe over the top of the unstable railing when Jacob came running out through the balcony doors.

"Ellie?" he shouted, blinking against the heavy rain. He looked pretty tattered and bloody. Whippy had given him a very bad beating.

"Over here," I managed to say. He was already running toward me.

Jacob took my arms and lifted me over the railing. He set my feet on nice, solid ground.

I leaned against him, embracing him. Like I said, I'm not usually that much of a hugger, but he'd just saved my life, okay? It made me feel warm just to lean against him for a few seconds, letting him support me.

"You did it," I said, backing away from him a little. "Good work. Thanks."

"What did I do?" he asked.

"You convinced Eliza to go into the trap, and then you closed it. Right?"

"Me? I was busy getting my butt kicked all over the room by Whippy McFaddon."

"Whippy McHalf-Face," I said.

"Look what he did to me." Jacob held out one arm, the shirt sleeve ripped to pieces, the flesh lacerated and bleeding. "After that, I should be able to call him whatever nickname I want."

"Good point. But who caught the ghost, then?" I asked while we staggered inside, leaning on each other.

The room was destroyed, every piece of furniture overturned and smashed.

Juniper lay where I'd left her, on her side next to the cabinet door. Something was different, though—she now clutched the tall cylinder of the ghost trap in both arms.

"Juniper?" I shook her shoulder gently.

Her eyes parted just a little.

"Are you okay?" Jacob asked, kneeling beside her.

"I...I got her." Juniper gave an exhausted smile. "She's in there."

"Are you sure?" I gazed into the empty-looking ghost trap.

"Saw her do it. She came out like a mist, just a tiny mist..."

"And you closed the trap?"

"Like you were going to do," Juniper whispered. "Did it work?"

I glanced out at the balcony.

"It worked," I said. "You destroyed the poltergeist."

"What about the other one?" Juniper's eyes opened a little more, and I helped her sit up.

"I don't know." I looked at Jacob.

"Oh, Whippy?" Jacob asked. "After torturing me all over the room for a hundred million years, he vanished. It was right when that big explosion rocked the whole house. He isn't gone, I can tell that much. He's hiding somewhere."

"Ellie!" Stacey shouted from downstairs. There was panic in her voice. "Ellie, come down here!"

"Sounds like good news," I said, trying to ease the rising fear in Juniper's eyes. We helped her to her feet.

Out in the hall, I dashed ahead, leaving Jacob to help steady the exhausted girl. The poltergeist had drained Juniper like a battery.

I finally reached the far end of the hall, and I only had to descend a couple of steps before I saw what was frightening everybody downstairs.

Stacey stood near the foot of the stairs, shining her flashlight. Another beam, held by one of the family members I couldn't see from my angle, pointed in the general direction of both Stacey and the apparition.

It was a woman in a heavy woolen dress, thick with petticoats, and a matching kerchief. She was soaking wet, and as she ascended the first flight of steps, she left watery footprints behind her.

She walked slowly, like a recording moving at half speed, or somehow out of sync with our own reality. Each step took an agonizing amount of time.

I cautiously continued my descent, down the upper and middle flights. She'd barely climbed half of the bottom flight by the time I reached her.

"She came in through the door." Stacey pointed to the shattered back door below the stairs, from which rain spattered into the house. "I think she came from the pond."

The woman's face was cold and blank, like a porcelain death mask, but submerged below an inch or two of foul green pond water.

The pond water surrounded her like a nimbus, or like those hooded cauls in which some babies are born. It clung to her with no regard for gravity, other than the footprint puddles she left in her wake.

"It's Catherine Ridley," I said, standing two steps above the slow-moving ghost. "I'm pretty sure of it." She resembled the woman I'd seen faintly by the pond, but this was no faint, pale apparition. She appeared solid, three-dimensional, in full detail from her long blond hair—which floated in the thick layer of pond water on her shoulders—down to her leather winter boots.

Her eyes shifted to glance at me when I said her name, but she did not speak, did not react at all to my presence. She didn't seem to notice that the trap in my hands held her daughter's ghost, either. She just kept up her unnaturally slow steps, from one stair...to the next.

"Catherine, do you need some help?" I asked her.

She didn't reply. She was staring straight ahead as she walked right past me. I could see tangled, muddy weeds floating in the layer of water around her. The air dropped to near-freezing temperature as she passed, and I shivered, still dripping wet from the rain.

She turned...slowly...to begin the second flight.

Jacob stood at the railing by the top of the stairs, with Juniper beside him.

"Come on down, I think," I said. "Just hold tight to the railing. The stairs are getting pretty soaked."

I remained against the wall, easing sideways up the steps, shadowing Catherine's ghost in case she suddenly attacked somebody. I doubted she would, but you could never be sure. I knew a thing or two about who Catherine had been in life, but I didn't know who she was _now_ , as a century-and-a-half year old ghost, or what her intentions might be.

I had a pretty good idea, though.

When Jacob and Juniper had successfully slipped around the ghost without incident, we hurried downstairs to join the others.

"Juniper!" Toolie said. "Where have you been?"

"Up..." Juniper pointed, then let out a deep yawn.

"What happened out there?" Stacey asked. "That wasn't just lightning and thunder, was it? I thought the house was going to fall down on us."

"We detonated a poltergeist," I said. I touched Juniper's shoulder. "Actually, Juniper did."

"And I missed it?" Stacey frowned. "That would have been a great video for our YouTube channel. Jacob! What happened to you?"

"We don't _have_ a YouTube channel," I said, but Stacey was already gushing and gasping over Jacob's many belt-buckle wounds, holding his arms to look at them more closely. She hadn't even asked about the sealed ghost trap in my hands.

Toolie and Gord were scolding Juniper for running off, but she seemed much too exhausted to care.

Catherine's ghost made her slow way up the second flight, still retaining a small pond's worth of water in the air around her.

"Where's Crane?" I asked, while placing the trap inside a coat closet. It would have to do for the moment.

"Oh, he's right..." Toolie pointed to the empty space beside her, then ran into the living room. "Crane? Crane? Where did you go? He's not here!"

"We need to search for him," I said, my brain shifting back into high-adrenaline mode. We hadn't done anything about the boy ghosts yet, and last I'd heard, they wanted Crane dead. They might have quietly lured him away to some other part of the house while we were busy dealing with the poltergeist. "Jacob, you go with Toolie. I'll take Stacey back upstairs. Juniper, stay in the living room with your dad."

"But I want to help..." Juniper gave another huge yawn and stretched. "Couch sounds good."

Toolie and Jacob went into the living room with Juniper and Gord. They would probably start there and move on to the library.

Stacey and I sloshed our way up the stairs, mumbling "Excuse me" as we passed Catherine's ghost, who did not acknowledge us at all.

I ran directly to the attic door and flung it open, shining my flashlight up along the steep stairs. Nothing immediately leaped out to kill me.

"Shouldn't we check Crane's room first?" Stacey asked.

"No." I hurried up the stairs, not caring how loud my footsteps echoed. Whatever the ghosts were doing with Crane, I definitely wanted to distract them from it.

Stacey and I shouted Crane's name, sweeping our flashlights through the darkness.

We didn't have to search long. He sat under the big plastic Christmas tree, next to the endlessly cheery life-size plastic Santa Claus. A wooden train full of toys, operated by a reindeer engineer, lay toppled over where Crane had made room for himself.

Stacey gasped and squeezed my hand at the sight of him.

He barely reacted when he saw us.

In his right hand, he held a broken Christmas ornament. It had once been a cut-glass angel, but one wing had been snapped off, leaving a long, sharp edge.

Red blood shimmered along the broken wing, and a drop of it had coursed all the way down the cut-glass robes into the angel's sandal.

Crane's left wrist was coated in blood, leaking from three deep scratches he'd apparently carved himself.

"Crane," I whispered. "What are you doing?"

"You can't help them," Crane said. "I have to help them. I have to join them."

"No, no, no," Stacey shook her head. "You totally don't have to do that."

"It's the only way to beat him," he said. "All of us together."

"You mean Isaiah? Their father?" I asked.

Crane hesitated, then nodded.

I eased forward. I wanted to grab the broken angel from his hand, but the way he was holding it, I could have sliced his fingers in the process. The entire situation was so wrong, trying to talk a seven-year-old kid out of suicide. Again.

"This won't work," I said. "Believe me, I know as much as anybody can know about ghosts, and this will not--"

" _Shh!"_ a voice hissed, loud and angry, right in my ear.

Stacey cried out as something slammed into her, flinging her backward until her head cracked against one of those low-lying beams.

At the same time, something slammed into my ribs, knocking me into a pile of plastic jack-o'-lanterns, ghosts, and witches. I managed to climb up to my hands and knees, but then I was slammed into the stacks of cardboard boxes lining one wall. I couldn't move. The air was turning very cold.

" _Shh,"_ the voice said again, near my ear.

"Quit shushing me," I said.

" _Quit,"_ it whispered back, echoing me.

By the Christmas tree, Crane was digging the broken ornament into his arm again, carving a fourth red line.

"Crane, stop!" I shouted. "Stacey, can you hear me?" She was lying on the floor several feet away from me.

"Ugh," she said. "I can't move. Like somebody's sitting on me. Somebody with a really _cold_ rear end."

"That's Luke," I said. "Or Noah."

Boyish laughter echoed in the air. It sounded menacing enough to me.

"Crane, put down that angel and run downstairs!" I shouted. "Go back to your parents!"

Crane looked at me with a glimmer of hope, as if this was just what he'd hoped someone would tell him to do.

"Go!" I repeated.

Crane stood, moving much slower than I would have liked. He held onto the ornament, but he took a step or two toward the stairs. I figured Noah and Luke couldn't restrain him without releasing either Stacey or me—there were only so many ghosts to go around.

" _Don't leave,"_ a voice whispered, very close to me.

" _Help us,"_ whispered another, over by Stacey.

Crane hesitated.

"Don't listen to them," I said. "You don't have to do what they say." I suddenly wished I'd brought Jacob instead of Stacey—the kid at least seemed to listen to Jacob. Jacob had been pretty banged up, though, so I'd given him the lighter duty of searching downstairs.

I hoped they'd decided to continue to the second floor.

"Jacob!" I shouted toward the stairs. "Toolie! Can anybody hear me? Come up to the attic--"

I gagged on something invisible. It felt like a rough, dirty cloth had just been shoved down my mouth and into my throat. I managed to cough and hack, but I couldn't speak.

Downstairs, the doorway to the hall slammed shut—I could hear it, but I couldn't see it.

Heavy footsteps clomped up the stairs. Stacey and I looked at each other, and I hoped I didn't look as afraid as she did. The footsteps didn't sound like Jacob or Toolie to me, and I don't think either of them would have slammed the door shut, anyway.

Stacey remained silent. She saw the figure on the steps before I did, and her eyes grew wide.

Isaiah's ghost became visible in profile first, a shadowy figure rising up behind the broken railing, his head shattered and smeared with earth.

" _He's coming,"_ whispered the voice near Stacey.

" _Do it now,"_ urged the voice near me. _"If he kills you, you'll be his. Not ours."_

" _Do it."_

" _Do it."_

Crane moved the ornament toward his wrist again.

"Don't do it!" Stacey yelled, only to have her face lifted and slammed into the floorboards.

Crane dug the sharp glass deep into his arm, with a look of determination on his face. Fresh red blood leaked out all over his arm.

I struggled, trying to yell for him to stop, and trying to get free. The boy-ghost wasn't nearly as strong as the poltergeist, but I'd _already_ wrestled the poltergeist earlier that night, on two different occasions, and I was so dizzy and weak that I could barely cling to consciousness.

Isaiah stepped around the broken railing and walked directly toward Crane. Crane shivered, sitting down in front of the Christmas tree again, still cutting himself with the broken glass angel.

" _Do it now,"_ one of the boy's voices urged.

Crane winced as he stabbed himself deeper, ignoring Stacey's pleas for him to stop.

Isaiah towered over Crane. He opened his large, filthy right hand, and the long belt unrolled from it.

It looked like all the ghosts wanted Crane. The different ghosts may have wanted him for different reasons, but the underlying motive was probably the same: Crane seemed to have powerful psychic abilities, and the presence of someone like that can amplify a ghost's powers.

Maybe the two boys planned to use Crane to stage a revolt against their father, while the father wanted to use Crane to make himself stronger. It was only a question of whether Crane would kill himself and join the boys, or Isaiah would kill Crane and lay claim to his spirit.

Either outcome was awful and completely intolerable to me.

I kicked and struggled some more, and did my best to cry out, trying to distract Isaiah's ghost.

" _Shh,"_ a voice said beside my ear.

"Hey, Whippy! I mean, Isaiah!" Stacey shouted. "Isaiah Ridley! Look over here, it's your boys. Don't you want to punish them? They're being really, really bad—"

" _Shh,"_ both voices whispered.

The ghost's hold on me had relaxed enough that I could speak.

"Over here," I said, my voice a little croaky. "Isaiah, look, your boys are over here--"

I got slapped across the face for that. I slapped back, even though the boy holding me was insubstantial. Sometimes you just have to slap on principle.

Isaiah turned from Crane to look in our direction, his attention shifting to Noah and Luke.

Then he flickered a few times, but he didn't move anywhere. He kept appearing and disappearing right at the same spot.

Down the stairs, the door to the hall creaked open again.

"Jacob?" Stacey called.

Footsteps sounded again, but these were lighter and slower than Isaiah's could have been. They also had a wet, sloshing sound to them.

Catherine's ghost became visible through the broken railing, the pond water still surrounding her, as though she had to perpetually drown again and again.

She climbed up the stairs and turned toward her husband's ghost.

Isaiah flickered again, this time reappearing a few feet away, deeper into the attic. He flickered back and back again, retreating as Catherine's ghost approached him.

She raised one hand high above her head, and Isaiah fell to his knees. He raised a hand, too, but in more of a defensive gesture, as if he expected a blow to his head.

His chest rose and fell, and he let out a weird, ragged sob.

"It's time," Catherine's ghost whispered. It was the only thing she'd said since walking into the house. "It's long past time."

Isaiah gave another sob when she reached for him.

The layer of pond water suspended around her hand hardened in the freezing air near Isaiah. Sharp icicles encased her fingers. She reached closer, and a paper-thin layer of ice formed along her arm, almost to her shoulder, with a cold crackling sound.

There was no poltergeist to protect Isaiah now.

Catherine's face remained dead-vacant, with no expression at all.

She stabbed the long, sharp icicle of her index finger directly into the hole in the left side of Isaiah's head, the exact place where she'd shot him a hundred and sixty years earlier.

Isaiah let out an agonized wail and rose to his feet.

Catherine turned and dragged her husband toward us, while he staggered and stumbled along behind her.

Stacey and I didn't dare move or speak as they passed us. Catherine still walked at her creeping-slow pace, but a couple of times, they ghostly pair flickered forward several feet at once.

When they reached the stairs, Catherine paused, forcing Isaiah to pause with her. She turned her cold death-mask face to look at us, and then she said the last words I would hear her say:

"Come, boys. It's time to go home."

Then she turned and started down the stairs, towing Isaiah's ghost along with her.

I felt the weight lift off me, and Stacey gave a cough and rolled up to a sitting position.

After Catherine and Isaiah began their descent, I finally had a glimpse of Noah and Luke. They were shadowy, filmy figures, walking with their heads hung low, trailing like obedient ducklings behind their mother.

Stacey and I both ran to Crane, who had watched all of this in wide-eyed silence, just like we had. Even then, I didn't want to speak for fear of distracting the procession of ghosts from their descent.

"Crane? Are you okay?" I whispered as quietly as I could.

Stacey embraced him, holding his head against her chest as if he were her own child. It had been hard to watch the little boy cutting himself.

I inspected his arm. Most of the scratches seemed shallow, practice cuts while he worked up his nerve. I was pretty sure there would be a lot more blood if he'd actually hit a major vein or artery, but I'm no doctor, and he needed to see one as soon as possible.

We tiptoed to the broken remnants of the railing and looked down. The four ghosts were on the landing, walking slowly at Catherine's pace. An eyeblink later, they were down the stairs, filing out through the door to the hall.

We followed them down.

# Chapter Twenty-One

After we stepped off the attic stairs, we saw the procession of ghosts far down the second-floor hall, approaching the big central staircase.

Jacob and Toolie stood in the side hall where the children's rooms were located. They were staring after the apparitions, Toolie clinging to Jacob's arm.

"We're back," I whispered, startling both of them.

A horrified look crossed Toolie's face at the sight of Crane—wet with blood from his wrist to elbow, more drops of blood spattered on his shirt and jeans.

"Crane!" she ran toward him, taking his arm in her hands. "What happened?"

"I'm okay," Crane said. "It's over now."

Toolie ushered him off the to the master bedroom to wash and bandage his wounds.

Stacey, Jacob, and I continued after the ghosts, moving as slowly and quietly as we could manage, as they walked silently down the main stairway to the front hall. The entire situation had the eerie feeling of a late-night funeral march, but without a note of music or a word of prayer.

Downstairs, Juniper and Gord stood in the living room doorway, watching the ghosts walk by. Gord clutched his daughter's hand in one of his own. With his other, he squeezed the handle of his rolling oxygen tank in a white-knuckled grip.

They both gave me frightened looks as I descended the last stairs—where were their missing family members, and how were they supposed to react to a group of specters haunting their hallway?

I placed my finger to my lips. Above all, at that moment, I didn't want to interfere with the process of exorcism that seemed to be underway.

The shattered back door swung open again, sloshing through the puddle of accumulated rain on the floor.

The four ghosts blinked away, and then they were outside, shuffling toward the swollen pond that took up most of the yard. The four of us who were still living followed them at a cautious distance.

The ghosts grew blurry in the heavy rain.

Catherine, devoted mother and lethal wife, dragged Isaiah into the water, still moving in her slow but relentless way. A scrim of ice formed on the surface of the pond when Catherine pulled him under the surface. The thin ice melted quickly as fresh rain poured down on top of it.

Noah and Luke followed them down, one after the other, until the entire family was completely submerged in the dark water.

And then they were gone.

* * *

I sent Stacey and Jacob to turn on the power while the rest of us gathered in the kitchen. Toolie served iced tea. Crane's arm was fully bandaged, and he nibbled slowly on an Oreo cookie. Gord and Toolie sat with their kids while I leaned against the counter, feeling both jittery and exhausted. It was almost three in the morning.

"So the...poltergeist...was holding all the...other ghosts here?" Gord asked, while the lights flickered on overhead.

"Essentially," I said. "The poltergeist knew it was rooted here by Eliza's ghost, and if the ghost left the house, the poltergeist would have been destroyed. That's why it was protecting Isaiah's ghost, too. So once the poltergeist was gone, there was nothing to stop Catherine from entering the house and finishing the job she began when she was alive—getting rid of her husband."

"That's so wild," Juniper said. She sat in a kitchen chair, her knees drawn up to her chin. "So if I didn't make the poltergeist, why was it bugging me?"

"It needed a new host," I said. "It needed someone living to feed on. This is a really strange case, because I've never heard of a poltergeist so old. It must have been dormant for a long time...and Catherine's ghost must have been dormant during that time, too. Something may have happened recently, maybe in October, that really jolted these spirits awake."

Juniper frowned. Her Halloween seance had likely awoken both the poltergeist and Catherine, which was another reason the poltergeist might have attached itself to her.

"It's my fault, too," Crane said. "I think I woke them up. I woke up the boys."

"You didn't intend to do it," I said. "Anyway, the ghosts have left the building. We'll need to return in a few days to check over the house, but after an exit like that...I'd say you're probably in the clear."

"The house certainly feels safer already," Toolie said. "Not so heavy and dark."

Crane nodded.

"And what happens to Eliza?" Juniper asked.

"We'll take her to a remote cemetery where she can be at peace," I said. "We know a few of them, and I'll bring her to the nicest one. Lots of old magnolias and wildflowers. Lots of songbirds and rabbits. She'll be much happier than she ever was here."

Juniper nodded, but she still looked troubled about it.

"So her father killed her?" Juniper asked.

"Her father's ghost," I said.

"But why? He really liked his daughter, right?" Juniper asked.

"The poltergeist looked just like Eliza," I said. "Maybe Isaiah's ghost witnessed the poltergeist killing his sons and thought it was Eliza. In his confusion and grief, he attacked his daughter instead of the poltergeist she'd created."

"It's just all so sad," Toolie said.

"And then there was light, huh?" Stacey said, entering the room with Jacob. She was blushing and he was smiling kind of awkwardly. I wondered what they'd been up to back there, besides tinkering with the power switches.

"And then there was sleep," I said. "Mrs. Paulding, I have to sweep up some broken cameras in the upstairs hall. We'll come back for the rest of our gear in the morning, if that's all right." The thought of collecting the cameras, microphones, and the heavy stamper was far too much. "That will give us a chance to do a quick check of the house, too."

"Of course, of course," Toolie said. "And I'll clean up the mess, don't worry about it."

"There's broken glass--"

"I'll take care of it. Go on." She sighed. "It's sad to think of those people trapped in this house for so long. Especially the kids."

"It is," I agreed.

"You figure they went off to Heaven? Or Hell?" Toolie asked.

"Those are two possibilities," I said. "The important thing is that they've moved on to wherever they're supposed to be. That's all we really know."

Toolie nodded, thinking this over.

We collected the ghost trap from the hall and headed outside.

"Five more ghosts, totally annihilated!" Stacey said, once we were on the driveway and away from the clients. "We should start a scoreboard at the office."

"Does the poltergeist count as a whole ghost? Or just half?" Jacob asked.

" _That_ one should count as two or three ghosts," I said. "Thanks again, Jacob."

"Yeah." Stacey gave him a hug that seemed to linger for many, many extra seconds.

"Look, I'm happy to help you guys out," Jacob said, "But it seems like you always invite me in right at the evil-ghosts-ripping-people-apart stage."

"Maybe we'll invite you in earlier next time," I said.

"Yeah, at the boring library part," Stacey said. "You can squint through old deeds and tax records with us. You'd love it."

"I'm excited already."

I gave Jacob a quick hug, too. Saved my life. Nice guy. Cute, not that it mattered to me.

Stacey and I climbed into our van. While I waited for Jacob to pull out of the driveway, I couldn't help noticing that Stacey was humming softly and happily to herself in a way she usually didn't.

"What's with the singing?" I asked.

"Guess who finally asked me out." Stacey beamed at me.

Being a professional detective, I guessed it right on the first try.

# Chapter Twenty-Two

"So that's your final story?" Calvin asked. We sat at the long table in the middle of our workshop, which includes soldering stations, a video-editing cubicle, and a big glass kiln, among other things that don't usually go together. There's also an espresso machine, which I'd bought Calvin as a fairly selfish gift one Christmas. He ended up using it more than I did, though.

It was Saturday, almost a week after we'd wrapped things up at the Paulding house. Stacey and I had returned to double-check the house the previous night.

"That's it," I said. "The father was abusive to the boys, the mother killed him. The little girl spawned a poltergeist that ended up killing her mother and brothers. She must have felt a lot of anger and resentment toward her family—she hadn't hated her father like they did. And the poltergeist ultimately acted out that anger in the most extreme way. Isaiah's ghost saw it happen, but thought the poltergeist was Eliza herself. That must be why he killed her—he blamed her for killing the boys. He probably had no idea what a poltergeist was."

"I told you, poltergeists made by girls and young children are the most dangerous," Calvin said. "I've found no cases of poltergeists being so long-lived. You might write an article about it for the _Journal._ " He wasn't talking about the Wall Street investment paper but the _International Journal of Psychical Studies_ , the closest thing that exists to a trade magazine in our line of work.

"Why would I want to do that?" I asked.

"It could be good publicity for the agency."

"Stacey wants to start a Facebook page for us."

"I'm old enough to pretend I have no idea what that is," Calvin said. He gestured toward the two items on the table: a sealed ghost trap and a large rectangle wrapped in brown paper. "So you'll be releasing the girl?"

"I'm not sure she's in there," I said. I fetched him a pair of thermal goggles. "Look."

Calvin strapped them on and leaned close to the trap. "I see what you mean. Not a sign of activity. Jacob said the ghost was very faint, though."

"I think she might have moved on."

Calvin looked up at me, the goggles still strapped to his head. It made him look a bit like a cyborg, especially combined with the wheelchair. "Her choice to enter the trap was also a choice to leave the house, to let go of her life and death and move on."

"And move on." I nodded. "But the only way to check..."

"Is to open the trap." Calvin sighed. "All right. Set up a thermal camera, EMF meter, motion detector. And turn off the lights."

I hurried to arrange the gear. He watched through the thermal goggles while I set the trap to blow off its lid. Usually, I leave the trap in a carefully selected old cemetery and set it to open a couple hours after I leave—a little pocket of compressed gas opens the lid, freeing the ghost to wander its new residence. We do this for the ghosts that aren't a real threat to anyone, like Eliza.

This time, I set the trap to open in ten seconds, giving me just enough time to stand behind the thermal camera and watch.

The lid popped off with a hiss and landed on the table beside the trap.

I saw nothing on the camera, not even the slightest cold spot to indicate a ghost. There was no change in the EMF readings, either.

"No ghost?" I asked.

"No ghost." Calvin turned his head back and forth, scanning the room. "Not a thing."

"I guess she really did move on." I stopped recording and turned on the light over the table.

"One mystery solved." Calvin reached toward the package wrapped in brown paper. "Now will you tell me what's in the box?"

"There's some extra good news," I said. "A couple of days after we left, Gord found he was breathing much easier. He went to the doctor, and his emphysema seems to have vanished. They're still testing him, of course, but he says he has no problems now, no more feeling of drowning in his own lungs. He doesn't even use his oxygen tank anymore."

"That is good news. It sounds like his disease might have been a symptom of the haunting."

"It fit with the whole drowning and dripping thing going on in that house," I said. "Gord was so grateful, he created this for us."

"That's my cue to unwrap it?" Calvin asked.

"That's your cue."

Calvin tore off the brown paper wrapper.

Inside was a large painting, about three feet high, of an antique candy tin. The tin was labeled "GHOSTLY GUMBALLS" in big, cartoon-scary green letters. The image on the tin showed an apparently haunted gumball machine. Several pastel sheet ghosts floated around inside the glass globe. One mischievous little ghost was leaning out through the partially-raised candy door at the bottom, as though plotting his escape.

"That's fantastic," Calvin said, with an amused smile.

"I almost took it home without telling you about it. Where should we hang it? The front room?"

"I guess we could use a decoration of some kind out there. Good news about the client healing up, too."

"It makes me feel much better about sending an invoice. We kind of left their house a wreck, lots of damage."

"No more ghosts, though."

"No." I hesitated, then I told him about what had happened while I was drowning, the brief glimpse of Anton Clay with his fiery eyes. "Why do you think I saw him?"

"That's probably just your brain, flashing back to the first time your life was in danger," he said. "Inside the mind, time is based on feelings, not clocks. Whatever you feel most strongly about can seem very immediate, even if it happened many years ago."

"Just a memory," I said. I nodded. The alternative, the idea that Anton had somehow been able to reach out to me when I was on the verge of death, was too chilling to consider. It remained a possibility, though, with some chilling implications about how connected I was to that evil pyrokinetic ghost.

I stood up. "I'll hang the painting tomorrow. Stacey wants me to come to her apartment. She says it's some kind of emergency."

"She has an emergency and you've been sitting and chatting with me?" Calvin asked.

"I don't think it's a house-on-fire emergency," I said. "She has a date with Jacob tonight."

"Oh, good. Fraternizing among the staff. Nothing bad could come of it."

"Jacob's just a volunteer, though. So I guess he can date whoever he wants, right?"

"Whoever he wants?" Calvin raised his eyebrows. "Why would you phrase it that way?"

"What are you asking me?" I asked.

Calvin regarded me for a moment, then said, "What about your romantic life? Anything interesting on the horizon?"

"Nope. The horizon's all just empty sky."

"Maybe--"

"Please don't try to scrape up somebody for me to date," I said. Then I smiled. "I appreciate your concern, Calvin."

"I just don't want you to be lonely."

"Now you sound like my aunt. It's not your style." I kissed him on the temple as I left.

"Ellie," he said. "Don't let death consume your entire life."

"Thanks, Obi-Wan." I waved as I left the office.

# Chapter Twenty-Three

"What do you think of this outfit?" Stacey asked me, turning in front of her closet. Stacey's room was decorated with her nature photography, like deer and hawks, and pictures of her family. Her kayak was stored near the ceiling, suspended on ropes. "Light summer dress over jeans?" she asked.

"Where's he taking you?"

"Blues in the park, supper at Moon River," she said.

"Lucky," I said. Moon River Brewing Company had some great kinda-organic American fare with lowcountry and Creole influences. "Watch for ghosts. That place used to be the City Hotel—it's _really_ haunted."

"That'll give us something to talk about. So, should I wear this, or--"

"Wear that," I said.

"Seriously? Because I was also thinking--" Stacey reached for a shirt hanging in her closet.

"No, you nailed it the first time. Slam dunk. Hole in one. Other sports analogies."

"You really think so?" she asked.

"How would I know? Why don't you ask your roommates?" I pointed toward the door. Beyond it, a couple of girls were talking and laughing in the living room. "I'm literally the last person to ask about fashion."

"Yeah, but you and Jacob are so alike," she said, dropping onto her bed beside me.

"We are?" It would be an understatement to say I was surprised by that idea. "Why would you think that?"

"Well, you know, y'all kind of have the analytical-left-brain thing happening."

"He's a psychic."

"And you're a ghost trapper," Stacey said.

"I prefer to keep it scientific, though."

"And he's an accountant by day. You see what I mean?"

I didn't. "So you're saying I should date Jacob?"

Stacey laughed. "No, I just want your opinion on what to wear."

"And now you have it. You'll have fun. It doesn't matter what you wear, you're pretty."

"Aw, thanks."

"Shouldn't I get out of here before he shows up?" I stood and moved toward her door. "It could get awkward."

"Why?"

"Just because, work talk, you know? Could be a distraction." I was feeling strange about the situation, getting into everybody's personal lives. "So unless you wanted to ask me about your shoes or something..."

Why did I say that? Of course she did, and of course she owned a heap of them.

Eventually, I got out of there, leaving through the gated front door as I stepped onto Abercorn Street. The sidewalk took me past old brick and stone houses with impressive columns and elaborately sculptured trim. These quickly gave way to smaller, less impressive houses, with wooden porch posts instead of neoclassical columns, some of them converted into little shops. Massive trees grew everywhere, screening the old buildings with yards of Spanish moss.

I felt weirdly jealous of Stacey. Not because of Jacob—maybe there had been that moment, right after he'd helped me off the balcony railing, when I'd felt something, but Stacey had always been interested in him. I wasn't so sure about dating a psychic. I can imagine several drawbacks...like possibly hearing my thoughts. No, thanks.

Still, I _was_ jealous. I wished somebody interesting were taking me out that Friday night. Instead, I'd fold laundry with my cat.

It was dark out, and my senses were keyed up as I approached my car. The old black Camaro that Dad had bought less than a year before he'd died. His trophy car, celebrating some kind of promotion at his construction firm. I missed both my parents so much.

Walking along the streets at night in Savannah, it's not unusual to hear footsteps following you, only to turn and see nobody there. Or you might pass somebody in oddly old-fashioned clothes on the street, only to blink your eyes and have the person disappear entirely. Voices, music, laughter, screams—the past and present mingle freely here, as do the living and the dead.

As far as anyone could tell, I might have been just one more lonely ghost haunting the old city, paying no attention to those I passed, lost in my own memories.

I thought of my parents, and my friends, and Stacey offering to hook me up with one of her college friends. Maybe I would take her up on that. My nights alone were growing a little too long, and they could use a little light.

# The Crawling Darkness

### Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper,

### Book Three

by

J.L. Bryan

Copyright 2015 J.L. Bryan

All rights reserved.

# Acknowledgments

I appreciate everyone who has helped with this book. My beta readers include authors Daniel Arenson and Robert Duperre, as well as Isalys Blackwell from the blog Book Soulmates. The final proofing was done by Thelia Kelly. The cover is by PhatPuppy Art.

Most of all, I appreciate the book bloggers and readers who keep coming back for more! The book bloggers who've supported me over the years include Danny, Heather, and Heather from Bewitched Bookworks; Mandy from I Read Indie; Michelle from Much Loved Books; Shirley from Creative Deeds; Katie and Krisha from Inkk Reviews; Lori from Contagious Reads; Heather from Buried in Books; Kristina from Ladybug Storytime; Chandra from Unabridged Bookshelf; Kelly from Reading the Paranormal; AimeeKay from Reviews from My First Reads Shelf and Melissa from Books and Things; Kristin from Blood, Sweat, and Books; Aeicha from Word Spelunking; Lauren from Lose Time Reading; Kat from Aussie Zombie; Andra from Unabridged Andralyn; Jennifer from A Tale of Many Reviews; Giselle from Xpresso Reads; Ash from Smash Attack Reads; Ashley from Bookish Brunette; Loretta from Between the Pages; Ashley from Bibliophile's Corner; Lili from Lili Lost in a Book; Line from Moonstar's Fantasy World; Lindsay from The Violet Hour; Rebecca from Bending the Spine; Holly from Geek Glitter; Louise from Nerdette Reviews; Isalys from Book Soulmates; Jennifer from The Feminist Fairy; Heidi from Rainy Day Ramblings; Kristilyn from Reading in Winter; Kelsey from Kelsey's Cluttered Bookshelf; Lizzy from Lizzy's Dark Fiction; Shanon from Escaping with Fiction; Savannah from Books with Bite; Tara from Basically Books; Toni from My Book Addiction; Abbi from Book Obsession; Laura from FUONLYKNEW; Lake from Lake's Reads; Jenny from Jenny on the Book; and anyone else I missed!

# Also by J.L. Bryan:

### The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

Cold Shadows

The Crawling Darkness

Terminal (coming May 2015)

### The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)

Jenny Pox

Tommy Nightmare

Alexander Death

Jenny Plague-Bringer

### Urban Fantasy/Horror

Inferno Park

The Unseen

### Science Fiction

Nomad

Helix

### The Songs of Magic Series (YA/Fantasy)

Fairy Metal Thunder

Fairy Blues

Fairystruck

Fairyland

Fairyvision

Fairy Luck

For Christina

# Chapter One

"So, spill already," I told Stacey. We had an appointment with a possible client in fifteen minutes, and we'd just stopped for fair-trade, organic, cruelty-free, artisan-brewed, Third-World-enriching coffee at The Sentient Bean by Forsyth Park. Since I hadn't brought my own mug, I'd paid the environmental surcharge for a biodegradable to-go cup.

"Spill what?" Stacey asked, sipping her iced chai concoction. Summer was in full bloom in Savannah, and we'd all be roasted alive if not for the towering trees, the live oak trunks lining the streets like thick columns, supporting the cooling canopy of leaf and moss that blocks out the searing sky above.

Of course, there's also the humidity, which just makes the heat sizzle, my mom used to say.

"Come on, Stacey," I said. "Last time I saw you, you were getting ready for your date with Jacob. I haven't heard from you all weekend. So...nothing to talk about?"

"I didn't think you'd want to hear me gab about my dates," Stacey said.

"After I spent fifteen entire seconds giving you advice about what to wear? I'm invested now."

Stacey leaned back in her seat, smiling. She's a pretty girl, with her blond pixie-cut hair and a body that's about what you'd expect from a girl who somehow believes that hiking and kayaking are fun weekend leisure activities, rather than the sweaty mosquito-filled nightmares they truly are. It hadn't taken a massive amount of flirting for her to grab the attention of Jacob Weiss, our new psychic consultant, a young accountant who happened to speak to the dead, but only reluctantly.

"It was fun," she said. "Blues concert in the park, dinner..."

"The two exact things I already knew..."

"He's funny," Stacey said. "I mean on the surface. He's smart. But you can tell there's a lot of stuff under there. When he doesn't know you're looking at him, his face is almost grim."

"He's been through a lot," I said. "The plane crash." Jacob had been one of a handful of survivors and awoken to find himself surrounded by the confused ghosts of dead airline passengers who'd been on the plane with him. That event had awoken his abilities to see and hear the dead.

"Did you know he lived in New York?" she asked. "He's from here, I mean his parents live in Savannah, but he went to school at NYU. He was working at a big firm up there, but he moved back home after the crash."

"Is he planning to move back?"

"I don't think he knows. He's kind of lost right now, I think. Who wouldn't be, after what he's been through? I asked him what it was like, hearing all those voices. He took me on a walk downtown, toward Colonial Park Cemetery, and he'd kind of trail his fingers along the outside of a house and tell me things about its history. Just glimpses. 'There was a girl here, she liked to whistle while she picked flowers, her mom would yell at her to stay out of the garden...' Things like that. Could you imagine going through life like that, seeing and hearing all those leftover memories of the dead?"

"It sounds distracting," I said. "How does he drive? Half these streets are built on top of old graves."

"I didn't ask." Stacey snickered. "It does sound crazy."

"So you had a nice dinner and talked about dead people," I said. "And then?"

"And then?" Stacey raised her eyebrows. "Who says there's an 'and then'? Or that it would be any of your business?"

"So there _was_ an 'and then'?"

Stacey blushed. "Okay...maybe he kissed me. That's it. He was a total gentleman, too, with opening doors and stuff. He even pulled out my chair at supper. Who does that anymore?"

"Sounds like he was well-trained by his mom. So are you going out again?"

"I think so. Whoa, check out the giant evil dollhouse." Stacey pointed.

I parked our detective agency's blue cargo van on the street near the new client's house. Stacey's description was apt. We were looking at a towering three-story Victorian, mostly in the style they call Queen Anne—living in Savannah and investigating lots of old haunted houses, you start to learn a few things about architectural style.

The house was stone at the foundations, solid brick on the first floor, and mostly wood by the time you reached the third floor. It had that crazy Queen Anne shape, with bay windows and gables jutting out on every side, and sunken porches like dark caves fronted with ornate wrought-iron railings—you almost thought a bear or a wolf would stalk forward and peer out through the railing like a zoo animal in a cage. A window-lined turret jutted skyward at one corner, and a matching turret roof capped the corner of the enormous wraparound porch, which ran across the front of the house and out of sight down one side.

Elaborately lathed gingerbread-style balusters, spindling, and overhang lay everywhere, and these would have lent the house a charming look if they hadn't been painted dark red, barely visible against the dark earth tones of the house and trim.

"Needs more pink," Stacey said. "And yellow. If you just painted it in cheerful colors, it would be so much prettier. Why spend a billion dollars on a house like this and then make it ugly?"

I didn't reply. My eyes had fallen on another house, visible over brick walls and high wrought-iron fences. It sat on the next street over, behind and one house down from our potential clients. Moss and ivy had nearly swallowed the massive old trees on the lot, making them look like giant monsters wrapped in shrouds.

That other house was tall and narrow, four stories of white brick gone dingy and yellow with age. All the windows and doors were boarded up, giving it the blind look of a mausoleum.

I knew that house. Calvin and I had been hired to remove a very nasty sort of ghost from it about eighteen months earlier.

We'd failed miserably.

Now I saw the fate of that house—sealed up, bank-owned, dead to the world. I thought about the family who'd lived there. The Wilsons. Nice family, husband and wife, four young kids. Driven to insanity and grief.

"What's up?" Stacey followed my look. "Creepy place. Been there?"

"Yes."

"Not for a pleasant Christmas party, I'm guessing?"

"No."

"Feel like offering multiple syllables at once?" Stacey asked.

"Not really. Let's get to work." I climbed out of the van, grabbing my black toolbox while Stacey shouldered her camera bag.

Happily, Stacey didn't press me about the Wilson house. There was hardly time to fill her in on that old case before we spoke with our new client. It gave me the chills, though, visiting a house so close to that one. The back corners of their lots actually touched.

I was suddenly extremely interested to hear what our prospective client had to say. And I was worried for our safety.

We passed a cluster of four mailboxes, labeled A through D. The old Queen Anne mansion had been subdivided into apartments. Judging by the mailbox clusters up and down the street, so had a few others in the neighborhood.

The front steps led us up about half a story to the front porch itself, which was wide enough to host a large crowd, provided they didn't mind sitting in rickety old rocking chairs. A porch swing hung at the flared round corner of the wraparound porch, under the conical turret roof, its chains flaky with rust.

A brass letter "A" was nailed to the front door, which was inset with panes of colored glass and flanked by more colored-glass panes on either side. I rang the bell, half-expecting it to sound like the Addams family door chime.

The woman who opened the door was about my age or a little older—early thirties, tops. She was an attractive African-American woman, her hair done in a hundred tiny braids and pulled back into a ponytail. She wore scorching-weather-appropriate denim shorts and a tank top.

"Are you..." She looked us over in our unseasonably heavy clothes. I've been scratched, bitten, burned, and thrown down enough stairs that I wear turtlenecks and my leather jacket when entering a new haunted house, regardless of the heat. Survival before comfort. And let's just forget altogether about fashion.

"I'm Ellie Jordan, lead investigator with Eckhart Investigations," I said. "This is Stacey Ray Tolbert, my tech manager."

"Just call me Stacey!" Stacey smiled.

"Are you Alicia Rogers?" I asked. "We spoke on the phone."

"Come on in," she said, but she sounded guarded and gave us a suspicious look. Perfectly normal. Clients spend our first meeting trying to assess whether we're scam artists or real ghost-removal experts. I spend the first meeting trying to assess whether the client seems sane or not, so that's fair. A number of people who call us have mental disorders, not ghosts—it's their neurons rather than their houses that are haunted.

Of course, living with a troublesome ghost can also _make_ you crazy, so I have to judge carefully.

Alicia led us into a grand foyer, dominated on one side by a long staircase running straight up to the second floor without making a turn. The staircase was solid dark mahogany, the railing as ornately lathed as the gingerbread spindling outside the house. The ceiling, two stories above us, was patterned in alternating dark and blond wood, with a red geometrical shape suggesting a rose at the center. A four-level antique chandelier hung from the center of the rose design.

The colored-glass windows flooded the front room with light. While it had been built as an impressive entrance to the enormous house, it looked like Alicia used it as a living room. A sectional couch faced a TV screen hung on the wall next to the large, ornate fireplace, which had been constructed with three different colors of brick in an alternating pattern.

"Gorgeous place!" Stacey said.

"It's just a rental. So, y'all really do this?" Alicia looked at me, crossing her arms. "You can take ghosts out of people's homes?"

"In most cases," I said. "You didn't give me a lot of details on the phone." Like, zero details. "What kind of disturbance have you had?"

"Disturbance," she nodded. "That's a good word for it. My kids saw it first." She pointed upstairs. "Up in their rooms. First Mia, then Kalil. Then me." She added the last in a soft, troubled voice.

"How old are your kids?" I asked.

"Kalil's eleven, Mia's nine."

"How long have you lived here?"

"About six or seven months. We moved here a few months after my husband died. I couldn't afford the old place anymore."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Drunk driver," she said. "We had to move to a smaller place. I know this room doesn't look small, but it's really most of the apartment. My room's through there." She nodded at a closed door near the foot of the stairs. "Kitchen's back there, kids are upstairs...and that's all there is to the apartment. We were lucky we could afford anything, and the rent was so low. I thought it would be a new start for us. Listen to me ramble on. So how does this work?"

"We can start by looking at the places where paranormal activities have been witnessed," I said.

"The hauntspots," Stacey said, and I wanted to give her an annoyed scowl. She'd made up that word and was trying to make it stick.

"Yes...where should we start?" I asked. "Where was the activity first witnessed?"

"Mia's room. Come on." Alicia led us up the stairs. Along the way, I noticed pictures on the wall—a young girl in a ballerina costume, a boy with strap-on glasses wearing a karate outfit. A family portrait showed Alicia next to a broad-shouldered, smiling man I assumed to be her deceased husband.

The family photos were interspersed with paintings—brightly colored swamps at sunset, jazz men on distinctly French Quarter street corners.

"Are these from New Orleans?" I asked.

"Oh, yes." Alicia smiled a little, looking back over her shoulder. "Gerard was from Louisiana, and we used to go to New Orleans for Jazz Fest every year, before the kids were born." She smiled, very slightly, and continued up to the top of the stairs.

The upstairs hallway was as luxurious in construction as the rest of the house—high molding engraved with intricate little leaves, paneled walls alternating between dark and light wood, polished hardwood floors.

The hallway had clearly been truncated when the house was divided into apartments. It was short, with just a few doors.

"I told you there wasn't much to the apartment," Alicia said. "Up here, it's just the two kids' rooms, a bath, a linen closet. Apartment B has the rest of the second floor. They've got half the first floor, too. Hard to imagine one family needing this whole house for themselves back in the day."

She led us into a room that clearly belonged to a young girl, the pink bedspread fluffy and lacy and home to a nest of plush giraffes and pigs. Like the rest of the home, it was spotless and tidy, the toys, books, and dolls stacked away in cubbyhole shelving, organized by type. A big mirror, its frame pink and engraved with flowers, reflected the tall arched window, which was trimmed in smaller panes of colored glass. Cheerful Disney-animal prints hung on the bright yellow walls.

"This is Mia's room," Alicia said. "She saw it first."

"What did she see?" I asked.

"The Closet Man. That's what she called him." Alicia approached the closet, which had a pair of narrow double doors that slid aside into wall pockets.

The closet was deep and narrow, like a short hallway. The walls were rough brick instead of the smooth yellow-painted surfaces of the bed room, the floor sunken so I had to step down as I entered it. Old houses are full of weird, unexpected features like that.

Dresses and jeans were arrayed neatly down one side of the closet, completely sorted and separated by type, and I'm pretty sure the blouses and dresses were in ROYGBV rainbow order by color, too.

My Mel Meter spiked up to six milligaus as I passed through the door—a very high reading, especially on a bright summer day.

"Your daughter certainly keeps things organized," I said. "You said she was nine?"

"Mia?" Alicia laughed. "That girl will have this room trashed in three minutes after she gets home from her friend's house. Kalil's the neat one. This is my work, thank you."

I laughed. "Of course, it's normal for kids to be afraid of the closet, but this closet is particularly unusual. I could see it stirring anyone's imagination."

"That's what I thought," Alicia said. "That's what any parent would think. Closet Monster Syndrome, my mother called it. She would prescribe 200 cc's of hot chocolate, followed by bed rest." Alicia smiled. "She was a nurse, too."

"Is that what you do?" I asked.

"Over at St. Joseph's." Alicia nodded. "They've been putting me on afternoon shifts, so I come home late and don't get to see my kids much, which makes all this even harder on everybody..."

"What exactly did your daughter see? How does she describe the Closet Man?" I asked.

"She said he was a man with no face. He'd watch her from the closet while she was in bed. She always wants the closet doors pulled tight, with no gap in between. But she says he opens the doors sometimes—just a little bit, just enough to watch her."

"Creepy," Stacey said, shivering.

"Have you ever seen that happen?" I asked.

"No, but I've had a few nights where I closed the doors for her, then later she screams," Alicia said. "I'll come in and the doors will be open just a little bit. She always swore she hadn't done it herself, but of course I didn't believe her, or I thought her brother must have done it. I don't believe in ghosts. Well, I _didn't_ before all this."

"When did Mia start seeing him?" I asked.

"A few months after we moved in. I understood she was scared—she'd just lost her father. We were all having nightmares. I thought that was all..." She shook her head. "For a long time, all he did was open the closet and look at her. Then it changed. She started saying he'd open the doors all the way and stare at her. Then he started coming into her room—by then, he wasn't Closet Man anymore. He was Fleshface."

"Like the horror movies?" Stacey asked.

"Just like those," Alicia said. "One night, Kalil smuggled home his friend's DVD of _Fleshface II: Flesh and Bones_. Kalil's not allowed to watch scary movies, he gets enough bad dreams as it is. And he's one hundred percent not allowed to show anything scary to his little sister. And don't you know that boy not only watched the movie in his room, but he let his sister see it, too? My aunt was in town watching them, and she'd fallen asleep downstairs. I was ready to smack that boy when I found out." Alicia shook her head. "Since then, it hasn't been Closet Man, it's been Fleshface. And Fleshface comes all the way into her room, sometimes. She's even woken up with him standing by her bed."

"And he looks just like the movie monster?" I asked. I had serious crawling-flesh feelings now. Was the old monster finally back? I tried to push aside thoughts of that old case, but I couldn't help it. The house was right next door—well, catty-corner, anyway, the back corners of the two lots just touching each other.

"That's what she says," Alicia told me. "Just like Fleshface."

"That must be scary." I hadn't seen _Fleshface II_ (or _Fleshface I_ , for that matter) but I'd seen the movie poster at the theater. It looked like your basic knock-off of _Friday the 13th_ or _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ , a serial killer guy in front of an old cabin in the woods. He wore a mask that was apparently made of strips of skin glued together mummy-fashion, leaving only his eyes bare, and he wielded a chainsaw, in a clear stroke of complete unoriginality by the filmmakers. "Has he ever hurt Mia? Ever touched her?"

"He's pulled the blankets off her," Alicia said. "Just one more thing I didn't believe was supernatural. She screams, I run upstairs to check on her, and she says Fleshface pulled the blankets and sheets and threw them on the floor. Of course, when that started, I still didn't believe her. I thought she just had a nightmare and kicked off her own blankets."

"Of course," I said. "How often does she see him? How many times a month?"

"It was only every once in a while, at first," Alicia said. She hugged herself as if cold. "Gotten a lot worse lately."

"And he always comes out of this closet?" I asked.

Alicia nodded. "That's what Mia says. Kalil has seen it from his closet and from his bathroom door, too. One time he saw it looking in his window." Alicia opened another door, opposite from Mia's closet, and led us into a connecting bathroom. Again, it was spotless and gleaming. Even the toothbrushes, Aquafresh Kids pump, floss, and so on were arranged in a perfectly straight row on the marble counter. I wondered whether Alicia kept the house this immaculate every day. It seemed like a ton of work.

The bathroom led into the boy's room, decorated with posters of the solar system and the Milky Way. An autographed photo of Neil DeGrasse Tyson hung in a frame on the wall, next to family photos, and a few math and science trophies adorned the dresser. A model space shuttle was partially constructed on the desk. She told me the boy was away at some kind of math day camp.

"You said Kalil sees Fleshface watching him from this door, too?" I asked, swinging the bathroom door open and closed, as if that were going to tell me something.

"That door and the closet," Alicia said, and Stacey panned her camera around toward the closet door. Unlike the one in Mia's room, this seemed like a normal hinged door. Alicia opened it, showing us a phone-booth-sized closet crammed full of winter clothes.

"Boys don't need as much closet space," Stacey said, and Alicia nodded.

"How long has he been seeing the monster?" I asked. My Mel Meter again showed a spike of activity right at the closet door.

"I don't know. For months," Alicia said. She took a breath, hesitated, then let out a sigh, as if coming to a decision. "Kalil doesn't see Fleshface, though."

"What does he see?"

"He sees...little men. With big black eyes." She shook her head. "Aliens. He sees aliens in his closet."

"Whoa, like little gray guys?" Stacey asked.

"Those. I told him to stop watching those alien-abduction shows on the History Channel, because I thought they were giving him nightmares. I know it doesn't make any sense. I believe in aliens even less than I believe in ghosts, but he's terrified of them." She shook her head. "I'm not saying they're really Martians or anything. That's just what he sees."

"So he sees his own fears personified," I said, feeling myself tremble. This was sounding more and more like the Wilson case. "It certainly fits with his interest in outer space."

"Oh, he loves astronomy. I'm hoping to save up and get him a good telescope for Christmas, but..." Alicia shrugged. "We'll see how that one crumbles."

"What do the aliens do?" I asked.

"He says they usually just watch him from the closet, or they crack open the bathroom door and watch through there. Or he wakes up and one is standing over his bed, like it's studying him. It sounds like all those alien-abduction stories, which is why I thought he was just watching too much TV..."

"What changed your mind?"

"He woke up with scratches on his arm," Alicia said. "I still thought he'd done it in his sleep, but he kept talking about the gray aliens. Now I thought it was something serious, you know, a mental health issue. I had him evaluated, and they diagnosed him with ADHD and sleep disorder. He's on Ritalin and melatonin, but it hasn't helped with the monsters. Now I understand why."

Alicia led us out into the short hallway and fell silent, staring at another door near the end. It was round at the top, set into a decorative archway trimmed in tiny engraved geometric patterns.

"What's through there?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said, hugging her arms close against her again.

"An empty room?" Stacey asked.

"Not even that. That's where I've seen him come and go. Three times, now." Alicia shivered. The hallway did feel a bit colder now, despite the light from the tall windows trimmed in smaller colored-glass panes. "The first time, I was downstairs in my room, sleeping, and I heard Mia scream. I thought, 'Oh, Lord, here goes another nightmare.' It was late—one-thirty-seven in the morning, I remember looking at my clock. So I went upstairs to check on her.

"The house felt so cold that night. I thought I'd check the thermostat once I got Mia settled, make sure we weren't blowing up the electric bill. This was just a couple of months ago, near the end of May.

"So I'm barefoot and wearing my summer nightdress, and I'm freezing by the time I get to the top of the stairs. That's when I saw him. He came out through Mia's door." Alicia pointed to the girl's room.

"Was the door open or closed?" I asked.

"Open a little bit. Kalil, he won't sleep with any doors open—the closet, bathroom, and hallway door all have to be shut tight. Mia likes to keep her hallway door open so she can yell for me. Sleeps with a nightlight, but it burns out or just goes off for no reason, almost every night. It's not natural."

"Ghosts don't like too much light," I said. "A surge of photons messes with their electromagnetic fields. That's why they mostly come out at night."

Alicia nodded. "If you say so. It was dark that night, the hall lights were off, and I don't even think there was much moonlight. I couldn't see him very well, and he was like a heavy dark shadow, with no face, just like Mia used to say. The Closet Man." She looked up at the crown molding and light-and-dark patterned wood ceiling over the girl's door.

"What did he do?" I asked.

"He climbed up out the top of Mia's door." Alicia pointed to the top of the door frame. "He scrambled up the wall and along the ceiling. He was shaped like a man, I mean two arms, two legs, but he didn't _move_ like any man. He crawled like a spider. His arms and legs kind of bent the wrong way. He was upside down, moving fast, and of course he gave me a bad feeling. I was horrified and felt sick all through my body. I knew I was looking at something evil, something that shouldn't be in this world." She wiped sweat from her forehead with trembling fingers.

"It sounds disturbing," I said.

"It was a long way beyond _disturbing_ ," she said. "He climbed on down the hall, and then he slipped into that door." She again nodded at the mysterious closed door nested in its ornate archway.

"Do you mind if I open it?" I asked. I still wasn't clear what she meant when she said there was _nothing_ beyond the door.

"Go ahead." She backed away toward the steps, arms crossed. "It doesn't usually come out during the day."

"That's reassuring," I said. The door handle was a curved brass lever placed high on the door, about shoulder-height to me. I gripped it and turned, trying to prepare myself for the nameless cosmic horrors that lay beyond.

The door opened onto nothing. By that, I mean a smooth, flat piece of wall, painted a stark white, with none of the paneled wainscoting that adorned the rest of the hallway.

I blinked at it. The sheer blankness of it made me stupid, somehow, like my brain stopped functioning for a few seconds to focus its entire attention on processing what I was seeing.

"Yeah," I finally said. "Nothing."

"They must have left it here when they split the house into apartments," Alicia said. "I don't know why they would just leave a useless door like that."

"Maybe because of this sweet arch around it." Stacey pointed to the intricate hardwood trim. "They left it for decoration."

"Maybe," Alicia said. "I sure wish they hadn't. Would you mind closing that when you're done?"

"Sure." I shut the door. "Was it open or shut when he crawled inside it?"

"Shut."

"What did you do next?"

"I ran to check on Mia. My baby was so scared. Talking about Fleshface again."

"Did you come back and check the door?" I asked.

"After I got her calmed down, I made myself come out here and open it. There wasn't anything to see. I took Mia downstairs to sleep with me that night. By the morning, I told myself I'd just let my imagination get away with me. I was probably still half-dreaming when I went up those stairs."

"Do you have any idea what's on the other side of this wall?"

"Apartment B. The Fieldings. That's all I know."

"You said you encountered the entity again?" I asked.

"Come on downstairs," Alicia said, wasting no time descending the steps. "I'll show you."

Stacey and I shared a worried look. This was no simple nuisance ghost or residual haunting. The entire household was living in fear of a very creepy-sounding entity.

I couldn't wait to find it and eliminate it. Ghosts who threaten children have a special place in my heart—a place filled with malice and hate.

We followed Alicia down the stairs.

# Chapter Two

"The second time, I saw him right here. Another late night." Alicia pointed over the railing as we descended. "He crawled alongside the bannister. He looked the same way. No face, shaped like the shadow of a man. His arms and limbs bending strangely. He climbed about halfway down the stairs, then he turned and went straight down the wall."

Alicia led us to the hallway that ran across the back of the entrance hall. It was really more of an open arcade, supported by a row of cherry-wood archways. One side of the hall opened into a kitchen with a large bay window, a row of throw pillows arranged neatly on the window seat.

The other end of the hall terminated at three doors—left, right, and center.

Alicia pointed to the left. "This one leads to the hallway we all share, because it has the only staircase to the basement. The laundry machines are down there. At one time, I thought that was the main reason the rent was so cheap, because everybody has to go and do their laundry in the basement." Alicia let out a little humorless laugh.

"That one leads to my bathroom," she continued. "My bedroom used to be the front parlor, I think, back when it was all one big house with one rich family. But now, this door..." She pointed to the one on our right. "That's where I think he really goes."

"His lair?" I asked.

"Yeah. That's a good word for it," Alicia said. She opened the door, revealing a flight of stairs that ran underneath the main staircase. It was blocked off by cardboard boxes about halfway down.

"Where do those stairs lead?" I asked.

"I guess they used to go to the basement, but they're sealed off now," Alicia said. "That's Mr. Gray's apartment down there. We just use this stairwell for a storage closet."

I peered down the dead-end basement steps, illuminating them with my flashlight. My Mel Meter found yet another spike of energy right at the doorway.

"When I saw him climbing down the wall, he left through here," Alicia continued. "First he looked at me, though. He froze, like a cockroach when you flick on the lights, like he didn't expect to see me. His head turned sideways at me, and his neck twisted in a way...a living person couldn't do that. He kind of stared at me with that blank shadow face. Then he scuttled away inside, even though the door was closed."

"He goes from closet to closet," I said.

"Another night, I woke up from a bad dream and went to the kitchen for some water. When I was coming back, I saw him right here, crawling toward _this_ door again. Well, he jumped right off the wall, right at me...and right _through_ me," Alicia said. "I felt so sick I thought I would die. I got dizzy and nauseated and almost fell over.

"He slipped right through that door and out of sight," she said. "It was a minute before I saw my dress was torn and bloody. They say piranhas can eat your fingers so surgically you won't even know they're missing until you see the blood. That's what this was like." Alicia lifted the front of her shirt, showing us three long, scabby scratch marks across her stomach. "I was bleeding all over and didn't even know it. I can't tell you how scared I was. I work the ER, I'm used to blood, but there was no reason for me to be cut up like that. It meant the ghost was real, not just in our heads.

"I looked in on the kids—good thing they were sleeping and didn't see me like that. I cleaned up, and I just sat out here on the couch, shaking, for the rest of the night. I was scared it would come back and hurt the kids. I was too scared to open the door and go after it, and what could I have done?" Tears glistened in her eyes and she wiped them away. "That's when I knew I had to do something. Bring in some experts. And now you're here. So can you get rid of it?"

"We usually can remove unwanted entities," I said. Stacey gave me a look, either hearing the tremble in my voice or noticing something about the expression on my face. My confidence was crumbling fast.

I kept to my usual script with Alicia, though, mainly because it was the best way to keep myself composed.

"We're going to need to study your situation a little more," I said. "Have you told us everything you've experienced?"

"That's all we've seen so far," she said.

"You mentioned a laundry room in the basement. Have you ever seen or heard anything strange down there?"

"I never liked the basement," she said. "Always feels like somebody's watching you. At first, I thought it was just because it's such a dim, ugly place. It's also right next to Mr. Gray's apartment, so maybe that had something to do with it—Mr. Gray could just walk through the door at any time. I always thought it was just my nerves or my imagination bothering me, but I never went down there during the day. And after this..." She gestured at her stomach. "I trust my instincts more. Could be something there. I'll show you."

Alicia unlocked the door across from the dead-end basement stairs. She led us into a short, paneled side hall. An ornate Victorian door, trimmed in panes of colored glass and surrounded by windows, looked out on the side portion of the wraparound porch. The hallway had three interior doors, including the one from Alicia's apartment and another directly across the hall, which led to another apartment, labeled with a big brass "B."

"Here it is." Alicia opened the third door, the one to the basement. Old wooden stairs led down into a dark, humid brick chamber with a row of three coin-operated washing machines facing three dryers. One dryer chugged and rattled, with an occasional hard thumping sound like there was a shoe inside. A couple of hanging fluorescent bars cast weak, sour light that left much of the room in shadow.

"It's cold," I said, feeling the cool air as I stood in the doorway.

Alicia nodded, keeping her distance from the door after opening it.

"That's weird for a laundry room," Stacey said.

I felt sick and afraid as I looked into the darkness of the basement. It wasn't just fear, it was dread, the deep certainty that something horrible was about to happen.

Something horrible already had, I supposed—the monster had returned.

I pointed my flashlight down the steps, but had no real desire to descend into the basement just yet. It might be down there...and it might remember me.

"Have you asked your landlord whether anyone else has had these experiences?" I asked. "Or if there's any dark history to the house?" Last time, Calvin and I had been unable to determine the identity of the ghost—if it had a human identity at all. It might have been what Calvin called a _demonic_ , a theoretical intelligent spirit that had never been born into flesh.

"Oh, I called the property manager," Alicia said with a scowl. "I told him what was happening, and he implied it was all a mental-health issue on my end. Only he didn't say it that nice. He called me hysterical and reminded me illegal drugs aren't allowed in the building." She shook her head, a little snarl forming at the corner of her lips. "I'm trying to save up enough money to move, but there's not much to spare. The rent's cheap, but there's a big penalty for breaking the lease."

"What about your neighbors? Have they seen anything?" I asked.

"I don't know the Fieldings or Mr. Gray very much. We hardly talk," Alicia said. "I suppose we could ask Michael and Melissa." Alicia pointed up the staircase behind her.

"Do they have any kids?" I asked.

"I would hope not! They're brother and sister. Melissa is seventeen, and she watches my kids sometimes. We can see if Michael's home."

"That would be great," I said.

Alicia led the way up the dark hardwood stairs, the antique grain absorbing the light from the windows alongside them. We crossed a second-floor landing, where there was nothing but a single closed door. She told me it led to the Fieldings' apartment, and they probably left it locked all the time. It looked like the area around the door had been sealed off long after the house was built—the wall was blank and white instead of paneled with wood.

Two more flights brought us up to another small landing, where there was nothing but a single door. A brass letter "C" hung beside it.

Alicia knocked. After a minute, she knocked again, then shrugged.

"He's probably at work," Alicia said. "He's a firefighter and an EMT, works twelve-hour shifts at the station."

"A fireman and a medical guy?" Stacey's eyebrows raised. "Is he cute?"

"Stacey." I shook my head.

"Hey, just asking."

"Do you have any idea why they don't live with their parents?" I asked.

"The parents are gone," Alicia said. "Father ran off, mother passed away. Michael's taken care of Melissa since then."

"Aw, and he takes care of his little sister?" Stacey asked. "He sounds great."

"Stacey, aren't you dating Jacob?" I asked.

"One date. We haven't talked exclusivity..." She glanced at Alicia and blushed. "Uh, anyway..."

"He helps us out, fixing things around our apartment. Electricity, plumbing...thank goodness, because I can barely get the property manager to return my calls when something breaks."

"So he's good with his hands," Stacey said. "Wait, are you like, romantically involved with him, Alicia?"

Alicia shook her head. "Nice guy, just...not my type."

"Next time you see Michael and Melissa, can you ask them to speak with us?" I asked.

"I certainly will."

As we descended the stairs again, I was deep in thought, worried about how we would handle this case. It sounded like the same entity from the Wilson house had slipped over into this apartment building. It had bested us last time, so what could we do now?

I needed to talk it over with Calvin, urgently. And Stacey needed to be brought up to speed.

"Mrs. Rogers," I said when we reached the ground floor, "I think we might have some insight into what's happening here, but I want to do some research and get back with you. We also need to schedule an overnight observation." _Which will hopefully show that I'm wrong about all of this_ , I thought. "We can do it as soon as it's convenient for you, but I recommend we get moving as soon as possible."

"I agree with that," Alicia said.

"We'll have to come in and set up cameras, microphones, and other gear around your apartment," I said.

"Do it as soon as you can," she said. "I'm about to lose my mind here."

"Anybody would feel that way after what you've been through," I told her. "We can start tonight."

Alicia agreed. She led us out to the front porch, and I walked to the corner and pointed to the boarded-up Wilson house. "Have you or your kids ever gone over to that house?"

"That scary old place? They better not have," Alicia asked. "Why? Is it haunted?"

"It has a history of being haunted," I said. "We've investigated it before."

"What happened?" Alicia asked.

"The entity vanished without a trace before I could trap it," I said.

"Wish this one would do the same," Alicia said. "It can start vanishing anytime it likes."

I gave her a laugh. "We'll be in touch a little later today."

Stacey and I left the porch and returned to the van, where I stopped and grabbed a crowbar out of the back, adding it to my toolbox. Then I continued on down the sidewalk.

"Um, where are you going?" Stacey asked. "Aren't we leaving?"

"We're walking to the next block. I want a closer look at the Wilson house."

"Not that creepy tall one with the boarded-up windows?" Stacey asked.

"Exactly that one."

"Ugh," Stacey said. "I'd better bring a flashlight."

# Chapter Three

The next street had large antique homes as well, set back behind ornate but mildly aggressive fences that seemed to dare you to try and climb over their black iron teeth.

The boarded-up old Wilson house loomed over the neighborhood like a blind watchtower, much taller than it was wide. Its yard was a crazed jungle of weeds and wildflowers under the thick shade of the trees.

The air felt chillier as we approached it.

"What exactly happened here?" Stacey whispered.

"The Wilsons," I said. "They experienced what Alicia was just talking about. Monsters in the closet. A shadowy crawling thing that can take the shape of your fears."

"And you didn't catch the ghost."

"We couldn't _identify_ the ghost, so it was hard to trap. And then..."

"Yes? Still listening over here."

"I'll have to let Calvin tell you about that part," I said. "But this ghost was very dangerous. Not just psychokinetic, but psychotropic. Able to induce hallucinations."

"Sounds fun," Stacey said, her tone sarcastic. She looked up at the tall, sealed-up house and let out a slow sigh. "What kind of hallucinations?"

"Whatever you're afraid of." I walked along the fence, then glanced around to see whether anyone was watching. Of course, anybody could have been peering at us through their windows, but the only person on the street was a mail lady in a white Jeep. I waited for her to continue on down the block, then I set my toolbox on the ground.

The fence was about four feet high, the gate padlocked. It wasn't impossible to climb over—just very, very tricky, with the iron spikes all along the top. I placed the toe of my boot on the middle rail.

"Uh, Ellie? It looks like you're about to climb over that sharp fence, there. Am I seeing that wrong?" Stacey asked.

"Give me a boost," I said. "I'll be less likely to impale myself that way."

Stacey helped me over the fence, then handed me my toolbox. I stood in high, tangled weeds.

"You can stay here and keep watch," I told her.

"For what? Old ladies walking Yorkies?" Stacey handed me her camera bag, then vaulted easily over the fence.

"Show-off," I said.

"I did gymnastics in high school." She shrugged, then looked up at the house. "Seems even colder on this side of the fence. Probably just the extra shade, right?"

"Probably." I brought out my Mel-Meter to check the temperature and any electromagnetic fields in the area. As I walked slowly toward the front stoop, stepping over thorny invasive plants and hidden stones on the ground, the meter ticked just a little.

"Are we finding anything?" Stacey looked over my shoulder.

"Just a milligau or so, but even that's unusual. Considering the house looks abandoned and locked up, I'm doubting there's any electricity flowing into it." I glanced up at the power lines, as if that would give me some clues. It didn't, of course.

I walked slowly around the perimeter of the old house, trying to see if the readings picked up.

"So, what happened? They just abandoned the house?" Stacey asked.

I didn't really want to talk about it, but I had no choice. She had to know what we were up against.

"We couldn't get rid of the ghost," I said. "We couldn't trap it, and it started to get very good at hiding from me...Finally the family fired us since we couldn't help. It kept going after their kids, and I guess they couldn't sell the house. They just packed up and left town."

"That must have been a serious haunting," Stacey said. "This house looks expensive."

"Very serious," I agreed. We walked along the side of the house, then around to the back. My Mel-Meter continued flickering, indicating some kind of activity within.

"So tell me about the ghost—hey, are you doing what I think you're doing?"

I'd brought out my crowbar and placed the flat end against the plywood covering a small window at the back of the house.

"Yep," I said. I pointed the end against the edge of the wood and the brick frame of the window sill, and I slapped my hand against the curved end of the bar, hammering it into place.

"So we _are_ breaking and entering?" she asked.

"I just want a quick look around."

After many difficult and sweaty minutes of work, during which Stacey kept glancing around with a worried look on her face waiting for somebody to bust us, the slab of wood pried away with a crack and tumbled into the weeds below the window.

"Little harder than I expected," I said, using my shirt to wipe sweat from my face.

Stacey peered inside the open window, up on her tiptoes for a better view.

"Whoa, somebody wrecked this place," she said.

I looked in alongside her, shining my flashlight into a bare, dusty room where the walls and ceiling had been ripped open.

"It looks like thieves stripped out wiring and pipes to sell for scrap," I said. "That can happen when houses stand abandoned like this. I guess they boarded up the windows a little too late."

"Yeah, those plywood sheets really provide a lot of security," Stacey said, looking at the sheet of wood I'd just pried loose.

"Why don't you gymnast-vault on in there and have a look around?" I asked.

"By myself?" Stacey blanched. "In an abandoned old house?"

"What, are you scared of ghosts?" I asked.

"It's just..." She shook her head. "I never told you about the first time I ran into a ghost."

"It wasn't a college project thing you were shooting at Colonial Park Cemetery?" I asked. That was how Stacey had introduced herself to us, with video footage of ghosts from around the city. She'd told us that she'd caught one on camera by accident, then started intentionally pursuing them. With a regular camera, you're lucky to get a flicker of a shadow, maybe an orb or two. The amount she'd collected, and her obsession with finding more, had impressed my boss, Calvin Eckhart, who'd been looking for someone to help me in the field.

"No..." Stacey shook her head. "That was when I started collecting ghost images. Something else happened back home, when I was a kid."

"Tell me while we look around." I boosted myself up onto the window sill, then into the dark old house. Stacey followed me inside. I hadn't had any intention of sending her in alone.

"Where I grew up, right outside Montgomery, there was an old mansion like this. Well, not quite like this, not as tall, but it was a sprawling old antebellum place. Some parts of the roof had caved in, and it was so old, I can't believe any of it was still standing." Stacey swept her light through the dark room. We continued on into a hallway, and I watched my Mel-Meter for any increase in the electromagnetism around us. "I guess it used to be a plantation house, but most of the land around it was strip malls and stuff...but if you went deep enough into the woods, you could find it standing there, overgrown with thorns and poison ivy. A lot like this place."

I opened a closet door, and my Mel-Meter ticked up to two milligaus. A strong residual or a weak active presence.

"I'm guessing you went inside?" I asked.

"Yeah." Stacey stepped over a broken heap that might have been a wooden chair at some point in its existence. "Right before Halloween, what a shock. My brother was going with a couple of his friends—Kevin was thirteen, and I was eleven. Our older brother, Patrick, was in high school and busy with his own friends. Kevin didn't want me to come either, but I threatened to tell our parents where he was going if he didn't take me with him."

"Bratty little sister," I said.

"Exactly." Stacey said it with a weak half-smile. "So we broke in there that night—well, we didn't really have to break in, because the back door was missing. The place was all in ruins, all rotten inside. The floors creaked and groaned like it was fixing to collapse under our feet, and there were a couple of big holes where you could fall through into the foundation, or whatever was under the house. We didn't have great flashlights like this." She waved her heavy-duty tactical flashlight.

While Stacey talked, I continued checking the rooms of the old Wilson place, particularly the closets, where the EM activity was a little higher. I led her up the steep, winding stairs to the second floor. The place felt like some kind of network of caverns, completely lightless. The air had a stale, sour smell from being sealed inside so long.

I tried to suppress the memories that wanted to boil out at me at each turn—screaming children, the dark mass of the ghost crawling in its spidery fashion across the ceiling, and finally the blood. Blood everywhere.

"We heard something at the back of the house," Stacey said. "Like a scratching sound, over and over again. My brother insisted we go check on it. He said it was probably just a dog or some animal trapped inside the house...I was scared, but I was even more scared to be alone. So I went with them.

"It was creepy, because there were trees growing up through the house, and moss everywhere, like it was half-house, half-forest. The scratching got louder as we advanced, room by room, trying not to fall through the old floorboards.

"Kevin walked up to this old door near the back, and he and his friends dared each other to open it. Every time the scratch sounded, the door bumped a little. There was a latch holding it closed on our side, but it was really loose, a couple of the screws had come out of the wall. I had a bad feeling about it, but if he was right and it was some kind of trapped animal, I wanted him to let it go...so I didn't say anything. I should have."

"Did you open it?" I led Stacey up to the third floor. Three of the Wilson children's rooms had been up here—that meant three bedroom closets I had to check. I walked into the nearest bedroom, where a Cookie Monster poster still hung on one wall. The folding doors to the closet were closed. I set my toolbox down beside them.

"Not me, no way," Stacey said. "Holy cow, I was shaking so hard. My brother was the one who finally did it—lifted the latch, pulled the old door open. I'll never forget that awful rusty squawk from the hinges."

"What did he find?" I tensed and drew open one folding door, half-expecting my worst fears to jump out at me, maybe claw my face off, maybe kill me. Maybe leave me in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.

My heart was thumping as I jabbed the flashlight into the shallow rectangular space of the closet. It was full of cobwebs, and a few forgotten hangers dangled on the rack. More hangers lay on the floor, among abandoned stuffed animals, Barbie dolls, and a pair of very small pink Nikes.

The Mel-Meter ticked up briefly, then subsided.

"When my brother opened the door," Stacey said, "I thought something would jump out at us, the way it was scratching and clawing on the other side. But nothing did. The door opened, the scratching stopped, and we were looking into a small, dark room, with a little moonlight leaking in from a window.

"The smell hit us a couple seconds later—a gagging, dead-thing-full-of-maggots smell. We all kind of choked, but my brother pulled his shirt over his nose and stepped in there anyway. He was always the brave one, you know. Patrick, my oldest brother, was the popular one, and he stayed out of trouble. Kevin could create trouble out of any situation, even a church barbecue."

"What was inside the room?" I asked, while leading us into another dark bedroom. Crayon drawings adorned one wall, animals with big teeth and claws, nightmarish things drawn by a little boy. A small bed lay in one corner as if it had been shoved there haphazardly.

"A dead squirrel," Stacey said. "And that thing had been dead for days, its eyes and guts were all eaten out—"

"I get the idea."

"It was gross. But it definitely hadn't been scratching and pounding on any doors anytime that night. And there was nothing else in the room. We shined our flashlights all around—well, _they_ did. I just stayed outside the door and watched.

"The scratching sounded again," Stacey said, and her voice was very low now. "From inside the wall."

I checked the closet, and again my meter flickered upward, almost two milligaus this time, though there was nothing visible inside. I knelt by the bed and eased up the edge of a blanket to shine my light into the darkness beneath it. Again, I tensed myself for an attack, but found only dust bunnies, and not particularly feral ones. My meter again ticked up a notch.

A banging sounded upstairs, startling me into scampering back from the bed. Stacey gasped, shining her light up at the moisture-damaged ceiling.

"What was that?" she whispered.

I opened my toolbox and brought out our goggles—thermal for me, night vision for Stacey. We strapped them onto our foreheads, ready to drop them over our eyes if we needed them. I cued up a Karamanov symphonic work, a little Eastern Orthodox gospel to blast at the ghost. The right music can be a powerful weapon against troublesome spirits, slamming them with enough emotional energy to jar them for a little while. Or send them running, if you're lucky.

The banging continued overhead.

I motioned for Stacey to follow me.

We ascended the steep, narrow stairs to the fourth floor, approaching the repeated banging above.

There were only two doors at the top. A weird light flickered below one of them, in time with the banging. The sound clearly came from that direction. I pointed at the door, and Stacey nodded.

I pushed it open. We walked into a room with exposed timber rafters and a slanted roof, which had been the bedroom of the oldest Wilson child.

A bit of light flashed at me, then vanished, and the banging sounded again. I turned my flashlight toward it.

The plywood panel covering one of the narrow, rectangular windows had come loose. A stiff wind was blowing in through the broken glass, whipping the panel so it banged against the window frame, letting in brief flashes of light from outside.

"It's the ghost of the haunted window," Stacey said, in such a dead-serious, solemn tone that I had to laugh.

"About as dangerous as your dead squirrel," I said. I inspected the fireplace with my flashlight and Mel-Meter. Again, it hovered between one and two milligaus.

"That wasn't the end of the story," Stacey said. "While the boys were poking around in there, something came out of the corner. I mean it didn't come from a window, and the only door was the one where I stood. One minute, there's nothing there at all. Then, all at once, a heavy black mass, like a dark cloud, fills that whole corner of the room.

"Kevin's two friends backed away. Kevin moved toward it, though, shining his little orange pumpkin flashlight, just a cheap thing from the Halloween section at the grocery store. And the darkness absorbed the light.

"She took shape from the black mist. A woman in a hoop skirt, a bridal veil. Her dress was transparent in the moonlight, so you could see the rotten skin and bones beneath. Her face was decayed, you know. But her eyes were pale blue, and they just about glowed. I can still see them." Stacey shivered.

I approached the closet door.

"You saw a full apparition," I said.

"More than full. Overflowing. She looked at my brother, standing right in front of her. Then she bared her teeth and lashed out at him. Her skeletal little hand was like a shriveled claw, and she left scratch marks across his cheek." Stacey demonstrated with her own fingers across her face. "It was ugly."

"What did you do?" I slid open the folding door to the closet. A dark, deep space with a low ceiling, more like a crawlspace than a closet, looked back at me, daring me to come play with the spiders and the restless dead.

"We all screamed and ran," Stacey said. "One of the floorboards broke beneath me, and I fell on my face. I used one of those trees to pull myself up, and I remember the trunk was soft and rotten, and I could feel insects crawling over my fingers, but I couldn't see them. I had no idea where my flashlight was by this point.

"So I got to my feet and ran back through the house, out the front door with the other boys. Kevin's friends jumped off the porch and started running for the woods.

"I yelled after them, asking where my brother was. One of them turned and pointed into the house. The other one didn't even look back.

"I screamed for them to come back, but they were gone, off into the woods. Leaving me there alone, with my brother somewhere inside the house. So I went to the front door and started screaming for Kevin. He didn't answer me.

"Finally, I just went back inside to look for him, even though I was scared to bits by this point. In one of the rooms, which had about four good-sized trees growing through it, most of the floor was missing. In the dark space below, I could see the pumpkin-orange glow of Kevin's flashlight pointed at the old rock foundation of the house. It was lying on top of all these broken floorboards. I mean, there was almost no floor left in that room, I couldn't have crossed through it if I'd tried.

"So I yelled his name, you know, 'Kevin! Kevin!' And I thought I heard him groan down there, but I wasn't sure. I couldn't see him at all, the way his flashlight was pointed.

"Then I felt the air get cold, like really, _really_ cold. I felt her looking at me before I saw her. She stood on the other side of the open pit, staring at me."

"The rotten dead bride chick?" I asked.

"Yeah, the dead bride chick. And she spoke to me. It was just a whisper, but I could hear it clearly across the room. 'Don't cry for him,' she said. 'All men are devils under the skin.'"

"Early feminist thought of the antebellum South," I murmured.

"Well, she disappeared. Just whoosh, gone. And then chunks of the old ceiling started coming down on me, and the floor groaned under my feet, and it started to sink. She was trying to kill me with that old house.

"I shouted to my brother that I'd get help, but I didn't hear him say anything back. I got out of the house as fast as I could, but my ankle started burning. I guess I'd turned it when I'd fallen through the old board earlier, but I hadn't noticed yet. I noticed it then. It was all I could do to hobble to the front door while pieces of the ceiling and walls crumbled down on top of me.

"The front porch stairs were old and collapsed, so I had to sit down and slide off the porch. I moved as fast as I could, through the weeds and briars, sort of hop-dragging with my swelling ankle. I looked back, expecting to see the whole house shaking like an earthquake, but it was dead calm. A pale light glowed in one of the windows, like somebody was holding a dim candle. I think that was her, watching me.

"I made it into the woods and kept going. It was maybe a half mile to the nearest road, which normally wouldn't seem that far, but my ankle was screaming in pain with every step. I had to drag myself through those woods, using low branches to support me. I stumbled that way for a long time, and I kept looking back, sure the lady was going to pop out of the woods and kill me.

"Finally, I made it to a break in the woods, one of those strips they carve out for power lines, you know, with grass growing under it. I followed those out toward the highway. My ankle was killing me. I finally felt some relief when I saw that bright red light, and that big freckled girl smiling down at me...it was a Wendy's sign.

"I limped inside, all scratched up and dirty from the woods, and leaned against the wall so I didn't collapse to the floor. The manager called the police and my parents, and he gave me a free chocolate Frosty since I didn't have any money.

"It felt like forever waiting for my parents and the police. I wanted to go back into the woods with the cops, but they wouldn't let me. I couldn't actually walk. My dad went with them, my mom stayed with me. She basically set me in the car and yelled at me." Stacey sighed. "So why do you keep staring into the closets, Ellie? Is this thing really a closet monster?"

"We're looking for the boogeyman," I said.

"Okay, but seriously..."

"Seriously. _Babau_ in Eastern Europe. _Busseman_ if you want to get German about it. _Saalua_ or _lulu_ in the Middle East. _Dongola Miso_ in parts of Africa. The monster that hides in dark places and comes out to torment children at night." I peered into the deep crawlspace-closet. Black widow spiders perched in there, watching me from their webs. Ugly little dark-shelled palmetto bugs scurried away from my light. "It's a species of specter known all over the world."

"Whoa," Stacey said. "And it knows what scares you?"

"It feeds directly on fear," I said. "Remember the Paulding case, with the poltergeist? Poltergeists feed on anger, particularly the frustrations of adolescents and children...probably because their emotions are more powerful and less controlled."

"Low-hanging fruit," Stacey said.

"There's more energy to take, and it's easier, compared to adults," I said. "The paranormal journals call these entities fearfeeders or fearmongers, I guess because _boogeyman_ just doesn't sound sciencey enough _._ They feed on the emotional energy released by fear, so they've developed methods of causing people to feel as much fear as possible. Like I said, they focus on children because that's where the energy is, but that doesn't mean adults are immune. Not at all."

"Great. And things went wrong last time?"

"Very wrong. You never finished your story," I said. My Mel-Meter had given me readings similar to the other closets, so I closed the door and headed downstairs.

"Right," Stacey said. "Where was I?"

"At Wendy's, getting yelled at by your mom."

"Yeah, so my dad and the police went to find Kevin. I guess the cops knew right where to go. It probably wasn't the first time kids had decided to sneak into the haunted old mansion in the woods." She shook her head. "It turns out my brother had landed on some big nineteenth-century nails. His heart and lungs were punctured. He was probably dead before I even escaped the house."

"Oh, my God, I'm sorry," I said, touching her arm. I felt genuinely horrified. "You never told us about any of this."

"I don't like to talk about it." Stacey was looking away as we rounded a landing and continued down the steps.

"I understand."

"I did tell Calvin, though. I just asked him not to tell you."

"Why?" I looked back at her, but she wasn't meeting my eyes.

"I kind of felt like you didn't want me around." Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear it over our echoing footsteps. "I didn't feel comfortable with you knowing that about me."

I stopped and turned back to face her as we reached a lower landing.

"It wasn't about you," I said. "I didn't want...honestly, I didn't feel like I was ready to train anybody else. I'm still learning so much myself. And you've seen how dangerous this work can get. I didn't want to be responsible for somebody else's life. Or for their death. I'm really sorry to hear about your brother."

"It was a long time ago. It doesn't always feel that way, though."

"I know." I didn't need to tell Stacey about Anton Clay, the fiery ghost who'd burned my house down and killed my parents when I was fifteen. Both of us had lost family members to ghosts. "So you weren't just some aw-shucks kid who happened to catch a ghost on her video camera. You were searching for them, weren't you?"

"I've been searching for them since my brother died," Stacey said. "I used to sit alone in my room with a Ouija board. The whole occult thing. I hid it from my family, of course. It would have horrified their United Methodist sensibilities."

"How do they like you working here?"

"I haven't...totally told them what I do," Stacey said. "They think I'm a production assistant for a company that makes commercials and stuff."

"So you haven't told them at all."

"They'd think I was crazy. Or into Satan or something."

"That's what my Aunt Clarice thinks," I said. "She's the one who took care of me after my parents..."

"She thinks you're into Satan?"

"Probably." I snickered. "She thinks we're all crazy, selling pure craziness to people even crazier than ourselves."

"Sounds about right," Stacey said.

We climbed back out the window. After the relentless heavy darkness inside, the sunshine outside came as a blinding shock.

# Chapter Four

I wanted to speak with Calvin about the new case right away, but we also needed to spend some time at the city archives for background research before it closed at five p.m.

Our first job was to sort through the property titles of the house and identify who had lived there and when, establish a complete history of ownership. This process was about as much fun as it sounds—lots of old file folders and faded type on yellowed paper.

"Done," Stacey sighed, when we'd traced the owners back to the house's construction in 1889. It had most recently been acquired by Keystone Properties, a company whose sign I'd seen on small apartment and office buildings around town.

"Now, all the neighboring houses," I said.

"You're kidding." She slumped back in her hard wooden chair.

"Now that we know the entity is mobile, we have to cast a wider net," I said. "The Wilson house wasn't built until 1925. There wasn't a house there before—the area where it stands was part of the garden belonging to the house next to it. That's why the house is so tall and narrow, because the lot is small. We investigated the older house next door last time, the one that used to own the property, but it didn't give us any good leads. Now we know to look all around, at houses on both streets."

"That'll take forever," Stacey said.

"Let's get digging," I said, approaching the row of file cabinets. A rotund, middle-aged archive clerk with a walrus mustache watched me from a desk.

"Don't re-file anything," he said, for the fifteenth time that afternoon. "We have a very specific system. Leave it all on the table when you're done."

"I will," I assured him, also for the fifteenth time.

He raised the _Better Homes and Gardens_ magazine he was reading, but he kept his eyes on me, clearly suspicious that I would attempt to re-file something if he glanced away for a moment.

I returned to our table with another heap of folders. Stacey gave just the slightest pout at the sight of them.

"This is great," I said. "We'll have to find something, finally."

"Yeah, great," Stacey said, in a not-so-thrilled tone of voice. She didn't immediately leap to open the folders and start searching. "So, what about this alleged hot fireman guy?"

"What about him?" I sat across from her again and began reading through more exciting property-title records.

"When do we get to talk to him?"

"We need to get this done, Stacey. The archive's closing soon."

"I know that! I just meant, you know, he lives in the building, too, so he might have witnessed something. And his little sister or whatever might have seen the ghost."

"Right, witnesses. That's why you're so interested."

"I'm all business." She winked. "Still...hot fireman guy. Just think about it."

I slid her a stack of folders. "Just think about tracing the ownership of the old Greek Revival house on the corner."

She sighed and got to work.

The walrus-mustached clerk began clearing his throat about ten minutes before closing time, and he kept clearing it. We'd churned up a heap of stuff for him to re-file.

When I said it was time to go, Stacey jumped to her feet and all but flew to the door.

"Sorry about the mess," I said to the clerk as I walked past him, giving him an apologetic smile.

"You didn't re-file anything, did you?" he asked, looking suddenly alarmed.

"Not one piece of paper, I promise."

"We have a very specific system here."

"I understand."

He hefted to his feet as I left the room, and he hurried to close the door behind me.

We drove out of downtown, to the fairly scary-looking industrial district where our office is located. The largest area of the office is the workshop in back, where we park the van and store all our gear. I sat down with Calvin at the long worktable in at the center of the room while Stacey poked around in the refrigerator. Hunter, Calvin's bloodhound, nosed around her, clearly curious what she might do with the food.

"Who wants salad?" she asked, grabbing out lettuce and a tomato.

"I'm not hungry," I said. I'd been dreading telling Calvin about the new case.

"You look upset," Calvin said.

"I know you must have noticed the location of our new client," I said.

"I did."

"I think it's a fearfeeder," I said, and then I filled him in on the details.

"That sounds like our old friend the boogeyman," Calvin said, with a smile that didn't have the least bit of humor. "Maybe you should just advise the family to move. Leave this case alone."

"I can't do that," I said. "Neither would you, in my position."

"You can't place yourself into that kind of danger."

"Pickles, anyone?" Stacey asked. "I like bread and butter pickles on my salads, but other people seem to hate that..." She looked at the haggard expression on Calvin's face, then at whatever fear or anxiety was showing on mine. "What are we talking about? Why does everyone look like we all just got called for jury duty or something?"

"Did you tell her what happened during the Wilson case?" Calvin asked me.

"I thought I'd let you explain," I said.

"Are we sure nobody wants salad? I brought Bacon Bits." Stacey shrugged, then sat down with a bowl and started crunching. "So what's the mystery? Ellie told me you never caught the ghost last time."

"We nearly did," Calvin said. "We couldn't identify the ghost, and we couldn't lure him into a standard trap with just candles for bait. So we set up the bear cage in the attic area on the fourth floor."

"Bear cage?" Stacey raised her eyebrows.

"We mainly call it that because it's a bear to transport and set up," I told her. "We haven't used it since...well, it's been a long while." I walked to a storage closet, which I opened to reveal a roughly phone-booth-sized object draped in a tarp. It stood next to shelves crammed full of soldering irons and baskets of sharp hand tools and spools of wire.

"And it's big enough for a bear," Calvin added, watching us from the table. He was shuffling a deck of cards, something he did at times to keep his hands busy. Calvin loved the cards—he had a running poker game with a few old friends from the city police force. He'd worked with them as a homicide detective before retiring to hunt ghosts full-time.

"And even if it works, you _barely_ survive." I gave him a smile. We were resurrecting an old inside joke from before Stacey's time, from the day we'd set up the trap after carrying it, piece by heavy piece, up the four stories of the house. We'd tried to use the word _bear_ as many times as we could. "Anyway, we had to bear it all the way up to the attic. That's when I decided I preferred basement ghosts to attic ghosts."

"Let's see it," Stacey said, walking over to help me pull the tarp off the big trap. While the canvas thudded to the ground, her eyebrows rose. "Holy...you could fit a cow in there. Well, a small one."

The cage, mounted on a platform with lockable wheels, was indeed big enough for a small cow. It had leaded-glass panes on every side, done in a Victorian array of colors that made it resemble a set of church windows welded together into a cage. Either that or some crazed lighting fixture from the nineteen-seventies.

"There are two doors," I said, while I unlatched and opened both of them. The narrow doors were on opposite sides of the colored-glass cage, so that you could run straight through it without slowing down—which was pretty much the whole idea. "It's for ghosts who won't respond to other kinds of traps, but who will chase and attack any nosy ghost removal specialists in the area. Ghosts who are only tempted by live bait."

"And we're the bait?" Stacey asked.

"We hate this trap," I said. "For obvious reasons. It's a bear to move and a bear to keep charged. But we eventually had to resort to it for the Wilson case."

"Did it work?" Stacey peered inside. Fine copper mesh lined every surface, fitting together and overlapping at the corners of the cage. When charged, the layer of mesh created an electromagnetic prison for ghosts.

I looked at Calvin.

"I was the bait," he said. "Still had my legs under me back then. Ellie had your job, Stacey—out in the van, monitoring the house. There was a lot of scattered activity in that place, aside from the fearfeeder."

"That's what we're calling the boogeyman, right?" Stacey asked. "You were boogeyman bait."

"Only I didn't boogie fast enough, it turned out," Calvin said. His face was perfectly stoic while he made the little joke, framed by his overgrown gray hair and granny glasses. "By this point, the family was out of there for the night, staying at a relative's place. I was alone in the house, and it was so active....the boogeyman brings his pack of stolen souls with him, you see. He's looking to add a new one, sooner or later. A child. But first he feeds on the living for as long as he can, until he picks which child he wants to take away with him. Then he's gone, dormant, like a bear that's filled its belly for the winter. That's how these fearfeeders usually operate."

"So the boogeyman was in this trap?" Stacey said, regarding it with new curiosity.

"By the time the entity finally came for me, I'd been alone in that dark house full of whispering, creaking, and knocking for several hours. I'd seen apparitions of dead children. I told Ellie everything was fine, but...I could feel that place eating into me." Calvin said. "I should have called it a night. I was too worn by the time it arrived. Worn down by fear."

Stacey had returned to her chair, leaning on the table and listening to Calvin, her salad long forgotten.

"He pursued me—as he'd already done the night before, as I knew he would do—and I led him right into the trap. Ellie was watching on video and monitoring the trap's sensors. She had a remote control ready to slam both doors once the entity was inside, just as soon as I ran out the second door. That was the plan.

"He chased me into that trap. While I was inside, just before I made it to that second door, I turned and looked back." Calvin winced and shook his head. "Never look back, that's what they say. They're right. I just glanced over my shoulder—I was wearing night vision goggles—to see if he'd followed me. And that's when I saw him."

"What did he look like?" Stacey asked.

"He'd reached in and found something that scared me when I was younger, when I was in uniform," Calvin said. "Something that lurks in the mind of every cop on the beat, or every time you stop a motorist. It's the quick-draw devil, the one that gets the drop on you, the one that puts a bullet in you. That random, armed madman who pulls a gun instead of his driver's license. You never know who it's going to be. Odds are you'll never see him at all, but he could show up anytime. He could look like anybody at all.

"His clothes were nothing you'd notice, just the plainest street clothes, gray flannel, faded jeans. His face was about as vanilla-average as any you could cook up, except for two things—his black sunglasses, where I could see two images of myself looking back at me. They weren't exactly my reflection, though. They were my younger self, in my uniform days, looking scared as all get out, like I'd seen the devil himself rising up from the soil.

"The other thing was his smile. Sly. Knowing. Because he had the drop on me.

"I barely had time to notice his weapon—it was a fat, six-barreled pepperbox revolver, like something out of the back room of an antique store. He was already shooting at me, the barrels rotating and blasting hellfire.

"I felt those things tear through my chest and stomach, hot metal slugs that slowed and rolled as they passed through me. He fired all six shots and never missed one. I was on the floor of the cage, with my blood everywhere. There was no chance for Ellie to close the trap, because I couldn't move—my legs were useless already.

"The armed madman shriveled up and turned into the entity's real shape, the faceless black shadow. It crawled away across the ceiling, upside down, like a bug. Its movements are all jerky but almost too fast to see."

"It shot you?" Stacey was horrified. "Ghosts can shoot you?"

"The bullets were just an embodiment of _my_ fear," Calvin said. "They didn't exist for long. Nobody ever found a single one of them, either in the room or inside me. Ectoplasm bullets...there when you need them, gone when you don't. The ghost was just punching holes in me with its psychokinetic energy. Got me right in the central nervous system."

"That's terrible!" Stacey said. "I'm so sorry."

"I'm used to it," Calvin said. "It's been about eighteen months now. Anyway, that eventually led to a job opening for you, so it all worked out." He forced a smile.

"And so he got away," Stacey said. "That's the one we're dealing with now? We'll get him for you, Calvin!"

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, but this is a tricky entity," Calvin said.

"I kept trying to capture it by myself," I told Stacey. "Calvin didn't want me to, but I spent the next week at that house. The family finally told me to give up, because they weren't coming back."

"That was the one good thing about what happened to me," Calvin said. "It convinced that family the house was too dangerous for their children to ever set foot in again. They escaped with all their children. Another family hadn't been so lucky." He shook his head. "I can't believe he got the drop on me."

"What happened to the other family?" Stacey asked.

"The McAllisters. They lived in that house in the early seventies. They had a child go missing, six-year-old girl. No evidence, no sign of a break-in, no leads. Most kidnappings are done by people who already know the kid—the perp's identity is something you figure out in the first thirty seconds. There was nobody like that in her life. The girl had screamed about demons in her closet to the point where her family brought her to a kid psychiatrist. Then, one night, they tuck their little girl into bed and she disappears before sunrise. Nobody ever saw that girl again."

"We aren't just looking for violent deaths this time," I told Stacey. "Now that we know it moves from house to house, we have to look for missing children connected to all the surrounding houses, going back as far in time as we can dig."

"So basically we're just going to live at the library every day until we solve the case," Stacey said. "We're still identifying the past owners of all the houses."

"Let me see what you have," Calvin said, glancing at our notes. "I'll start checking missing persons databases for all the families who've lived at those addresses, but that will only take us so far back in time. I can ask my friends at the department to look through older missing person files, but we'll need to give them much more specific details than what we have here."

"How can we find out about the older cases?" Stacey asked.

"Maybe call your boyfriend," I said, and she blushed a little. "We can have Jacob check the house, then walk around the block and see if he picks up on any missing kids over the centuries. He probably won't be able to give specific names and dates, but at least locations and eras. That could narrow it down."

"So we should bring him in soon?" Stacey asked. "I'll call him."

"As soon as possible," I said. "If he could come tomorrow night, that would be great."

"Why not tonight?" she asked. "I mean, if he's available."

"We have enough to do tonight, setting up the observation gear and trying to talk to Alicia's neighbors," I said. "If we wait and get a clearer picture of what's going on, we'll have a much better idea of how we want to use Jacob. Well, I guess we all know how _you_ want to use him, Stacey, but—"

"Change of subject," Stacey said, blushing now. "Away from my love life. So how do we trap this guy, or this thing, when you haven't been able to do that before?"

"That's why we're looking into missing-child cases," I said. "The oldest cases might give us a clue about the origins of the fearfeeder."

"You mean the boogeyman? But we're not even sure if he's human, right?" Stacey asked.

"We'd better hope he is," Calvin said. "If it's a demonic, it could prove impossible to trap him."

"Well, yay," Stacey said. "Can't wait to get started."

# Chapter Five

Evening was already coming on, darkening the street with shadows as Stacey and I returned to Alicia's house. We had to park halfway down the block, since only street parking was available.

"Can't wait to carry this junk all the way to the house," Stacey grumbled as we hopped out of the van. She pulled the strap of her camera bag over her shoulder. We'd be making a few trips to bring in all the cameras and tripods.

"What are you complaining about?" I asked. "I thought you liked going on long hikes with a heavy pack on your back."

"That's different," she said, while we walked toward the big Queen Anne house. "That's in the woods or the mountains."

"Then pretend you're in the mountains," I said. "Problem solved. Look, deer! And...monkeys!"

"There are no monkeys in the Appalachians," Stacey said.

"So it's an exciting adventure already." I led the way onto the porch and rang the bell.

Alicia smiled when she opened the door, though it looked like she was struggling to make the smile happen. The TV was blasting in the living room behind her, some singing-kids show that was probably on Sprout or the Disney Channel.

"Hi!" said a young girl by Alicia's side, who I recognized as Mia from her pictures.

"Mia, this is Miss Ellie and Miss Stacey," Alicia said.

"Nice to meet you, Mia!" Stacey gushed, while I nodded and waved.

"Are you the monster catchers?" Mia asked.

"That's us," I said, while Alicia ushered us inside.

"How do you catch them?" Mia asked.

"We have special traps," I told her.

A boy with thick glasses watched us from the couch. Math textbooks and worksheets cluttered the coffee table in front of him. Math camp, I remembered. I would've hated that as a kid.

"And this is Kalil," Alicia said.

Kalil stood up and offered his hand.

"Hello, it's nice to meet you," Kalil said, as professional as any business executive. Stacey and I shook his hand. "Please let me know if I can assist."

"You're the future astronomer, aren't you?" Stacey asked.

"Astrophysicist," he corrected. "I want to help search for Goldilocks planets."

"What are those?" Stacey asked.

"Like the Three Bears," he said. "Not too hot, not too cold...not too close or far from its star, but just right. A planet must have liquid water for life as we know it to emerge."

"That's interesting—" Stacey said.

"There could be as many as forty billion planets the right size and location for life," Kalil said. "That's just our galaxy alone."

"Amazing!" Stacey said, looking genuinely impressed. "Huh. That gives you a lot to think about."

"Want to see me do a cartwheel?" Mia asked Stacey, as if jealous of the moment of attention Kalil was getting. The girl didn't wait for an answer, but went right into three cartwheels that took her all the way across the living room.

"Very nice!" Stacey clapped.

"Okay, kids, they have work to do," Alicia said. She turned to me. "What's next?"

"We'll set up our observation gear to try to get a look at what's happening here," I said. "Cameras, most importantly. We need to place those in the paranormally active areas of the house."

"The hauntspots," Stacey said, making me cringe a little.

"He's in my closet," Mia said, looking very serious now. "Fleshface. You have to get him!"

"That's the plan," I told her. "Mrs. Rogers, we'd like to put gear into both kids' rooms for us to watch overnight, if that's all right with you."

"That's fine," she said. "Call me Alicia, though. I'm not that much older than you, am I?"

"No, ma'am," I said, and she rolled her eyes and laughed a little.

"I'm surely not _that_ old, either," she said.

"What kind of equipment do you use?" Kalil asked.

"I can tell you all about that!" Stacey said. "Especially if you help me carry it in from the van."

"I want to help, too!" Mia said, stepping in front of her brother.

"Great," Stacey said. "Let's get moving."

Alicia followed us outside. With her help, and the kids carrying tripods, we brought in the gear in just a couple of trips.

I frowned at the purple sky above, while the last orange embers of the sun died away somewhere beyond the west end of the street. It was better to set up during daylight hours, so you don't have to go into the hauntspots after dark when the ghosts might be getting active.

_Hauntspots_. Stacey's word had crept into my thoughts like an unwelcome party guest.

"Let's start in my room," Kalil said, after we'd deposited our gear in a heap in the living room.

"No, my room!" Mia countered. "I have the worst ghost. You just have aliens."

Kalil cleared his throat. "Have you ever encountered extraterrestrials?" he asked me, dead serious.

"Not so far," I told him. We lugged gear up the stairs. "We think that what you're dealing with has the power to take the shape of whatever you fear. That's why you each see different things."

"Aliens could be real," he said. "The universe is probably loaded with species more intelligent and capable than we are."

"I certainly hope so!" I replied, but he didn't seem to find it funny.

"If there aren't aliens, then what's in my closet?" he asked.

"It's a kind of electromagnetic entity imbued with consciousness," I said, thinking he'd dig the scientific terms.

"Huh?" Mia asked, pausing by the door to her room, holding a tripod in both arms.

"A ghost," Stacey said. "A ghost that can pretend to be other things."

"Oh," Mia said. "Like Fleshface."

"Exactly. It's not really Fleshface. Fleshface is just a made-up character from a movie," Stacey said.

"Maybe." Mia did not look convinced.

We set up thermal and night vision cameras in her room, pointed at her closet door, along with a high-powered microphone and EMF and motion detectors. We didn't want to miss anything in the kids' rooms.

Stacey explained to a very curious Kalil how ghosts draw energy from their environment, creating cold spots and shapes we can detect on thermal, and how we use EMF meters to check for unusual electromagnetic activities.

We moved on to Kalil's room.

"We'll watch your kids as closely as we can," I said to Alicia. "But the house is full of blind spots, and we won't be able to fully track the entity's movements unless we can get your neighbors to agree to cameras, too."

"I don't know," Alicia said. "I really don't know the Fieldings or Mr. Gray. What do we say? 'Hi, remember me from the mailbox and the laundry room? Can I set up cameras to check your apartment for ghosts?'"

"How about your neighbors on the third floor?"

"I told Michael and Melissa what we're doing," Alicia said. "They're expecting y'all to go up and ask some questions, but I don't know about cameras..."

"We'll make that one of the questions," I said. "Stacey, how much longer up here?"

"There's a lot to do," Stacey replied. "We need a few downstairs, too."

"We need to go up and speak to the third-floor neighbors."

A wicked smile broke across her face—Stacey thinking of the mysterious hot fireman, no doubt.

"Hey, I've got this covered," she said. "Especially with the kids helping me. Why don't you go on up?"

"Seriously?" That threw me off-balance for a second. I'd thought she wanted to meet Fireman Michael pretty badly, the way she kept bringing him up.

"Yeah, you can fill me in on the highlights later." Stacey winked.

My cheeks burned a little as I realized what she meant. She wasn't interested in the guy for herself, but for me. That made me feel embarrassed somehow.

"I'll take you up there," Alicia said. "Kids, put yourselves on Grade A behavior. I'll be right back."

Kalil mumbled something and nodded, not even looking up from the technical manual for Stacey's thermal camera, which he was studying as though he had to memorize it. Mia was showing off her somersaults to Stacey and didn't respond.

"Mia, what did I say?" Alicia snapped.

Mia rose up from a somersault, held out both arms, and sang out "Grade AAAAA!" dragging out the "A" sound as if it were the dramatic crescendo note of a musical.

"That's right," Alicia said.

Alicia led me back downstairs, into the short side hall that provided the apartments shared access to the basement. I opened the basement door and looked down into the flickering darkness below.

"We should really get a camera down there, too," I said.

"I'm not sure all the neighbors would agree," Alicia replied.

"Maybe I'll have Stacey hide one in a laundry basket or something." _But I'm not sending her down there alone_ , I thought.

"I didn't want to say anything in front of the kids," I told Alicia, while we walked up the stairs. "But if this haunting is what I think it is, the entity is very dangerous. It may have taken a five-year-old girl who lived here a few decades ago. It...injured my boss, Calvin Eckhart. Paralyzed him."

"So my kids aren't safe here."

"Is there anywhere they could go?"

She sighed. "Not in town. I could have Mia stay at a friend's house for a night maybe. Kalil, he's a little more difficult. He doesn't have a lot of friends, and he'd rather stay home and read..."

"Have you considered moving out?"

"Naturally, but that's so expensive. I had to put down a deposit and a month's rent, and there's a big penalty if I break my lease, then I'll have to come up with a lot more money to move...and I didn't want to take the kids away from their school, but there's not much we can afford in this district. That's why I called you."

I nodded. "From what I've read about these entities, they feed on their hosts a long time before taking them, if they take them at all. Bonnie McAllister dealt with it for over a year before she vanished."

Alicia stopped a few steps down from the third-floor landing. She looked at me, studying me for a moment.

"Can you get rid of this or not?" she asked. "If my kids are in danger, we'll run, even if we end up homeless and living in the car."

"If we can't, you'll be the first to know," I said. "You should all be safe while we're here, because Stacey and I will watch the house at night until this is resolved. We haven't even verified that this is the same ghost from the other house...but it certainly sounds like it."

Alicia shook her head, not looking reassured at all. I couldn't blame her.

"What happened to your boss?" Alicia asked.

"He was attacked while trying to capture the entity. It was evasive—it hid from us for most of the investigation, and then it fought back viciously. At the moment, I'm worried it will remember me, and it just won't come out at all." _Or it will try to kill me_ , I thought, but I didn't see any need to distress her further. She knew the situation was dangerous.

"It usually goes away just before I get there," she said. "One of the kids screams for me, I go up there...nothing. Except for the times I told you about."

"How often do they see it?"

"Couple of times a month."

I nodded. "It hasn't built to the truly dangerous point. It's still sniffing around. I spent some time studying these kinds of entities when we investigated the Wilson house—"

"How many kids has this one taken?"

"Just one that we know of, and that was forty years ago," I said. "We're researching the history of both streets to see if there are any more cases, but that will take time."

"I want to get back to my kids." Alicia knocked on the door to the third-floor apartment. "Mind if I introduce you and run? Or do you need me?"

"I'll be fine, thank you."

The door opened, and warm air that smelled of tomatoes, spices, and toasting bread wafted out, reminding me that I'd skipped dinner, too worried to eat.

"Hey, Alicia." The teenage girl who opened the door smiled at her, then gave me more of a tentative look. She was tall, freckled, and gangly, dressed in glittering jeans and an absurd number of little bracelets.

"Melissa, this is the lady I was telling you about," Alicia said. "Her name's Ellie."

"Hey," Melissa said, smiling tentatively. "Y'all come on in."

"I have to run," Alicia said. "Before my kids drive the other ghost exterminator crazy. You're still watching them for me tomorrow afternoon, aren't you?"

"Of course." Melissa turned and stepped back into the apartment. The place had irregular ceilings, sloping low to the wall at some points. The floor was dark hardwood, like the stairs, with several colorful rugs scattered around. I saw a large saltwater tank, home to some exotic-looking fish. An old-fashioned cuckoo clock, shaped like an ornately carved little rustic cottage, hung on the wall.

I followed Melissa into a living room, where the TV was off but the stereo by the brick chimney—no fireplace, just a chimney from the lower floors—blasted some old blues. "Michael! The ghost hunter person is here!" she shouted, turning down the music.

She'd been yelling through a cutaway wall into a small kitchen, where her older brother stood at the stove, his back to us. The firm muscles of his back were fairly apparent through his thin white t-shirt.

He turned around and I got my first look at him: brown hair, a little shaggy, eyes bright green and intense. A playful, devilish look, especially around the lips. He was taller than me by a head, and I'm not short.

Hot firefighter guy.

_Let's try not to call him that to his face_.

"Hi," I said, while he stepped around to greet me. Clingy white t-shirt, old jeans. "I'm Ellie Jordan, lead investigator with Eckhart Investigations. I'm not sure what Alicia told you—"

"You're here to look for ghosts," he said, and there was that hint-of-devil smile again. I wondered if he were secretly laughing at me. If so, at least he had the decency to keep it secret.

He held out his hand, and I took it. Warm, strong, rough around the edges.

"Michael Holly," he said. His eyes glanced over my face, taking me in with quick little flashes. "Good to meet you."

I could say that I wasn't suddenly looking forward to the interview ahead, but I'd be lying.

# Chapter Six

"Do you catch a lot of these ghosts?" Michael asked, leading me back to the kitchen, the source of the tasty aromas that had greeted me at the door. His sister Melissa was still in the living room, in body but not in spirit—her eyes were glued to her phone, and her purple thumbnails clacked the screen as she hammered out a message to somebody.

"I do my best. Have you ever seen anything unusual in this house?"

"One second." He picked up a wooden spoon and stirred a pan of spaghetti sauce with four large meatballs in the center, then sprinkled in a pinch of freshly-pressed garlic. _He cooks, too_ , I heard Stacey whisper in my head, and I wanted to scowl at her for putting me in this state of mind. I was here to work, not make an idiot of myself trying to flirt with a guy who was probably a couple degrees too hot for me, anyway. That kind of thing was well outside my comfort zone.

He tasted his concoction, then nodded. "Do you like spaghetti?"

"Sure...I'll only take a minute of your time."

"Have a seat, I'll bring you some." He gestured toward a rough-plank table just beyond the kitchen area, positioned in a corner with tall but shallow bay windows on each side. These looked out onto ancient trees, the twisting oak limbs lit by the streetlamps below.

"Bring me some? Oh, no, you don't have to do that," I said.

"Suit yourself, but it's going to get awkward with the two of us shoveling spaghetti in our faces while you watch. Plus, there's garlic bread." He pointed to a small bread basket, where slices of toasted, buttered French bread were nestled in the white cloth. The meal was Carb City—how could he eat like this and still look good in a t-shirt?

He transferred the spaghetti into a large serving bowl, then carried that and a big salad out to the kitchen table. I found myself carrying the bread to the table for him. It was all weirdly domestic.

"Here you go." He pulled out a chair for me, facing one of the big windows, the one that looked out over the sidewalk and street. "Melissa! Come set the table. Melissa!"

Melissa looked up, jarred back into our own dimension by his voice. "What?"

"The table," he said again.

"Is she having dinner with us?" Melissa squinted at me.

"You don't have to—" I began.

"She's just going to watch us eat, but give her a plate and fork in case she changes her mind," Michael said as he returned to the kitchen.

"Oh...kay." Melissa gave him a you're-a-freak-look, one eyebrow raised, and began setting the table. "You have to excuse my brother. It's the firefighter thing. I think all the smoke goes right to his brain."

I smiled at her while she sat down.

"So, have you ever—" I began, ready to start talking ghosts. Anything to keep me from watching Michael's shoulders move inside his shirt.

"Beer? Or wine?" Michael offered. He opened a cabinet and looked inside. "I mean, uh...beer?"

"Just water, thanks," I said. "I'm technically at work right now."

"That's right. On duty." He pressed a glass against the filtered-water dispenser in his refrigerator, then set it in front of me, alongside the empty dish and silverware Melissa had put out for me. Now it would be weird if I _didn't_ eat. It was like I'd been sucked into a Venus flytrap of Southern hospitality.

As Michael sat across from me, holding a bottle of a local microbrew called Southbound, I considered that maybe I wouldn't mind being trapped here. For a little while.

We served ourselves family-style, using tongs for the salad and a giant spoon for the spaghetti. I assumed they weren't crazed psychopaths who invited people into their homes for poisoned garlic bread.

"You should grab one of those meatballs," Michael advised me, pointing to them as if I couldn't see where they were. "I learned that recipe from my friend Serge at the firehouse."

"Oh. Is he Italian?"

"Russian, I think. But he makes great Italian meatballs."

"I'm not really that hungry—" But I _was_ , that was the problem. The food smelled amazing, and I didn't want to go into pig-mode just now.

"Try it." He served one big meatball and a nest of saucy noodles onto my plate. Now I _really_ had to eat it.

I did, and it was good. Spicy, right up on the edge of too spicy but without going over. My stomach growled.

"What did I tell you?" he asked.

I nodded, because I wasn't about to open my noodle-and-sauce-filled mouth. I took a sip of water before answering.

"It's good. Do you learn all your recipes from the fire department?" I asked.

"Most of them. We spend all night waiting for calls. Occasionally we have to go put out a burning building or respond to a car crash, or a heart attack...the rest of the time, we're cooking and eating."

"Which could only lead to more heart attacks," I said.

"Exactly." He smiled. "So how exactly do you do it?" he asked.

"Do what?"

"The ghost thing. Same kind of work? Hang around waiting for supernatural emergencies?"

"It's a lot of watching and listening," I said. "I guess there's a good amount of waiting. That's what we'll be doing tonight in Alicia's apartment."

"Have you seen anything there yet?" Melissa asked, looking up from her phone at last.

"We've only just started. What about you?" I looked from her to Michael. "Have either of you seen anything strange in this house?"

"I saw my brother in a Speedo once," Melissa said.

"Not true," Michael countered. "I only wear trunks."

"Anything scarier than that?" I asked.

"Scarier than Speedos?" he asked.

"He used to wear Crocs," Melissa said.

"I thought we weren't going to bring that up again," Michael replied, looking solemn.

I smiled, keeping my mouth firmly closed. Spaghetti is a poor choice for a date meal—you've got noodles and sauce constantly on the brink of spilling everywhere. Not that I was on a date. It almost felt like that, though, some sort of nineteenth-century Victorian date where we had to be chaperoned by his sister because unmarried men and women couldn't be trusted alone.

I shoved that sort of thinking out of the way as best I could.

"How long have you lived here?" I asked them, attempting to steer the conversation back on course.

"Two years?" Michael glanced at his sister. "Two and a half?"

Melissa shrugged and looked down at her food.

In that silence, I could feel something heavy hanging in the air between them, like a dark cloud over the dinner table. It probably related to how they'd ended up living here in the first place, brother and sister with no parents. I decided to back away slowly from that topic—they'd only just met me, and I had no right to ask about their personal tragedies.

"Have you seen anything unusual in that time?" I asked. "Other than questionable swimwear?"

Michael looked at me for a long moment, his lips parted, forkful of spaghetti forgotten halfway from his plate. He was studying me again with those intense eyes, but I had no idea what he was thinking.

Then he turned to look at Melissa, as if expecting her to speak.

"Go on, Mel," he finally said. "You want to tell her?"

Melissa sighed and poked at her spaghetti for a bit before looking up at me.

"It's kind of...embarrassing," Melissa said. "I'm not even sure it was a ghost. More like a nightmare I kept having."

"Now it's just a nightmare." Michael shook his head. "That's not what you used to say."

"Well, it's been a while..."

"Can you tell me what happened? From the beginning?" I asked her.

"Okay." She took a breath. "Okay. So, I was like fifteen, and I was at my friend Callie's house. She was from my dance group. I do modern dance and ballet. Anyway, a bunch of us slept over there, and when it was really late, somehow we decided to play Bloody Mary. You know that game? You stand in front of a mirror and say 'Bloody Mary' three times, and this crazy ghost lady is supposed to appear."

"Sure," I said.

"So we crowded into her basement bathroom—that's where we were hanging out, you know, down in the basement, there's some old couches and a TV and stuff. We turned out the lights and lit a candle, this pink thing that smelled like cotton candy.

"We're all kind of spooked already, and we started daring each other to say it, because nobody wanted to start. Finally we decided to all say it at the same time. We were kind of whispering it, and it was creepy, like six girls going..." Her voice dropped into the softest possible whisper. "'Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary...' We whispered that three times." Melissa threw a worried look at each of the big bay windows that flanked her, turned into partial mirrors by the dark night outside. I realized she'd been afraid to say the name a third time, even now as she recounted the story.

I found myself leaning forward, waiting to hear what happened next, my delicious spaghetti totally forgotten.

"Then we waited," Melissa said. "Angie—that's this other girl—started making little 'woo-ooh' ghost noises and we told her to hush. Then we whispered about it and finally decided to do it again, but we had to say it louder this time. Simona was already freaking out and wanted to leave, but we wouldn't let her.

"Anyway, we did it again. We said the name three times, but louder, like a normal talking voice," Melissa said. "Then we got braver and did it _again_ , and again, and by then we're all like trying to be louder than each other and just yelling it at the top of our lungs. Like we totally forgot her parents were asleep upstairs.

"I really don't know how many times we said it, but then there was this thump outside the door. She had a dog, so maybe it was the dog trying to get in, or maybe not...But nobody was thinking about the dog, you know? Not right then.

"So we all got quiet, totally frozen, and I was watching the door in the mirror So I could see all of us there in the mirror, but the girls at the back were just dark shapes because the candle was burning down.

"I'm looking and looking at the door in the mirror. That's when I saw her." Melissa chewed her lower lip, falling silent.

"What did you see?" I asked, as gently as I could.

"The face. _Her_ face. Like a young woman—I mean, older than I was, like in her twenties, and she was really pretty, or you know, she used to be. There was blood." Melissa traced her fingertips from her eyes down across her cheeks. "Her eyes were full of red, and she was crying blood. Her lips were bloody, too. She was dead, like someone had stabbed her to death through the eyes. And she was just standing there, facing me in the mirror.

"Then she turned her head a little bit, like she was trying to see everyone in the room—which is weird, because she didn't have any eyeballs, just bloody holes—and that's when I screamed. And everybody else screamed, and we all ran out of there."

Melissa had long since abandoned her dinner fork. She repeatedly twisted and crunched a paper napkin in her hands, looking stressed.

"That sounds pretty scary," I said.

"Totally." Melissa nodded. "Hey, you're a ghost expert. Do you know anything about Bloody Mary? Like who she _really_ is?"

"My first response would be that most cases are probably a combination of self-hypnosis and the Caputo effect," I said.

"The what thing now?" Michael asked.

"A psychologist in Italy had test subjects look at a mirror in a dim room for ten minutes each," I said. "They saw their faces change—sometimes into other people, sometimes into monsters. It's some kind of hyperactive processing in the brain's facial-recognition software, as far as anyone can guess."

"And that scientist grew up to be a guy named Caputo," Michael said.

"Sure...on top of that, you all expected to see something scary," I said. "You'd psyched each other up for it. So, combine those two effects. What did the other girls see?"

"A scary woman's face," Melissa said.

"Just like yours?"

"Um..." Melissa sat back in her chair. "Simona said it was like a shriveled old woman with black eyes. Callie said it was more like a skull with red hair."

"So you all saw something different?"

"I guess. You think we just made it all up?"

"That's the most likely possibility," I said. "But there are a couple of others..."

They both looked at me, waiting. Matching pairs of vibrant green eyes.

"Your ritual activities could have attracted any loose spirits in the area," I said. "Your state of mind could have made you more sensitive to seeing them. And there are a few ghosts who use mirrors as a kind of doorway. The symbolism of a mirror attracts them. It can be difficult to explain."

"Doorways to where?" Melissa asked, her voice a whisper.

"Wherever they go when they're not here," I said. "Sometimes they're here, sometimes... _there_. The other side."

"What's on the other side?" Melissa asked, and Michael leaned in a little, like he wanted to hear.

"I don't know," I said. "Who does?"

The room was quiet for a minute after that, everybody poking at their food but not eating very much. I was a real downer, I guess.

"So," I said, clearing my throat. "Is that the whole story, Melissa?"

"I wish!" Melissa said, perking up again. She hopped to her feet. "Come on, I'll show you."

I glanced at Michael, who shrugged, gesturing for me to follow her.

Melissa led me to a low half-wall under a slanted roof. She knelt by a kind of hobbit door, much lower and wider than a normal door. It sort of reminded me of a barn gate, actually.

She pulled the knob at one end, swinging it open. I expected to see a crawlspace beyond, or maybe a storage closet with an inconveniently low ceiling.

Instead, it opened onto another room, with a single bed and wooden dresser with a large mirror framed by ornate little shelves and columns. Dance trophies adorned the shelves, tall plastic figurines colored to look like gold, on plastic pedestals colored to look like wood.

Melissa hopped down into the room—the floor was a few feet lower on the other side of the door.

"Watch that first step," she said.

"Interesting doorway," I said, squatting down and swinging my legs through.

"I think the house originally had multiple attics or something," Michael said. His voice startled me because it was so close—I hadn't realized he'd left the table, but now he stood over me, watching me with a little lopsided devil-grin. "Things didn't line up when they fused all the third-floor portions together."

"It's pretty neat," I said. Melissa's room was small and rectangular, with a pair of windows in one of the long sides of the room. Her single bed lay under one window, but the other window was mostly blocked by the big dresser and its mirror, which were jammed against the foot of her bed. It didn't seem like the most logical use of the space.

"My dresser used to be over there," she said, pointing to one of the short ends of the rectangular room. Then she pointed to her bed. Her headboard was against the other end of the rectangular room, next to her closet. "When I was in bed, I could see the mirror. It reflected my bed and my closet. So at night, if I woke up, I'd see myself and the closet beside me, too."

"Okay," I said, nodding for her to continue.

"About a month after that party, I woke up one night, and my room was really, really cold," she said. "It was August, so it was still hot outside, but I was freezing. My teeth were actually chattering together. I didn't even know that was a real thing until then. And it wasn't just the cold—I felt like something was watching me, or like somebody was in the room with me.

"I saw her in the mirror. The doors of my closet were like half open..." Melissa demonstrated, positioning the two doors. "So I couldn't see right into my closet, I could only see the inside of it in the mirror. It was Bloody Mary again, like she'd followed me home or something. Standing in my closet. Watching me from the mirror with her bloody eyes.

"I couldn't move. I was seriously frozen, not just from the cold. It felt like all the strength was draining out of me while I just lay there, looking at her in the mirror. I was too afraid to even close my eyes."

"What did she do?" I asked.

"She stood there for a minute, watching me. It seemed like it lasted hours, but it couldn't have been that long. Then she was gone, just like that. The room slowly got warmer, but I could still barely move at first. My muscles were like jelly. I was so tired, but I was still more scared than tired, so I turned on the lamp. I stared into my closet, but there was nothing there. I left the light on and somehow fell asleep later, after telling myself it was just a bad dream. The next day I saw a dress hanging in my closet, right about where Bloody Mary had been, and I told myself, yeah, I just was half-asleep and got confused.

"But it happened again a couple weeks later, and then again. Freezing cold. Bloody Mary watching me from the closet. I started sleeping in the living room. Finally Michael turned my dresser so I couldn't see the mirror at night, even though he had to jam it in between the wall and the foot of my bed."

"Did that take care of it?" I asked.

"Sort of," she said. "A couple of times I thought I heard a footstep in my closet. One time I heard some of the hangars kind of rattle together in the middle of the night. Why would they do that? I didn't open my closet to look. But it started happening less and less. It's been a year or something now since the last time. I haven't thought about it in a while. I guess I blocked it out. Everybody thinks you're crazy if you talk about seeing ghosts." She shrugged.

"Believe me, I know exactly what you mean," I said.

"Do a lot of people think you're crazy?" Michael asked.

"More than I'm comfortable with." _Do you think I am?_ I wanted to ask, but didn't. "It comes with the work." I looked at Melissa again. "Is that it?"

"Is that not enough?" She frowned.

"Do you have any idea why it might have gone away? Did anything change in your life around then?" I drew my Mel-Meter and leaned into the closet, but I didn't find any unusual readings, not even a ghost of a ghost.

"I don't even know why it was here," Melissa said. "I figured she followed me home from Callie's party or something, then haunted me for a while until she got called away."

"Called away?"

"Sure. Think of how many kids are out there doing 'Bloody Mary.' It must be, like, thousands every day. Every weekend, at least. I guessed she finally got distracted. I didn't really think about it, I was just glad she was gone. But no, I don't think anything special happened in my life to end it." Melissa seemed to be concentrating very hard.

"Did anything change around the house?" I asked. "Somebody move in or out?"

"The Fieldings moved in last summer," Michael said.

"Do they have kids?" I asked.

"They have a boy. He's like nine or ten," Melissa said. "I tried to get some babysitting work from them, but they didn't hire me. They're not very nice. They think they're better than everyone else in the house, I guess because they have the biggest apartment."

I nodded. I wanted to speak to them now, especially the boy, but that sounded difficult to arrange.

"So what do you think? Was I haunted by the ghost of Bloody..." Melissa glanced at the dark, reflective window again. "Of her?"

"I don't think that's exactly it," I said. I looked to Michael. "What about you? Ever experience anything strange or unexplained in this house?"

Michael shrugged. "Just a creaky old house being old and creaky."

"That's not true!" Melissa said. "What about that one time in your room?"

"I told you that was nothing," Michael said.

"That's not what you said when you told Angelique about it." Melissa looked at me. "He won't admit it, but he saw something. I heard him tell his girlfriend."

"It was _not_ a big deal," Michael said.

"I'd like to hear it anyway," I said. _Girlfriend?_ Of course he had one.

"Come on." Melissa heaved herself up through the low half-door, back into the living room. I followed, feeling a little silly as I crawled on my hands and knees a few paces until I could stand without banging my head on the steeply sloped ceiling.

"Where are you taking her?" Michael asked, hurrying to cut off his sister.

"Your room." Melissa pointed to a door tucked on the far side of the brick chimney, almost out of sight.

"There's no reason to do that," he said.

"I just want to show her the closet—" Melissa tried to dodge around him, and he stepped sideways to block her. There was some wrestling as she tried to push past him, grinning the whole time like she was playing the world's greatest prank.

"You really don't have to show me," I said.

"See?" Michael said, relaxing a little. "She doesn't even want to see my room."

Melissa took advantage of the moment to dodge under his arm and open his door.

"Wait!" Michael said, hurrying after her.

"Wow, your room's a wreck," Melissa said, snickering.

"Just let me...can you wait here a second?" he asked me, looking flustered. He'd been laid-back and calm so far, but his little sister apparently knew how to annoy him. Not surprising. I was an only kid, so I didn't have the pleasure of a sibling making my life more difficult.

"What are you hiding in your room?" I asked. "A gorilla?" I don't know why I said _gorilla_. Guess I thought it would be funny.

"I'll be right back." Michael stepped into his room, and I heard him rummaging around in there. Melissa stood outside the door, giving me a smile.

"He's just hiding his My Little Ponies," Melissa said.

"I am not!" he shouted from behind his mostly-closed door, and Melissa cackled.

"Just leave the My Little Ponies out where I can see them," I said. "They're not that scary."

Michael opened his door. "Okay. Come on."

I stepped into his room. It was a very artist-in-a-garret situation, cramped under a sloping roof, except that it flared out at one corner. Two steps led up into the corner, but most of the area at the top of the steps was hidden behind a heavy blue drapery, like an old-timey bed curtain.

A breeze shifted that curtain, giving me a glimpse of the foot of his bed, which apparently sat on a small raised platform surrounded by arched windows in one of the house's turrets. The windows were open to let in the cool evening breeze.

I quickly turned my attention away from this odd-but-fascinating sleeping arrangement and looked at the narrow workbench set up on one side of the room, where Michael was standing. Tiny gears, cylinders, and disks were spread across the table, along with some odd little hand tools and spools of wire.

At one end of the table stood something that looked like a fanciful Bavarian dollhouse, with colorful wooden flowers trimming the bottom edge. A second-floor balcony with large doors sat under a clock face with Roman numerals.

"What's that?" I walked around and saw the exposed back, full of intricate little mechanisms.

"It's just an old automaton clock," he said. "I kind of...fix them up. It's extra money," he added almost apologetically, as if embarrassed.

"Automaton?" I asked. "Like a cuckoo clock?"

"Exactly. But this one's a gnome clock." He lifted up a wooden disk with four little gnome figures mounted around the edges. "Every hour, the balcony doors open, and one of these four guys pops out, depending on the time of day." One gnome leaned on a shovel, as if hard at work. Another snoozed on a mushroom bed, his hat low over his eyes.

"You made this?" I asked, and he laughed.

"No, I just find old ones and fix them," he said. "Some of them are in really bad shape. I like restoring these old things, bringing them back to life..."

"He's a freak," Melissa said, watching us from the door. "Just tell her about the ghost, Mikey."

"I don't know if it was a ghost." Michael sat down behind the bench and toyed with a weird little tool, like miniature pitchfork with the outer tines bowed out into a "C" shape.

"What did you see?" I asked.

"I was up here working one night, on this owl clock I'd found at an estate sale. Its eyes and wings moved when it hooted the hour. That's what it was supposed to do, anyway, but this thing was missing half its parts. I had to replace the weights, the pendulum rods, the winding chains, the eyeball mechanism. It was a great piece, though, made by Shaefer Brothers of Philadelphia in 1887—"

"Nobody _cares_ , Michael," Melissa interrupted.

"I thought it was pretty interesting," I said.

"Oh-kay..." Melissa shook her head and gave me a perplexed look, as if I'd spoken an alien language.

"Anyway," Michael said, "I was sitting here working on that Shaefer owl clock one night. It was around one in the morning, and I had all these problems with the owl wing I was trying to fix. I was totally focused on this, but then out of the corner of my eye..." He pointed over to his arch-shaped closet door. "I saw the door open. And I was pretty sure a shadowy head leaned out and looked at me.

"I turned, and it dodged back into the closet." Michael dashed across the room, reenacting for my benefit. "I ran after it, but when I looked in the closet, nothing." He started for the door. "And that's it. That's all I saw."

"How long ago was this?" I asked.

"Two years, at least. Pretty soon after we moved in." He stood near his bedroom door, waiting for me.

"It was inside this closet?" I reached for the handle and pulled it open.

"Hey, don't—" he said, and then a couple weeks' worth of dirty laundry spilled out onto my feet. Jeans, socks, t-shirts, boxer shorts. There was a reassuring lack of Speedos. He'd probably jammed it all in there at the last minute.

Melissa cracked up.

"Oops," I said, then I drew my Mel Meter again and checked the closet, holding it over the dirty laundry. "I'm not picking up any sign of a ghost in here."

"Mike's socks probably ran it off," Melissa said.

"Can we go back to that part where we were out in the kitchen having a good time?" Michael asked.

"I probably need to get back downstairs, anyway," I said. "I guess we're done checking out your, uh...stuff." I backed up, shaking his underwear off the toe of my boot, feeling more than a little embarrassed. For both of us, really.

"We're setting up cameras and microphones all over Alicia's apartment tonight," I said, while making my way out of his room. Michael closed the door behind him, and I caught him giving his sister a quick scowl. "It's a long shot, but if we have any extra cameras, could we set up one at each of your closets?"

"A camera in my room?" Melissa frowned. "Who's going to be watching it?"

"Mostly my tech manager, Stacey," I said. "She'll be watching the whole house."

"Okay, a girl," Melissa said, relaxing a bit.

"We won't be looking at you," I told her. "We can position it right at the closet door."

Melissa shrugged and looked at her brother.

"Just the closet?" Michael asked. "I don't want anybody stealing my secret gnome-clock repair techniques."

"You're such a dork," Melissa whispered.

"So that's a yes from both of you, right?" I doubted we'd see much activity in their apartment, but I wanted to cover as much of the house as we could. Apartments B and D, the Fielding family and Mr. Gray, weren't available to us, so I wanted to get a foothold in Michael and Melissa's apartment. It wasn't just an excuse to come back and see Michael again. Though I couldn't say I minded that aspect of it at all.

"I suppose you can check our place for ghosts if you want," Michael said. He gave me a crooked smile, and the cuckoo clock on the wall sprang to life. Its little door opened and the wooden bird popped out and made its "cuckoo, cuckoo" sound several times, as if to say the idea of looking for ghosts was a bit insane.

I smiled, feeling pretty awkward, and returned downstairs.

# Chapter Seven

"Check this out," Stacey said. I'd found her, along with Alicia and her kids, in Kalil's room. She was rigging up a small spotlight that plugged into the wall, and she'd aimed it directly at the closed door of Kalil's closet. "If anything comes out to bother Kalil, he can switch this on from a control by his bed. I rigged one up in Mia's room, too."

She flipped on the spotlight, soaking the closet door in its scorching white glare.

"Looks good," I said. "But we could have just loaned them a couple of tactical flashlights."

"True, but then I couldn't do this." Stacey tapped her digital tablet. The spotlight turned off, then back on again. "Remote control. Even if they're asleep when the fearfeeder comes out, I can torch it from the van."

"Nice." I nodded.

Kalil sat on the edge of the bed and pressed a button on his end table, wired to the spotlight, clicking it off and on.

"I have one, too!" Mia reminded me, beaming.

"So...how did it go?" Stacey asked with a sneaky grin. She stood and led me out of the room, while the kids stayed behind, taking turns clicking the spotlight. They seemed overjoyed about it, as if we'd given them a powerful weapon.

Ghosts hate bright lights, especially the sun. That's why Stacey and I carry high-powered SWAT-style tactical flashlights on our all jobs.

Unfortunately, no amount of light will really harm the dangerous ghosts or make them go away permanently—light is just a defense, and it doesn't always work if the ghost is determined to harm you. It still beats politely asking the monster to go away.

"Come on, I'll show you what I rigged downstairs." Stacey led me down the steps, then asked in a lower voice, "So?"

"They said we could put a couple cameras up there tonight. Do we have anything to spare? It's not that critical. They haven't had a lot of activity recently—none in the past year, but they have seen things in their closets in the past."

"What else?" Stacey asked, looking very amused with herself.

"The girl was haunted by Bloody Mary for a while after summoning her at a slumber party," I said, while Stacey led me toward a night vision camera pointed at the door to the old, sealed-off basement stairway under the grand front stairs. "You know, you look in the mirror and say her name three times..."

"I know," Stacey said. She stood by the camera, arms crossed, looking impatient.

"It's consistent with a fearfeeder," I said. "Taking the shape of something that scared her."

"That's all very interesting and great. Now tell me about the fireman. Is he hot?" She snickered. "Hot fireman. That's pretty funny—"

"Stacey, come on." I glanced upstairs to see if our clients had come out of the boy's room.

"Come on, what? Is he datable or not?"

"I guess." I double-checked the little display monitor on the closet camera to make sure the shot was lined up. I zoomed it out a little. "We want to get the area above the door. It likes to crawl on the ceiling."

"Your pretend lack of interest is totally not convincing," Stacey said.

"He has a girlfriend," I said. " _Angelique_."

Stacey snickered. "Is she French or what? An art student, maybe?"

"I have no details."

"Want me to ask him for some?"

"I do not." I checked the camera pointed at the dead-end basement stairs under the main staircase, and I made sure the door leading to them was closed tight.

"Milk the sister for information," Stacey suggested.

"I don't feel like milking anyone today, thanks." I heard footsteps on the stairs above us. "This camera looks good. Let's go set up in Michael's place. I want a hidden camera down in the laundry room, too."

"Why hidden?"

"So the neighbors don't complain. The Fieldings apparently aren't very friendly."

"No, they're not." Alicia came around to join us. "They only speak to me to complain. Kalil left his bike in the yard, or somebody played their music too loud, or Mia and her friends were practicing their dances on the front porch and the Fieldings had to walk _all the way_ around them to open their door..." She shook her head.

"I have to wonder if their kid's seeing anything," I said.

"Good luck talking to them."

"We were about to head down to the basement. Do you happen to have a laundry basket we can borrow? Maybe a few towels to hide the camera?" I asked her.

"Sure. How was your talk with Michael and Melissa?"

"They've seen things," I said. "We're going to watch their closets, too, just in case. I'd like to get cameras all over the house. What about Mr. Gray? What's he like?"

"Quiet as a mouse," Alicia said. "You just see him coming and going. He's an older man who lives alone. That's all I know."

"Maybe I'll pay him a visit tomorrow," I said.

We grabbed our last cameras while Alicia brought us a laundry basket stocked with towels and a couple of blankets. Then Stacey and I headed out into the short side hall that connected three apartments with the porch and the basement.

I opened the basement door, and we looked down the wooden steps into the dim room below. One dryer was thudding along, rocking a little on the concrete floor. The hanging fluorescent bars swayed, casting shifting shadows that faded to complete darkness around the corners and edges of the room. The air was unseasonably cool.

Neither of us was in a hurry to start down the stairs. The air had an unpleasantly familiar heaviness, a cold thickness I'd learned to associate with strong, active ghosts. Goose bumps crawled up along my spine.

"Hey," Stacey said, "Let's go do the third-floor apartment first. Good idea, am I right?"

"The basement's not going to be less creepy if we come back later," I said.

"But we'll have less gear to juggle, in case we need to run out of the basement in a hurry."

She had a point there. We'd had some bad experiences in basements in the past. Ghosts are drawn to the dark underground areas of a house like bats to a cave. Maybe it reminds them of the graves where they belong. If we were going down there, I preferred to travel light.

So we went upstairs instead.

In the apartment, Stacey managed to distract Melissa by enthusiastically asking about the clownfish and anemones in the aquarium. Maybe it wasn't even an intentional ploy—Stacey does wildlife photography as a hobby. It fits right into her deplorable camping-and-hiking lifestyle.

She went to set up a tripod in Melissa's room, leaving me to handle Michael's room by myself. As he led me in, I noticed he'd crammed his dirty clothes into a laundry basket in the corner.

"So you're going to watch me sleep?" he asked while I set up.

"Just the closet," I said. "You won't even be in range." I glanced at his bed curtain, still swaying in the night air. "I can tell you're really into privacy by how you sleep surrounded by windows."

"I _close_ the windows," he said. "If it's cold. Or...whatever."

"Uh-uh." I looked at the digital display screen. "Okay, if Closet Man pokes his head out, we'll see it."

"You're probably wasting your time up here," he said. "I only saw it once."

"Do you know any of the other neighbors very well? Besides Alicia and her kids?"

"Not really. I met Hoss Fielding when he moved in—"

"Hoss?"

"Henry, but he prefers to be called 'Hoss.'"

"I find that hard to believe," I said.

"Me, too. He's a tall guy, seems like a car salesman or something. His wife is always scowling when I see her. Sometimes we hear them yelling at their kid."

"What about Mr. Gray?"

"I barely know that guy. Good neighbor. I'm surprised he puts up with the rest of us."

I sighed—I'd hoped he could help me talk to somebody who lived in one of the other apartments, but apparently the Fieldings were no more friendly to him than to Alicia. I would have to approach them cold, with a simple "Hi, I'm looking for ghosts in your building, can we spy on your apartment?" I couldn't see that going very well.

Then I glanced at his overstuffed laundry basket.

"Were you planning to wash those tonight, by any chance?" I asked.

"Uh...not really. I don't like to go down to the laundry room."

"I can see that."

"It's not that I'm lazy. The basement is just..." He shrugged.

"Scary? Spooky? Creepy?" I suggested.

"Right. It's like someone's watching you down there."

"That's just what Alicia told me," I said. "We have to go set up a camera in that room. I was thinking it would be convenient if you happened to be on your way down there."

"You're scared of the basement, too." He gave me his little devilish grin.

"I've had bad experiences with haunted basements. But if you're too busy, that's okay. I was just checking." I moved toward his door.

"Hold on. I didn't say I wouldn't go." He grabbed his laundry basket and followed me out.

Melissa and Stacey were back in the living room.

"What's up?" Melissa asked her brother. "Doing some night laundry?"

"Just keeping the ghost hunters safe," Michael said, glancing at Stacey, who grinned.

"Sure." Melissa looked me over. "You've got my brother washing his clothes. That's amazing."

"Don't act like I never do it." Michael stepped out the front door of his apartment.

"He _never_ does it," Melissa whispered to me. "Not until his socks are walking around on their own."

"Thanks for all your help," I said, giving her a smile.

"I know about the stuff Kalil and Mia are seeing in their rooms," Melissa said, suddenly looking serious. "They've told me about it. I hope you can take care of it."

"I hope so, too."

Stacey and I followed Michael downstairs. He was waiting by the open door to the basement.

"Ready?" he asked, already turning to start down the steps. I followed, noticing that this was my least favorite sort of staircase, wooden steps with no vertical risers, just dark gaps between the stairs where someone could reach up and grab your ankle.

The room was bigger than it had looked from the doorway. I clicked on my flashlight and swept it around the dark, dusty corners, finding lots of spiderwebs. Three of the walls were old brick, while one looked like stones crudely cemented together. Two basement-level doors led out of the laundry room, and I asked Michael about them while he dumped his laundry into a washing machine.

"That one connects to Mr. Gray's apartment," he said, pointing to the door set into a brick wall. He turned to the other door, in the rock wall. "That's just the furnace, I think."

"Mind if I look?" I approached the door and found it coated in dust and spiderwebs. It didn't appear to get much use.

"It's probably locked," he said.

I tried the cold, grimy handle, but it wouldn't turn. I wiped my hand on my jeans.

"Who would have the key?" I asked.

"You'd have to call the property manager," he said.

"Hey, what do you think about right here?" Stacey asked me. She was positioning Alicia's laundry basket on a counter that ran along one wall. "I can get...most of the room from here."

"Try to include this door," I said. "And as much of the ceiling as you can."

"Okay, but these aren't exactly ideal conditions." Stacey propped the camera on a rolled towel to tilt it upward, then packed in the other towels and blankets around it. She stepped back to look at her work. "That's probably the best I can do."

"You know, you've kind of trapped me here," Michael said.

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"Now I have to come back in half an hour to move my clothes to the dryer," he said. "Or I'll get sour laundry issues. What if the ghost gets me?"

"I can come back with you if you want," I said. I thought he was kidding, but I wasn't totally sure. "And Stacey will be watching on the camera, too."

"I'd better give you my phone number so you can tell me if you see any ghosts down here." He was grinning—I still couldn't tell if he was kidding.

"Good idea." He told me his number and I saved it in my phone. Then I fished a business card out of my pocket and handed it over. "The second one's my cell number. If _you_ see any ghosts anywhere in the house, call me."

"And you'll come bust the ghost?" he asked.

"Maybe." I took a last look around the cold, gloomy basement with my flashlight, then I headed upstairs.

# Chapter Eight

"So, you gave him your number," Stacey said. She sat in the back of the van while the monitors came to life one by one, showing the feeds from the cameras we'd set up all over the house. The kids' room showed up in both thermal and night vision.

"I gave him my work number." I stood on the driveway, talking to her through an open door at the back of the van.

"Do you _have_ another number?"

"It's just in case we see ghosts," I told her. "We condemned him to return to the laundry room, remember? And he'll let me know if _he_ sees anything tonight."

"Then let's hope he sees a ghost," Stacey said. She smiled, straightening up on the narrow cot where she sat. "Hey, we could Scooby-Doo up a fake haunting so he'll have to call you!"

"We're not Scooby-Dooing anything."

"You sure? It would be a fun harebrained scheme. We make a sheet ghost and hang it on a clothesline, see, and run _that_ past his bedroom window—"

"How are your monitors looking?" I asked. "Any adjustments needed? Any malfunctions?"

"Fine, go all Sally Serious on me." Stacey turned to the bank of little monitors built at the front of the cargo area, then checked her laptop and nodded. "All systems nominal, Captain. The _Enterprise_ awaits your orders."

"Are your signals strong?"

"You know who _I_ think was giving off some strong signals tonight—" Stacey began, and she looked like she was about to laugh.

"I'll mark that as a yes." I switched on my headset and walked away toward the big wraparound porch. "Testing, testing..."

"You could at least close the door behind you," Stacey said over my headset, while slamming the van door where I'd been standing.

"I thought you might enjoy the fresh night air." I glanced up, but I couldn't see any stars because of the row of wrought-iron streetlamps along the sidewalk. The old house towered above me, its small turrets, protruding windows, gingerbread trim, and recessed porches creating a labyrinth of shadows across its facade. Even at a casual glance, this place looked like a haunted house.

I returned through the front door. Alicia was in the living room, waiting for me.

"The kids are in bed," she told me. "I made you some coffee in the kitchen. Just help yourself."

"Thank you," I said.

"I'll probably go to my room, too. With you and your friend here, I might actually be able to sleep tonight. Wake me if anything happens."

"I will. Good night, Alicia."

She yawned as she walked into the first-floor bedroom and closed the door. I heard the sound of running water as I climbed the big entrance-hall staircase, like she was having a bath.

The doors to the kids' rooms were closed, and the upstairs was silent. I was camping out on my air mattress in the hallway to stay close to them, and I'd already placed my toolbox of gear and my digital tablet beside it.

I picked up the tablet and flipped through the various camera feeds. I couldn't see the kids, but I could see their closet doors were closed tight.

There was one camera in the hall, a thermal pointed at the door to nowhere with the decorative archway. Alicia had seen the entity leave through it. I glanced from the thermal image to the door itself. Nothing happening so far.

With a smile, I checked on Michael's closet door. Then I looked at his sister's door, then the laundry room, and the door to the dead-end basement stairs. Everything was coming in fine. Calm and quiet.

One end of the hallway terminated in a pair of narrow glass doors that led out onto a sunken porch. I stepped through them. Outside, I found myself in a small outdoor area, paved with brick and surrounded by solid walls on three sides, with an iron balustrade overlooking the garden below.

I had a clear view of the old Wilson house towering on its small lot, the moonlight painting the peeling exterior the color of washed-out bones.

I shivered at the sight of it. If this really was the same entity, I wondered how it had changed in the past couple of years. Was it weaker or stronger? Would it remember me?

"We're going to stop you this time," I whispered. "We're going to catch you."

The house stared blankly back at me, its windows and doors plugged with plywood.

Michael returned to the laundry room a while later, and Stacey made sure to alert me of the fact. I selected the night vision camera in the basement and watched him on my tablet. If anything supernatural jumped out of the shadows to grab him, I'd want to know about it.

He smiled and waved at the camera when he arrived, but glanced nervously over his shoulder a couple of times while he changed over his laundry. He gave another wave when he left, and said something, but we didn't have a microphone down there to hear.

"Did you catch that?" Stacey whispered over my headset.

"I think he said 'no ghosts.' Or maybe 'yo-yo.'"

"Yeah, probably 'yo-yo.' Because that makes sense."

Michael turned off the light as he reached the top of the basement stairs, and the camera adjusted, showing me the basement in shades of green, penetrating the shadows so I could watch the two closed doors.

"So, what did his room look like?" Stacey asked.

"Messy," I replied. "He sleeps in the turret."

"That's romantic."

"You're hilarious, Stacey. Can you keep your mind off my love life for a few minutes? Or years, maybe?"

"You have a love life?" Stacey feigned a surprised gasp. "Tell me all about it."

"Sorry, I didn't hear that," I said. "My headset must be going bad. We'd better stay quiet unless we see some otherworldly activity."

"Now you're being hilarious," Stacey grumbled.

It was a quiet night, for a while. We logged the first activity at two thirty-seven in the morning.

"Ellie," Stacey whispered. "The basement."

I checked my tablet. The camera's viewpoint was cut into two stripes by the laundry basket's plastic-weave design. I could see washing machines and the staircase on one side, a couple of dryers and the two basement doors on the other.

"Where?" I whispered.

"Watch by the last dryer. Maybe it'll come back."

After a moment, something flickered, but not where she'd directed me. It was farther back, by the door to the furnace. It was just a rippling curve that appeared briefly in the air, then it was gone.

"What was that?" Stacey whispered, in her best girl-about-to-be-slaughtered-in-a-horror-movie voice.

A suggestion of a shape appeared near the stairs, maybe the dim outline of a small person, but it faded just as quickly.

"I wish we had thermal down there," I said. I eyeballed the thermal down the hall from me, the one pointed at the door to nothing, and weighed the idea of carrying it down into the basement right away.

"We'll know for tomorrow," Stacey said. "Look, there's a..."

I saw it, and it faded before Stacey could even get the word out. A tiny, circular orb had winked across the room, near the ceiling.

"It's getting active down there," Stacey whispered.

We watched for the next half an hour as occasional forms and partial apparitions faded in and out, never very clear or lasting very long, making me think of a weak radio with poor reception, just the occasional hint of a voice or drop of music leaking through the static.

"Are you seeing anything up in the house?" I asked.

"Nothing."

The strange shapes continued to appear, increasing in frequency for several minutes. Then they stopped cold.

"Is that it?" Stacey asked after a few minutes of inactivity.

The laundry room lay quiet for a bit longer—then something emerged from the door in the rock wall. A dark shape rose from the top of the door, like a two-dimensional cutout made of black cardboard.

"The door," I whispered.

The dark shape slithered up along the wall, a roughly human-shaped shadow against the many shades of night-vision green. Its arms bent the wrong way at the elbow as it planted its hands on the ceiling.

Then the dark shape skittered across the ceiling, arms and legs bending at sharp angles that reminded me of a running spider.

"Holy cow," Stacey whispered.

The shape flickered toward the stairs, then it was gone.

"Where is it?" I asked. I was on my feet, ready to move, but I had no idea where to go.

"Not in front of any other cameras," Stacey said. "We need better coverage of this house. We focused too much on the closets."

I flipped through the various viewpoints in Alicia's apartment—the door that led beneath the stairs, the closets in the kids' rooms—watching for the thing to emerge.

"Ellie," Stacey whispered. "I think it's in the hallway with you. It's walking toward you."

I checked the feed from the thermal camera pointed at the door to nowhere. There it was. A faint pale blue shape moved in front of the archway, like the shadow of a man taking a walk.

It was moving toward me, toward the kids' rooms.

Then it stepped out of the camera's range, still heading in my direction.

I grabbed the thermal goggles from my toolbox and strapped them on as quickly as I could, never turning my back on the invisible figure. I could feel a growing chill in the air.

With the heavy goggles in place, I could see it again—a tall, broad-shouldered male shape, thin and blue. Walking, almost strolling, like it had all the time in the world.

I drew the powerful, three-thousand-lumen tactical flashlight from its holster on my belt, but I didn't click it on. The light might have chased the thing away, but the entity wasn't threatening anyone yet, and I was here to observe and learn.

My heartbeat kicked up as the pale figure passed close by me, my fingers trembling with a sudden blast of fight-or-flight adrenaline. The air grew even colder, and it seemed to seep into me, filling me with icy dread. I was definitely looking at something unnatural. If it hadn't been for my thermal goggles, though, I would have seen nothing, experienced nothing more than a cold draft drifting down the hall.

It stopped outside Kalil's room.

I tightened my grip on my flashlight, and also found the little iPod mounted on my belt, next to a small portable speaker. I was ready to hit the ghost with both barrels.

The ghost remained where it was, its faint blue shape fading in and out of sight, as if it were breathing in and using up sips of ambient heat in the room. I couldn't tell if it was preparing to manifest as an apparition or disappear entirely.

"Ellie, are you okay?" Stacey whispered. "I can't see what's happening."

"Mm-hmm," I hummed back, as low as I could, to avoid drawing the entity's attention.

After a long moment, it walked on down the hall, then stopped in front of Mia's room. The light blue blob of its head moved to one side, as though listening to something.

It froze there for several seconds, then vanished.

"I think it went into Mia's room," I said. "I'm pursuing."

"Let me know if it gets dangerous," Stacey replied.

I opened the door and pointed my unlit flashlight into the room, ready to blast the ghost and hopefully distract it from menacing the girl.

My thermal goggles revealed Mia's glowing red form in the bed, but no pale blue shape anywhere.

I tiptoed past the sleeping girl and approached her closet. As I reached for the knob on one of the closed sliding doors, I whispered for Stacey to stand by for activating her remote-controlled spotlight, in case I needed an extra-big flood of photons.

I couldn't help but tremble as I eased the door open. The entity that had haunted the Wilson house and crippled Calvin had the power to dig inside your mind. Not my favorite kind of ghost, not at all.

Nothing immediately jumped out at me, no movie monster wielding a chainsaw, no gray aliens wielding who-knows-what. No Bloody Mary emerging from the shadows like a reflection in a dark mirror.

The girl's clothes hung on the closet rod, neatly sorted by type and color, her shoes perfectly aligned on the rack below in her mother's typical obsessive-compulsive way. Tennis shoes, ballet slippers, black formal shoes with little white bows. No ghosts, as far as my thermals could see.

I raised the goggles off my eyes and clicked on my flashlight. I stepped down into the closet, blasting bright white into the dark corners. Nothing seemed amiss, and I didn't sense any kind of presence in the room. The Mel Meter found no change from the readings I'd taken earlier in the day.

Then I heard something: voices. One sounded like a child, frightened and whispering rapidly. An older male voice cut it off, angry and shouting.

I followed the voices to a wall and pressed my ear against it. It sounded like they were in the next room, but that was in the Fieldings' apartment, so I had no way to check whether these were auditory apparitions or regular living people. Most likely the latter, though.

I couldn't make out many words, and the conversation soon ended. I wondered if the Fielding kid had seen something. I needed to reach out and speak with that family as soon as possible, but the things I'd heard from Alicia and Michael didn't exactly make me look forward to it.

When their voices fell quiet, I left the closet, clicking off my light and closing the door firmly behind me. I slipped out of Mia's room and checked in with Stacey while scanning the hall with my thermals.

"All clear up here," I said.

"I've got a few hints of movement in the basement," Stacey told me. "Nothing anywhere else. Where did it go?"

"Maybe into the Fieldings' side of the house," I said. "I don't think that was our boogeyman, though. It didn't move the same way. And it seemed too weak."

"Another ghost?"

"Nothing attracts ghosts like a haunted house."

"The laundry room is a crowded ghost disco by night," Stacey said. "Why would all those spirits be crammed into the same place when they have this huge house?"

"We need to make a broader survey of the house." I turned the thermal camera in front of the arched doorway so it captured more of the hall beyond. "And monitor the basement in every way we can."

I watched the strange movements and shapes in the basement on my tablet, occasionally switching to the other viewpoints around the house. I didn't catch another glimpse of the dark, spidery shadow or the tall pale figure for the rest of the night.

# Chapter Nine

Alicia awoke long before her children. It was still dark outside, but the sky was turning purple as we sat down at her kitchen table to give her a quick summary of what we'd found.

"The basement seems to be the most active area," I said. "We'll need time to analyze all the information we gathered, but Stacey clipped out some video footage for you."

Stacey nodded. She turned her laptop to show Alicia some night vision video of the basement in fast forward, with weird half-formed shapes blinking in and out of sight like bizarre creatures in a dark green aquarium. When the clip ended, she backed it up and played the last part in slow motion.

The spiky, spidery black entity crawled up through the door and across the ceiling. Stacey paused it while the entity was still visible.

"That's it," Alicia said. "That's what I saw in the living room. That's what got me." She touched her stomach where she'd been scratched. "Oh, it makes me sick just to see it."

"That was the last we saw of it," I said. "We think it went into the Fieldings' apartment over there, if it went anywhere at all."

"So it didn't go near my kids last night."

"No...but there was something else." I nodded at Stacey, and she pulled up the other clip she'd prepared, the glimpse of the pale blue figure in front of the dead-end door upstairs.

"What is that?" Alicia whispered.

"I'm not sure," I said. "I don't think it's the fearfeeder. An old house like this can have a number of ghosts." I gave her the quick summary of what the entity had done, how it had seemed to stop and listen at her kids' doors before vanishing. "It could be someone who lived here long ago. Anyway, it didn't seem very strong, based on the temperature reading. It might be a residual haunting, something that just repeats the same actions again and again. We'll gather more information as we go."

"And what about all those things in the basement?" Alicia asked.

"That seems to be the center of activity in the house," I said. "We'll monitor it much more heavily tonight."

"It could be hard to hide that much gear from the neighbors," Stacey said.

"I'll try to speak to your other neighbors later today," I said. "If they don't cooperate, we can probably still set everything up in the laundry room tonight. It seems like nobody in this house likes to go down there at night, so maybe there won't be anyone to notice the cameras and motion detectors."

"That's true," Stacey said. "Only Michael went down there last night...and only because you asked him."

"Good luck talking to Lulinda Fielding." Alicia shook her head. "I'd volunteer to introduce you, but she'd probably be _less_ likely to speak to you then. That woman's a beast."

"I can't wait," I said. "In the meantime, we're going to dig deeper into the history of the neighborhood and see what we come up with. It's important to try and find some physical item that can be used to lure the ghost, something that had emotional significance in his life."

"I hope you can find a way to solve this mess," Alicia said. "My kids need to be safe in their home."

"I couldn't agree more," I said. "We'll get to work."

As the sun rose, we shut down our gear, retrieved the laundry basket with the hidden camera from the basement, and headed out to the van.

I dropped Stacey at her apartment and forced myself to attend an early-morning kickboxing class. Once I was there and felt the stress burning out of my tense muscles, I was glad I did it.

Then it was home, feed the cat, sleep for a few hours so I could get back to work with fresh energy.

By noon, I was back at the office. Stacey was already there, the little go-getter, reviewing footage with Calvin.

"Interesting," he said as I pulled an extra chair up to the video editing station, where three large monitors faced Stacey like a three-sided mirror in a department store. "I wonder who our mystery guest was."

"I heard something in the next apartment—" I began.

"Stacey told me. You need to get access to that apartment right away."

"Apparently the residents aren't the sweetest people in the world," I said. "Have you found anything?"

"A missing person file from 1994," he said, grabbing a stack of printouts from the long work table nearby. He rolled over to me and tossed them in my lap. The top page had a black and white image of a smiling boy with chunky braces, wearing a school-picture-day Izod shirt. "Kris Larsen, eight years old. Vanished one Friday night in September, never seen again. His family lived in the house that backs up to our client's. They first thought he'd slipped out and gone to a friend's house, but nobody saw him or heard from him that night."

"Was there any mention of closet monsters?" I asked, skimming over the brief summary from the missing-person database.

"Not in the police report, but that's not an area that your typical cop is going to explore," Calvin said. "We aren't exactly trained to consider supernatural perps."

"Maybe you should be, in this city. Does his family still live there?" I thumbed through more pages.

"Moved in 2001," he said. "The parents now live in Texas. Fourth page."

I flipped through papers and nodded. Too bad they were so far away. I would still try to contact them, but people have a funny way of not wanting to talk about sensitive and highly personal subjects with strangers who call them on the phone. They're even less responsive to emails than phone calls. Face to face is always much more effective, but we didn't have the time or budget for a plane trip halfway across the country.

"What else?" I asked.

"There's another one from 1985," Calvin said. "Bradley Carson, age twelve. It's hard to say whether this was related. The kid disappeared for several days but was found again. I tried to track him down, found out he spent some time in a state psychiatric hospital after that. That's all we know about him so far. I have a friend searching for that old case file."

"Which house?" I asked.

"Next door to the client's. Now, we already know about Bonnie McAllister, six years old, missing in 1973," Calvin said. "I gave Stacey a copy of the file to study."

I nodded. I'd just about memorized that file during our previous, ill-fated investigation. The little girl Bonnie had seen an old-fashioned devil in her closet, horns and hooves and red scales, the whole package. Her parents had responded with therapy and, ultimately, psychiatric meds. After fourteen months of the occurrences growing from once or twice a month to every single night, the girl had finally vanished and was never seen again. The case was still open.

"The databases we can access get spotty a few years before that," Calvin said. "You'll want to contact Grant to see what he can dig up at the Historical Association archives, but this is too wide a net to hand him. A dozen addresses over two centuries."

"Jacob said he can come tonight," Stacey said, grinning like a schoolkid hopped up on Pixy Stix. "I can walk around the block with him and see what he picks up."

"I'm sure you won't mind," I said. "Try not to distract him along the way."

"I won't!" Stacey gave me a sly smile and looked at Calvin. " _Ellie_ met an interesting guy. He lives in the building we're investigating."

"That's a fascinating turn in the case," Calvin said. "Let's hear more."

"There's nothing to hear," I interrupted. "Stacey's been pushing me at this firefighter guy since she first heard of him."

"And she likes him," Stacey added, not helping things at all. I felt more embarrassed than annoyed, so maybe I _did_ kind of like him.

"Sounds promising, Ellie," Calvin said.

"When did everyone become obsessed with my private life?" I asked. "Don't we have a dangerous ghost to catch here? Let's go call on our next witness."

I grabbed the piece of paper with the Larsen family's phone number on it and walked over to my desk, where I could sink beneath the walls and out of sight for a minute. Nobody answered my call.

"Let's load up, Stace," I said when I stepped out. "We need a full array for the basement, but I don't want to lose any of the camera positions we've already established."

"Look, she's all business now," Stacey said, and Calvin actually chuckled.

"Stacey, just assemble the gear," I told her.

"Yes, sir, captain, sir." Stacey grabbed a thermal and a pair of motion detectors. "Hey, should we go full-on laser grid? Really watch every square centimeter of that basement?"

"That's not a bad idea," I said. "Just remember we have to break down everything before sunrise, if the neighbors aren't cooperative when we visit."

"One multisided grid projector, coming up." Stacey walked to a storage closet.

"I feel like I should come with you," Calvin said to me.

"Come if you want," I said, "But we're still just observing. I'll let you know when we're ready to move on to trapping."

He nodded. "Any new ideas about how to trap this one?"

That was unnerving—my boss and mentor looking to me to figure this out. The responsibility felt a little too heavy.

"Maybe we'll turn up a human identity for the boogeyman," I said.

"If there _is_ anything human under there," Calvin said.

"And if he's a pure demonic? Do we call the priest?" I asked.

"He's not a priest anymore," Calvin said. "Just a demonologist. I should give him a ring to make sure he's available." Calvin paused, reflecting. "And at least half-sober."

"We're all geared up for our mission, sir," Stacey said when she returned, giving me one of her mock salutes.

"Stop calling me 'sir.' You sound like Marcy from _Peanuts_ ," I said.

"Maybe I was talking to Calvin," Stacey said.

"Let's get to work," I said. "I want to squeeze in some serious library time this afternoon, too."

"Oh, please, let's." Stacey shook her head as we approached the van.

"Watch out for ghosts," Calvin said. I glanced back, giving him a grin, but he wasn't actually smiling. His look was dead serious. "Call me if you need anything."

I nodded. It wasn't like him to act so worried, but this was an unusually dangerous case. I was determined to make things right, to finally capture the ghost that had put Calvin in that wheelchair.

# Chapter Ten

We spent another fantastic afternoon digging through old title deeds, property records, and faded photographs, still establishing a chain of ownership for all the houses around Alicia's home. There was much sighing and eye-rubbing on Stacey's part.

In the evening, we returned to Alicia's place, ready to set up more gear in the basement.

"Hi," Melissa said, answering the front door. In the big entrance hall-turned-living-room behind her, Mia was practicing handstands while watching cartoons, while Kalil sat on the couch reading a book called _Guns, Germs, and Steel_. "Alicia won't be home until after nine. Come on in. Need any help?" Melissa eyeballed the gear in our arms.

"We're good," I said, stepping inside and setting down a couple of tripods. "We just need to refresh the battery packs on the cameras."

"Did you see Fleshface?" Mia asked, swaying as she walked toward us on her hands.

"Or the aliens?" Kalil asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose as he looked up at me.

"We picked up some good evidence," I said. "We're definitely on the trail of the one that's been bugging you. It's not really Fleshface or aliens, did I explain that? It's a thing that can pretend to be whatever you fear."

"But what is it really?" Kalil asked.

"It's a thing made of energy," I said. "It feeds itself by drawing out the fear in people. The best way to weaken it is to recognize that it's tricking you and resist the urge to be afraid."

"What's the _second_ best way to make it weak?" Mia asked.

"Showing it courage," I said. "Even if you really feel afraid on the inside... _act_ like you're not afraid. That's what courage really is, anyway. Shine a light on it. Throw a pillow at it. Shout at it to go away."

"But what if that just makes it mad?" Kalil asked.

"At first, it might try to get even scarier," I said. "But if you keep standing up to it, it will go away and sulk, or try to find someone else to feed on. Because when you show it courage, you're refusing to feed it. If it does try to make itself bigger and scarier, that means you're winning, because you're making it use up more of its energy."

"But what if you can't help being scared?" Mia said.

"I've faced a lot of ghosts," I said. "I still get scared. Your natural reaction is to go very still, to make no movements or sound and hope it goes away. With this type, that's _exactly_ what they want you to do. Take some action. Scream for your mom or your brother, scream for Melissa or me or Stacey if we're here. And hit it with a big blast of that spotlight Stacey set up for you. Ghosts hate light."

Kalil nodded and jotted notes on a pad on the table.

"All done down here," Stacey said. She'd been working on the camera that pointed at the door to the dead-end stairs. "I moved it for a broader view of the living room. Zoomed out as much as I could."

"Did you get the—"

"It was hard to get the ceiling because it's so high," she said. "I did get the stair railing, since Alicia saw it climbing there. Kind of a steep angle, but it's something." She shrugged.

"Looks good," I said, after checking the display screen. "We'd better get moving. Melissa, we need to change the batteries in your apartment, too..."

"Go on up. My brother's home."

"Things sure would go faster if you took care of the third-floor cameras, Ellie," Stacey said.

"I'll tell him you're coming." Melissa was suddenly texting on her phone, her purple thumbnails flashing and tapping.

"Wait—" I began.

"Hey, Ellie, think fast!" Stacey said. I turned to see her tossing a camera battery right at me, and I barely had time to snatch it out of the air before it could wham into my ribs.

"Thanks a lot," I told her. "I said _wait._ I should go try to talk to the other neighbors first, before it gets too late to knock on their doors. Stacey, you take care of all the gear."

"Except the third floor, right?" Stacey winked.

"Hey, what was that?" Melissa looked between us, then focused on me. "Are you into my brother or something?" She had a weird little smile, like she was trying to decide whether to laugh.

"No." I felt my cheeks flush. "I mean, I've just met him."

"You're not into him?" Stacey asked.

"I'm into _working_. Which is what you should be doing, Stacey. The sun's almost down, and I don't want to be setting up in the basement at midnight." I walked to the front door, trying not to look like I was in a big hurry to leave.

I paused outside on the porch to take a deep breath of warm evening air. The sky was dark purple above us. I hated the idea of waiting until long after sunset to set up our gear in the clearly haunted basement, but we didn't have much choice if the neighbors didn't give permission.

I circled the house, past a fence thick with honeysuckle vines that blocked the view from the neighbor's yard.

Behind the house lay a small garden enclosed with high brick walls, a pleasant area edged with blooming pink roses. A bench and a covered wooden-bench swing faced a stone birdbath at the center. A pair of hummingbirds floated in the air near a sugar-water feeder on an old oak tree.

Narrow rectangular windows were set just above the ground, in the stone foundation of the house. They were dusty and dark, totally failing to provide any preview of the basement apartment or of Mr. Gray himself.

A pair of slanted doors were built into the back of the house, leading into the cellar, marked with a brass letter "D." Mr. Gray's apartment. From what I'd heard, it would be easier to talk to him than the Fielding family, so I figured I would start with the easy stuff and then let my evening go downhill from there.

I knocked on one of the slanted doors, feeling weirdly like I was visiting the home of some troll who lived underground.

No response came. I glanced at the little windows along the ground, but no light turned on, and there was no sign of activity.

I knocked again. "Mr. Gray?" I called. "Mr. Gray, are you home?"

Nothing. The evening gloom grew darker around me. The hummingbirds were gone, and three bats circled above in the rising moonlight, slurping their way through a cloud of mosquitoes.

I gave it a third knock, but the third time was not the charm. Mr. Gray didn't seem to be home, and if he was, he clearly wasn't planning to answer the door anytime soon.

I took a business card from my purse, circled my cell number, and wrote PLEASE CALL on the back, in the most girly handwriting, and drew a little smiley face. I thought it might reassure him that I wasn't there to harass him or anything negative. Then I stuck it into the crack between the cellar doors and walked away.

It was time for another deep breath as I ascended the porch steps, walked through the side door into the shared hallway, and knocked on the door to the Fieldings' apartment, which had a brass letter B mounted beside it.

The door creaked open. A woman stood there, wearing an inch or so of makeup, her hair an unnatural shade of yellow, her lips a garish shade of red. She was the type who was pushing forty but dressed like a teenage girl in desperate need of attention—high heels, low-slung shredded jeans, skimpy bra top to show off her tanned abs and the cobra tattoo crawling up her left hip. She was chewing gum as she looked me over, and her lips showed some distaste. I could hear a baby crying in the background, and _American Idol_ blaring from a television.

"Who are you?" she snapped, by way of a greeting.

I told her my name and occupation, handing her a business card.

"Is this about the lawsuit?" she asked.

"What lawsuit?"

"The class-action against them birth-control bastards." She shook her head. "What do you want?"

"I'm investigating several houses in this neighborhood," I said. "I've been hired by some of your neighbors to look into possible disturbances. Are you Lulinda Fielding?"

"Who's there? Is it Joey?" A chunky kid emerged into the small foyer where she stood. He was pale and out of breath, draped in a Transformers shirt, his girth a weird contrast to his hardbody mother.

"It ain't Joey! Get out of here!" she shouted at him. She turned back to me, but the boy lingered behind her, slowly munching down a bag of Skittles while he stared at me like I was a vaguely interesting cartoon. "I have a lot going on. Would you hurry up?" Lulinda said to me.

"Sorry, ma'am," I said. "Some people in the neighborhood have complained of strange things happening in their homes, particularly at night. They see moving shapes, or things that appear to inhabit their closets—"

"What, like possums?" Lulinda asked.

"Nothing so easy to explain," I said. "We're talking about activity that seems...unnatural. Paranormal, even."

She stopped chawing her gum. "You mean ghosts?"

"Essentially. Though they may not actually be ghosts," I said. "These kinds of experiences can result from a number of explainable sources. Power lines, for example, can interfere with the brain, making it see things that appear to be—"

"Does that mean we can sue the power company?" she asked.

"Well, that's just an example," I said. "What we'd like to do is investigate your home for any possible supernatural activity."

"Uh-huh." She straightened up, stiffening her back and looking down her nose at me. "And how much does _that_ cost?"

"I'm not trying to sell you anything—"

"Oh, yeah. Don't try to hornswaggle a hornswaggler. We are not buying anything from you." She began to close the door.

"Please, ma'am." I placed my hand lightly on the door, slowing it but not stopping it entirely—that would be a touch too aggressive. I felt like an old-timey door-to-door salesman, trying to hawk vacuum cleaners to housewives. "Haven't you or anyone else in your home seen scary or unsettling things at night?" I glanced from her to the kid who stood several feet behind her, slowly crunching his Skittles.

"Falcon, how many times have I told you not to eat outside the kitchen!" she snapped. "And chew with your mouth closed."

The huge kid, tragically named Falcon Fielding, frowned at his mom. "But—"

"Quiet!" Lulinda snapped. She turned back to me. "Why are you still there?"

"Would you mind if we just set up some of our gear in other areas of the house?" I asked. "We already have permission from the other tenants in this house. Just common areas like the back garden, or maybe—"

"I told you, we are not buying a thing. Good night!" Lulinda slammed the door in my face.

At least she hadn't thought to say _no_.

I walked around to the front door and let myself back into Alicia's apartment. Stacey was upstairs, reloading and double-checking the gear in the kids' rooms. I heard Kalil and Mia peppering her with questions.

"How did it go?" Melissa asked. She sat up on the couch and paused the TV.

"I met Lulinda Fielding," I said, and she cracked up. "She didn't exactly refuse to let us set up a ton of electronic monitoring equipment down in the basement, but I'm not sure she understood the question."

"Ugh, I hate the basement," Melissa said. "Are there ghosts down there?"

"Yes. That's where they all are, I think."

"I knew it! I totally knew it. You can ask Michael, I told him that yesterday."

"Any luck?" Stacey called down from one of the row of archways that looked out from the second-floor hall.

"They didn't say no," I said. "Nobody told me much beyond that."

"Jacob's going to be here any minute," Stacey said. "And you forgot to run the battery upstairs."

"Okay." I grabbed up the replacement battery from our little pile of basement-bound gear. Melissa narrowed her eyes just a little at me—I couldn't tell if she meant it playfully or not. Then she waved as if dismissing me and started her movie again.

"See you real soon," she said as I left. I don't know why that made me uneasy.

I carried the battery up the four flights to Michael and Melissa's apartment, slowly coming to understand how they could wolf down spaghetti and garlic bread dinners without gaining much weight. Their apartment was neat, and in a decent location near a big park, but I would hate to carry a couch up those stairs.

Michael answered the door. More of that blues music played from the stereo. He wore some ratty, worn-out khakis and a black t-shirt, but also a little pair of half-glasses that looked totally wrong on his face.

"Uh, hi," I said. "Ghost exterminator."

"Come in." He grinned as he closed the door behind me. "How's it going? Caught any yet?"

"No, but we're getting some bites. I just have to change out the battery in Melissa's room, then take the camera out of yours."

"Why's that?" His smile faltered a little, as if he were almost disappointed.

"We need a night vision for the basement. Your bedroom is the least active place in the house, so I'll grab it from there."

"You're saying there's not enough activity in my bedroom?"

"Right, there's—" I paused and blushed at the idea that he might be making a joke. "Not."

"I mean, you only monitored for one night. A _Monday_ night."

"Are weekends more exciting?"

"Always. That's when I do most of my clock work."

He followed me to his sister's room and watched through her hobbit door as I switched out the camera batteries. "So...does this stuff really work?"

"This camera? Only if the battery's full."

"No, I mean..." He hesitated, looking at me with a little grin playing around the corners of his mouth. "You know. All of it. The ghost-hunter stuff."

"Are you asking if I'm a scam artist?" I crawled back up through the door. He offered me his hand to help me up, and I accepted. Why not? "Is that what you're getting at?"

"I guess. Not exactly. Yes." He smiled, as if expecting to remove any offense just by being kind of handsome. It helped. A little.

"If I were conning people, why would I admit it?" I asked.

"Maybe you'd have a moment of brutal honesty. A crisis of conscience. That kind of thing," he said.

"Nope." I ducked into his room and collapsed the camera tripod to make it easier to carry. He waited in the living room for me.

"Can I help you carry that down?" he asked, reaching for it as I approached the door.

"So you can spend a little extra time calling me a crook?"

"I'm not calling you anything yet. I just don't personally believe in, you know, horoscopes, or palm reading..." He took the tripod from me and followed me down the steps. Let the accusations fly. I'd heard it all before.

"I wouldn't say I believe in those things, either."

"What about UFO's?" he asked. "Or reptilian Illuminati?"

"Oh, definitely not UFO's," I said. "That's just a conspiracy by the reptile people."

"I knew it."

"So now you know I'm legit." I glanced back at him as we rounded a landing.

"Alicia and her family have been through a lot," he said. "I just don't want them to get hurt. Or ripped off."

"They'll get more than their money's worth," I told him. "We have a sliding scale."

"And easy financing, I'm guessing."

"Zero percent interest for the first twelve months, actually. You should hire us. You're definitely living in a haunted house."

"Definitely, you said?"

"We have footage of two distinct entities," I said. "One in the basement, one in Alicia's apartment."

"Can I see it?"

"I'll show you later."

He laughed. "Sure."

"I mean it," I said. "This whole neighborhood has a history."

We reached the shared hallway, and he started for the basement door.

"Wait," I said. "We don't want to risk the neighbors seeing our gear and getting upset. We have to wait a couple of hours."

"I doubt anybody goes down there at night," Michael said. "It would have to be a pretty serious laundry emergency."

"You don't think it's too early?"

"It feels worse the later it gets," he said. "It's just going to be you and the other girl down there? You don't want it to be too late."

"We've been in worse places than this."

"That's right. I forgot you're a couple of hardened, kick-ass ghost hunters."

"We are. And I thought you didn't believe in ghosts, so what are you worried about?"

"I said I didn't believe in horoscopes."

"What's your sign?"

"Leo."

"Figures. Typical Leo."

"Really?"

"I have no idea." I did, though.

"Call me when you go down," he said. "I'll help you out."

"Oh, really? What will you do, squirt the ghosts with a fire hose?"

"Yes. Because that's all I know how to do, squirt things with hoses."

We circled around to Alicia's front door, and I heard a rusty metallic creak from the far end, under the shadows of the turret roof. In the light from the house windows, I saw a dark form on the porch swing, which moved slightly back and forth, its chains creaking in time.

"Hello?" I said.

"Ellie! Hi!" Stacey rose from the swing, followed quickly by Jacob. "Uh, Jacob's here."

"I'm picking up on that," I said. I turned to Michael. "You can just drop that in Alicia's place. Thanks for helping."

"Let me know if you need me," he said, glancing at Jacob and Stacey before he walked through the door.

"What were you two doing?" I asked.

"Nothing," Stacey said. "I mean nothing, uh, professionally speaking."

"Good. How are you, Jacob?"

"Considering how these things usually go for me, I'm guessing I'm much better now than I'll be in a few hours," he said. "Just let me know in advance whether I should expect to get clawed, bitten, beaten, or burned this time. Then I'll be better prepared for the agony."

"There's a slight chance you could end up facing your own worst fear, whatever that might be," I told him.

"Great. I have so many, I can't wait to see which one is actually the worst." He looked over at the house. "So, did they _intend_ to make this place look haunted when they built it, or did it somehow evolve to look more creepy over the years?"

"I'd guess both," I said. "Before we go in, though, I want to walk around the neighborhood..." I glanced inside, where Michael was talking to his sister. "Actually, I have another idea. Stacey, you take Jacob around the block, and record everything he says."

"I'll take video. What are you going to do?"

"Set up our gear in the basement," I said.

"No way. Not by yourself." Stacey crossed her arms. "Not after dark, Ellie."

"Michael volunteered to help me. He might as well pitch in, since we're de-haunting his house and Alicia's paying for it."

"Oh, I totally get it now. Ellie's into that hot firefighter guy," Stacey said.

"Really?" Jacob grinned and leaned to look in the window.

"I am _not—_ that's not the point," I insisted. "This way, we won't be working down in the most haunted part of the house at midnight. And it'll be good to have Michael there in case another neighbor walks in on our set-up, since he lives here, too."

"So, to be clear, this has nothing to do with you being alone in the dark with that guy," Stacey said. "Am I getting that right?"

"Absolutely. He can help with the gear and he has emergency training..." I shrugged. "I can have it done by the time you've finished casing the neighborhood. Jacob, we're looking for the oldest thing you can find related to children disappearing—"

"Whoa, whoa," he said. "You're not supposed to give specific information or directions to the psychic, you know."

"I'm giving you some this time," I said. "We need to identify who this entity is. We don't need to hear about every ghost and every tragedy in every house on the street. Each one of these houses probably has its own ghosts."

"Yeah, true. So, missing kids." Jacob watched Stacey as she stepped inside to grab a camera.

"And _old_ ," I repeated.

"I'll see what I can do." Jacob took Stacey's arm, and the two of them walked down the porch steps. She smiled at him as they strolled away under the streetlamps and the mossy oak limbs, looking like a happy, sappy couple from some old black and white movie.

Michael was still hanging out in Alicia's apartment, talking with his sister and Kalil.

"Is your offer still good?" I asked him.

"Which offer?"

"Helping me downstairs," I said, while grabbing some of the gear.

"Sure."

"You're going to help her find the ghosts?" Melissa asked.

"I can help, too," Kalil said.

"Thanks, but I just need one person," I said. "We'll be back in a minute."

Michael picked up the rest of the gear in his arms.

"Careful, some of that's fragile," I told him.

"Just like when he brings in groceries," Melissa said. "He'll hang like a million bags on each arm to avoid a second trip to the car."

"It's worth it, too," Michael said. He was already to the door before I caught up with him.

# Chapter Eleven

Though it was summer and the sun had recently set, the basement air was cold. Michael led the way down the steps, which I liked because it meant he wouldn't notice me peering down at the gaps between the stairs, watching for a shadowy hand to grab at my feet.

None of the washers or dryers were active, a good sign. I opened each of the washing machines, checking inside.

"I don't think that's a good place to hide a camera," Michael said. "Or did you bring something to wash?"

"Ha ha. I'm checking for wet clothes. Wet clothes would mean somebody might be coming back to dry them tonight."

"Are there any?"

"Nope." I closed the lid on the last machine.

"Nice detective work."

"Thank you." I took a spotlight from the assorted gear he'd laid out on the laundry-folding counter. I found a socket near the laundry machines, turning the gloomy basement into a bright day in the Sahara.

"I didn't expect to need sunglasses in the basement," he said, squinting and turning away from it.

"Sorry. I just want to see what I'm doing, and discourage any nasties from bugging me while I do it." The air felt cold and thick, like refrigerated molasses, as I moved through it setting up night vision, thermal, a remote EMF meter, and a motion detector. Michael asked me about each item of equipment and let me explain it. He had a smile on his face, but I couldn't tell if he enjoyed my company or was sort of inwardly laughing at me.

Finally, I set up the laser grid projector on its stand near the middle of the room, and I pointed it right at the door in the rock wall.

"Can you kill the lights?" I asked.

"Is this when we see the ghosts?" he asked. He turned off my searing spotlight, then moved to the light switch on the wall and flicked off the overheads.

"I hope so." I watched thousands of green laser dots become visible on the wall, and I adjusted the projector slightly, centering the grid around the Door to Evil.

"What does that do?" Michael asked, whispering as though the darkness required it.

"If something moves through here, it will black out some of those dots," I said. "It might detect something too insubstantial to see with your eyes, or even a sensitive camera."

"And it really works?"

"Sometimes. We can't count on any of our gear to help one hundred percent of the time. That's why we threw the kitchen sink at this basement. It's very active down here, and we don't want to miss anything."

"Very active, huh?" He was rubbing his stubbled chin, looking at the grid of green dots.

"Come on, I'll show you." I led him through the dark room toward the night vision camera. "Watch the display screen."

"I'm watching."

After a minute, a circular orb floated past. Something flickered in the corner of the screen, the shape of a small human arm, but melted away as quickly as it appeared.

"Are you seeing that?" I whispered.

"Those are ghosts? I expected something a little more...obvious. Couldn't that just be dust in the air or something? There's definitely tons of that down here."

"These aren't the big entity we want," I said. "They're probably his retinue. Little spirits, fragments of the souls he's taken over the years. Let me try something." I took a deep breath and spoke in a much louder, commanding-you-around kind of voice, stating the name of one girl the boogeyman had taken. "Bonnie McAllister! Bonnie McAllister! Are you here?" I said the name a third time, thinking of Michael's sister and her Bloody Mary game. "Bonnie McAllister! Can you show yourself to us? We're here to help you."

Michael and I watched the screen. I held my breath.

There was a sound like whispering in the air. A young girl.

Suddenly the shape of a greenish, hollow-eyed face filled the display screen on the night vision camera, as if someone were peering right into the lens. My heart doubled its beating, and Michael took a sharp breath and stepped back. The face vanished as quickly as it appeared, and it was gone when he looked again.

"Wow. Did that really happen?" he whispered.

"We're recording, so we can check."

He shook his head. "I've never believed in ghosts. What was that?"

"A ghost," I said. "You might say you don't believe in them, but you also said you don't like to come down to the basement at night."

"That's because it's creepy."

"So what? Why were you worried about me coming down here?"

"I don't know. It doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? It just feels like a...bad place."

"It makes perfect sense," I said. "You want to be a rational, sane person, and you don't think that fits with a belief in ghosts. On the other hand, you can feel something's not right when you're down here. One part of you wants to believe there are no ghosts—but another, deeper part of you knows they're around."

"So I'm crazy."

"No, you're just like most people I meet. People can believe contradictory things, especially about complicated subjects like death. Think of how many people profess a belief in a heavenly afterlife but are still afraid to die. You have kind of the opposite thing going on."

"I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm afraid of them." He laughed a little. "It would be nice, though, wouldn't it? Knowing that people you care about still exist out there. Knowing that we all go on..." He glanced around the dark basement. "Although if the afterlife is just being stuck in a laundry room in an old house forever, that's going to disappoint a lot of people."

"If we can get rid of the fearfeeder, these other souls should get unstuck," I said. "If they're really his victims, and not other accumulated hauntings—"

Door hinges squealed, and electric light spilled out across the ceiling.

A large, dark form filled the doorway at the top. It shuffled down a step toward us, and the step groaned under its weight.

"Falcon?" I asked, squinting my eyes. "Falcon Fielding?"

"Falcon _Williams_ ," the boy said, his voice high and nasal. "Hoss is my stepdad."

"Sorry," I said.

"What are you doing?" He looked from me to Michael, then toward the green laser dots on the wall, his faced shrouded in the dark gloom.

"We're just checking for any unusual problems down here," I said.

"I heard you talking to my mom," Falcon said, as if I might not have noticed him standing there the whole time I spoke with Lulinda. "She didn't tell you everything, though."

_She didn't tell us anything_ , I thought. "Have you seen anything unusual around the house, Falcon?"

"Yeah. In my fireplace. It's not a real fireplace anymore, it's bricked up inside. So nothing can climb down into it. But I see it there anyway."

"What do you see?" I asked.

I heard him gulp. "My mom gets mad if I talk about it. Hoss slapped me one time and told me to stop. But it won't go away."

"What is it?"

He hesitated. "You won't laugh?" He looked from me to Michael again, as if more concerned about Michael's opinion of him.

"We won't, I promise," Michael said. "We've all seen scary things. That's why Ellie's here. She's a...what do you call it?"

"I'm a ghost removal specialist," I said. "I've dealt with ghosts all over the city."

"It's not really a ghost," he said. "It's more like a...dinosaur." The boy cringed as he said it. "It sounds stupid but it's real."

"Tell me more about it," I said.

"It's a skeleton, like at the museum. Skull and ribs and bone claws."

"What does it do?"

"It stands in the fireplace and watches me in bed. I wake up and it's there. Usually it doesn't move, it just looks at me." The boy shuddered—I could see it even in the dark room. "Then last week, I woke up and it was by my bed. Its skull was looking down at me. It's like a T. Rex. It barely fit in my room, it was all bent over..." His voice cracked, and I realized he was crying.

"It's okay." I walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. He was still a couple of steps from the bottom, so it was an awkward reach. "We're working to get rid of it. In the meantime..." I told him the same information I'd given to Alicia's kids—that it wasn't really a dinosaur, that it preyed on his fear, that standing up to it would weaken it. "Do you have a strong flashlight in your apartment?"

"I think Hoss has a couple in his tool drawer." He sniffed, wiping his face all along his arm, which I took as a cue to drop my hand from his shoulder.

"Get the brightest one and sleep with it in your bed," I said. "Fire it at the monster if it bothers you again. Imagine it's a powerful weapon. But the real weapon is your courage, the real attack is your choice to stand up to it."

"I'll try." He sniffed again. "Don't tell Mom I told you about it. And don't tell Hoss or he'll get mad."

"We won't," I said. "And...maybe you won't mention what we're doing down here, okay?"

"They'll find out," he said. "They find out everything." Falcon turned and ascended the stairs, huffing and out of breath by the time he reached the top. He looked back at us. "I hope you can get rid of it. It's evil."

Then he closed the door and left us in the dark.

"He doesn't seem like the happiest kid," I said.

"I've never seen him smiling," Michael told me. "He always looks miserable."

"We can't make him happy, but we can make his life easier." I drew my flashlight and pointed it at the door, the bright white beam drowning most of the tiny green dots. "We have to close this case quickly, before the boogeyman tries to take one of these kids. We need to get to the heart of it."

"You want to go in there?" Michael grabbed the doorknob and rattled it. "It's locked. I could call the management company in the morning, try to get Hernando out here. That's the maintenance guy, he'll have a key, but it usually takes a few days before they send him—"

"I don't even want to wait until the morning." I grabbed my toolbox from the counter and handed him my flashlight. "Keep shining that on the door."

"Okay..." He looked puzzled, but held it for me.

I knelt in the bright light by the door, opened my toolbox, and took out a slim leather pack. I unfolded it, selected a couple of slender steel bypass tools, and slid them into the lock.

"Do you bring your own lock picks everywhere?" he asked.

"Tools of the trade." There was nothing particularly complicated about the lock, and within thirty seconds, I was pushing open the door into a dark cavity behind the rock wall.

The intense cold hit us first. The air erupting from the darkness was so dense and cold I could feel it pushing against me. It smelled old and stagnant, the smell of things that have lain too long in their own filth. It was like prying open a coffin that's been buried for years—something I had to do once, unfortunately. I hope to never do it again.

Michael let out an "ugh" sound, and I gagged pretty badly myself. I pushed away from the door and rose to my feet. Then I snagged my flashlight back from him and pointed it inside.

There was, as expected, a furnace, a pot-bellied metal monster squatting in the corner, its copper tentacles snaking away into the ceiling. Its pilot light glowed red behind a small steel cage, the device letting off a low hiss. The thing looked ancient and clunky—no wonder the landlord kept it locked away from the tenants.

For a moment, I thought of Gehenna in the Bible, the place near Jerusalem where children were burned alive in sacrifice to Moloch and other nasty gods. Vanishing children.

Despite the red glare of the bestial furnace, the air was ice-cold, as if something were greedily sucking up every drop of heat produced.

I advanced into the dark space, my flashlight barely denting the gloom. Michael stayed close beside me, protectively, which was much better than leaving me to go alone, and far better than turning and running away. The atmosphere was dark enough to panic most people. I felt almost sick with dread, my muscles tensing up, cold sweat rising all over my back.

The old walls were built from a combination of bricks and irregular rocks cemented together—it didn't look like the soundest foundation for the three-story mansion above.

Spiderwebs matted the walls, and I saw a couple of black widows lowering themselves on threads like floating teardrops of poison.

"Watch for spiders," I whispered.

My flashlight found a heap of old hand tools piled in a rusted-out wheelbarrow. Shovels and shears, also flaking with rust, were propped against one wall. I doubted these were the tools used by Hernando the maintenance guy. They looked like they hadn't been touched in decades.

The loose bricks of the floor sloped gradually downward as we approached the back wall of the room, and the smell of death was stronger. My instincts told me to run away.

"What's that?" Michael squatted on the bricks—I noticed they reflected a little sheen, and the dirt between them looked like it was verging on mud.

He reached out toward a slab of plywood that lay over some kind of hole in the floor, blocking most of it from view. Michael slid it aside. The hole, lined with dark, mossy stones, stretched away into solid darkness below. Cold, rotten air rose from it.

"What is it?" Michael whispered. "A tunnel? A sewer?"

"It could be an old well," I said. "Some old houses had them in the cellar so you wouldn't have to go outside in the winter. It's more common up north, though."

He rose and stood beside me while I shone my light into the well, but the beam barely scratched the darkness. I rotated the iris on my flashlight lens, making the beam as dense and concentrated as possible, but it only showed us an extra foot or so of mossy stones. The darkness beyond seemed impenetrable. Not a good sign, not at all.

A sigh echoed within the well, so low and soft that I leaned my head closer to hear it. I couldn't tell if it was male or female, human or just an ill wind blowing through a dark cave.

I gazed down into the depths, trying to see anything at all. My skin crawled, my guts clenched in unease. The animal part of me wanted to flee, to close the door and never look back...but I couldn't help trying to see deeper into the subterranean world below. It felt like a place full of secrets and horrors.

_Eleanor_.

The voice echoed upward from the darkness. My complete first name, which almost nobody had called me since my parents died.

I recognized this voice, too. My mother. Just the way she'd said it the last time we'd spoken. We'd been fighting—I was fifteen, bucking for independence, wanting to ride with some older kids to an OutKast concert on a school night. I had a crush on one particular boy in that group. My mom wouldn't let me go.

"You'll understand when you're older, Eleanor," she'd said. Her last words to me, ever.

"I hate you!" My last words to her. Then I'd slammed the door to my room and never saw either of my parents alive again.

Her voice stabbed into me like a hook through the heart, drawing me toward the deep darkness below.

I bumped into Michael, which jostled me out of my rapt stupor a bit. He was stepping toward the well, too, his eyes fixed on the endless cold black inside. We were both moving that way.

He didn't seem to notice our collision at all—he just kept staring and easing forward. The toe of his shoe slipped over the edge of the well as if he expected to simply step inside. His face was blank, his eyes wide.

"Michael!" I shouted, snapping my fingers in front of his face. No response. He slid his other foot to the edge of the well while he stared down into it. I planted my hands on his stomach and pushed, feeling the ridges of his abdominal muscles through his shirt. He inched back, then started again, as if I were a minor obstacle to be nudged aside or run over.

Whatever evil lay in the well seemed to have captured his mind. It had almost done the same to me, but seemed to have a stronger hold on Michael. Maybe it was because he hadn't faced as many ghosts as I had, or because he'd been the one who'd uncovered the well.

Hoping for the latter, I knelt on the cold, damp bricks and shoved the slab of wood back into place, covering most of the hole, except where the wood bumped into his shoes.

Michael jumped as though something had bitten his toes. He finally looked at me, his eyes still wide open, his face chalk-white. He looked like he'd seen a ghost, or at least heard one.

"Are you okay?" I stood next to him, touching his arm to try to calm him. He was shaking.

"We have to get out of here," he said. Without waiting for me to reply, he grabbed my arm and hurried us both through the door, slamming it behind us. I don't really like other people hustling me around like that, but again I appreciated that he'd tried to pull me out of danger with him rather than run off and leave me there.

"What did you see in there?" I asked.

"Nothing. But I heard..." He shook his head.

"You can tell me." I stayed close to him in the dark basement, partly because he was still holding my arm and I wasn't in a rush to escape his strong grip. I was close enough to smell his scent, a woody oaky cologne mingled with the warm smell of his sweat. My blood was racing from more than fear.

"It was my mom," he said, his voice so quiet I moved in closer to hear him. "She called for me."

"I heard mine, too," I told him. "She died when I was fifteen."

"My mom died three years ago," he said. "Pancreatic cancer. She died less than a month after they found it."

"I'm sorry." I reached out my other hand to comfort him, but wasn't sure where to put it. It landed on his chest, where I could feel his heart thumping against my fingers.

"Melissa was just fourteen. It was hard on everybody..." He looked at the closed door.

"You took care of your sister after that?"

"Yeah. My mom's cousin wanted her to go live with them in Tennessee, but we wanted to stay together."

"What about your...father? Can I ask about that?"

"That's easy." He managed a smile. "That loser left when I was eleven. Melissa was two. She was throwing one of her tantrums, and he said he couldn't take it anymore. That's exactly what he said before he left: 'I can't take this anymore.' Then he walked out on us. I've barely heard from him since."

"I'm sorry. Melissa was lucky to have you around, though."

"I might have gone crazy without her," Michael said.

"A lot of guys wouldn't have done that—young, single, and choosing to take care of your younger sister? You're a good brother. You're a good person. Aren't you?"

His bright green eyes looked into me, and I could feel so much in the small space between us. Fear. Sadness. An attraction like a live wire, drawing us ever closer together. At least, I know I felt that on my end.

I looked up at him, my eyes adjusting to the darkness enough that I could discern the features of his face, his nose and lips. It was an intense moment, and my toes actually curled in anticipation of what might happen next.

My phone beeped several times, and the ring told me it was Stacey calling.

I couldn't help a small sigh before I answered. Michael and I were still looking at each other, but the sudden, sharp feeling of intimacy and need was already starting to fade, broken up by the outside world's interference. I retreated back into my more familiar, less exciting professional shell.

"What's up?" I asked.

"You should probably get over here," Stacey told me. "Jacob found something. Early eighteenth century, he says. And he's kind of acting weird."

"Like violent weird?"

"No, no, like he climbed the fence and he's pacing somebody's front lawn, and I'm pretty sure they're home...Jacob! Get back here! They'll call the cops!"

"I'll be right there." I hung up after she told me the address. It was the big, brooding Tudor house where the Larsen family had lived, where seven-year-old Kris had vanished about twenty years earlier.

I looked back at Michael.

"Bad news?" he asked, probably because of the disappointed look on my face.

"Just the usual weirdness. I have to get to work, though. Maybe we should talk later?"

"Sure. You're all done here?" He glanced around at the cameras and microphones I'd set up around the room. "You don't need five or six more cameras?"

"I think it's enough." I hurried out of there, stuffing all my confusing feelings back inside, the psychological equivalent of getting dressed on the run.

# Chapter Twelve

I caught up with Stacey at the old Larsen house, which sat on the corner lot two doors down. Stacey stood on the sidewalk, softly calling for Jacob, who'd jumped the fence and was currently making himself at home among the shrubs and flower beds, pacing back and forth.

"She's here!" Stacey called as soon as she caught sight of me.

"Finally." Jacob tromped up to the fence, standing between two huge azaleas. "This guy was crazed. Seriously crazed."

"I'm guessing you found something," I said.

"He did it right here." Jacob backed up several steps, until he stood in a crushed-gravel path that wound through the flower beds and tree islands of the house where he was trespassing. A balding, gray-haired man stood in a window of the house, glaring at Jacob, clearly able to see him in the light of the streetlamps.

"Uh, Jacob, there's a guy watching," Stacey told him. "He looks like the type who'd come out waving a baseball bat. Or, you know, a twelve-gauge."

"He lured the kids out here one at a time," Jacob said, looking at me. His arms were stretched out, his fingers splayed open as if catching information from the air. "It was all screened by trees then, an arbor with big shrubs around it. The house was different, too, completely different. He did the boy first, waking him up in the middle of the night with a made-up story about...buried treasure." Jacob nodded, as if double-confirming that in his mind. "He took him out to the trees where nobody could see them. There was a lot of moonlight. When he pulled the knife and stabbed the boy in the gut, he could see the anguish in the boy's face. Not just the physical pain. The boy trusted the man, and the man betrayed him." Jacob took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "That made the man feel something. Glee. Power. He reduced the boy to nothing but pain and hurt. Then he killed him. And he enjoyed it. It surprised him how much he enjoyed it."

"How did he know the boy?" I asked.

Jacob concentrated, his eyes closed. "Family member."

"His father?"

"Not exactly. But almost."

"How is 'almost' an option?" Stacey asked. "His uncle?"

"Maybe. But not just...they were twins. He and the little boy's father were twin brothers. They all lived in this house." Jacob pointed toward the heavy, dark house where the homeowner stood at the window, glaring at us while talking on a phone. "So, for the boy, it was _almost_ like being murdered by his own father."

"What were their names?" I asked.

Jacob shook his head. "I'm not good with that. Names, dates, numbers..."

"Give me a time period," I said. Stacey had already mentioned one, but it's always good to ask again. And again. Calvin had taught me that.

"Eighteen...twenties? Thirties? He's wearing an old patched-up frock coat. I think he has money, though. They'd have to, with that house. Well, not _that_ house, but the one that used to stand here, with full wraparound porches on both levels, an antebellum place."

I started jotting details on my pocket notepad. Though Stacey was recording him with a handheld video camera, I didn't want to comb back through that footage for key details. He was giving us some fairly good, specific information. Hopefully it was relevant to our case.

"So he kills the boy and leaves him here," Jacob said. "He goes back in for the little girl, the sister. Tells her something about magical creatures or fairies in the woods. He brings her out here, shows her the brutalized body of her dead brother. The little girl screams in terror, and he _relishes_ it. She starts to run, he grabs her hair. She's crying and shrieking like a little pig. That's how he thinks of it when he snaps her head back and draws the blade across her little throat. It's just like killing a pig. He always thought the kids sounded that way when they whined and cried."

"That's awful!" Stacey said.

"Why is he killing them?" I asked. It was weird how Jacob would slip into the present tense when picking up psychic information, as if the tragic events were somehow still happening, again and again, centuries later.

Jacob shook his head. "His mind is a black cloud. He's crazed. I'm mainly picking it up from the kids' perspectives. It's really a place-memory, not a ghost."

"What's the difference again?" Stacey asked.

"A ghost is a lost soul, or a lost piece of a soul," Jacob said. "Place-memory is like an emotional scar. Trauma can leave a permanent mark on a place. And there was definitely some trauma here. He took the bodies through the woods..." Jacob almost walked into a very obvious seven-foot-high brick wall, stopping himself at the last second by reaching out both hands to stop the collision, as though the wall had walked into _him_. "Where did that come from?"

"You mean the giant wall?" Stacey asked.

"I didn't see it a second ago. Lost in the past." He shook his head.

"You should probably consider climbing back over the fence." I nodded at the gray-haired house owner, stepping out onto his porch with a scowl on his face and a rifle in his hand.

Jacob turned and waved at the guy. "Sorry. Lost our...Frisbee. I mean our cat. Whose name is Frisbee."

The guy didn't reply. Maybe he figured he'd let his glare and his gun speak for him. A real Ted Nugent type.

We helped Jacob scramble back over the fence, and he immediately walked past the wall and scrambled over the next iron fence, into another neighbor's yard. At least we were getting closer to our client's house. Soon, he might not be recklessly trespassing at all.

"He carried the bodies through here, through trees and scrub," Jacob said. "He felt _alive_ , like he'd...turned from a shadow into a real person." Jacob shook his head. "That's the best I can understand. He felt more real because he'd killed those kids."

"Cuckoo, cuckoo," Stacey whispered to me. I wasn't a hundred percent sure whether she meant the 19th-century child murderer or Jacob himself, who plunged heedlessly through a small hedge, following the path of his vision with little regard for present-day obstacles.

"He took them down to the old well—"

"Look out!" Stacey called, just before Jacob could crack his knee on one support of an iron fence. He glared at the fence as though annoyed by its existence, then heaved himself over into the front garden of Alicia's house. There wasn't much actual garden left, because much of the area had been paved to provide a small parking area for the tenants.

"Right past this tree..." Jacob said, appearing to walk around a large invisible object. He pointed at the towering, irregular Queen Anne house where Alicia and Michael lived. "Through the brambles, into the old well. Hardly anyone used that well, anyway. The water tasted sour." He looked up at the conical turrets and shadowy recessed balconies. "This house wasn't here yet. It was just the woods and the old well. I guess there's no well anymore."

"That's not exactly true," I said. "Michael and I just discovered one in the basement." I didn't add any more information, didn't mention how it had drawn us toward it with whispered voices and a kind of morbid but irresistible fascination—I wanted to see what Jacob would learn on his own.

"Seriously?" Stacey asked. "I wouldn't drink from that basement."

"I'd better go check it out," Jacob said, starting for the porch.

"Can you do a quick walk-through of our client's apartment, too?" I asked. "I'd be much obliged."

"You and your fancy talk," Jacob replied.

"Since there hasn't been any activity in Alicia's bedroom, I was going to have the family wait there while he checks the apartment," Stacey told me. "Less interference with his Spidey senses."

"Good idea," I said, thinking back to Michael and I discussing the activity in his bedroom, or the lack thereof.

We climbed the steps to the front porch.

"Looks like Alicia's home," I said, glancing in through one of the windows. "Go ahead and quarantine the family, Stacey."

"And should I set up a perimeter?" Stacey asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know, it just sounds good. Like from a zombie action movie." She covered her mouth with one hand and imitated a crackling radio. "Quarantine the area and set up a perimeter."

"Just _go_ ," I said, and she huffed a bit as she walked inside.

"I'm getting a really dark feeling from this place," Jacob said. "From all the houses I've passed on this block."

"Then you're on the right track," I told him.

He looked worried, a deep frown etched on his face.

"That was a grisly murder I just saw," he said. "I'm guessing I won't enjoy the rest of this, either."

"I heard you and Stacey had fun the other night," I said, by way of trying to lighten the mood.

He just gave me a puzzled look, like he couldn't figure out why I'd bring that up at this exact moment.

"Just making conversation," I said, then Stacey returned from inside and opened the door for us.

"Come on in, y'all," she said. "The family's sequestered."

"Hey, nice word choice," Jacob told her as he stepped inside. "Much nicer than 'quarantined.'"

"Thanks." Stacey took his hand and looked up at him with a kind of mock awe, as though his joke compliment had swept her off her feet. "I worked on it all night. I hoped you would say something."

"Are you recording, Stacey?" I asked. She could flirt on her own time.

"Oh, yep." Stacey raised her camera and pointed it at Jacob. "Action!"

Jacob walked in a slow circle around the living room, nodding to himself as he took in the vaulted space, the grand staircase, the row of archways across both the first and second floor, giving cutaway views of the hallways on both levels.

He glanced at the door near the foot of the stairs, which led to Alicia's room.

"We're avoiding that room," Stacey said. "Unless you feel, you know, drawn there or something."

"So far, it's the same general darkness of the whole neighborhood," he said. "Imagine a black cloud, or a fog of evil that's settled over these houses and just sits there like L.A. smog."

"The Smog of Evil," Stacey said in a deep, highly dramatized voice. "Next week on SyFy."

"Exactly." Jacob wandered into the kitchen, both of us following him, but he just gave it a glance and a shrug before moving on.

An interesting thing about kitchens: while ghosts are most drawn to the dark, deserted areas of the house, typically the attic or basement—or closets, in the case of our current boogeyman—the kitchen, in my experience, tends to be the least haunted area. Maybe it's the fact that kitchens are well-lit, but they're also the center of activity for the living, the emotional energy constantly churned and refreshed. They're the heart of the home, and I think something about that keeps the restless spirits at bay, hiding in the shadows. There are plenty of exceptions, of course.

We followed Jacob to the other end of the first-floor hall, where there was a door on every side, all of them closed. He glanced at the door to Alicia's master bathroom, then looked a bit longer at the door to the shared hallway, but finally opened the one under the stairs. He held out his hands and took a deep breath as he looked down the dim, dead-end stairs cluttered with cardboard storage boxes.

"It likes to come up through here," he said. "This doorway. It's obsessed with doorways. Where do these stairs lead?"

"Nowhere. Bricked up," I said. "They used to go to the basement."

"It comes up here regularly, doesn't it? This is like a well-worn trail. It usually keeps to itself. It watches. It's here a lot more than anyone realizes."

"Comforting thought," Stacey said.

"This is your problem ghost, isn't it?" Jacob walked down the first couple of steps, trailing his fingers on the walls. "Nasty thing."

"What can you tell me about it?" I asked.

"It's malevolent. And secretive, always hiding...I see it wearing masks all the time, hiding itself."

"Can you tell me who it is? Anything about its identity? Was it a person?"

"If it was, it's been a long time," he said. "It's twisted into something else over the years. I guess we have to go down to the basement." He said it reluctantly, like he'd stepped on a rusty nail and was resigning himself to going for a tetanus shot.

"We'll do that when we're done upstairs," I said. "The basement isn't connected to this apartment."

"Let's go upstairs, then." Jacob closed the door.

As he ascended the main stairs, he traced his fingers along the railing for a little bit, then scowled at them as if they'd come away with some kind of sticky residue. He didn't say anything about it.

He was drawn right to the closet in Kalil's room.

"This is another door," Jacob said, opening the closet door.

"I knew we called in a psychic for a reason," Stacey said.

"A doorway that it uses to step into our world," Jacob said. "It can kind of take over certain doors, and certain small spaces, and use them as a crossing-point. It's powerful. And it likes to terrorize living people. It...drinks fear like a bat sucking blood. The fear makes it stronger, but also corrupts it. The stronger it grows, the more evil it becomes. If it ever was human, I'm not sure it even remembers that. It's hard for me to get into its mind at all."

He had similar observations in Mia's room. "It loves to scare this girl. She's the youngest, and she has the most potent and concentrated fear of any of them."

"What are its intentions toward her?" I asked.

"Feeding," Jacob said. "Feeding and feeding until she's just an empty husk."

"How do we stop it?" Stacey asked.

"I'm not sure, but I don't think asking it nicely will work," Jacob replied.

We walked out in the hallway again, where he approached the decorative archway of the door to nowhere. He swung it open.

"Interesting design here," he said. "This is another one of the possessed doors—it's like the thing can manipulate doors all over the house. It comes...wait." He blinked and held up a finger as if to quiet me, though I hadn't actually been talking. He turned his head just a little, listening to something I couldn't hear.

"It's cute when he does that," Stacey whispered to me. "Like a puppy hearing its name."

"There's something else here," Jacob said. "He paces up and down this hall. Watching."

"Watching what?" I asked.

"He's worried about the family here, the woman and the kids," Jacob said. "He's a protective presence. Well, he wants to be, but he's not that strong. He knows he's supposed to move on, and all the natural forces are trying to move him on from this world, but he fights them. It's like pulling against gravity. He won't leave until they're safe."

"Who is he?"

"He's showing me his face. And a cross. A little gold cross hanging from his neck." Jacob pointed to his own collarbone.

"What's his name?" I asked.

Jacob gave a rueful little smile and shook his head. "I'm better with faces than names. Sorry. That's why he's here, anyway. He doesn't have a lot of power, and he's not native to this spot. He's doing what he can, trying to keep the thing in the basement away from those kids, but he's much less powerful than it is."

I glanced at Stacey, expecting her to make a B-movie joke about The Thing in the Basement, but she was listening quietly and intently.

"What else?" I asked.

"He's trying to be an angelic presence and failing," Jacob said. "That's how he sees it, in those terms. He wants to be the strong protector, but he's stuck as more of a passive observer. He's struggling to do more. To be more." Jacob paused.

"He's here now?" I asked.

"He doesn't leave if he can help it. Sometimes he fades and feels the pull of the other side trying to draw him away. It takes constant focus for him to stay here at all. He's fading more and more now, and that panics him because the job isn't done, the family's still in danger and he has to leave soon."

"What can he tell us about the thing from the basement?" I asked.

"It was already here when he arrived. He came here because of it, because of the danger." Jacob paused for a long time, more than a minute. Floorboards creaked overhead. It was probably just Michael or Melissa, going about their lives above us. "He's telling me how it always disguises itself, wearing masks to scare people. How it's feeding on all the kids in the house."

"Can he give us any advice for stopping it?" I asked.

"He doesn't even know what it is. He's seen what it does, though. He says it likes to get you when you're alone. He's scared for the living people in this house, but especially the family in this apartment." Jacob frowned. "He's fading. Like there's a tide pulling him away into the distance." He looked at me. "I don't think that guy's going to be much help."

"Doesn't sound like a threat, either," I said. "I'll take the good news with the bad. Though he might be trying to deceive us."

"Always possible," Jacob said. "Everyone lies eventually."

"Aw, I should embroider that on a pillow," Stacey said, following him back downstairs.

We'd finished showing Jacob the apartment, but the ghost-infested basement still waited for us below. I was not eager to go near that old well again, but clearly he was sensing some information about it, and I needed whatever he could find.

I just hoped that reaching his psychic powers into the horrible darkness of the old well, which had bewitched both Michael and myself, wouldn't be like throwing a lit match into a lake of gasoline, causing some kind of paranormal eruption of evil spirits. I was not remotely in the mood for something like that.

# Chapter Thirteen

Jacob stepped onto the first stair into the basement and hesitated. Stacey reached around him to flip the light switch, and the hanging fluorescents buzzed to life.

"I obviously don't have to tell you this is the worst part of the house," Jacob said. "You've got it wired up like a TV studio."

"So much for not giving the psychic advance information," I said.

"It doesn't matter." Jacob continued down the stairs, pausing on the last one. This put me in the unfortunate position of pausing a couple of steps behind him, where something could snatch my ankles through the gaps. I shined my flashlight down between the stairs while I waited, but saw nothing except rusty junk, mostly the guts of an old washing machine that looked like it had been stripped for parts.

"Okay, Jacob," Stacey said after a while. "This is me poking you to get moving."

"Sorry. This place is...full." Jacob grimaced as he left the final stair for the brick floor.

"Which means?" Stacey asked.

"There's a lot of, I don't know, broken ghosts. Fractures, lost chunks of souls. They're clumped together. Imagine, as you're walking through here, that it's flooded with dark water, like a swamp, and there are body parts floating everywhere. They're mostly submerged. Here and there, you see them twitching, a finger curling, an eyeball in half a face turning to watch you pass. That's what I see."

"Gross," Stacey said, while we followed him toward the laundry machines. "I'm going to imagine unicorns floating in cotton candy instead."

"Dismembered unicorns," Jacob said. "Their hoof-stumps kicking, turning the cotton candy dark with blood..."

"That's almost worse. Why would you say that?" Stacey asked.

"Your suggestion made me see it that way for half a second," Jacob replied.

"Oh, weird. So if I said—"

"Don't, it's distracting," he told her. He turned to face the door in the rock wall, the one that led to the furnace and the well and whatever evil chthonic force dwelled below the house. I thought it was clearly the boogeyman's lair, but something told me it might be more than that.

"Stacey." I raised my flashlight, signaling her to raise hers. We approached the door, and I motioned for Jacob to wait while I opened it. There was a good chance something nasty and powerful lurked just on the other side, waiting to shapeshift into whatever we feared and kill us all.

So we entered cautiously.

Our ultra-bright tactical flashlights pushed back the shadows but didn't exactly cut through them or chase them away. The small red flame glowed in the belly of the old beast of a furnace, like a single angry, badly misplaced eye.

Jacob reluctantly entered the room with us.

I heard a sound that hadn't been there the last time, like crashing ocean waves as heard from within an underground cave, sloshing and echoing.

"I already feel sick," Jacob said. "Like drop dead, burn my corpse so it doesn't infect the village sick." His skin looked like bleached chalk.

"Should we get out of here?" Stacey stood close to him, embracing him with one arm. "You okay?"

"We should get what we came for first," I said, and Stacey scowled at me. I felt bad saying it, but everyone upstairs was depending on us.

"She's right." Jacob cleared his throat and walked toward the slab of plywood covering the well. Stacey kept close by him, and I tracked along on the other side. A psychic medium like Jacob is a much more interesting target to supernatural types than a couple of regular girls like us. "What's under there?"

"That's exactly what I need you to tell me." I squatted beside the covered well. The slow, liquid sound was louder the closer I got to it.

I grabbed one edge of the plywood and slid it back, exposing the cold darkness below. The sloshing sound echoed from somewhere deep within, like the heartbeat of some massive primordial creature dwelling far below the earth.

Now Stacey was pale white, too, looking into the old well. I reached over and nudged her arm.

"Don't look inside it," I told her. "Keep your eyes on Jacob."

She nodded, looking rattled, but did as I said.

Jacob leaned forward just a little, but wisely kept a few feet between himself and the hole.

"Oh, no," he said. "That's...awful. Don't show me that."

"What do you see?" I asked.

"Not that!" He closed his eyes and covered his ears, as if protecting himself from some deafening shockwave.

When I'd been here just a little earlier, Michael had been drawn toward the well, mesmerized by the darkness, stepping slowly toward it as though in a trance.

Now, Jacob _slid_ toward it as though dragged by an invisible chain, the soles of his shoes skimming right over the bricks. The liquid noises inside the well grew louder, making me imagine a slobbering, ravenous wolf.

Stacey and I jumped forward, seizing him by the arms. The unseen force pulled at him with incredible strength, and we had to fight to keep him from falling inside. The pull stopped after a few more seconds.

Jacob's eyes opened, staring down into the well with a thousand-miles-away look. His jaw was slack.

"Hey, Jacob?" I said.

No response.

"Wake up!" Stacey snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, but he was catatonic on his feet, as if his mind were lost somewhere in the darkness below.

He started to lean forward again, and we tightened our grips on him. Stacey shouted his name again.

"Kiss him," I told Stacey.

"Seriously?"

"Worked for Sleeping Beauty, didn't it?" That didn't really seem relevant, but it was the best idea I could think of in half a second.

"Um...if you say so." Stacey rose up on her toes and turned his blank face toward him. She hesitated, then gave him a good, hard kiss on the mouth, which lasted a few seconds longer than strictly necessary.

The invisible force pulling him forward stopped all at once, as did the strange ocean-crashing sound from deep inside the well.

Jacob turned and gazed at Stacey, blinking.

"What just happened?" he asked.

"Which thing, exactly, are you asking about?" She gave him a coy little smile, and she was actually blushing, which was pretty abnormal for her. Not for me, though. I'm always blushing like an idiot, especially when I trip over things or say something awkward in a conversation...which is itself way too common. I'm not great at small talk. I'd rather pick one interesting topic and stick with it for a while.

"We need to get out of here." Jacob glanced at the well again. He was back with us mentally, but he was still sickly pale, the darkness of the place bothering him at a deep physical level.

I knelt to push the wooden slab back over the dark hole, but Jacob hurried and beat me to it. Then he took Stacey's arm and waved for me to follow as he hustled her out of there. If it ever happened that he could only save _one_ of us from, let's say, drowning or being trapped in a burning building, it was clear who he would pick. I couldn't blame him, though. I wasn't the one who'd just placed myself over a small gateway to Hell to save him with a reverse Prince Charming kiss.

I didn't risk looking into the well again, but kept my back to it as I followed them out of the furnace room and shut the door tightly behind me. Stacey and Jacob were embracing, both of them shaking. The laundry room itself wasn't a pleasant spot—the dark shadows seemed to drape everything like heavy curtains, and there was the oddly cold air and the undeniable feeling of being watched by things you couldn't see.

"What can you tell us, Jacob?" I asked him.

Jacob turned his head to look at me, still clasping Stacey close in his arms. There's nothing more romantic than sharing a brief encounter with nameless underground horrors, apparently.

"First I saw..." He took a deep breath. "Some of the people from the plane crash. The most mangled bodies. That's how some of them appeared to me when I awoke in that airliner wreckage; they were ripped to shreds but still walking around, too dazed and shocked to realize they were dead.

"When I looked into that old well, the first thing I saw was those people, climbing up the walls, looking at me. Coming to get me, furious that I'd survived when so many of them died. They wanted to drag me down with them."

"It wasn't really them," Stacey said. "This thing just feeds on your fears. It can look inside you and find what scares you."

"Stacey," I said.

"I know, feeding the psychic. Sorry." Stacey didn't look that sorry. She wanted to comfort him more than she wanted to follow our investigative protocol.

"Is that the same well you mentioned outside?" I asked Jacob. "Where the man carried the bodies of his niece and nephew after he killed them?"

"That's the well, but those two bodies are the least of it." Jacob looked around the room, narrowing his eyes, listening. "I can see them all more clearly now. These are the remnants of the dead over the years...that girl and boy are probably in here somewhere, if I could search long enough. But there are older dead. _Much_ older than I usually find. They're so ancient that they don't even present themselves with faces or bodies anymore, or speak with voices, but I can feel them..." Jacob stepped away from Stacey and closed his eyes. "People who died thousands of years ago. Just ghosts of ghosts now, but still here."

"Why are they here?" I asked.

"This spot has been known as evil ground for a long, long time. The place of bad water, they called it. But people would forget, or new people would move in, and someone would discover or dig out the water. It would taste sweet at first, but then it went bad. Some very twisted, evil things have happened here, a lot of them so long ago that the specific memories have faded, but the atmosphere still remains..."

"Well, that's all much worse than what I was hoping to hear," Stacey said. "I was leaning toward a 'solve the old murder, crack the case quick' scenario, myself."

"What can you tell us about what's happening now?" I asked. "With the fearfeeder?"

"That well is definitely where he comes and goes," Jacob said. "It needs to be sealed tight. Physically and ritually."

"Do you know how to do that?" Stacey asked.

"You need somebody more experienced than me," Jacob said. "I'm not trained for it. You need a shaman, a priest, somebody who can bring some power into it. Some of these ancient spirits are hanging around just to keep this place in check, to make the dark things stay down below, but they're old and fading. Their protection is cracking."

"I think I know somebody," I said. "Will that stop the entity we're dealing with?"

"I don't think so," he said. "It's turned some of the closets in this house into possessed doors—computer programmers would call them back doors, secret ways to gain access. So I don't think it would stop the crawling dark thing at this point. Once you deal with your fearfeeder, though, you need to take care of this well so nothing else comes out, nothing else goes in. When Uncle Murderer from the early nineteenth century killed those children and put their bodies into the well, he made a connection with the darkness inside. One thing all evil spirits understand is blood sacrifice."

"What kind of connection are we talking about, exactly?" I asked.

"He mingled his soul with an old, old darkness," he said. "It's hard to say, only that he grew even more twisted than he already was...and probably a lot less sane."

"Is there any connection between him and the fearfeeder we've been chasing?"

"Possibly. The entity you're dealing with now keeps its identity hidden. It only wants to make itself visible when it's pretending to be something it isn't."

"Could they be the same entity?" I asked, getting right to the point of my question. "That's what I need to know."

"They could be."

"I know they _could_ be," I said, feeling myself grow impatient, my calm professional veneer starting to crack. "I'm trying to get a definite answer."

"I don't have one," Jacob said. "It's possible that his murders tied him here, and he returned as a ghost, but the darkness in the well changed him into something else over time." He looked around at the laundry room—empty to my eyes, crowded with damaged and mangled spirits to his. "Something has to be done about this."

"We're open to suggestions," I said.

"I'll tell you if I think of any." Jacob stared at the closed door to the furnace room.

Stacey and I took the opportunity to double-check our gear, and then all of us left up the stairs, turning out the light behind us.

As I stepped out of the basement door, I could feel the nameless things in the darkness watching, like predatory eyes boring into us from the shadows.

# Chapter Fourteen

"Be very careful," Jacob told Stacey as they stood on the front porch, embracing closely and gazing into each other's eyes. I was third-wheeling it a few feet away, waiting to go back inside. "There's a lot of danger in this house."

"Don't worry about me, I'm staying out in the van." She nodded at our cargo van, parked on the street not far away. "Ellie might be in trouble, though."

"I'll be fine," I said when they both looked my way. "Observation only tonight. I promise."

"Maybe I should stick around, just for a while," he said. "In case you need me."

"You can help me keep an eye on all the monitors again," she said. "You're good at that."

"I have spent years sharpening my TV-watching skills," he replied, and she gave it more laughs than the joke was really worth.

Stacey gave me a questioning look, and I shrugged.

"As long as you keep your eyes on the monitor, not on each other," I said.

I grabbed my headset from the van and returned inside alone. My first stop was to knock on Alicia's bedroom door. "All clear," I said.

Alicia stepped out, telling her kids to wait in her room, and closed the door behind her.

"Well?" she asked. It was a normal enough thing to say at the moment, but the word immediately made me think of the dark, stone-lined shaft in the basement, from which evil things bubbled to the surface.

I had her follow me to the kitchen so the kids couldn't listen through the door, and then I gave her what information I had. It certainly sounded bleak and hopeless coming out. Her facial expression alternated between skeptical and horrified.

"For now, we think we have some leads on who this entity really is," I said. "Identifying a ghost is key to removing it, so our odds are now much better. I'll stay here again tonight and keep watch. By tomorrow night, we should have some hard historical facts to help us trap the ghost."

"I need you to take care of this right away." She glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was later than I'd realized, approaching eleven p.m. I didn't know where the time had gone. "Is it safe for the kids to sleep in their rooms?"

"I'll stay close to them again," I said. "Stacey and I will both be watching all night, so you can rest. There was one thing I didn't mention."

"Does it get worse?"

"Not this part. The psychic encountered what he called a positive male spirit, here to protect your family specifically. He was not someone who had a connection to this house in life."

"Gerard," she whispered. Her husband's name.

"We didn't get a name—he rarely picks up on names, unfortunately. Jacob said this male ghost knew he had to move on, the next world was calling for him, but he was stalling and won't go until he sees you're safe."

"What else?" Alicia stared intently at me, leaning closer for any news of her lost husband.

"Did Gerard ever wear any jewelry?"

"Jewelry?" She laughed. "No, he wasn't that type. All he ever wore was a little cross his grandmother gave him, and he kept that under his shirt."

"What color?"

"Gold. Why?"

"The psychic saw that," I said. "He was still wearing the cross. A memory of it, anyway. Do you have a digital picture of your husband you can send me?"

"I absolutely do." Alicia flipped through pictures on her phone, looking wistful.

I grabbed my digital tablet from our gear-heap in the corner of the room, and I confirmed I'd received it. Her husband stood on a beach, tall and handsome, looking out towards swollen thunderheads above the ocean.

"Okay, this will take a minute," I told her. "You might as well put your kids to bed, if you want."

She nodded and went to retrieve the sleepy children from her room.

Using Google image search, I quickly assembled a photographic line-up of men who vaguely resembled Gerard—late twenties to early thirties, very dark skin. I combined these in a single document, a dozen images with Gerard tucked unassumingly in the lower right corner of the collage.

I put on my headset.

"Stacey, do you read?" I asked.

"Not as much as I should," she said. "You know, my mom keeps telling me those Janet Evanovich novels are really fun—"

"Never mind," I said, sighing. "I'm sending you a photo line-up. Ask Jacob if he recognizes anyone."

"Roger, Wilco," she replied.

"You totally knew what I meant before, didn't you?" I asked. "You knew I wasn't trying to start a conversation about Stephanie Plum."

"Sorry, transmission's getting fuzzy. Stand by." Stacey turned down the volume on her headset, but I could still hear her explaining it to Jacob.

"That one," Jacob said. "He's the one in the house, watching over the family."

"Please note subject has identified the man in the third column, three pictures down," Stacey said, really overdoing it now. "Is that our suspect?"

"That's Alicia's husband," I said. "So we've identified one ghost. Too bad it's not the one we need to catch. Gotta go." I stood as Alicia returned down the stairs, staring at me like she was starving and I had a platter of hot, fresh cornbread.

"Don't you mean 'over and out' or 'signing off' or 'good night and good luck'?" Stacey asked. I turned down the volume without answering her.

"We have as much confirmation as we can get," I said. "The psychic did pick Gerard out of these pictures." I showed her the collage I'd slapped together.

"So it's him," Alicia said.

"As far as the psychic can tell. Some entities, and particularly the one we're dealing with now, can disguise their identity. I have to mention that for accuracy. But I don't see why it would pretend to be Gerard in front of Jacob, who doesn't even know Gerard. Jacob had a very strong sense of this dark entity's energy, and I don't _think_ he would have been fooled, but it's always possible."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm more than ninety percent sure this is your husband, but not a hundred percent," I said. "I try to be scientific, but this is one area where you'll want to check your own feelings, if you encounter him. You knew him better than anyone."

"I sure did." Alicia looked at me a long moment. "Do you think...?"

"What is it?"

"Could your psychic friend help me speak to Gerard?" She was whispering, glancing up at the closed doors to her kids' rooms. "I wish I could talk to him just one last time."

"Probably not tonight—Jacob's done a lot already, he's probably drained," I said. "I'll ask him about it another time. I can tell you, though, that if his spirit is here, you can talk to him anytime. He's paying close attention to you and your kids. He'll hear you."

Alicia's eyes shone.

"I've spoken to him a lot," she whispered. "Since he passed. Sometimes I felt like he was hearing me, somehow..."

"He heard you," I said.

The tears erupted and tumbled down her cheeks. I patted her on the back. She embraced me, and I hugged her while she sobbed a little. I could feel the weight of her life, raising two kids alone while working a demanding job with long hours, and I suppose nobody had held her in a long time. That's one thing about this job—dealing with a lot of death means we run into some high emotions.

"I'm sorry," Alicia said, looking embarrassed as she drew back and wiped her eyes. "I guess I've been wanting someone to say that for a long time."

"I understand, believe me. My parents both died in a fire when I was fifteen." I didn't want to talk about myself, but I wanted her to know that I was familiar with those extreme feelings of loss and isolation.

"That's awful," she said, touching my arm.

"I'm used to it. But the pain still comes back sometimes."

"I'm so sorry." She gave me a little smile through her tears. "Maybe that's why you like Michael so much. A firefighter."

My first instinct was to deny liking him yet again, but that would have been a lie, and lies didn't belong in this conversation.

"Is it that obvious?" I asked, and she laughed.

"I should get to sleep myself," she said. "Thank you for being here, Ellie."

"I'll do my best to help your family," I said. "I promise."

As she walked away and closed her bedroom door, I felt an even stronger sense of purpose about resolving the case.

"Stacey, copy?" I said, turning up my headset again.

"I'm reading you," she replied.

"I'm getting into position," I told her while I climbed the stairs. I'd turned off all the downstairs lights. "How are we looking?"

"Basement's a ghost aquarium again," she said. "And the laser grid has dark spots passing through it, blotting out the dots, about once a minute."

"And the rest of the house?"

"Total snorefest so far."

"Keep me posted." I flicked off the upstairs lights, leaving the house enshrouded in ghost-inviting darkness, and sat on my air mattress.

The first order of business was emailing Grant Patterson, our friend at the Historical Association, with all the details about the house on the corner. We needed to know who had lived there in the first half of the nineteenth century, and I told him about the twin brothers and the two children who would have been reported missing or dead. I added a couple of family names we'd turned up for that lot during our research at the city archives.

The subject line of my email: URGENT. We needed to make some swift progress. I told him that inside the email, too, with copious thanks.

Then I used my tablet to check through the cameras around the house. Just as Stacey said: weird, irregular shapes fading in and out of view on the night vision in the basement. The thermal showed small, drifting cold spots forming and dissolving with no apparent physical cause, all over the room.

Looking up and down the dark hallway, I took in the closed doors, the stairs, the cutaway arches behind me giving a view of the living room below. My eyes adjusted to the gloom, able to see in the pale streetlamp light drifting in through the balcony doors at one end of the hall. The house had fallen quiet.

I wanted to call Michael, but it was much too late to call anyone that I didn't know to be a confirmed night owl. What would I say? _Hi, sorry to wake you, want to chat some more about how you live in a house of horrors built on cursed ground?_

There had to be better conversation-starters than that.

Alicia was right—I was interested in Hot Firefighter Guy, but I wasn't altogether sure how I felt about those feelings. I like to keep people at a slight distance. Like behind a wall topped with barbed wire and surrounded by a moat full of piranhas. I'd always been that way.

_Not always_. _Not before Mom and Dad died,_ a little voice in my head felt obliged to point out.

So what? That was another life. There was no reason to think about Antonio Torres, the boy who'd invited me to the OutKast concert I'd never attended, how open and fearless my crush on him had been.

It hadn't been that way with anyone else since then. Not since I'd raised the barriers around myself and installed catapults full of flaming arrows on top.

Since my parents died, I'd resisted being close to anyone, even being unfairly cold to my cousins when I'd gone to live with my Aunt Clarice in Virginia. She already had three kids, but she'd made room for me, anyway. Not that teenage me had appreciated it.

Then I thought of Alicia. She and her husband had clearly shared a deep, strong connection. Then she'd lost him, and it had torn her in half. I'd already lost the people I cared about most in a flash of fire. The flames hadn't consumed me, but they'd burned me to my core. If I let myself care too much about anyone else, or get too close, I would just be preparing myself to get burned all over again.

My place was with the dead.

I watched the house through my tablet for a while, then I stood and paced the dark hall, moving as lightly as I could so my boots wouldn't send out resounding clicks from the hardwood.

Stacey had turned down her microphone so I wouldn't have to hear her chatting with Jacob, or whatever they were doing out in the back of the van together.

I looked out through the glass doors onto the dark cavity of the recessed balcony. Past the wrought-iron railing at the front, the narrow old Wilson house stood in its blind-watchtower fashion in the moonlight. I finally let myself remember that night, but my memories were just terrified flashes.

I'd been in the van, watching Calvin in green night vision on one of the monitors. He'd run into the booth-sized trap, and I couldn't see what happened inside because the walls were built of that colorful, heavily leaded glass.

The fearfeeder had dropped from the ceiling like a cockroach, landing on top of the trap while Calvin was within it, baiting the monster with his life.

It crawled down one side of the booth—just a black mass of darkness shaped like a man—and scurried around inside, pursuing Calvin, just as Calvin had intended.

I'd warned him it was coming. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Maybe that had caused Calvin to pause, to look back rather than running straight on through and out of the trap.

I had not heard any gunshots, nor seen the scummy-looking guy who Calvin had seen, the boogeyman of cops everywhere, the unknown person waiting just around the corner, or maybe in a pulled-over car late at night, ready to blast out the brains of anyone wearing a badge.

That illusion—sight, sound, and all—had been for Calvin, and the cameras and microphones had picked up none of it. All I heard was Calvin grunting in pain over my headset, and all I saw was him falling halfway out of the trap, collapsing, blocking the door so I couldn't close it.

Then I'd gone running inside and found him on the floor surrounded by his own blood.

I turned away from the house and its painful memories, walking now to the dead-end door in the ornate archway.

"Come on," I whispered. I touched the flashlight holstered on my utility belt, which I'd strapped on in case tonight turned into more than a simple observation. "Come on, boogeyman, Closet Man. Tell me who you are."

Something cold passed me, an unseasonably chilly draft. It was over as quickly as it began.

"Who's there?" I asked. I clicked on my flashlight, but it didn't reveal anything. I walked over to my toolbox to grab the thermal goggles.

While I fished them out, I heard a tiny creak behind me.

By the time I had the goggles in place, the cold spot was gone. The dead-end door was ajar by just a crack, as though somebody had walked past and opened it.

I walked to the door, feeling my heartbeat kick up a little. Intellectually, I knew there could be nothing behind the door—there wasn't _room_ for anything behind it—but at that moment, in that dark and silent haunted house, I could believe that it would open onto something else entirely, some scene of horror and death...but I opened it anyway.

And found myself staring at a blank wall.

I let out a slow sigh, feeling a mixture of relief and disappointment. It's my job to find, observe, and remove the ghosts, but that doesn't mean I enjoy encountering them face to face, not at all. It's just a necessary part of the work.

Something had passed through here, either Gerard or the boogeyman, but it was gone now.

I walked up and down the hall, listening and watching. I would usually make rounds of the house, checking in person for any activity, but I didn't want to stray too far from the kids tonight. Protecting them was my main concern.

Time passed. Slowly. I mostly checked the basement cameras to watch the activity there. Stacey mentioned over my headset that Jacob had gone home for the night, to catch some sleep before he woke up to count other people's money at the firm where he worked.

By about three in the morning, I was feeling drowsy, and fairly certain that nothing would happen that night. It happens a lot. Ghosts don't always follow a set schedule, unless they're obsessed with a certain time—the time of their death, usually. I once dealt with a ghost who appeared like clockwork at 1:11 each morning, the exact moment she'd been murdered by a jealous lover. That one was easy to find. Unfortunately, this fearfeeder was not so predictable.

Just as I was ready to give up for the night, Stacey whispered urgently through my headset.

"Ellie, I've lost both cameras in Mia's room," she said. "They blacked out."

"I'll take a look." I drew my flashlight without clicking it on, then took Mia's doorknob in my hand. It was like grabbing a ball of ice. "Stacey, I might need back-up. Get ready."

I turned the handle, which wasn't easy—the tumbler and latch assembly inside the doorknob let out cracking sounds as though they had been frozen into place.

Pushing the door open, I stepped into Mia's room with my flashlight out in front of me like a firearm.

The room was cold, as I'd expected from the doorknob, so cold my breath turned solid white in the air. Something growled soft and low in the darkness.

Mia lay in her bed, rigid as a corpse with her eyes wide open. She was staring at her closet, but I had to step deeper into the room before I could see it.

The two cameras remained in place on their tripods, undisturbed, pointing at the closet door. The door itself was open a few inches.

Something dark stood in her closet. The low growling sound rumbled from there, too soft to be heard by anyone outside the room.

"Stacey, hit the floodlight," I whispered, looking at the remote-controlled light she'd installed. Nothing happened. "Stacey!"

"I'm trying!"

I ran to Mia's bedside table and pressed the floodlight button Stacey had installed there, but the light still wouldn't come on. I tried the lamp—dead. The wall switch for the overhead light—no response.

Mia looked at me, too terrified to speak, then looked back at the closet.

I clicked on my flashlight, narrowing and concentrating the beam with the little iris, and jabbed it at the closet. The dark figure slipped out of sight, but the room remained painfully cold, and I could still hear the growling. It was a mechanical sound, I realized, more like an engine than an animal.

"Stacey, get in here now," I whispered, approaching the closet door.

"I'm already on my way."

"Mia, run." I looked at the girl in the bed, but she shook her head very slightly, too scared to budge from under her covers.

The mechanical roaring grew louder as I reached for the cold closet handle and slid the door aside.

It sprang out at me, ignoring the high-powered tactical light in my hand. Behind me, Mia screamed.

Fleshface, the supernatural stalker-killer who'd risen from the grave in sequel after cheesy, low-budget sequel, swung his chainsaw at my head as he leaped up from the sunken closet.

My only defense was to dodge back, leaning back as far as I could while the chainsaw sliced through the space where my head had been. I'm not Matrix Girl, so this was not done elegantly, and led to me crashing backwards and sprawling on the carpet, in a fashion that might have been horribly embarrassing if I hadn't been preoccupied with feeling terror for my life.

I did escape the chainsaw, though. It passed over me and lodged into the door frame around the closet.

The apparition seemed dangerously solid. I could feel the displaced air when it leaped at me, smell the motor oil and exhaust from the chainsaw. It looked just like the movie monster, its head wrapped like a mummy's but with strips of human skin (or the Hollywood effect-shop equivalent) instead of ancient cotton. His enormous, heavily patched overcoat rustled as he pulled the chainsaw free.

"Mia, run!" I shouted again as I scrambled to my feet, backing away from Fleshface. It's not a good idea to fight chainsaw-wielding ghosts in the same room as a small child, if you can avoid it. Not that I've ever seen a ghost wield a chainsaw before.

Mia pulled her thick quilt over her head, hiding in her bed. It was frustrating, but I understood where she was coming from. Only the bed was safe. Leaving the bed, even reaching a finger or toe over the edge, or leaving any part of yourself exposed from beneath the covers, meant opening yourself to attack. Every kid who's ever seen a monster in the closet knows that.

Fleshface regarded me for a moment, his dark eyes glittering in their sunken sockets as I shined my flashlight at his head. I suddenly wished I'd seen at least one of his movies.

"Mia," I said. "How did they kill Fleshface at the end?"

"With his chainsaw," she whispered. I could barely hear her, but I was pretty sure that was what she'd said.

"Of course."

"He's powerful but slow," Stacey said over my headset. "The girl who kills him in the second movie is a gymnast."

"Sounds like a job for you," I replied.

Fleshface came at me again, the chainsaw raised above his head in a way that, I'm pretty sure, violates the standard chainsaw safety manuals. He looked ready to bring it down and split me in half. The smart, self-preservation thing would have been to run, but no matter how scared I was, I couldn't leave Mia alone with this monster.

I dodged to one side and let him charge past me. As Stacey had promised, he lumbered onward, not nimble at all. His chainsaw swung toward the floor, and he started to twist around, belatedly trying to follow me.

The only option I really had was to swing my tactical flashlight, its anodized shell of aircraft-grade aluminum designed to double as a blunt weapon when cops needed one in a pinch.

I swung it with both hands like a baseball bat, right at the fleshy strips on the back of his cranium.

This was a big risk. Most of these entities aren't very solid when you try to fight back—you find yourself wrestling with a cloud of energy that lashes at you with psychokinetic energy but has no real mass itself, no stomach or groin where you can plant your boot. There was a good chance I'd stumble right through the movie monster only to get hacked apart by its chainsaw. The chainsaw, of course, wasn't actually real, either, but represented a dense, sharp, rapidly moving center of the ghost's psychokinetic power.

The flashlight whipped toward his head...and slammed into the back of it with a satisfying crack.

Fleshface let out an awful moan, like a high wind through a graveyard just before a storm. He staggered forward, the tip of his chainsaw dragging through the carpet and shredding it into a cloud of lint.

I drew my flashlight back for another strike, but he was already turning toward me, his chainsaw swinging in an upward arc toward my ribcage.

I changed the trajectory of my flashlight in time to bring it clanging down on the chainsaw before it reached me, as if we were suddenly in a medieval sword fight.

A storm of electrical sparks erupted, briefly lighting up the room before he sliced my flashlight in half. I stumbled backward as he raised the spinning blade yet again, the tip pointed at my heart.

I was moving in the only direction open to me...right into the closet, a dead end where he'd have me cornered in one of his favorite spots in the house.

Another light flooded the room. Stacey stood in the doorway, her tactical flashlight in one hand.

"Buddy slaughter!" she shouted.

I couldn't make any sense of those words, but Fleshface stopped and turned toward her.

"Guess what I'm about to do," Stacey said. "I'm on my way to a party, where I'll drink beer and maybe sneak off with a guy. And if I hear any strange, creepy noises while I'm there, I'll be sure to go and investigate them all by myself, without telling anyone where I'm going."

I knew just what Stacey was doing, describing behaviors that would mark a character for certain death in any teen horror movie. Only the virtuous virgins survive.

Fleshface let out a roar and charged at her.

I went after him, raising a leg and landing my boot in the center of his back. My foot sank in a little—his body felt spongy, as if I'd just stomped on a Jell-O mold covered in a dirty napkin.

He went down, and I fell after him, since I'd put all the power I could summon into that kick. Three years of kickboxing class finally paid off.

The monster crashed on top of his chainsaw, and the blade ruptured out the back of his overcoat, directly in the path of my fall.

I managed to fling out my arms and catch myself, landing on my hands and knees, the buzzing chainsaw blade only an inch from my chest.

He squirmed under me, and I pushed back into a squatting position.

Though the chainsaw jutted out through his midsection, there was no blood or gore. His limbs twitched and flopped, as boneless as a scarecrow's.

Something poured out of his flailing form. At first I took it for some strange black liquid, thick and viscous, flowing from his crumpling overcoat and deflating mask.

Then they crawled up my leg, and I realized I was looking at a flood of spiders. Black widows, thousands of them, pouring out while the coat and mask shriveled to the carpet like empty rags.

I stood and staggered back, screaming as I pulled my sleeve over my hand and swept at the spiders crawling up both legs of my jeans. People rarely die from a single black widow bite, but just one can make you extremely ill. I didn't want to find out what a hundred of them might do.

Mia screamed along with me.

"Calm down, Ellie," Stacey said, looking at me like I was crazy while she turned on the room lights. "It's over."

"Do you not see—" I began to shout at her, but then I looked down. I was smacking at my legs for no apparent reason. All the spiders were gone. So were all traces of Fleshface.

"Did we kill him?" Stacey asked.

"I wouldn't bet on it." I drew my thermal goggles down over my eyes to check the room. "Probably just chased him away. Mia, are you okay?"

"Yeah," the girl breathed. "Is he gone?"

"Gone for now," I said. "Stacey, what did you yell at him when you ran into the room? Buddy something?"

"Buddy Slaughter."

"That's Fleshface's real name," Mia said. "In the movie."

"Gotcha."

Alicia arrived in a panic, wearing frayed blue satin pajamas, clearly drawn by her daughter's scream. While she sat on the bed to embrace and soothe Mia, the three of us told her what had happened. The room rapidly grew warmer, shifting from a bitter winter feeling into humid, warm summer air. Kalil appeared in the doorway as we spoke, watching and listening but saying nothing.

"Did you see anything, Kalil?" I asked him.

"No," he said. He was trying to sound nonchalant, but his voice trembled, hinting at fear underneath the surface. "I just heard screams. Is it gone?"

"We think so," I said.

"Can I stay in your room, Mommy?" Mia asked.

"Of course you can, baby. You too, Kalil."

"I'm okay," he said. "I'm not scared."

"I don't think I'll sleep again tonight," Alicia said. "It's almost four, anyway. I'll just go clean the kitchen."

"I'll help you, Mommy," Mia said.

"Kalil? Cleaning or sleeping?" she asked.

"Cleaning," he said with a sigh, but he looked relieved at having a third way out, not having to sleep alone or with his mom.

Alicia and the kids left, off to clean and organize an apartment that was already pretty neat and spotless as far as I could see. It was a relatively healthy reaction under the circumstances, I guess, getting busy with something that would both distract them from their thoughts and help them reclaim some feeling of control over their home.

Stacey and I remained in Mia's room. While Stacey took snapshots of the scene, I studied the gash in the closet door frame.

"Look at this," I said, and Stacey came over. I ran my finger across the shallow, diagonal cut. "This seemed much deeper to me at first. There's no chips, no splinters...like he cut it with a scalpel instead of a chainsaw."

"Maybe we should really insist on the family leaving the house for a few days," Stacey said.

"We know this entity can leave the house, though," I said. "If it follows them somewhere else while we're here, we won't be with them to protect them. When Calvin and I investigated the Wilson house, we urged the family to leave, and they did. But I'm trying _not_ to repeat our choices from that investigation."

"Because it turned out badly."

"The entity disappeared after that. I couldn't find it on my own. It needed the family there to draw it out."

"So we're kind of using our clients as bait." Stacey frowned.

"We're keeping the entity predictable," I said. "If we change their routine, we change what it does."

"However you want to say it." Stacey took pictures of the distinctly non-chainsaw-like cut.

"It's shocking how precisely it wields its PK energy." I picked up the sliced halves of my flashlight. "It's usually blunt force, like knocking on a wall or slamming a door. Or it's up close and personal, biting and scratching. What this thing just did is off the charts."

"Great," Stacey said softly, in a tone that made it clear she wasn't feeling that great about it at all. She checked the night vision and thermal cameras. "The batteries are drained dry, but these aren't damaged otherwise. I'll go get replacements."

Stacey left, and I stood alone in the room. The interior of the closet was shadowy and still gave me a sinister feeling, like something was there, watching me. My thermal goggles revealed nothing, but the EMF meter registered the same high readings we'd found on our first walk-through. The closet was itself a doorway, somehow leading down into the soulless depths where the monstrous shapeshifting entity dwelled, hungry to terrorize the living.

# Chapter Fifteen

Stacey and I left at sunrise, after breaking down our gear from the laundry room and stashing it in Alicia's apartment. The moment we stepped out of the house into the pale morning light, it was like a heavy, oppressive weight lifting from our shoulders.

"You know what I wish?" Stacey said, while I pulled the van out onto the street. "I wish, just once, that we'd run into a _nice_ haunting, you know, a _nice_ ghost who just plays the piano or tidies up the house at night. One who kind of says, hey, being dead isn't so bad."

"A lot of ghosts have some kind of psychological disorder, or else they wouldn't be here," I said. "A ghost who understands his situation feels compelled to move on. Like Gerard. He's got one foot in the next world already, so I guess he's not so powerful here."

"What do you think that next world is like?" Stacey asked. "Is there a heaven and hell? Or is it like the near-death experiences people have?"

"I don't know. Maybe there's nothing."

"How could there be nothing? You talk all the time about ghosts moving on to the 'other side.'"

"Maybe that's just a term we have, and not a real place," I said. "Maybe a ghost is just a tangle of unresolved emotion and longing. Untangle the knot, and there's nothing left but emptiness." I thought of my parents, gone forever, my whole life defined and shaped by their absence.

"That sounds bleak," Stacey said. "What does Calvin say about it?"

"Calvin says we must embrace uncertainty or we aren't being honest with ourselves."

"Sounds like something he read in a fortune cookie."

"Probably," I said. I didn't feel like having this conversation with Stacey at the moment, or thinking about whether there was more to life after death than restless ghosts making life miserable for the living.

After dropping her off, I went home for a bit of sleep. I had nightmares about a dark masked figure hunting me with a chainsaw. I was glad to wake up surrounded by daylight, rather than awake from those nightmares in the deepest hours of the night. I'm sure I would have seen monsters in my closet, too. In this line of work, you never run out of fresh nightmare material.

I saw I'd missed a call from Calvin, so I called him back while I brewed coffee. My cat Bandit meowed at my feet, clearly remembering the day I'd accidentally spilled cream on the floor.

"Bad news on the Carson kid," he said.

"Which one was that?"

"Twelve years old, disappeared in '85," Calvin said. "Turns out when they found him, he was catatonic, wandering down River Street. Dirty from head to toe, wearing shredded pajamas. He didn't say a word. Kid lived to be twenty-three years old, but he never spoke again. Went persistent vegetative, then died. Shut down. Like something sucked the soul out of him."

"Great. Another possible bad fate for our client and her kids." I filled him in on the events of the previous night.

"This is getting worse, Ellie," he said, the worry plain in his voice. "I think you and Stacey should stay inside together from now on."

"But then who will—"

"I'll sit in the van," he said. "I'll keep watch."

"We can handle this."

"I thought I could handle it alone, too, Ellie," he said. "I was wrong. Learn from my mistakes. And to be honest, I want to see this thing beaten and caught."

"You're the boss," I replied, but I wasn't happy about it. This same entity had hurt Calvin before. I didn't want to see him get hurt again. Saying that aloud would just rile him up, though.

As we spoke, I grabbed my tablet and walked out onto what my landlord would call my "balcony," which was more like a brick ledge with rails. It was a nice place to sit and have coffee, soaking up the green sunlight filtered through the oak canopy above.

"What else?" Calvin asked.

"I have an email from Grant." I skimmed it quickly. "He's found something for us. Hopefully it's better news than you had about that poor kid."

"Couldn't be much worse," Calvin said. He was right about that.

After an exciting lunch of apples and celery, I met up with Stacey and drove over to the Historical Association mansion, a beautiful gray-brick place trimmed with black wrought-iron railing, a feature ubiquitous around the city.

"Sorry to meet you at the servants' entrance," Grant whispered, opening the side door for us. "The Docents Committee is having tea in the front parlor. Come, come, you both look lovely."

"So do you, Grant," I said. He was impeccably garbed as usual, in a white summer suit over a mint green shirt, the entire ensemble seeming to cool and sweeten the air around him. That was probably his cologne, though. I noticed an unfamiliar row of salt-and-pepper bristles on his upper lip. "Are you growing a mustache?"

"Simply an experiment, nothing more." He led us toward the polished rosewood back staircase, the railing made of elegantly sculpted black iron columns.

"You look like Clark Gable," Stacey offered as we followed him up.

"Then I shall never shave it off."

"Is that what the Docents Committee is meeting about?" I asked in a hushed, conspiratorial whisper. "Your new mustache?"

"Much larger issues." Grant rounded the landing, leading us up to the second floor. "They're deciding on the flower arrangements for next season _and_ what to serve at the Society dinner in two weeks. There was some discussion of buying a new carpet for the first-floor reading room. The meeting might come to blows."

The upstairs hall was brightly lit and hung with paintings of Savannah and the nearby islands drawn from across the past two centuries. At one point, we crossed a cutaway balcony and glanced down at the front parlor, where a cluster of well-dressed silver-haired ladies, ranging in age from sixty to ninety, sat ramrod-straight in the antique wing chairs, having a serious discussion in low voices. I imagined the argument growing heated as Grant had mentioned, the elderly ladies shouting, flinging their cups and cookies at one other, finally descending into all-out brawl, pearls and purses flying.

I doubted it would happen.

"This way..." Grant turned an ornate little curved handle on one door. He brought us into his office, where everything screamed _antique_ , from the polished walnut rolltop desk against the back wall to the chairs engraved with little grape-and-leaf shapes. Tall rectangular windows looked out on the grassy park across the street, framed by light, gauzy floor-length curtains. Bookshelves crowded the walls, densely packed but neatly organized.

Grant sat at a more modern desk at the center of the room, with a sleek black computer and stacks of documents. More documents, folders, and leather-bound books sat on a rolling cart parked beside his desk.

"I apologize for the mess," he said. "Have a seat. Should I smuggle up tea and cookies from downstairs?"

"We don't want to trigger an international nuclear incident," I said.

"Very true. The reading-room carpet might never be replaced. Well, let's begin with the Bible." Grant lifted a heavy leather volume the size of an unabridged dictionary and placed it before us.

"Are we going to get religious here?" I asked.

"Not at the moment. We'll skip to the end." He gingerly opened the old Bible, revealing rows of names and dates written in faded ink on two blank pages by the back cover. I nodded. Lots of families used to note births, marriages, and deaths in the old family Bible.

"The Barrington family occupied the land you're studying," Grant said. "This may look like a dry collection of names and dates, but see how much we can learn from it." He pointed to a pair of names with his pen, not touching the fragile old paper. "Two brothers, Joseph and Edgar Barrington, born on the same date in 1795. We know right away they're twins, but we can't say whether they're identical or fraternal.

"In 1820, Joseph marries Rebecca Moore, born in 1803," Grant continued. "In 1821, she gives birth to a boy, Joshua. Two years later, a girl, Sarah. Then the dates tell a darker story. Joseph dies in 1825 at the age of thirty, leaving a young widow and two small children behind. Both children died about two years later, on the same day."

"This is exactly what we're looking for," I said. "Grant, you're a genius."

"You can thank the Association's endless appetite for acquiring every stray piece of paper in the city," Grant said.

"It looks like the wife lived to be sixty—" I began, leaning forward and reading the handwritten dates upside down.

"Ahem. I've spent all day cobbling together this information, so _I_ will be the one telling the story," Grant said.

"Sorry," I said, sinking back into my chair. "Please continue, sir."

"Thank you. As I was about to say, Rebecca lived until 1863, dying amid war and deprivation. She did not re-marry. And, as we can also see, Edgar lived until 1856 and never married."

"Sounds like Edgar could be our boogeyman," Stacey said.

"Boogeyman?" Grant's neatly groomed white eyebrows perked up in interest.

"That's what we're hunting this time," I said. "It hides in closets, it makes you see things and feeds on your fear."

"I've heard this before," Grant said. "Is it similar to the ghost that put Calvin in that wheelchair?"

"We think it's the same one," I told him.

"Oh, dear. Be careful, both of you." Grant looked deeply worried, lines crinkling his forehead as he frowned at me.

"We will," I said.

"Promise me."

"I'll even make a note of it." I took out my pocket notepad and jotted down the two words. "Be...careful." I turned the notepad around to show him.

"I'm satisfied that you're taking the threat seriously," he said. "Where were we?"

"Edgar Barrington," I said.

"Yes, thank you." Grant opened a binder filled with faded old documents in the blocky type of nineteenth-century printing presses. "As far I can determine from tax records and assorted correspondence, Edgar lived in the house with his brother Joseph. Joseph was the one who built the house. He prospered in the trade of agricultural commodities, mainly timber for shipbuilding and export. An American tale, truly—Joseph made his fortune, built himself a mansion, and found a well-bred young lady to install inside it."

"What did Edgar do?" I asked.

"Edgar worked for Joseph in a subordinate capacity...an errand boy, more or less. He never made a mark on his own. After Joseph died, the business foundered badly under Edgar's management...until Edgar was placed in a mental asylum in 1829, where he lived until his death. I have the commitment papers around here somewhere..." Grant reached for an old folder. "In any case, it fell to young Rebecca, a woman who'd lost her husband and both children, to manage the business. Which she did well, finally selling it at quite a profit. All of which evaporated in the war."

"Sounds like a tough chick," Stacey said.

"Indeed. Here are Edgar Barrington's commitment papers...According to his sister-in-law, he was often found crawling the floors of the house at night like an animal, or standing for hours in the garden, staring at nothing, laughing to himself or drooling. At other times, he would pretend to be his dead brother and insisted that people call him 'Joseph.'"

"Weird-o-rama," Stacey said.

"He was witnessed in public, disheveled, what the paperwork calls 'a state of utter disarray.' He would skulk around school buildings, churches, and parks, staring at children as they played."

"I'd like to change my vote from 'weird' to 'creepy,'" Stacey said.

"Several witnesses offered statements, including neighbors and business associates, but it seems clear to me that Rebecca, Edgar's widowed sister-in-law, spearheaded the effort to have him committed."

"Leaving her with the house and the business," I said.

"The man killed her children," Stacey said, sounding defensive. "And he was clearly a bag of nuts, stalking other kids..."

"How did his brother Joseph die?" I asked Grant.

"A horseback riding accident," Grant said. "Interestingly, Edgar was the only witness to Joseph's death." He said that with an air of a person casually unloading juicy gossip, knowing it will bring a big response.

"So Edgar might have killed his brother, as well as his brother's children," I said. I was scribbling on my notepad like a madwoman.

"Good thing he got locked up," Stacey said.

"Truly. He died in that asylum, too," Grant said.

"Uh." Stacey sat up in her chair, looking at me with wide, worried eyes. "This isn't going to lead to us digging around in another haunted old insane asylum, is it? Because I'd rather go snorkeling with sharks. With a big tuna steak dangling around my neck."

"Then you'll be happy to learn that is not an option," Grant said. "This particular hospital was demolished long ago. As was the Barrington house itself."

"The big Tudor place that's there now was built in 1905," I said. "That's where a boy named Kris Larsen disappeared in the nineties. Do we have any pictures of this Barrington family?"

"We have a photograph of Edgar Barrington, apparently taken at the asylum." Grant produced an old brownish photograph protected by plastic.

The man lay on his back, his mouth slightly open, his eyes glazed. His face looked pinched and thin, his nose and cheekbones so sharp they looked like they could cut paper. His hair had gone gray. His fingers were long and thin, like a pianist's.

"He looks dead," Stacey commented.

"He is," Grant said. "I found this along with his death certificate. He died of tuberculosis in 1856, probably acquired inside the asylum, which helps explain his bony condition."

I gazed at the picture for a moment, trying to connect this thin corpse to the robust dark figure who scurried along ceilings and walls, tormenting children in the night.

"I've also found a few items of correspondence written by Edgar, as well as some by Rebecca," Grant said. "You may find the Edgar one particularly interesting. It is dated 1828, and he seems to have written it to Rebecca while he was out of town surveying a timber purchase. Here."

Grant brought out the old hand-written letters. Edgar's handwriting was a jabbing, spidery crawl.

"All I see makes me think of you," I read aloud from the section Grant had indicated. "The mating creatures in their rut, the great trees fallen and bleeding, their sap like blood returning to engorge the earth with life."

"A real poet," Stacey mumbled.

"It torments me to share our home yet not our flesh— Wow, that's pretty blunt. You are the wife of my lost brother. Biblical law makes it clear you should be mine," I read.

"He's wrong on that point," Grant said. "Deuteronomy requires it only if the first brother dies childless. Joseph had left a son and a daughter."

"Who both died two years later," I said.

"That makes me think of this Serengeti documentary I saw," Stacey said. "When a new male lion takes over a pride, after defeating the old alpha male, he also kills all the previous alpha's cubs. Makes all the females go into heat so they can have the new leader's cubs instead."

"I don't believe it made our dear Rebecca go into heat," Grant said. "The letter shows Edgar's unfulfilled desires for her."

"You have shown me a colder face, and resisted me, and you call me mad. My madness is for you, Rebecca. We are bonded each to the other, by chains stronger than simple vows, stronger than blood itself. You are cruel, your presence stirs me to arousal, leaves me in torment and pain—" I read.

"That poor woman, living with that creep," Stacey said. "I wonder if she suspected him."

"Did they ever find the two kids' bodies?" I asked Grant.

"I've read nothing about that," Grant said. "The children were reported missing and never recovered. The date of their disappearance was later recorded as their date of death."

"We know where the bodies went," I said.

"Then perhaps you will lay them to rest," Grant replied.

"No way. I'm not going down into that well," Stacey said.

"So, here's the scenario I'm seeing," I said. "Edgar lives in his twin brother's house, watching Joseph and his family every day. Edgar's not successful on his own, he's unmarried, he's basically living in his brother's shadow. Maybe he's already mentally disturbed and can't get his own life together. So he's jealous. Jealous and crazy. He kills his brother to try and take his place. Then, a couple years later, decides to kill the two kids. Maybe he wants to have his own with Rebecca. He clearly wanted her to marry him, and she clearly resisted, and finally had him committed. How does that sound?"

"Sounds like he was a total whack-a-doodle," Stacey said. "But yeah, that's the picture I'm getting so far."

We read through more correspondence, including the letters by others who'd observed Edgar's increasingly bizarre behavior. These seemed to have been written in support of Rebecca's bid to lock Edgar away in the asylum, providing evidence that he was off his rocker. Rebecca struck me as a strong and resourceful woman, weathering the worst tragedies, using lawyers and doctors to remove Edgar from her life for her own safety, though she'd been too late to save her children.

From a letter from Rebecca to her sister, written early in Joseph and Rebecca's marriage: "I thank you for your kind comments about the house, but I must tell you, the house demands so much it seems to own me. Even with five household servants I cannot keep up. And the children! Two overwhelm me—I do not see how you manage five, dear sister. I remember believing marriage would free me from Father and his cruelty, giving me freedom and power at last—how foolish I was.

"I prattle about the burdens every woman must share in this life, but I face another in this home. I beg you repeat none of this. Joseph's brother Edgar continues to dwell with us, and his presence unsettles me. He has none of Joseph's loud and boastful manner, but is a creature of shadows and whispers. Strange that two men so identically crafted on the surface could be so different. Edgar sulks and slumps, and appears shorter than Joseph.

"It is unfortunate to say, but I must confess it somewhere to unburden myself. When, by ill chance, Edgar and I find ourselves unaccompanied, alone in a room with no witnesses, he looks on me in a manner that puts me in mind of a starving dog, eager to gnaw upon my bones. It is all the stranger that he wears the form of my husband. These encounters disturb me. There is no other proper word for it."

After more reading, we came across this passage, in a letter to a friend a year after her husband died: "Edgar craves me in marriage. He drools like a hound. He makes no secret of his desire. But I have been married once, and have no wish to bind myself to a low creature who wears the face of Joseph yet is an inferior soul to my dear lost husband. My children place sufficient burdens upon me, as do the men from the office who come to me for advice, knowing that I understand my late husband's affairs and investments, and am not an irresponsible fool like Edgar. They let him make pronouncements, then ignore him and follow my advice instead.

"Edgar grows stranger by the day and year. I must lock my bedroom door at night, for I have opened my eyes more than once to see him standing over me, his form rigid as a corpse seasoned two days in the ground, his breath panting as he watches me sleep."

There was a long gap in her letters after the day in 1827 when her children disappeared, as if she could not bring herself to write after losing her children, followed by a flurry of correspondence dated 1828 and 1829, most of it about having Edgar committed to the asylum.

"I'd be interested in finding anything she wrote after Edgar died," I said. "Did he start haunting the place right away?"

"I suggest we divide up the remaining papers and read through them separately," Grant said.

Stacey sighed as Grant placed a few inches of folders and unsorted documents in front of her.

It took us a lot of reading, hours of it, shuffling through old bank records and squinting at the faded handwritten letters. Stacey was the one who found it.

"Here," Stacey said. "1859, four years after Edgar died. Letter to her cousin. Sandwiched in between her fears about the rising division in the country, her belief that Lincoln's election was a sign of troubled times to come...listen to this. 'I cannot release myself of agitation. By night, I find myself tormented by visions of Joseph and the children, and these visitations are far from happy. In my mind, my poor lost children stare at me with hate and loathing. I wish only for an end to this torment, as I wish for peace in our nation...' And then back to blah blah here comes the Civil War," Stacey concluded. "That sounds like our boogeyman."

"Her husband and children, hating her from beyond the grave," I said. "That must have been her fear."

"Survivor's guilt. I'm pretty sure Jacob has that from the plane crash," Stacey said.

"So we've learned all about our boogeyman," I said. "Now we just have to trap him."

"How?" Stacey asked. "His house was torn down, and that old asylum was torn down, so we can't go there, which is a total shame. Where are we going to search for ghost bait?"

I thought about it for a minute. "Grant, where is Edgar Barrington buried?"

"I believe I ran across..." He shuffled through papers for a few minutes. Stacey stared at me with a very disturbed look on her face. I tried not to laugh at her reaction. "It would be Laurel Grove North."

"Can we track down his exact plot?"

"I have the bill of sale for it here," Grant said.

"Um..." Stacey cleared her throat. "Just to be clear, so I don't feel like I'm going crazy. We're not talking about robbing this guy's grave, are we?"

"Do you have a problem with that?" I asked her, keeping my face stoic.

"Well...there could be jail time involved. Among many, many other considerations," she said.

"That's why it's best to wait until after nightfall," I told her. "We're less likely to get caught that way."

Stacey gaped at me. All the color had drained from her face.

"It sounds like an adventurous evening," Grant said. "I would volunteer to wield a shovel and help to excavate your evil friend, but honestly, I'd rather be doing...just about anything else tonight."

Stacey remained speechless, a rare thing for her.

# Chapter Sixteen

Laurel Park Cemetery lies on the west side of Savannah, over a hundred and fifty acres of huge old trees, statues, crypts, and gravestones mostly dating from the middle to late nineteenth century. Roads and paths curve out of sight under the shady canopy.

It was gloomy when Stacey and I arrived, the evening approaching us quickly under a dark and overcast sky. Great conditions for grave robbing.

We walked up one of the foot paths, past massive granite markers and dark marble obelisks, toward the oldest area of the cemetery. I carried a ridiculously oversized purse, more like a small suitcase, with a few flowers sticking out the top.

"Hey, I didn't really want to mention it, but we totally forgot to bring any shovels," Stacey said. She scanned the footpaths and the shadows under the trees, as if looking for someone, but the graveyard appeared deserted. We were the only living people in sight.

"We don't need them."

"So we aren't digging up the boogeyman's bones," Stacey said, looking relieved. "Right?"

"It would be nice if we could, but like you said, there could be jail time involved."

"Yeah. It would be...nice." Stacey shook her head.

We found the Barrington family plot, enclosed by stone and wrought iron. I opened the little gate and let myself in.

"My skin's already crawling," Stacey whispered.

"You're not helping the mood by saying that," I whispered back. I felt a little nervous, too. A monster lay under these stones.

We found Joseph Barrington's grave. _1795-1825. Beloved husband and father. I rejoice in thy salvation -1 Samuel 2:1._

His brother Edgar lay nearby. _1795-1856_. No plaudits or Bible verses for him.

Rebecca Barrington lay directly in between the brothers, her headstone a little more ornate. A granite cherub perched on top of it, one hand extended downward as if to help Rebecca up out of her grave, the other pointing skyward as if to indicate their destination.

Nothing commemorated the two missing children. As far as we'd been able to determine, their bodies had never been found.

"Edgar's buried right in the middle of the family he destroyed," Stacey said. "Makes you think."

"What does it make you think?"

"Uh...it's just an expression. So what's the plan, ma'am?"

I knelt in front of Edgar's grave and brought an empty ghost trap out of my silly-sized giant purse, scattering the handful of flowers that I'd thrown on top of it.

"You really think we can trap him here?" Stacey asked. "With no stamper or anything? Are we just going to ask him nicely to step inside it for us?"

"Nope." It was a standard trap, a two-foot plastic cylinder with a leaded-glass jar inside. A layer of copper mesh was fitted between the glass and the plastic to create an electromagnetic barrier when the battery pack was activated.

I took a little steel trowel from the purse and scooped up a heap of dark earth and a few weeds from in front of Edgar's headstone. I dumped it all into the trap.

"Interesting..." Stacey said, watching me closely.

"Earth from the ghost's grave," I said. "It automatically reminds them of their true condition, and offers rest and peace. A ghost looking to escape its miserable existence can find it very attractive and sink right in."

"So that's our bait? Edgar's grave dirt?"

"Best bait we can manage."

"What if he's not looking to escape or move on or whatever?" she asked.

"Then he'll avoid this soil like the plague, making it completely useless as bait."

"Great. So...fifty-fifty chance, right?" she asked.

"I don't get the sense that Edgar is really trying to give up his role as boogeyman," I said. "So I'd put the odds at closer to ninety-ten. Not in our favor."

"That's comforting." Stacey looked up at the dark clouds ahead. "Is it about to rain?"

"Just watch out for other people," I said, shoveling more dirt, rocks, and small weeds into the trap. "I don't want to try explaining this to a judge."

Stacey paced around, looking nervous, watching the growing shadows while I filled up on nice, fresh grave dirt.

"Someone's coming," she whispered.

I glanced up, hoping to see an elderly pedestrian type taking an evening stroll and visiting the ancestors. Instead, I saw headlights cutting through the gloom. It was a golf cart, probably a maintenance or security person, and it was turning toward us.

I capped the trap and stashed it into my giant purse before standing up.

"Just wait for him to pass," I whispered.

The cart didn't pass, though. It slowed to a halt as it reached the portion of the path closest to us. A man stepped out—white beard, tan coveralls. I could see a dirty shovel and hoe propped upright on the back of the cart.

"Cemetery's closed," he said, walking toward us. He wore a hard, suspicious look on his wrinkled face.

"Already?" Stacey gave her best innocent, rapidly-blinking girl look. "I thought it closed at sunset."

"Naw, we close at five each day. It's posted right up front."

"Oh, I am so sorry, sir!" she said, covering her mouth as if horrified while doing the most honeyed Alabama accent I'd ever heard. "My aunt told me this cemetery had the most beautiful angel statues she'd ever seen, and I just had to go and see them for myself. And she's right, but she didn't tell me how lovely the gardens were. We'll just skedaddle on out of here, I am so embarrassed."

The gruff-looking maintenance man had slowly begun to smile as the words gushed out of Stacey's cute blond head. She was doing a good job charming him, which meant I didn't have to deal with the situation. I appreciated that.

"Looks like rain," the man said, pointing his thumb at the dark, overcast sky. "You might get caught out in the weather. I'd better give you ladies a ride back to your car."

"Oh, goodness, you don't need to do all that, sir," Stacey replied. "I'm sure we'll be fine."

"I insist," he said. "You'll look like a couple of wet cats if you walk all the way back."

"Well, if you _insist_..." Stacey started toward the golf cart, and I trailed behind, feeling mildly annoyed. I'd wanted to get away from the guy as soon as possible, but I suppose we'd have looked more suspicious if we'd actually turned down a free ride so we could walk in the rain.

I rode on the back, facing backwards next to a dirty shovel, my now-heavy purse in my lap.

Stacey sat up front while the man told her all about the history of the cemetery, soaking up her attention while he puttered us forward at about five miles an hour.

A light, misty rain was drizzling by the time we reached the van.

We got ahead of the slow-moving rainclouds, which obscured the setting sun and brought an early nightfall as we drove downtown. After parking at the curb in front of our client's house, I led Stacey around back. I wanted to try again to speak with Mr. Gray.

I knocked on the slanted door marked with the brass _D._ The little windows near the ground were dark, so I didn't have much hope. Raindrops splatted my hair and face. I knocked again.

"I think he's out," Stacey said.

"Or he's doing a great job of avoiding us." I sighed. "Let's get inside."

Melissa was babysitting Kalil and Mia again. The kids were in the kitchen, eating peanut butter and jelly.

"My brother said you can call him if you need help again," Melissa told me, while Stacey and I started on the heap of gear that we needed to lug down and set up in the basement all over again.

"I think we'll be okay," I said. I didn't want Michael thinking I needed help and protection all the time. I was a ghost-hunting private detective, after all, who'd just recently kicked a boogeyman until it bled spiders.

"Are you serious?" Stacey asked. "You're not going to let that guy carry the heavy stuff for us, Ellie?"

"We can manage," I told her.

It took a few trips to move everything down, and we set up with the portable floodlight on again, since the overhead fluorescents were so poor. The room was already cold, and we could feel hidden eyes watching us from every corner.

We ran into problems—the thermal was stubborn about booting up, the microphone battery kept dying.

We were working on sorting those out when more problems arrived.

The basement door opened, and a tall man, easily six-four or six-five, charged down the steps. He had a square jaw and a comb-over that generally failed to hide his bald spot, and he wore a big brown-striped tie with a short-sleeve shirt.

"There they are!" he said, pointing at us.

He was followed by a shorter man, hefty with a black Elvis-esque pompadour and sideburns to match, his sizable stomach draped in a bowling shirt. The man squinted in confusion through his purple-rimmed glasses.

Then Lulinda Fielding followed right behind them, and the picture snapped into place. I wondered which of the two men were her husband, the elusive Hoss.

"I told you! My boy saw them down here yesterday," Lulinda said.

Falcon. The little turncoat.

"Just what is going on in here? Who are you people?" asked the Elvis wannabe. His voice was unexpectedly high and nasal.

"We're private investigators," I replied.

"They're rip-off artists," Lulinda said. "Talking about ghosts. They told my boy the monster in his closet is _real_."

"Kid just whines and cries all the time," said the man with the combover. "Scared of dinosaurs. What kind of kid is scared of dinosaurs?"

"I'm gonna have to call the police," Elvis Guy said as he reached the basement floor. "What is all this mess?"

"We're studying paranormal disturbances on behalf of several of your tenants," I told him. "I'm Ellie Jordan, from Eckhart Investigations—" I reached for a business card.

"Well, I'm the property manager for this here house," Elvis Guy said. "Zayne Plunket. And I need all this mess taken out right now."

"Your own tenants wanted us here," I said.

"The only tenants I see are Hoss and Lulinda Fielding, and they want you _gone_."

"Just give me a second." Since Alicia hadn't been home the last time I was upstairs, I called Michael.

"Did you find any ghosts?" he asked when he answered.

"I found some of your neighbors. They called in your property manager," I said. "Want to come vouch for us?"

"Sure. Just tell Zayne to sing 'Hunka Hunka Burning Love' until I get there."

I snickered as I hung up the phone. "Michael's coming down," I told them.

Hoss, of the combover and ugly tie, snorted and shook his head.

"You still need permission from the property owner to do...whatever this is." Zayne adjusted his purple glasses as he leaned over to inspect the thermal camera on its tripod.

"Careful, that's expensive," Stacey said, moving closer to him. "And fragile."

"What does it do?" Zayne asked.

"It's a thermal imaging camera. It shows us cold spots indicative of active revenants or other noncorporeal entities," I said.

"What's that, now?" Zayne asked. The words rushed together to sound like _Whussat, nah?_ I couldn't quite place his accent. Maybe it was Late Pilled-Out Elvis.

"Ghosts," Stacey said. "We're looking for ghosts."

"They're crazy! Call the police already!" Lulinda said.

"Leave them alone," Michael said, walking in through the door. He'd arrived so fast that he must have run the whole way, but he didn't show any sign of being winded or anything less than calm and relaxed. "They're supposed to be here."

"Says who? You?" Hoss asked, glaring while Michael descended the steps.

"Alicia and I want her here," Michael said. He walked over to stand beside me, a nice show of solidarity. He glared at Zayne while he spoke. "This house is haunted. I've seen it, my sister's seen it, Alicia and her kids have seen it."

"And your child has seen it," I said, looking at Lulinda. She gave me an oversized pink-lipstick clown-frown and looked at the floor. I turned to Zayne. "We tried to speak with Mr. Gray, too, but he never answered his door."

Zayne looked from us to the Fieldings as if puzzled, scratching his big King of Rock and Roll belly.

"Who's Mr. Gray?" he finally asked.

"Over in apartment D." Hoss pointed to the door to Mr. Gray's apartment, his forehead bunching up over his eyes as he studied Zayne like he was the world's biggest idiot, maybe on display at the circus freak show. "Scrawny old guy. Always dressed sharp, wearing that same old-fashioned gray suit and bowtie. Pays you rent every month. You might have heard of him."

"Nobody's lived in apartment D for years," Zayne said, returning Hoss's scrutiny with his own you're-an-idiot look.

"We see Mr. Gray all the time," Michael said.

"You might want to go collect some back rent," Hoss said, pointing to the door. "I hate freeloaders."

"No, there's no tenant," Zayne said.

"You're out of your mind, Elvis," Hoss said, striding on his long, bird-stalk legs toward the closed door at the far end of the laundry room. He knocked on it.

Zayne looked around at the rest of us, an expression of disbelief on his face. Then he walked over to the door, took out a thick wad of keys on a keyring, and shuffled through them...slowly, as if he had hours to kill. Hoss watched him impatiently, arms crossed, toe tapping.

"Put some fire under that mule!" Hoss finally snapped.

Zayne didn't reply. He finally found the right key, slid it into the lock, and turned it.

The door to apartment D creaked open.

I walked over to see it, along with everybody else.

We looked into a small room with eggshell-bland walls, the floor made of cheap, warped hardwood. Cardboard boxes, paint cans, and a small pile of old lumber sat along one wall.

I flipped on my flashlight and walked inside. No furniture, just assorted old junk. It was all one room, except for a bathroom in the corner. I saw the short flight of concrete stairs leading up to the slanted doors where I'd knocked earlier.

"Nobody's lived here in a while," Stacey said, following me in.

"I don't get it. Where did Mr. Gray go?" Hoss asked, standing in the doorway.

"How many times do I have to say it? There's nobody named Mr. Gray, nor Miss Scarlet or any other color, living down here." Zayne stepped into the apartment. "There was trouble with water leakage, and people kept breaking their leases, saying the place was..." He closed his mouth.

"The place was what?" Michael stepped close to Zayne, who looked at the floor, scratching his stomach. "Haunted?"

"Well..." Zayne shrugged. "People will say anything, I guess."

"You know about this!" Michael said. "You and everybody at your company. That's why the rent's so low but the lease is expensive to break. _You_ should be paying for the ghostbusters."

"Doesn't make any sense..." Hoss grumbled, kicking a piece of crumpled waste paper across the floor.

"We're not paying for anything!" Zayne snapped. "Y'all need to get out of here." He waved his arm as if directing traffic back to the laundry room. "Come on, now."

"You're all messing with me," Hoss said, with a glare for Zayne especially. "This is some kind of joke. Come on, Lu." He stomped out of the room, and Lulinda followed, with a dismissive glance at the lot of us.

Michael was still glaring at Zayne, who seemed to slump under the weight of Michael's look.

"I guess that settles that," Zayne mumbled, shifting his weight uncomfortably.

"And you're not going to give these investigators any more trouble?" Michael asked. He was certainly thorough about standing up for us.

Zayne mumbled something and wandered out of the apartment. I gave Michael a smile as we left. His return smile was warm and inviting.

# Chapter Seventeen

Upstairs, Calvin had arrived and was waiting for us outside. The drizzling rain had passed, leaving the night smelling fresh and new. Michael walked over there with Stacey and me, since he'd agreed to help lug the big stamper into the basement, thankfully.

We gave Calvin the summary of what had happened and helped him into the van, where he would be watching the monitors all night.

"So you're the fireman," Calvin said, appraising Michael over his glasses. Calvin wore a coat and tie for the occasion, though he'd neglected to shave or untangle his salt-and-pepper hair, which had grown longer year by year since he'd left the police force.

"Yes, sir."

"Decent manners, too," Calvin said. "Not like these young people who don't bother with proper introductions."

"Oh, sorry," I said, feeling embarrassed. "Michael the fireman, this is Calvin the ghost detective."

"Good to meet you, boy," Calvin said, shaking his hand. "Heard you've been a big help."

"I just carry stuff to the basement."

"With a basement haunted as bad as yours, that's a big help."

"Thanks," Michael said.

"I need to ask you something, Michael," I said, opening a briefcase I'd stored in the back of the van. It was crammed full of folders holding photocopied pictures and documents from the library and the Historical Association. I flipped through them and found the picture of Edgar Barrington from the asylum morgue. "Do you recognize this person?"

Michael's eyebrows shot up. "That's Mr. Gray."

"Whoa," Stacey said. "Seriously?"

"This man's name is Edgar Barrington," I said. "We think he's our boogeyman."

"Mr. Gray's the boogeyman?" Michael asked.

"It could be the twin brother," Calvin said.

"That's right. Edgar had a twin brother, Joseph," I explained to Michael. "Joseph died in a horseback riding accident, possibly arranged by Edgar. His ghost could be stuck here along with his twin."

"Twins can have a strong psychic connection," Calvin added. "If Edgar's stuck here, Joseph could be stuck with him."

"It's crazy to think that old man is a ghost," Michael said. "I figured he was just quiet and lonely, kept to himself. He never really replied when I spoke to him, but just kind of nodded and smiled and continued on his way. Sometimes he was heading toward his apartment, sometimes leaving the house and strolling up the sidewalk..."

"Why do you call him Mr. Gray?" I asked.

"That's what Terry and Alex called him," Michael said. "They lived in apartment B before the Fieldings did."

"Maybe it was just from his appearance," Stacey said. "He wears a gray suit, never speaks to anyone. Somebody started calling him Mr. Gray and it caught on among the tenants."

"He does have a gray tone to his skin, too, like he's sick," Michael said. "I always thought it was the perfect name for him. What's his real name again?"

"Joseph Barrington," I said. "Edgar's his brother."

"And you're hoping to catch Edgar tonight. With this." Michael tapped the trap, half-filled with grave dirt. I'd dumped the excess dirt into a mason jar to make room for candles inside the trap, and so the trap's internal sensors wouldn't be buried in earth.

"Standard ghost trap," I said. "A layer of leaded glass on the inside, surrounded by an electromagnetic field, the whole thing insulated with plastic. This dirt is from Edgar's grave."

"And that actually works?"

"Sometimes. Tonight will depend on whether he's attracted to his own grave dirt or repelled by it."

"Better get that trap ready," Calvin said, turning back to the array of glowing screens to watch the house. "We're into the ghosting hours."

We carried the gear down to the basement, where I slid the trap into the stamper. I lit a couple of candles to help draw the ghost's attention. On my advice, we stayed quiet throughout this process.

I programmed the trap to snap shut when it detected a temperature drop of five degrees or more, combined with an EMF spike of at least two milligaus. That was virtually a hair trigger. I would be watching the trap on video with the remote in hand, but it was good to set the trap to close automatically when it detected a ghost, just in case something went wrong.

We left quickly and closed the basement door behind us. Then we lingered in the short hallway, near the bottom of the steps to Michael's apartment. Michael and I just looked at each other.

"Okay, I'd better check on the clients..." Stacey excused herself, stepping through the door into Alicia's apartment.

I felt rooted there, looking up into Michael's bright green eyes, and there was again that feeling of something warm and magnetic drawing us together. I hoped he felt it, too, and that I wasn't going completely crazy.

"Do you think you'll catch him tonight?" Michael asked.

"If we don't, I'm not sure what we'll try tomorrow night."

"Anything else I can help with?"

I was tempted to ask him to sit with Stacey and me, monitoring the apartment from the inside, but I worried my personal feelings about having him around would distract me from the work. Also, it might be hours before anything happened—what if the conversation grew awkward or he started to think I was boring? There were all kinds of ways for things to go wrong, and all kinds of mistakes I could make if I wasn't totally focused on what I was doing.

"I think we're all set for the night," I told him. I glanced at his lips and imagined what they might feel like on my own. Yep. Distraction. "Thanks again."

"Call me if you need anything at all," Michael said. "I want to keep everybody safe."

"Of course you do."

The moment lingered, and I wondered if he might hug me, or something else...

"Good night," he said, turning away slowly and starting up the stairs. Was he not interested? Or did he _have_ to be such a gentleman? I'm sure he could read the look on my face like an open book. He'd probably seen it plenty of times on other girls.

"Good night," I said. I walked to the door to Alicia's apartment, then looked back to see his denim-clad legs climbing up and out of sight.

When I walked through the door, the apartment was quiet, the lights low. Stacey sat on the couch in front of the secondary nerve center she'd set up on the coffee table, consisting of a laptop and a couple of tablets.

"Where's the family?" I asked.

"They all went to bed in Alicia's room," Stacey said, pointing at the closed door near the foot of the stairs.

"All right." I sank onto the couch beside her.

"What's up with you?" Stacey asked, looking me over.

"Nothing. What are you talking about?"

"You're grinning like the Joker and your face is all flushed. What did you two do out there? Jazz aerobics?"

"We didn't do anything," I said. "Just said good-night."

"But you were ready for more, weren't you?" Stacey waggled her eyebrows.

"Get serious. Any activity?" I leaned in toward the laptop, which showed the night vision view of the basement, with its usual suggestions of half-formed apparitions. I toggled it to the thermal and saw the scattered little cold spots.

"Just the usual downstairs stuff so far," Stacey said. "Nobody's gone near the trap. No spidery boogeymen crawling out of old wells. Here's the thermal we set up in the furnace room." She showed me on a tablet. The well was an obvious black hole, ringed with waves of dark purple, at the far end of the blue-hued room. Freezing cold.

"Come on, Edgar," I said. "I'm ready to finish this job."

Edgar made no hurry to appear.

"So, want to talk about Michael?" Stacey asked.

"Nope."

"Jacob?"

"Go ahead."

"We're going out on Friday," she said. "That new movie's coming out, the historical one about what's-her-name, that Russian queen lady?"

"Catherine the Great?"

"Is that it?"

"I don't know. I never see anything until it's on Netflix." I checked the time. "I'll make some quick rounds of the apartment."

"Should I come with you?"

"I'll be fine." I strapped on my utility belt and drew my flashlight, a replacement for the one that had been cut in half. I checked the door under the stairs first, then I went up to check the kids' closets, the door to nowhere, and the sunken porch at the end of the hall. The Mel Meter didn't show anything unusual—not for those doorways, anyway, where the readings had always spiked. I looked around with my thermal goggles, but there was no sign of Edgar the boogeyman or Gerard the friendly ghost.

"All clear up here," I said into my headset, and Calvin and Stacey both confirmed they heard me.

I returned downstairs, where Stacey was watching an Isaac Mizrahi-thon on QVC, the volume lowered to a whispering-gerbil level.

"We don't watch TV during investigations," I said. "It could discourage the ghosts from appearing."

"Then why don't we tell our clients to just leave the TV on all night?" she asked. "Besides, it's not observation night, it's trap night. And for once there's someone else to help watch the monitors. Don't you love that T-shirt dress?"

I made my rounds multiple times that night.

At quarter until four, I was upstairs yet again when Calvin's voice came over my headset.

"He's here," Calvin said. "He just came out of the well...now he's passing through the door into the laundry room..."

"Stacey, watch the door to the dead-end stairs," I said. "I'll cover the ones up here." I pointed the glowing beam of my flashlight at the archway door.

"Yes, ma'am," Stacey said. With Calvin on the radio with us, she was being entirely professional tonight.

"He's moving toward the trap," Calvin whispered. "He's very close to it, like he's looking at it..."

I held my breath.

"Just jumped away," Calvin said, and I sighed. The trap had failed. "He's moving across the ceiling, just like I remember. Crawling like a black spider. Now's he's above the stairs, moving to the door."

"Great. Stacey, get ready."

"I'm in position."

We tensed, waiting for the dark entity to emerge from one of the doors.

We waited and waited.

"Maybe he went into the Fieldings' apartment," Stacey whispered.

"Check Melissa's closet," I said.

"It's clear," Calvin replied. "I..." He took a sharp, sudden breath.

"Calvin?" I asked.

"The monitors just blacked out," he said. "The van's gone dark. Something's tapping on the roof. I think it's out here, Ellie. I'm firing up the ghost cannon."

"We're on our way," I said. My heart was instantly racing. Edgar had crippled Calvin last time—maybe he meant to finish the job tonight.

I raced down the stairs, watching Stacey run across the living room and out the front door, her flashlight ready.

I jumped over the last few steps and hurried toward the door.

The dim lights in the room went dark, and so did the television, bringing a sudden silence throughout the house.

A voice spoke from directly behind me, like a lover leaning over my shoulder to whisper a secret, his breath as hot as desert wind on my ear.

" _Eleanor_."

It wasn't my mother this time.

I stopped, and the front door closed itself, the lock clicking into place.

I turned to face him. It was like stepping toward an open oven, the heat pushing against me.

Anton Clay's face had haunted my nightmares for the past ten years. He was handsome, his blue eyes piercing and powerful, his long blond hair tied back with a black ribbon. As always, he wore his coat with tails, his silk cravat and vest. His golden cufflinks and buttons gleamed as though reflecting a great fire.

This ghost had killed my parents and tried to kill me, burning our house down around us. In life, he'd had an affair with a married woman who lived in the old antebellum mansion located where my parents' neighborhood now stood. The woman had broken it off, and he'd responded by burning down her house, killing her, her husband, and their whole family, as well as himself.

In death, he was a pyromaniac ghost, who burned down every house built on the site of his death. Including, most recently, mine.

He stood in the dark living room as a solid apparition, seeming to glow with a fiery light of his own, heat rippling the air around him.

Absolute fear froze me into place. It was my worst nightmare, being trapped in a house with him again, and it was coming true.

"My sweet girl," he said, his voice right out of the early nineteenth century—the accent more stiff and English, not yet softened into the modern Southern cadence by generations of slow cooking in the sun. "Are you at last ready to join me? I have waited so long. Hungering for you while you blossomed and grew." He moved closer, scorching the air around me, flash-drying the skin on my face. "We belong together, Eleanor. You are mine."

I wanted to tell Calvin and Stacey what was happening, but my lips wouldn't move to form the words. I couldn't hear either of them on my headset anymore. I wondered if Anton had sucked out the battery power from my headset, just as he'd done with the lights in Mia's room.

_Not Anton_ , I reminded myself. _Edgar. He's taking the form of my fear._

"Beautiful, beautiful Eleanor," he whispered, reaching a hand toward my cheek. I was a child again, sick with terror.

"Edgar." I barely managed to say it, barely managed to push the air across my lips. It took all the courage I had, and then some, to talk back to him. I forced myself to say it louder. "Edgar Barrington. That's your name."

The apparition of Anton Clay hesitated a moment, staring at me, withdrawing his hand. Then the blue irises of his eyes turned fiery red, and his skin seemed to redden, too.

"You misunderstand the situation entirely," he said, with an arrogant smile. "I am within you, Eleanor. Always. Our little spidery friend, the one who haunts the house, has merely opened an opportunity for us to visit again. I am here with you, just as I was with you that night. Be joined with me, Eleanor. Be consumed by me." He leaned close, his scorching lips approaching my mouth, and I realized he meant to kiss me. "Our destiny is sealed."

"No." It wasn't a tough _no_. It was definitely more of a helpless-squeak _no_. I backed up a few steps from him, but he kept up with me. He was not rushing. He moved almost languidly, as though he had no cares at all, as though he were completely in control of the situation and knew it.

I backed into the wall. _Stupid._ He didn't try kissing me again, though. This time, he leaned back just a little, satisfied that I was cornered, and opened his hand, palm up.

A gout of flame sprang up, more than a foot high, conjured at his fingertips. The air roasted around me. I felt my cheek blister and smelled crackling strands of my hair. He smiled, the manic smile of a deep thirst about to be quenched, an addiction about to be satisfied.

Thin runners of flame rose all over the room behind him, tracing along the edges of the furniture, the corners and baseboards, the frame of the front door, outlining the room in fire. A stream of fire raced up the staircase handrail toward the second story.

Someone pounded on the front door, shouting. Stacey, trying to get back in. It sounded like she was kicking the door pretty hard, but the solid old oak held firm. The entity was keeping her out.

Fire and smoke billowed from beneath the door to Alicia's room. I heard the woman and her children screaming inside.

I lunged toward that door, but Anton grabbed me, his fingertips digging into my arm like sharp talons. I struggled to get free, but the apparition was very solid, as solid as a living person. He barely moved, just smiled and gripped my arm while I pulled and lashed at him. His eyes drooped to half-lidded as he relished the screams of the burning children beyond the door. Getting his fix. Anton Clay, psychotic dead aristocrat, loved to burn things, but he loved to burn people even more.

With my free arm, I drew my flashlight and smashed it into his stomach. No reaction, like hitting a brick wall. If anything, his eyes drooped even more, his blissed-out drugged-up smile spreading wider across his face.

The flashlight had done some damage to him when he was in the form of Fleshface, up in Mia's room, but it didn't bother him at all now. Maybe that was because Fleshface was someone else's fear, and Anton Clay was my own.

The fingers biting deep into my arm grew hotter and hotter, smoldering through the leather sleeve of my jacket, burning into the skin underneath. I screamed in pain.

The flames rose all around us, the thin streamers of fire expanding into irregular shapes as they ate into the furniture and the structure of the house.

Fists pounded against Alicia's burning door, and their screams grew louder. I could make out the individual voices, even in that chaos—Alicia's howls of pain, Kalil's boyish grunts and cries, Mia's horrified shrieks. The entity was trapping them in there, making sure they couldn't escape the blazing fire.

"Listen to them die," Anton Clay whispered. "You can't help them. Just as you could not help your parents. Or _chose_ not to? You were quite angry with them, weren't you, Eleanor? I could feel it on you, the heat of a furious young girl. Maybe you wanted them to die. Wanted to be free. Some part of you wished for that."

Even as his fingers burned into my arm, his words held me entranced, conjuring all the horror, guilt, and grief from deep within me. It was my fault. I deserved to die—

"Ellie!" a voice screamed. Stacey? Not Stacey.

Alicia. She ran into the room, flanked by her kids. They must have come out through the master bathroom.

She stopped cold when she saw the fire, and held out her arms to both sides to stop Kalil and Mia, too.

The three of them watched in horror as flames engulfed their apartment. The banging and screaming at their bedroom door stopped abruptly.

Their dying voices had been part of the boogeyman's illusion. Thank God.

The flames around them whisked out like birthday candles, leaving black and smoldering baseboards and furniture behind. The effect spread out like a ripple from the family, snuffing out the runners of fire as quickly as Anton had made them appear.

A loud crack sounded from the front door. It swung open, and Stacey staggered in, off-balance and wielding the crowbar from the van. She stumbled toward me, gaping in surprise at the fires surrounding the door.

Then the rest of the flames blew out, leaving us all in darkness.

The sharp-fingered hand released my arm. As my eyes tried to adjust to the dim glow from a streetlight outside, I saw Anton shrivel into something black, with sharp, angular limbs.

It hissed as it leaped at me. Stacey had recovered her balance and now hit us with a flashlight.

The shadowy figure of the fearfeeder, of Edgar Barrington's ghost, landed on the wall high above me. It scrambled like a spider on amphetamines into the high shadows of the two-story room.

I pointed my flashlight at the ghost and clicked, but I only got a brief, weak puff of light before the battery died. Barrington had drained it along with my headset, and probably every device on my belt. The most annoying and difficult ghosts are the ones that suck all the power out of my ghost-hunting gear.

Stacey tried to follow it with her light, but it shot out of sight into the upstairs hall. If Jacob was right, it could use any of its favorite doors up there to escape and retreat into its lair below.

All of us stared after it, watching to see if it would return, possibly in some new and more horrible form. After a little while, we looked at each other instead.

"Is everybody okay?" I looked at Alicia and her kids. They nodded, still in shock from all they'd just seen. I was so glad to see them alive and unharmed that I could have hugged and kissed them. I refrained.

"Everybody's fine!" Stacey said, looking out the front door. I stepped forward and saw Calvin out there, parked in his chair at the bottom of the porch steps.

"Wow," I said, completely shaken. "Thanks for coming, everybody. Was there any fire in your room at all, Alicia?"

She shook her head, looking at the smoke curling up from every spot the flames had touched.

"I heard a voice calling me," Alicia whispered. She turned her eyes up to meet mine. "Gerard. I followed his voice out here."

"Thank you, Gerard," I said, speaking into the air.

Stacey shined her light over the blackened, smoldering furniture, then up the staircase handrail, which was in no better shape.

"Hey," she said, "Where's a fireman when you need one?"

# Chapter Eighteen

Michael didn't answer his phone, probably asleep at four in the morning. I went upstairs myself to wake him, leaving Calvin and Stacey downstairs with the family. I'd grabbed a fresh flashlight from the van in case Edgar decided to make a return appearance.

I knocked on his door as loud and hard as I could. I wasn't feeling shy or nervous, because Alicia and her kids really needed him to look at her apartment and make sure it was safe. It was a strictly professional ghost-hunter-to-firefighter situation.

Eventually, he opened the door. Tousled bed hair, sleepy green eyes, thin t-shirt, red boxers. Oh, my. I was feeling less professional by the second.

"Oh, hey, it's you," he said, his voice drowsy and scratchy. His gaze landed on my burned sleeve and wounded arm, and his drooping eyelids raised. "What happened?"

"I played with fire, I got burned. Sorry to wake you up, but I need you to look at—"

"Come inside and take off your jacket," he said, reaching for my non-wounded arm as if to help me walk.

"Go inside and put on your pants," I replied, dodging back from him.

"That needs attention right away."

"My arm can wait. There was a fire in Alicia's apartment."

"Is anyone else hurt?" He started forward as if he intended to run downstairs that second. I stopped him with a hand on his stomach. His firm, warm stomach. I pulled my hand back quickly.

"No, but can you make sure the fire's not going to start up again? And the place isn't going to come crashing down? Those would be good things to know."

"Just a second." He left the door open and darted inside. I followed him into the dark apartment and waited in the living room while he got dressed.

Melissa emerged from her room, blinking, wearing a sleeping gown.

"What's up?" she asked.

"The ghost tried to set your house on fire," I said. "It was my fault. It was taking the form of my fears."

"You're afraid of fire?" she asked, looking confused.

"Yes." Well, true enough. I've never been one to burn candles or incense for "atmosphere." To me, the only atmosphere created by open flames is one of impending danger and death.

"We'd better get on top of it," Michael said, dashing out of his room fully dressed. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from the kitchen.

"You're fast," I said.

"Fire's faster." He sprinted out of the apartment without waiting for me.

"Are we safe up here?" Melissa asked, rubbing her eyes.

"I think so."

"Are Mia and Kalil safe?"

"Yep."

"Okay." She yawned. "I'll come, too."

She disappeared into her room, and I waited impatiently, not wanting to leave her to walk down the all the stairs alone. She finally returned wearing jeans under her sleeping gown.

We hurried downstairs, where Michael was inspecting the apartment. Alicia and her kids sat on their couch, charred at the top and armrests, listening to Calvin. Stacey was watching the basement on her tablet while they spoke.

"...at this point, we have to consider this place too dangerous for the kids, especially at night," Calvin said. "You'll want to make other arrangements for tomorrow night. Friends, relatives, hotel, anything."

Alicia nodded. "For how long?"

"We'll finish the job as quickly as we can," Calvin said. "Tomorrow—well, today, it's going to be sunrise soon—Ellie and I will work out a new plan of attack. If that doesn't work, we'll develop another one, until the entity is gone."

"I can't afford to stay in a hotel too long," Alicia said.

"This is strange," Michael said. He stood by the staircase, where he'd been inspecting the railing. "Ellie, come have a look."

I walked to stand beside him, trying not to picture him in his underwear again. "What is it?"

He ran his fingers along the top of the railing, revealing unburned wood beneath. He showed me his blackened fingertips.

"There's really not much fire damage," he said. "It's mostly smoke stains and soot."

"Because the fire was mostly an illusion," I told him. "So it's all still structurally sound? Nothing's going to fall apart on the kids?"

"It's fine," he said. "The furniture's singed, of course. But there's no other repairs to make. All the place really needs is a good washing."

I tried not to crack a smile, thinking of Alicia's obsessive cleaning and organizing. Here was a job she could really sink her teeth into.

"Now we have to take care of your arm," Michael told me.

"I'll be fine."

"Go!" Calvin insisted, turning to look at me.

"Yeah, your jacket is kind of gross and melted all over you," Stacey said. "Probably want to take care of that."

"Go on," Alicia said. "We're okay now."

I nodded and let Michael steer me back to the door to the shared hallway.

"I have a first aid kit in the van," I told him.

"Mine's better." He turned toward the staircase to his apartment.

"How do you know?"

"It's a full trauma kit." He held my arm as we started up the stairs. It wasn't strictly necessary, or even at all necessary—an injured forearm didn't interfere with my ability to walk. I didn't try to pull free of his hand, though. It was nice to let someone else be in charge for a minute. Maybe two minutes, even.

"Do you always treat burn injuries by making people walk up four flights of stairs?" I asked.

"I'm doing you a favor. Exercise stimulates endorphins. The body's natural painkillers."

"Funny thing, my arm still feels like it's on fire."

"Maybe we need to find a bigger staircase."

Inside his apartment, he had me stand by the sink, under a bright hanging light, and examined my arm. His kitchen was small but pleasant, lots of cheerful polished wood, a row of potted herbs on the window sill flavoring the air with sweet and spicy aromas.

"I like your apartment," I said.

"Really? All the weird-shaped rooms and attic roofs don't annoy you?" He opened the pantry and brought out a red backpack-sized first aid kit.

"Nope. Not as much as the gateway to hell in your basement."

"Is that what's down there? I was hoping for raccoons or squirrels." He heaved the kit onto the counter and propped it open. The interior was full of compartments holding everything from an oxygen mask to finger splints.

"You really are one prepared Boy Scout," I said.

"Seriously, what do you call the thing in my basement?" He brought out a pair of steel trauma shears and gently took the shoulder of my wounded arm. "Hold still."

"The closest term I know would be a 'dark vortex.'"

"That wasn't mentioned in the rental agreement." Michael said. I watched his face as he cut my jacket sleeve around my upper arm, half-worried that the hefty shears would slice my arm open. They looked like they could snap through bones.

He cut a slit all the way down the side and carefully removed the jacket from my wound. He was gentle, but I still hissed in pain.

"Darkness and suffering attract more darkness and suffering," I said. "It's like gravity. Start with something small and let it build over the years—thousands of years, in this case, and you get...bad things."

"Bad things? You're confusing me with all these technical terms." Michael cut the sleeve of my cotton shirt into pieces and undressed my arm, revealing the red, partially blistered forearm.

"The science is pretty scarce in all of this," I said. "There's not a lot of hard established facts. Just folklore and superstition."

"I'm cleaning it off," he said, his voice shifting to something careful and soft, like he was talking to an injured child. It was like he'd snapped into character, into work-mode. I wondered if he spoke like that to every hurt person he helped on his job. I felt myself going a bit warm and glowy in the chest area. "This should help with the pain, too," he added.

He eased my arm under the faucet, into the running water.

"It's freezing!" I hissed.

"It isn't," he said. He moved the faucet handle slightly. "Now it's almost warm."

"I thought this was supposed to make it feel better."

"You don't feel better yet?" he asked.

I became less aware of the throbbing in my arm and more aware of him standing close to me, holding my arm, a welcome intrusion into my personal space.

"I'm better," I whispered after a while.

He turned off the water and patted my arm dry, while avoiding the burned area itself. Then he studied it again: four dark red patches, a couple of them with little flesh bubbles at the edges, burn blisters that made me think of hot pizza cheese.

"These marks almost look like fingers," he said. "Like somebody grabbed you."

"That's what happened. I told you this ghost takes the shape of your fears, right? I'm afraid of...fire. It's my fault the apartment burned."

"It didn't really burn, though. I've seen worse."

"I'm sure _you_ have."

He smiled and gazed at me for a moment. I looked right back at him.

"We'd better wrap it up," he said.

"Oh," I said, off-guard by his sudden dismissal. "I guess I should get back to work."

"I meant with this." He tore open a package labeled Water-Jel Burn Dressing and carefully laid the cool, gel-soaked material across my arm. I could feel the pain seeping out while he bandaged me.

"What's in this?" I asked, poking at the wrapping.

"Mostly tea tree oil. Nature's antibiotic." My fully dressed arm continued to rest in his hand, the gel pulling out the heat and pain. "Don't be so hard on fire. It can be fun. I always wanted to build and light the fire. Back at my mom's house, I mean, when we were kids. We don't have a fireplace here." He said it like it was a sad, tragic situation, not having a place to burn things for pleasure. "I used to go camping with my friends, and we'd build these huge bonfires. Fire's alive, I think. It has a mind of its own. It's fascinating."

"My parents died in a fire," I said.

"I meant to say fire is the most evil force on the planet. That's why I'm devoted to putting them all out. Some people, they like fires, but I don't know what's wrong with them."

I laughed at his backpedaling. It made him seem awkward and vulnerable for once. Something about that made me feel comfortable leaning just a little closer to him, and pretty soon after that we were embracing each other, my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

I happened to look up at him and found him looking down at me. He kissed me, and it was like a shock of energy, traveling down my spine and curling my toes.

"Cuckoo, cuckoo," announced the mechanical bird, emerging from its house on the wall. "Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo," it elaborated. Five a.m. Boss and client waiting for me downstairs.

I backed away and looked up at him. "Does that go off every hour of the night?"

"When it's working right."

"How do you stand it? I think I would've smashed that bird a hundred times by now."

"My mom bought that clock at a yard sale. It never worked. After she died, I just started looking at it one night, and I opened it up. I researched how it was supposed to work and how to fix it. I kind of liked bringing it back to life." He shrugged.

_Oops_. My turn to backpedal. "I was just thinking that cuckoo clocks are the best kinds of clocks. Why doesn't everyone have one. They're much better than, like...grandfather clocks."

"Or digital clocks."

"That goes without saying. And then you moved on to gnome clocks?"

"Antique automatons," he said. "Some people will pay a lot for a fully restored one."

"The cuckoo's telling me I need to get back to work," I said, moving away towards the door.

"I have to get to work, too. I'm late."

"You go to work at five in the morning?"

"Some people have it lucky," he said. "I'm just one of them."

"Okay. Well have fun..putting out fires and rescuing cats from trees." I put my hand on the doorknob. I hadn't taken my eyes off him.

"Did you know most cats are actually able to climb down the tree by themselves?" he said. "They just don't _want_ to."

"Oh. Maybe you could show me the statistics on that sometime." _What? Get out of here_! I was exhausted, not thinking clearly at all. "Thanks for the bandages and the...everything."

"I should check the progress of your burn tomorrow," he said.

"Okay. Good." I smiled at him. Had I not been smiling already?

"Just make an appointment with the nurse on your way out. And avoid walking into any open flames for the next twenty-four hours."

"Thanks for the advice, doc." I walked out of the apartment and hurried down the stairs, feeling a golden moment of pure elation and excitement before I reached Alicia's apartment and had to focus on stopping the monster again.

# Chapter Nineteen

Any time a ghost tries to kill me, I get a free breakfast.

That's according to a deal I made with Calvin a few years ago. Since he was at our client's house that night, I held him to it: a blue-crab omelet at Narobia's Grits and Gravy. This is a gem of a place, a family business located in a small building over on Habersham. It's always crowded because the food is unbelievably good and the prices are crazy low. Calvin was able to buy breakfast for the three of us for about twenty bucks. So it's not like I was being _too_ demanding. Working a lot of nocturnal hours around the city, you learn where the best breakfast spots are, though I'm usually eating supper at that time.

We talked about the case, just reviewing what we'd learned and where we were. We needed a new plan, but we were all too brain-dead to really put anything together. I was still badly shaken from seeing my most hated ghost and nearly dying at his hands—even if it wasn't really him, the boogeyman had done a pretty convincing imitation.

Anyway, the grits were buttery and amazing.

Then I went home to sleep, and my dreams were filled with fire, my parents, Alicia's kids, Anton Clay, and the spidery black boogeyman watching me from the ceiling. I think daytime nightmares are more vivid and intense, but that could be because I'm usually having them in the middle of an investigation, when I'm working vampire hours and dealing with unsettled and dangerous spirits.

I let myself sleep until early afternoon, and my arm was still burning in pain. I guessed I would need to cash in Michael's offer of a follow-up appointment—just thinking about it made me a little thrilled. I could still feel his unexpected but entirely welcome kiss on my lips. We'd only met a few days earlier, but it felt like I'd known him much longer than that. He made me feel safe and protected.

_You're never truly safe_ , I reminded myself. _Especially when you let yourself care too much about other people._

I tried to shake off that downer feeling as I took a long, hot shower, leaving my bandaged arm jutting out through the curtain. Bandit watched from the bathroom floor, giving a couple of inquisitive meows about this odd behavior on my part. He obviously wasn't too concerned, because the moment I turned it off, he hopped into the tub for his usual drink of warm water.

With my leather jacket cut to pieces, I picked a heavy denim one instead and pulled it over my black summer-weight turtleneck. I was in serious danger of getting physically attacked again that night, if things went well.

I met up with Calvin and Stacey at the office, and we hung around the long work table in the back. Files and pictures were spread out everywhere, including pictures of people and houses, Rebecca Barrington's letters detailing her brother-in-law's insanity, missing person reports from more recent decades, a few relevant articles from the _International Journal of Psychical Studies_ , and lore and art describing the boogeyman in every culture—always the dark thing hiding in small places, menacing children by night, sometimes hauling them away in a sack. There was no consistency in appearance among these entities, only a common pattern of behavior.

"He never shows his real face," I said. "He's always wearing a mask."

"Isn't he really that black crawling shape that runs around on the ceiling?" Stacey asked.

"That's a kind of psychological costume itself," Calvin said. "It represents how dark and twisted the soul has become over the years."

"So what if we confront him with his real identity?" I asked. "That might weaken him, or at least confuse him. He's used to the living always perceiving him as their own worst fears...not as Edgar Barrington, a sick and twisted human being. We could send Stacey to the print shop to get blow-up pictures of Edgar, and we'd need a mirror, too. Maybe confronting him with his real identity, after all this time, would be enough to make him move on."

"It's possible, but it may not work," Calvin said. "We may still have to trap him."

"Didn't I see a design for a mirror trap in the _Journal_ once?" I grabbed the nearest tablet to check the web archives of the paranormal periodical—we had a subscription enabling us to access all the back issues at any time.

"That was for catoptric ghosts," Calvin said.

"What are those?" Stacey asked. "They sound like cats who wear glasses. Instant internet meme."

"Spirits who use mirrors as doorways," I told her, my eyes and fingers still busy with the tablet.

"But Edgar uses _doorways_ as doorways," Stacey said. "Closet doors. Right?"

"That's why I doubt this is a good approach," Calvin replied.

"Thanks for the encouragement," I said. "Here, I found it. Lead glass mirror, with the copper mesh installed over the pane. You capture the ghost's image in the mirror, then activate the mesh to keep it there."

"If you ever face a mirror ghost, it might be useful," Calvin replied. "I don't believe this is the best entity for testing out new prototypes."

"Okay, so maybe it's only part of the solution," I said. "Even if I can just steal some of its energy."

"I'm not feeling good about this plan," Stacey said. "Except the part where I go to the print shop and get giant Edgar pictures. I'm totally on top of that."

"I think we might have to use this." I walked over to open the supply-closet door. The big walk-in trap stood in its corner, like a dusty phone booth built out of old stained-glass church windows.

"The bear trap didn't pay off very well last time," Calvin said. "I'd like to see both of you walk away from this case alive and intact."

"I'm the only bait we have," I said. "Besides the kids, and we obviously aren't going to use one of them. Edgar wants me. I was afraid he would try to attack you, Calvin, but that was just a distraction to get Stacey out of the house, to isolate me."

"Maybe he figures he dinged me pretty bad already," Calvin said.

"And now it's my turn," I said. "Come on, Stacey. We have to dismantle this trap and reassemble it over at our client's house. It's going to take a while."

"Sounds like a good time to call Captain Fireman," Stacey said.

"He's at work. What about Jacob?"

"Work," Stacey said. "Unless you want to wait until tonight to set it up."

"I definitely don't. Come on." I grabbed a drill and began disassembling the big trap. We wrapped the glass panes with blankets and secured them in the back of the van so they wouldn't get scratched or broken.

"I'll continue studying all of this and hope a good idea leaps up and bites me in the nose," Calvin said after we were done. He gestured to the spread of documents on the table. "I'll come over this evening to monitor the mobile nerve center again." That meant _sit in the van_. "Good luck, kids."

"See you soon." Stacey climbed into the passenger seat, and I started around to the driver's side.

"Ellie," Calvin said. I turned back to see a hard, flinty look on his face. He usually kept his emotions below the surface, but I could see Calvin was ready for some revenge against this ghost. "Be careful. And if it chases you into the trap...don't look back."

"Okay," I said. "We'll see you tonight. Everything's going to be fine, Calvin."

He knew better than to believe me, though. We could all end up dead tonight.

I drove downtown. We stopped at the Speedi Sign, then had a quick dinner of vegetables and rice from a Chinese place while we waited for our print order.

With Michael and Alicia both away at work, along with many of their neighbors, we were able to park right in front of their house. I let Melissa know we were there, and she offered to help. I didn't see any reason to turn her down. It was the middle of the afternoon, the sun bright and golden with only a few clouds in the sky—exactly the kind of weather that sends many ghosts into hibernation, waiting for darker times.

To make life easier, I picked the lock on Apartment D so we could carry the heavy trap pieces down the short concrete steps and through the vacant apartment, rather than down the long stairway the tenants used to access the laundry room.

During one of my trips between the van and the basement stairs, the clouds momentarily blotted out the sun, turning the world storm-gray.

I rounded the back corner of the house, lugging a heavy, blanketed chunk of thick, colorful leaded glass in both arms. In that gloomy moment, I saw the man for the first time, though Michael, Alicia, and the others had reported seeing him regularly.

He stood next to the open cellar doors, gazing down at the steps as though confused, his long fingers slowly scratching at his temple. He stooped with the posture of an old man, and his hair was gray, and Michael was right about the gray pallor of his skin. His suit and his wide-necked tie appeared in lighter and dark shades of gray, too. The impression was of an old man broken down by worry and care, but if you looked more closely at his face, he didn't look elderly. He looked prematurely aged, maybe by stress or illness.

I could see how he'd acquired the nickname Mr. Gray at some point, long enough in the past that the tenants, moving in and out each year, had learned it from each other without realizing that some earlier tenant had coined the name, probably as a joke.

He turned his head slowly toward me. He was a conscious entity. He knew I was there.

He gave me a gentle smile, and if I hadn't known it was a ghost, I would have thought him some kindly, sickly, possibly heavily medicated man standing there in the garden. As it was, the smile chilled me. Just the sight of him chilled me.

"Joseph?" I said. "Joseph Barrington? That's your name, isn't it?"

His smile faltered, and his mouth dropped to a flat line. The kindly look gave way to a blank, cold mask.

"Your brother killed you, didn't he?" I asked. "Edgar. He killed you and your children."

The sunlight swelled again as the interfering cloud moved on, and the apparition melted into nothing amid the rising light.

"I hope you don't mind if we use your apartment for a minute," I said to the place where he'd just stood.

"You okay?" Melissa asked, rounding the corner with another chunk of the trap wrapped in a blanket.

"I was just talking to Mr. Gray," I said. "I guess he didn't feel like replying."

"He doesn't speak much," Melissa said. "He usually kind of smiles and nods and keeps walking. My brother told me Mr. Gray's a ghost. Is that true?"

"It's true." We walked down the steps and through the bare apartment to our growing array of trap pieces, laid out on blankets across the floor. "He's the twin brother of the ghost who's been menacing your house."

"He seems so nice," Melissa said. "I thought he was maybe kind of senile since he never spoke, but you know, he was always dressed nicely and well-groomed, so I figured he wasn't desperate for help."

"People are often dressed and groomed well for their funerals," I said. "He was probably buried in that suit."

"Stop! You're giving me chill bumps." She set her parcel on the floor, and a portion of the blanket fell back, revealing a colored-glass corner. "What are you building down here? A ghost blender?"

"A trap," I whispered. Then I glanced at the furnace-room door and held my finger to my lips.

Stacey came with the final pieces, and we considered different spots to set up the big booth trap. While we discussed it, the door creaked open at the top of the laundry room stairs.

Lulinda Fielding stood there with a basket full of laundry.

"Oh," she said, stopping on the top step to look down at us. "What are y'all doing?"

"Sorry for the mess, Mrs. Fielding," I said. "We'll have it straightened up soon."

"I can still get to that washing machine." She continued down the steps. "I ain't rearranging my whole day for y'all."

"We understand, ma'am," I told her.

She looked among the three of us suspiciously while she loaded up the laundry machine. The silence in the room was uneasy.

"You're helping them, Melissa?" she finally asked, when her clothes had begun washing. She leaned back against the machine and folded her arms, looking hostile.

"Yes, ma'am," Melissa said.

Lulinda looked at the open door to the ghostly Mr. Gray's apartment, and she sighed and her shoulders sagged. She brought out a pack of Eve cigarettes and packed them against the palm of her hand, but made no move to take one out and light it.

"I saw something once," Lulinda said. "After we moved in, before Falcon started seeing things. I never put it together with him seeing that dinosaur skeleton in his fireplace, because it was a different thing. But y'all coming around here got me thinking." She looked down at her cigarettes, looked up at us, and put them away.

"What was it?" Melissa asked her.

"In my closet one night, not two or three weeks after we moved here," Lulinda said. "He was in there, looking out at me. My granddaddy. I was so scared that night, thinking he was back from the dead." Melissa hesitated, then seemed to make a decision and went on. "He used to be real bad to me in life. I got scars. I tried not to smile at his funeral. I was still a kid then, and I thought, if he knew how happy it makes me to see him dead, he'd come back and haunt me."

"How many times did you see him?" I asked.

"Just the once," she said. "But I could see him standing there as plain as I see you right now. He was staring at me the way he got when he was drunk, just before he slapped me around." She took a deep breath. "But he never came back. I thought it was just a nightmare."

"How often does Falcon see his monster?" I asked.

"Too much. Way too much."

"It targets children," I said, remembering that Michael had only glimpsed it once, too, right after moving in. "It'll check around on any new residents of the house, but it's looking to feed on children. They have more energy to take."

" _Feeding_ on them? It's feeding on my boy?"

"Exactly."

"And what can y'all do about it?" She looked around at the blanket-wrapped pieces spaced carefully around the floor.

"We going to remove it," I said. "I hope you and your husband don't have a problem with that."

"What is this thing, really?"

"The ghost of a man who used to live near here," I said. "Edgar Barrington. Ghosts sometimes find ways of feeding on the living. It makes them more powerful, but also distorts them from a lost human soul into...something else. In this case, a creature that feeds on fear."

"And you know what you're doing?" Lulinda asked me.

"I've removed ghosts many times before, all over the city," I said, speaking with a lot more confidence than I felt. Our plan was shaky, and I had nothing but doubts about it.

"I hope you get this one," she said. "I'll try to keep my husband from bothering you."

"We'd really appreciate it," I said.

"And stay out of my laundry." She pointed to the chugging machine and climbed back up the stairs. She wore cutoff denim shorts to showcase her long legs. The back of her shirt read SALTY DOG CAFE.

"Okay," I said when she was gone. "I think we should place the big trap in the back area of the room, between the furnace room door and the door to Apartment D. I want some room to maneuver in front of both doors. We set the cameras far back in the corners, out of the way..."

It took a long time to prepare the room, especially since we had to carry all our gear down from Alicia's apartment and set it up all over again. It was too much equipment to leave unguarded in the laundry room all day, especially when Hoss Fielding still didn't seem to want us there at all.

We also brought the big pneumatic stamper down to the laundry room again, and I loaded it with the trap filled with Edgar's grave dirt. Then I set the stamper to automatically slam the lid down onto the trap if it detected signs of a ghost inside. Hopefully, Edgar wanted to rest in peace and would be drawn to the earth of his own burial site, so that we could trap him and remove him from the house.

By nightfall, Stacey and I were sweaty and exhausted. I closed up the doors to Apartment D. We'd kept the cellar doors open all day to keep us fueled with fresh air.

Then I caught up with Alicia, who was home from work, and went upstairs to see Michael—strictly because of my burned arm, of course.

# Chapter Twenty

"How are you feeling?" he asked. I sat on the small couch in his living room, with a view of the tree-lined street outside.

"Tired," I said. "Worried."

"About tonight?"

"There's plenty to worry about," I told him.

"How does your arm feel?" He finished undressing the wound, revealing the four dark red finger marks. They were long and thin, like those of Joseph Barrington when I'd seen his ghost in the back garden. Edgar's twin.

"Not great," I said.

"The blisters have shrunk," he said. "That's good. I'd say you're fine as long as you don't get grabbed by another burning hand in that same spot."

"I wish the odds of that were lower," I said. "I'm calling him out tonight. We're taking him down."

He brought me to the kitchen to rinse my arm in water again, then he applied a fresh burn dressing, which brought a welcome new dose of that cooling gel.

We were standing in the same place we'd been when he kissed me. I looked up at him, drawing my wounded arm close to my side.

"Listen," he said. "Sorry if I surprised you with that. I don't always think before I act. Sometimes I save the thinking for later."

"Do you go through this with everyone you treat?" I asked. "The kissing and apologizing?"

"It's not part of the standard procedures," he said.

"Really? You don't get kisses when you come sweeping through the window to rescue some pretty girl from a fire?"

"Make the pretty girl into a forty-year-old fat cigar smoker with a walrus mustache who got lodged behind his steering wheel in a fender-bender, and yes, that happens sometimes."

"I came back," I said. "I must not have been too upset."

"Maybe you came back for revenge."

"Definitely," I said, thinking of what Edgar Barrington's ghost had done to Calvin. "And I'm going to take it right now." I reached my hands on top of his shoulders, rested my fingers on his neck. "Wait. What about your girlfriend? Angelique?"

"Angelique?" He looked confused.

"Your sister mentioned her."

"I haven't talked to her in months. She said she was tired of worrying about my job, about me going into dangerous situations and getting hurt. I think she was seeing somebody else, though. What about you?"

"I spend a lot of time running into dangerous situations and getting hurt," I said. "We could share war stories."

"I'm asking if you're seeing anybody. But I have to warn you, if you're not married or dating a friend of mine, you're fair game."

"You make me sound like some wild animal you're hunting," I said.

"I like a girl who understands what I'm saying." His hands were on my hips now, drawing me closer to him.

"Right now, the closest thing I have to a boyfriend is the ghost of a nineteenth-century slaveowner who wants to set me on fire."

"You can do better," he said. Then he kissed me again, holding me close to him. It was longer and slower this time, and all around much more interesting. I was absorbed for a minute in the touch and taste of him.

"I should go," I pulled back from him. Just like last time. "We have some stuff to finalize downstairs. I'll call you before the action starts."

"You're always running away," he said.

"Oh." I laughed a little, but kept moving toward the door. "It's just bad timing."

"Okay. But—and I don't want to pressure you—I'm looking for something a little more long-term than thirty seconds. Maybe a five-minute relationship? Ten?"

"I can't be tied down like that," I told him. "I'm a wild animal, remember?"

I left his apartment, feeling unusually tall and very happy at the idea of seeing him again. Hopefully I would live long enough for that to happen.

Since I seemed to be Edgar's preferred bait, it fell to me to face him.

By midnight, I stood in the laundry room by myself, my utility belt fully loaded, all my gear stocked with fresh batteries. I kept in touch with Calvin and Stacey over my headset, but I still felt alone and vulnerable down there.

I'd switched off the lights, which left the basement in complete darkness. I watched the door to the furnace room on the display screen of a night vision camera. I had my thermal goggles on my head, ready to bring them down over my eyes.

The air felt heavy and cold, as the basement always did after sunset. On the screen, I could see hints and blurs of things drifting past, like pieces of deformed fish floating in a viscous green swamp.

"How does everything look upstairs?" I whispered.

"Dead," Stacey replied over the headset, also whispering. "I mean, uh, clear. Nothing's stirring. No dead people hanging out."

"Okay." I glanced at the two traps—the regular one half-filled with stolen grave dirt, the candles lit as a lure. The walk-in trap, walled with colored leaded glass, both doors closed for now. I didn't want to draw Edgar's attention to it too quickly.

I glanced at the closed door to apartment D, wondering if Edgar's brother Joseph might make another appearance. I assumed that ghost was more or less on my side, since Edgar had killed him, but you never really know. Blood runs thicker sometimes, even among the dead.

Finally, I turned my attention to the door to the furnace room, also closed. Edgar's favorite place to pop out in shadowy boogeyman form.

Aside from the open static of my headset, the room was silent for a long time, punctuated only by Stacey checking in.

The room grew colder and colder. Small footsteps approached me from the furnace doorway, but I didn't see anyone there.

I pulled down my thermal goggles. Specks of cold hung in the air in front of me. As I watched, they drew together and became larger. Individually they suggested nothing, but together they suggested the rough shape of a small child, not much larger than a toddler—a portion of a leg here, a couple of fingers there.

" _Who is she?"_ a tiny voice whispered, so quiet I could easily have imagined it.

More cold spots gathered, and I felt the temperature drop. I could hear other voices in the shadows, their words too low and muffled to discern. It was sort of like being surrounded by people who speak a different language. You don't know what they're saying, but you suspect they're talking about you. Except, of course, these people were all dead.

These were fragments of ghosts absorbed by the well over the millennia, slowly merged into a cloud of lost souls, serving as the power source of the dark forces below.

The cold and the whispering moved closer. The ghosts were investigating me, a reversal of our usual roles.

"It's looking really active, Ellie," Stacey said.

"I can hear them," I said. "They're all around me. Should I do that thing we talked about?"

"Do it," Calvin said, cutting in.

"Okay." I took a breath, then straightened up, looking at the dark room all around me, dense with a blizzard of drifting deep blue spots. I spoke much louder now. "I know some of you here are old spirits," I said. "Seers and mystics who left pieces of yourselves here, thousands of years ago, to help guard the living against the darkness here. I hope you will understand my intent tonight, and give what aid you can."

There was no immediate response. Then the room became much, much colder, so fast I could hear the air crack. I was shivering hard—it was arctic.

The cold spots swelled around me, growing larger and darker, many of them phasing into purple. No friendly prehistoric Guale medicine man appeared to offer a hand, or anything remotely like that.

"I think I upset somebody," I said. I was shivering all the way to my bones, and I literally couldn't tell if it was cold or from fear.

This was the right thing to do, though. Just as I'd told the kids, the only way to fight a creature who feeds on fear is to resist it with courage. It took all the courage I could muster to stand there alone in front of the furnace door, waiting to face Anton Clay or whatever form the boogeyman decided to take. I felt like I didn't have nearly enough of that courage, though—all I wanted to do was run away, up the stairs, and out of that house, rather than face the thing on the other side of the door.

I took a deep breath and held my ground.

"Should we go ahead?" I whispered.

"Whenever you're ready," Calvin replied.

I took another deep breath, then I picked up the mason jar half-filled with Edgar's grave dirt and I unscrewed the lid.

"Hook up the relay to the speaker, Stacey," I said.

"Consider it hooked."

I turned on a small spotlight and pointed it away toward the wall, giving me enough light to see. Then I stepped closer to the door and knocked three times, pounding as hard as I could with my fist.

"Edgar," I said. "Edgar Barrington. I command you to come up. Come out and face me." There. That sounded like something out of a tough-guy movie, maybe a cowboy standing outside a saloon, challenging an old enemy to a duel.

My voice boomed beyond the door, on a slight delay. Stacey had installed a small but powerful speaker next to the well, which amplified my voice into a roar and sent it echoing down into the darkness below.

"Nothing so far," Stacey whispered.

"Edgar Barrington!" I repeated, hearing my amplified voice like rumbling thunder as it bounced around inside the well. I took a pinch of the grave earth in my fingers and cast it at the furnace room door. Little clumps of dirt and tiny pebbles rattled off its surface. I didn't know if the gesture would help me gain control over Edgar, but it was an idea. "Present yourself."

My voice seemed to echo for an unusually long time—or maybe it was something down below, answering me.

"Ellie, I'm losing power," Stacey said. "The camera watching the well is dead. Everything's shutting—"

"Wait for me," I told her. Then my headset died, the power robbed by one ghost or another.

The floor shuddered, and then flames boiled out around the door to the furnace room, a billowing conflagration that swept around all the edges of the door and began to eat into it. The heat surged out into the frosty room.

I watched as the fire spread in streamers across the door, until I could see nothing but a rectangular doorway filled with flames. I heard the whoosh of the fire, felt the heat on my skin, smelled the crackling wood of the door itself.

Wild, uncontrolled fire. I loathed it.

A streamer of fire extended from the billowing flames and anchored itself to the brick floor. Then another, moving like a candle flame stepping from one wick to the next. The shape of a man emerged, standing on those flickering legs, the head like a floating torch.

It burned down quickly, showing me charred flesh, eyes with red-rimmed pupils, the stained teeth of a grinning skull. Tongues of flame still flickered here and there among his soot-encrusted coat and vest.

Anton Clay, in one of his less handsome forms.

_Courage_.

"That's a nice trick," I said, my voice shaking as I tilted the jar and drew a line of earth along the floor as a barrier between us. "You'd be a hit at Burning Man."

His jaws opened, and an _actual_ tongue of flame moved in his mouth, flickering among his teeth, licking them and staining them black.

" _Eleanor,"_ spoke a voice from inside the flame. _"I knew you would return to me."_

While he chatted, I took the opportunity to move around one side of him, sprinkling a thick line of earth perpendicular to the first one. I poured it all the way to the wall, then snapped the jar forward, throwing a long dash of it between Anton and the furnace door, cutting off his main path of retreat.

"Do you really believe that will work?" he asked. He was back to the usual mask, the pretty face and spotless silk garments he'd worn in life.

"It's from your grave, Edgar," I said. In my mind, I'd imagined drawing a circle of earth around him, but what was emerging was more of a sloppy rhombus.

Now came the most dangerous part: I had to circle back around him, keeping my distance, so I could enclose him with earth from the other side.

"You don't understand who I am at all," he said. "I am myself, Anton Clay, merely using our friend here as a vessel to reach out to you—"

"I don't believe you." I eased around to the other side of him, ready to finish surrounding him with the ring of dirt.

Then he moved, faster than my eye could follow or my brain could react, suddenly standing less than an inch from me, his eyes burning into mine.

The jar of dirt exploded in my hands, slicing up my fingers. I barely had time to close my eyes before splinters of glass peppered my face. It felt like getting stung by a swarm of angry bees.

Something slammed into the center of my chest so hard my breastbone creaked. It knocked me backwards, sending me across the room until my spine slammed against the metal side of a laundry machine.

I crumpled to the floor, aching all over, unable to breathe, unable to see. A thick layer of dirt coated my face, and I was afraid to wipe it away from my eyes because of all the little glass pieces in my hands. I wasn't excited by the idea of scratching out my eyeballs.

Slowly, I eased up to a sitting position, still struggling to draw air. I didn't even want to open my mouth for fear of choking on dirt and glass. My nostrils and sinuses already felt coated in the gritty soil.

I pulled apart the snap buttons on my denim jacket, pawed my shirt tail loose, and used it to wipe my face. I opened my eyes as soon as I dared.

A cloud of dark earth floated in the room like a brown fog, dampening the floodlight, which was turned aside and on its lowest setting anyway.

He stood several feet away from me, not far from where I'd been when he sent me flying. He was a dark shadow in the fog of dust, facing me, standing perfectly and unnaturally still, in the way that dead things can. Watching me. Waiting.

Sneezing and coughing out dust, I rolled to my hands and knees and crawled backward along the row of washing machines, away from him. He turned his head slightly, but made no obvious move to attack, like a cat letting its prey squirm before it moved in for the kill.

I placed my hands on the washing machine and slowly pulled myself to my feet. Pain flared all over my lower back, making it hard for me to stand straight up. My hands were wet with my leaking blood. I could feel it all over my face, too, warm and fresh. I wondered how many cuts I'd suffered. My arm with the burn injury was throbbing harder from getting knocked around.

"Come closer," he said, still looking and sounding like Anton Clay. "You belong with me, my lost lamb. We'll make a glorious fire together. Your ashes will mingle with mine. I have an eternity of sweet burning to share with you."

I could scream for help, but I still wasn't ready to do that yet. Not until I'd worn him down, at least.

"You forget who you really are, Edgar." I reached my fingers into the inch of space between the washing machines, hoping none of the black widows that thrived in the basement were waiting there, ready to bite my fingertips. The last thing I needed was a dose of painful venom on top of all my injuries.

I found the sheet and pulled it out. We'd had Speedi Sign print us a blown-up version of the picture of Edgar's corpse, and this was mounted on cheap corrugated plastic so it wouldn't roll up or flop around.

"Look at yourself," I said, swaying on my feet, barely keeping my balance. Spots of blood from my face dripped onto Edgar's picture, painting open red sores on his dead face. "You're dead, Edgar Barrington. You have to move on. This world belongs to the living."

A sneer twisted Anton's face, baring his teeth, his face like a snarling dog's.

"Such an ugly picture," he whispered.

Then my floodlight went out, plunging the basement back into darkness. I had my thermal goggles on my head, but their lenses were caked with dirt and I didn't exactly have time to stroll over to my toolbox and fish out the wipes.

I reached for my flashlight instead, but before my hand closed around it, the large picture in my other hand burst into flame. It went up all at once, as though it had been dipped in lighter fluid and ignited with a blowtorch. The fire seared my hand and my face, singeing my hair.

I shouted in pain, dropping the ball of fire to the floor. The plastic curled and melted in the heat, like a human body curling into the fetal position when the cremation fires hit. Noxious burnt-plastic fumes rose around me, making me cough, and I staggered closer to Anton.

"And now, an end to our story," Anton said. A gout of flame rose in his palm. With it rose thin trails of fire all over the basement, tracing the outlines of the walls and the laundry machines, similar to what had happened in Alicia's apartment.

He didn't have to be close to me to strike me with fire. The burning picture had made that clear.

I took a deep breath and shouted as loud as I could: "Now!"

At the far side of the room, well behind the glowing figure of Anton, the door to the vacant basement apartment swung open.

Stacey ran out, swinging a flashlight and glaring at Anton. A stethoscope hung around her neck, bouncing as she ran. She'd brought it to listen at the door in case our electronic equipment failed again, which it had.

Anton turned toward her, hissing as if he'd been stabbed in the back.

Then Anton was gone, but the flames still burned along the walls and machinery. I thought of the lint-encrusted dryer exhaust vents, usually one of the biggest fire hazards in the home. I wondered if Michael would be proud of me for knowing that.

A woman appeared in Anton's place, shrouded in a bridal veil that had withered and yellowed into something that looked like mats of old spiderwebs. I could just see the outline of her head and wide hoop dress within, impenetrable shadow-shapes the firelight couldn't seem to reach.

She turned toward Stacey. Where Anton had held a flame in his palm, the bride figure crushed a handful of dried flowers, their petals falling to the brick floor like flakes of skin. The bride matched Stacey's description of the ghost that had killed her brother.

"Anton!" I shouted, visualizing my lifelong tormentor. "Anton Clay!"

The dead bride turned back toward me—and once again, it was Anton in his fine coat and vest, his face distorted in a look of intense hatred, his irises glowing red. The scattered flower petals on the floor burst into flame, illuminating his polished black boots.

Stacey knocked on the closed door to the colored-glass booth, and Jacob stepped out. Our psychic friend removed his glasses and glared at Anton.

Anton's face ruptured open and his clothes erupted in flames. What remained of the clothes shifted to charred rags. One arm was broken in three places, and the other was missing. The figure became taller and wider, not resembling Anton at all by the time he turned to face Jacob.

I didn't recognize this new figure, but I could guess—one of the plane-crash victims who'd been on board with Jacob, one of the mangled spirits who'd approached him as he lay in the wreckage.

I'd told everyone to think of their deepest fear, then imagine flinging it at Edgar like a rock. He had the ability to take on our fears, but now we were _forcing_ him to do it.

Changing its shape, shifting from one apparition to another, had to drain the entity's energy, making it weaker and easier to manage. Hopefully this would soften it up and prepare it to move on when confronted with its real identity.

On top of that, as I'd told the kids, the best way to fight a fearfeeder was with courage. What could be more courageous than intentionally facing your own deepest fears?

"You're terrifying," I said, approaching the monster, who now looked like some hunched, snarling Frankenstein mutation, trying to be three different things at once. "You can horrify anyone with their worst fears. Any _one_. Why does the boogeyman always disappear before your parents can look inside the closet? Why do you keep running away as soon as other people come to help? You did it upstairs in Mia's room. Then again last night."

The thing grunted and fell to its hands and knees. Its face stretched out like an animal's snout, and sharp rows of teeth grew along its upper and lower jaws, ripping their way out from its gums and emerging bloody.

It hugged the floor, its legs thick but stumpy, and it began to grow a thick, fleshy, reptilian tail.

"An alligator?" I said, backing up as the jaws snapped at my ankles. I looked over to see Michael emerging from the trap, staring hard at the shapeshifting entity on the floor.

"My dad," he said. "Before he left, he took me to one of those cheap alligator farms for tourists. Held me over the fence and said he'd feed me to them. Laughing." Michael hadn't taken his eyes off the beast. "Good old dad."

I'd hidden the other people carefully. The big booth trap had been activated, the mesh within creating a barrier for electromagnetic energy. Ghosts couldn't escape it. I was pretty sure they couldn't perceive anything inside it, either, so I'd hidden people there. Instead of using the booth as a trap for the ghost, I'd used it a hiding place _from_ the ghost. I sort of got the idea from _Superman II_.

Since there hadn't been enough room in the trap for everyone, Stacey had taken the less secure position of waiting in the vacant apartment. Since that seemed to be the domain of Joseph's ghost, we were hoping that Edgar's ghost would tend to avoid it.

Now Alicia emerged from the booth, where she'd been crammed in with Jacob and Michael. She stared at the alligator-man writhing and snapping on the dirt-coated floor, and it changed again.

It turned into a large, shadowy mass and rose above us, folds of darkness spilling open like black cloth. It stood nine feet high, draped and hooded in black, its face a dirty white skull.

Death itself.

Alicia regarded it, shivering.

It reached out its skeletal hands, and the flames rose larger all over the basement, sweeping up the wooden stairs.

"You have all made a mistake." Its voice was a low hiss that seemed to whisper in both my ears. "You have given yourselves to me."

"I am afraid of you." That was Calvin, rolling into the room from apartment D, the last of our merry band. "Not any mask you wear. Not anything you pretend to be. Only _you_ , the thing you really are behind all the disguises." He approached it, showing no fear. That motivated the rest of us to move in closer to the apparition.

The grim reaper shrank back to a normal human size, its skull and cloth vanishing. It stood there, not far from the furnace door, a faceless column of shadows and darkness.

"Show yourself!" Calvin demanded. "Show your true face."

I reached into the big canvas pocket on the back of Calvin's wheelchair and brought out something that looked like an oversized vinyl book with a battery compartment on the back. I opened the cover, revealing what Calvin had made for us back at the workshop. A mirror pane was inside, crisscrossed with copper wires, which could be powered at the touch of a button.

"Remember who you are, Edgar," I said, turning the mirror to face the darkness.

A woman appeared in the mirror—or the decayed corpse of one, the eye sockets empty, the face crumbling to reveal bone beneath, the hair like dried straw.

"Is that Bloody Mary?" Michael whispered. "What my sister saw in her mirror?"

The darkness took the form of the reflection.

"Edgar Barrington," I said, "We demand that you show yourself."

"I've been here all along," said a low voice. It raised the hair on the back of my neck, because it came from a place no voice should have been—directly behind me.

Keeping the mirror where it was, I turned back to see Mr. Gray in his crisp old-fashioned suit, regarding me with his dark eyes. He gave a gentle smile. I could feel the cold radiating from him, even as the fires in the basement grew.

"I would not miss this," he said, filling the air with frost as he walked past me, approaching the entity in its decayed-woman shape. He didn't go too far, I noted, hanging back from the grave dirt on the floor and the dust lingering in the air.

"You're Edgar?" I asked. "Not Joseph?" It looked like I'd identified the wrong twin.

"You should know," he said. "You've been calling my name."

"Wait a minute," Stacey said. "You're Edgar. The one who killed the children?"

Edgar gave her an angry look, and a butcher knife appeared in his hand.

"Not that we have to talk about that now," Stacey added quickly. She pointed her flashlight at the decayed crone. "If Edgar is Mr. Gray, then who is...?"

"Rebecca Barrington," I said. "Is that right?"

The old crone straightened up, and in a blink she was a beautiful young woman in a light gray dress with puffy sleeves and a sash at the midsection. She appeared all in tones of gray, like Edgar.

Edgar tremored at the sight of her, seeming to grow younger, his frenetic energy palpable in the air.

"Rebecca was the boogeyman?" Stacey asked.

"It was you," I said to the apparition. "You had Edgar kill your husband and children. You wanted to be free of them."

"I killed my husband myself," she said, her voice the same low hiss I'd heard from the fearfeeder before, when it had run away from me the previous night.

"The black widow spiders," I said, suddenly understanding. "It's your energy that attracts them."

She looked at me, her pretty face proud and haughty.

"And you had Edgar kill your children," I said, looking at him. "He did it...because he loved you?"

"That one knows nothing about love," Rebecca said with a smirk, her eyes turning black again for a moment as she said _love_. "He only wanted to be his brother. Successful and popular like his brother, instead of deranged and useless like himself. He coveted his brother's house, his brother's wife—"

"You promised to marry me," Edgar said. "You betrayed me."

"And what will you do about it?" she asked.

Edgar looked down at the floor, covered with his own grave earth between himself and Rebecca.

She gave a hollow laugh. "I am protected against you, even if you wished to harm me. But you could never wish that, could you, Edgar?"

He still hesitated, the butcher knife in his hand.

"Kill _them_ , Edgar." She pointed right at me. "Kill all of them for me. And then I may accept your affections."

The ghost of Edgar turned to me, a hard glint in his eye. Michael tried to grab him, but the apparition became insubstantial. Michael stumbled through, then stood between me and the child-killer's ghost.

" _Now,"_ Rebecca urged, her beautiful face flickering, revealing glimpses of her skull beneath her skin.

Edgar turned toward her...then advanced, placing one foot directly on the scattered earth, then the next.

She frowned, and it was a deeper frown than would be possible on a flesh-and-blood human face.

I noticed she stood in a clear spot, surrounded by the spilled earth, and hadn't moved much from there since she'd first appeared to me as Anton Clay. The dirt on the floor wasn't taken from her grave, but it was taken from the family plot where she was buried. I wondered if that made her want to avoid it, too.

Edgar took another step. His form decayed rapidly as he moved toward Rebecca's ghost. His flesh seemed to dry and crumble, and his clothes began to rot, revealing bone underneath.

Still he walked toward her across the dirt of his own grave. Halfway there, he fell to his knees, his apparition falling apart as if catching up to the actual condition of his body over in the old cemetery. The soles of his shoes split open, showing bony remnants of feet within.

Rebecca hissed, stepping back as Edgar's corpse-like ghost continued crawling toward her. He let out bone-shuddering grunts and groans, and moved slowly, as though it were causing him great pain but he was forcing himself to continue onward. His face was little more than blots of gray flesh clinging to his skull. Veins of rust spread across the butcher knife.

"Stop him." Rebecca looked around at us, all of us staring in a kind of shock as the ghostly drama unfolded. "Someone _must_ stop him."

"I don't think we will," Stacey said.

Rebecca screamed, her form flickering as if she wanted to escape but couldn't.

Edgar collapsed to the soil, no longer able to support himself on his hands and knees. He dragged himself forward, his form no more than rags and crumbling bones now, his butcher knife turned entirely to rust. He gave one last groan and stopped cold, lying facedown in the dirt. Then only disconnected bone fragments remained, half-sunken into the soil.

Rebecca laughed, and she looked healthier somehow—less grayscale, a little more color, her cheeks flushed.

"Who else wants to try?" she asked, smiling around at the rest of us, her teeth just a tad sharper than before. "You think you know who I am, but you know nothing of _what_ I am, of the old things below us, the gifts they have given me...the horrors they have shown me..."

"You don't belong here," I said. "You need to cross to the other side."

"This is my home," she said. "I belong nowhere else."

I'd chosen to confront the fearfeeder with its true identity in hopes of reaching the man inside the monster—or the woman inside, as it turned out—and encouraging the spirit to move on. It didn't sound like that was going to happen tonight.

I stepped closer to Rebecca, holding up the mirror so she would have to face her own reflection.

She hissed at me, the sound purely animal, making me think of hissing cockroaches I'd seen on TV once.

"Look at yourself," I said. "See who you really are."

Then I pressed the button to activate the electromagnetic grid. It gave off a slight hum, and I could feel the energy buzzing in the air around me.

"You wish me to admire my own beauty?" Rebecca asked with a sour smile.

I held the mirror a bit longer, but she did not react at all. Calvin had been right—this mirror trap was not effective against non-catoptric ghosts.

"Uh, never mind," I mumbled, putting it aside. "Stacey, grab the broom." I gestured to the row of washing machines. In a gap between the last machine and the wall sat a push broom, dust pan, and a yellow mop bucket, all of them dusty and hung with spider webs.

Stacey nodded and jogged past me to fetch it. I kept my eyes on Rebecca's ghost while Stacey handed me the broom.

Then I began to sweep the scattered earth toward Rebecca, banking it up one side and then the other, moving the barrier closer in around her. She backed toward the charred door behind her.

"Come a little closer," she said, holding out her hand as if to grab me. "Just one step."

Not being a total sucker, I held back. When I'd banked up the dirt as close to her as I dared, I raised the broom like a battering ram and charged at her.

Rebecca shrieked and dodged aside as best she could, but she wasn't my target.

The wide wooden head of the push broom slammed into the charred door behind her, knocking it open to reveal the darkness of the furnace room. She snarled and grabbed for my broom as I pulled it back, but she didn't move fast enough.

My idea was to keep sweeping the dirt toward her, driving her back into the well. Then I would surround the mouth of the well with her grave earth to keep her trapped inside until we could seal it tight. It wasn't a perfect or satisfying solution, but it was all I had. We'd failed to make her move on, and the experimental mirror trap had failed, too.

"Stay back," Rebecca hissed.

"You've been haunting this neighborhood for so many years," I said. "Terrorizing and killing children. Do you drag them down into the well with you? Is the bottom of the shaft littered with their bones?"

"Leave us alone," Rebecca said, and it was as though something else spoke through her, something plural, with many voices. "We will kill everything you love."

"That's sweet," I said, sweeping more earth toward her.

"Drop your broom, little witch," Rebecca said.

"Careful, Ellie," Calvin warned.

"I can handle her," I said. My words brought a sneer to her lips.

"Someone's coming," Jacob told us. His eyes were closed.

Above us, the door at the top of the stairs blew open, bringing in a flood of light from upstairs. A warm wind swept down the stairs, snuffing out fires as it swept through the room.

"You can't," Rebecca said, whispering to the wind as it approached her, blowing out the rest of the fires and churning up grave dust from the floor.

"Who's here, Jacob?" I asked.

"The man who guards the children," Jacob said, finally opening his eyes. I looked at Alicia.

"Gerard?" Alicia whispered, watching the swirling dust in the mysterious wind.

"No!" Rebecca screamed, holding up her arms and inching back toward the charred and broken door to the furnace room. "Make him go away!"

"I don't see anything," Stacey said.

The mysterious wind struck the low wall of earth I'd heaped up. I staggered back and out of the way as the dirt rose into a dark whirlwind, obscuring my view of Rebecca Barrington. I thought I could hear her screaming through the whooshing roar of the spinning air. My hair blew every which way across my face.

"What's happening?" Michael had to shout at me so the wind didn't swallow his voice. He pulled my close, protectively.

I just shook my head and shrugged in response: _I have no idea_.

The wind slowed, dropping into low eddies on the floor. As the churning dirt sank in the air, I saw Rebecca again, encrusted in earth but still standing. She even seemed taller, until I realized she stood on top of a mound of collected soil.

Rebecca grinned at me, a vicious look on her pretty face. I took that as a bad sign.

"That Negro ghost has been pestering me," Rebecca said. "Ever since that slave family moved into this house."

"Excuse me?" Alicia said.

"Yeah, hey, rude," Stacey added.

"You cannot kill me," Rebecca boasted.

"We don't have to," I said. "You're already dead."

Something groaned beneath the floor. A pair of skeletal arms, wrapped in black rags and the shriveled remnants of old flesh, emerged from the heap of soil and grabbed Rebecca by the legs, its sharp fingers hooking deep into her ephemeral clothes and skin.

She screamed as the arms pulled her down. She dropped waist-deep into the earth, as though the dirt were several feet deep instead of just a few inches.

The head and shoulders of a corpse emerged, staring up at her. Enough of his face remained that I could recognize Edgar, his face decayed in such a way that it had a permanent deep sneer on the left side.

His hands moved up to Rebecca's throat.

"No!" she screamed. "Not with you!"

"Now we shall be wed," Edgar's voice whispered between his crumbling jaws.

Then he sank back into the soil, pulling her down with him.

Rebecca shrieked and thrashed, sending up dust as she disappeared into the earth, but she was already growing pale and insubstantial. Her final scream sounded distant. As her fading head descended into the dirt, she gave me a final look of pure hatred.

Then she was gone. A low mist clung to the heap of earth, crawling among the pebbles and flakes of red dirt.

"Stacey, grab the trap," I whispered. "We need to sweep this up before one of them leaks out. I don't trust either of those ghosts."

Stacey hurried to remove the small trap from the stamper. It was still half-filled with earth, and three candles were mounted above them. She blew the candles out, removing them from the trap and dropping them to the basement floor as she walked over to me.

"I'll bandage you up," Michael told me. "After I spend an hour picking the glass out of your skin. Come on." He reached for me, but I pulled back.

"Not until we're squared away down here," I said.

Stacey and I knelt on the floor, collecting the dirt from Edgar's grave, which now held both Edgar and Rebecca, together at last, to remain that way for centuries or more if the trap lay undisturbed. Now it was the boogeywoman's turn to suffer her own worst nightmare, being trapped with her brother-in-law, the man whose advances she'd spurned with contempt, after he'd done the dirty work of murdering her poor children for her. The kids had spent their short lives unwanted and unloved.

I saw Calvin watching us silently, his face as expressionless as stone.

"How are you feeling?" I asked him.

He nodded slightly.

"We finally got him," I said. "I mean, her."

" _You_ got her," Calvin said.

"We all did," I said. "We defeated her by standing together."

"You and Stacey did a fine job. You always do." He cleared his throat. "I don't think you need me anymore. This investigation proves it. You succeeded where I failed."

"Only because we learned from last time," I said, feeling concerned. He seemed melancholy, not a normal state for him.

"I've trained you as best I can, Ellie," he said. "Maybe it's about time for me to pack it in."

"And do what?" I asked. I noticed Alicia and Jacob speaking quietly to each other across the room.

"Retire. Move. Sit at the beach."

"We're _near_ the beach. Get a place on one of the coastal islands. That would be healthy," I said. I tried to sound calm, but his words panicked me.

"I have family in Florida," he said.

I didn't know what to say to that, so I took the trap, now brimming with soil, over to the stamper. I placed the lid on the trap, then brought the pneumatic arm down for good measure, sealing the two murderous ghosts inside.

"Gerard?" Alicia gasped. She was staring upward at something I couldn't see. Or someone, I supposed, standing just in front of her. She raised one hand and seemed to caress the empty air. She nodded a little, as if listening, and tears crept out of her eyes and down her cheeks.

The rest of us fell silent. Michael was close to me, clearly impatient to do something about my injuries.

I wondered what Alicia was seeing and hearing. She looked entranced.

Finally, she whispered, "I love you, too, baby." Her hand fell back to her side, and she looked down at the floor, crying softly to herself.

I walked over to hug her, and she embraced me.

"He said he'll always watch over us," Alicia whispered, low enough that only I could hear her words. "He said he'll be waiting for me. He said...love is the only thing that lasts forever."

"You big sweetie," Stacey said, punching Jacob in the arm. "You helped her talk to her husband one last time."

"All I did was warn her that he was coming," Jacob said. "He asked me to do that."

"I can't believe Rebecca was the boogeyman the whole time," Stacey said. "And Edgar was just hanging around, waiting for his next chance with her."

"She would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for us meddling kids," Jacob said. Stacey snickered and leaned against him, and he placed an arm around her.

"Thank you," Alicia said, stepping back from me. "All of you. I have to...go sit down." She turned and started up the stairs, swaying uneasily on her feet as if she'd just suffered a major shock. I supposed she had.

"We still have to do something about that old well," Jacob said.

"I've called a specialist," Calvin said. He still had that sad look as he stared at the blackened remains of the furnace room door, clinging to the door frame by a couple of hinges. The doorknob lay on the floor amid charred bits of wood.

"Let's go," Michael said. "You don't want twenty infections all over your hands and face."

"Wait," I said. "Calvin—"

"Go with him," Calvin said, finally looking at me. He wore a small, almost sad smile. "You need someone to care for you."

I nodded. I think he was talking about more than my immediate injuries.

Michael led me upstairs to deal with my gory, bloody face, while the rest of my team got to work breaking down cameras and removing our gear from the scene.

# Chapter Twenty-One

"Are we there yet?" Stacey asked as we trudged up the remnants of the steep trail, which I located mostly by memory. Behind us lay a steep, tree-lined cliff overlooking a steep drop to the valley below. We'd awoken before dawn and driven a long, long six hours, from Savannah on the eastern coast of the state to the nearly impassable ridges of the western Appalachians. We'd taken down the fearfeeder two nights earlier, and taken a day to rest before the journey to bury the two dangerous ghosts.

"I thought you'd enjoy a hike in the mountains," I said. Stacey was the outdoorsy type, but I was more the air-conditiony type.

"I'm just excited to see this graveyard for monsters." Since Stacey was such an experienced hiker, I was letting her carry the ghost trap full of soil and spirits in her backpack.

I led the way into the dense woods, remote from any settled area. Calvin had picked the site because it was likely to be remote forever, the geography of the ridge and valley region making the construction of roads and bridges difficult and expensive. Few people had ever lived in the area.

Geography wasn't the only reason, though.

Wielding a small machete, I hacked through thick, thorny brambles, slowly advancing until I reached an overgrown wall. It wasn't much higher than my hips, but it was solid, built of hard local rocks crudely cut to fit together. Poison oak and thorny vines hid most of it.

"So this is like your own private hell," Stacey said. "For ghosts who can't be trusted."

"Yep." I hacked a clear space along the top where we could climb over without getting our clothes tangled in thorns.

The other side looked, at first, like just another shady patch of mountain forest, but the trees were thinner here, and the place was littered with overgrown rocks and boulders, thick with moss and poison ivy.

The air was about twenty degrees colder on this side of the wall.

"Okay, this is different," Stacey whispered. "I'm guessing these overgrown rocks are grave markers?"

"They are," I said. "They're just rocks, not carved headstones. If you scrape the plants off any of them, you'll find names inscribed."

I led her deeper into the small old graveyard. Though it was around noon, it was so dark under the canopy that I pulled my flashlight and pointed it into the shadows ahead. "See the old church?"

"Oh, yeah." Stacey stared at the ruins ahead—the uneven rock foundation, the collapsing wooden walls.

"That was the church of Reverend Mordecai Blake about a hundred years ago," I said. "Raw mountain religion—snake handling, faith healing, speaking in tongues. The church was basically a cult that included several families. Blake took things to extremes. Anyone who questioned his teachings, disobeyed him, angered him, or tried to leave the church was put into the Judgment Box."

"That sounds pleasant," Stacey said, warily approaching the ruins.

"Imagine a coffin with air holes in the side and a padlock on top," I said. "Sinners were put inside with half a dozen venomous rattlesnakes. Supposedly this left it up to God's judgment whether the person should live or die. Several people didn't, including children."

"That's awful," Stacey whispered.

"State investigators finally came to arrest him, but he refused to go with them. The preacher locked himself in the church and let his snakes bite him to death rather than go to jail. His ghost is still here, and the ghosts of some of his loyal followers. You do not want to be in this graveyard after sunset."

"I don't really want to be here now," Stacey said. She crossed her arms, shivering a little. I felt the same way. An atmosphere of dread permeated the entire place.

"Well, let's get digging." I shrugged off my backpack and removed the short spade hung from a loop, then pulled on a pair of gardening gloves. Stacey did the same. I showed her a row of tiny rock-heaps near one wall of the old graveyard. "This is where we've buried the other nasties. We mark them with little cairns so we don't accidentally dig them up..." I picked a spot, hacked away some weeds and brambles, and plunged the head of the spade into the earth.

"So...what happens when the battery in the trap dies?" she asked.

"The lead glass should keep the ghosts inside. If they do escape, they'll still be stuck in this graveyard, prisoners of the dead preacher and his followers."

"So Reverend Blake is like our prison warden," Stacey said.

"Basically. We're using him. He doesn't know he's helping us—it's not like he signed up for it or we discussed it with him—but he's a strong ghost who rules this graveyard. It's not as pleasant as those places where we release non-violent ghosts, like the one over in Goodwell." Goodwell, several hours south of us, was a ghost town with a nice, strong brick wall around its cemetery. We use it as a kind of wildlife preserve for nuisance ghosts—they're able to wander free among the old trees there, instead of being buried inside their traps.

Strange sounds interrupted us while we dug, making us look around. Snapping twigs, as if someone were walking toward us. Rustling leaves, as though a wind were blowing on the calm day. Whenever we looked towards the sounds, they stopped. Once I heard a hiss, only to see a bobcat watching us from the shadows of the thick undergrowth with its big yellow eyes. It scurried out of sight.

Finally, we had dug down a few feet into the dark, rocky earth. I took the cylindrical trap from Stacey's backpack and dropped it into the hole.

"It feels like we should say something," Stacey said.

"Like a eulogy?" I asked. She nodded. "Okay. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to imprison the spirits of two awful human beings. Edgar Barrington killed his sister-in-law Rebecca's children because she asked him to do it. Rebecca murdered her own husband, and terrorized and killed children for a hundred and fifty years after she died, feeding on their fear and transforming into even more of a monster than she was in life. Dear Lord, please keep them trapped here so they can never harm anyone else again."

"Amen," Stacey said, and I threw the first heap of dirt onto the trap.

We buried it quickly, then heaped a few handfuls of stones on top to mark the spot. I could feel something watching me from the darkness of the collapsed church, but I saw nothing there.

"Let's get going," I said.

"How are your hands?" Stacey asked, watching me remove my gloves. Little beads of blood had welled up from the larger scratches.

"Michael took out the glass pieces from my face and hands with tweezers," I said. "I still checked with the doctor yesterday. I've just been rubbing calendula cream on all the scratches and hoping they don't scar."

"Jacob was happy that he finally got out of a case without having his face totally mangled," Stacey said, while we walked back toward the low rock wall. "I guess it was just your turn."

"Then it'll be your turn next time," I said.

A long, low groan echoed across the cemetery. We looked back and didn't see anyone. We looked at each other, and then we scrambled over the wall and down the steep trail as fast as we dared.

# Chapter Twenty-Two

It was a couple of hours after sunset, and I was back in the unnaturally cold furnace room, looking into the dark well under the house.

I wasn't alone. Michael stood on the other side of the well from me, and in between us stood a friend of Calvin's, a man with thin gray hair and a Rudolph-red nose, dressed in jeans and a khaki shirt.

Michael had met us on the first floor—though fit and spry, Lachlan was seventy-one years old, and there had been no reason to make him climb all those stairs to Michael's apartment.

"Michael, this is Dr. James Lachlan," I'd said. "He's a Jesuit—"

"— _was_ a Jesuit," Lachlan interrupted with a smile. "The Vatican had me removed years ago. I had trouble waiting for the long, bureaucratic chain of permission before performing major exorcisms. And a few other restricted rites."

"Sorry to hear that," Michael said, shaking his hand. Michael seemed surprised by Lachlan's thick Australian accent.

"It's well in the past. I didn't want you mistaking me for a priest and confessing your sins to me by accident."

Michael laughed and led us toward the basement door.

"Michael's a good name, then," Lachlan said. "We'll be calling on your namesake for assistance. Let's hope he doesn't grow confused and think I'm talking to you instead."

"My namesake?" Michael started down the steps, looking back at us. Lachlan followed, then me.

"The archangel." Lachlan sounded a little bemused. "You're unaware you were named for God's champion demon-smiter?"

"I didn't even know they had a championship for that," Michael said. The former priest gave him a chuckle.

"Let's see the trouble spot," Lachlan said. He held a black case in one hand, which looked like the sort of things doctors used to carry back when they made house calls. He'd refused to let Michael or me carry it for him. Michael and I both carried high-powered tactical flashlights instead. Michael had already brought a few things down here while waiting for our arrival.

We'd opened the charred remnants of the door and stepped inside. The room was freezing, and the sound of distant rushing wind echoed up from the well.

I watched Lachlan as he looked deep into the darkness below, and I wondered what he was thinking. In the Church, he'd been a teacher at Jesuit colleges as well as a demonologist and exorcist. Now defrocked, he drifted from one secular university to the next, teaching ancient Middle Eastern history and languages. He was currently at the University of Georgia, only a few hours away.

"Here's what happens next." Lachlan placed his doctor's bag into Michael's hands and unzipped it, letting Michael hold it like a butler or servant. "I will exorcise this to the best of my ability. It's important that you stay back, and do not look into the well while I work. The moment I tell you to seal it, do so." He looked at Michael, who nodded.

Lachlan directed me to light a few white candles he'd brought, as well as a brass censer loaded with frankincense. The smoke flavored the air with a citrusy, woody odor. I placed the candles around the floor, trying not to show my distaste for the presence of open flames.

The ex-priest waved the censor above the well, chanting in Latin.

When he was done, he handed that to me, and I set it aside while he sprinkled salt into the well, chanting louder, his voice echoing back from below. More voices seemed to accompany it.

Lachlan tossed more salt into the well, and I heard churning, hissing voices down inside it.

Suddenly we appeared to stand on a crumbling brick ledge sloping toward a black abyss. Thick, cold darkness stretched as far as I could see. The voices screamed, howled, shouted in languages I didn't understand.

I felt off-balance, and my feet slid down a few inches toward the bottomless dark. Michael grabbed my arm to steady me.

Lachlan continued the rite, and the voices grew into a deafening wall of howls and tortured cries. I couldn't understand the words, but I sensed curses and elaborate blasphemies in the voices. My mind filled with visions of rotten faces, their eyes dark and hollow, their jaws stretched wide with screams, their hands cold and grasping. I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach, and I wanted to collapse.

Then it was over, and we were in the basement again, Michael still steadying me. Lachlan nodded to him, and I told him to go ahead.

Michael picked up the things he'd already stashed here—a drill, a steel plate big enough to completely cover the well, and a handful of long steel screws. Lead coated the underside of the square.

He laid it on top of the dark opening, then he went to work. It took quite a while for him to drill through steel and brick to anchor the sheet of metal in place. He was absorbed into the task, saying nothing, his hands moving with strength and intelligence. Plastic goggles shielded his eyes, and Lachlan and I remained several feet away to avoid sparks and flying bits of brick.

"Is that it?" I asked Lachlan.

"We've completed the full rite," he said. "What were you expecting? Seven-headed dragons rising from the depths to bring on the apocalypse?"

"Something like that, yeah." I felt skeptical about whether this had really been effective, and how long it would hold. Jacob had mentioned holy men and seers from centuries and millennia past who had tried in their own ways to seal the well, and whose remnant ghosts worked, with limited success, to keep the darkness in the well contained and away from the living. Later generations had always found their way back to this place, when enough time had passed and the legend of its evil had been forgotten.

Perhaps a hundred years from now, my ghost would be here among those ancient ones, trying to do the same work. I wasn't a medicine woman or a psychic, but at least I was stubborn.

As we left, I took a final look at the square of steel and lead bolted to the floor. The room already felt warmer, and my Mel Meter showed lower readings than the basement ever had before. The black hole—call it a dark psychic vortex, a ghost portal, or a minor doorway to hell—seemed closed for now. My job was as done as it could be, but I was still unsettled about it.

Outside, Lachlan climbed into the passenger seat of the van, waving off my attempt to help him. Before I climbed inside, I turned back to Michael.

"So that takes care of it?" he asked, reaching for me.

"Let me know if it doesn't." I let him draw me closer.

He didn't reply, but gave me another long, fantastic kiss on the lips. I felt myself grow very warm against him.

"Careful, there's a priest watching," I whispered when we were done.

"An ex-priest. And he's not watching."

"He's an ex-priest who probably wants to get to his hotel right away," I said. I traced my fingers along Michael's upper arm. "Thanks for all your help."

"It was my house, too. So I should thank you."

I glanced at the van. "I'd better go."

"Running away again?"

"As usual." I eased back from him, starting for the van.

"Listen," he said. "Saturday. This friend of mine from high school is in this really bad Cheap Trick cover band—"

"I love Cheap Trick."

"No, no, the music will be terrible. I was wondering if you'd endure the show with me anyway."

"How could I say no to a terrible cover band?" I smiled.

Michael stood on the sidewalk and watched as I drove away.

"He seems like a nice young man," Lachlan said from the passenger seat.

"He does."

"Appearances can be deceiving, of course. But not always." He looked out the window as we drove past crumbling old mansions, some of which had been terrorized over the years by the ghost of Rebecca Barrington.

We drove on through moonlit streets under the moss-hung canopy of oak limbs. Savannah's ghosts hid in every corner, behind every wrought-iron gate and marble column, stalking the gardens and dark streets, most of them invisible unless you knew how to look for them.

I wondered whether they had their own kind of community, and what they thought of us, the ghost trappers who removed spirits from their haunts. I doubted their opinion would be favorable.

I wondered about the future. Was Calvin serious about retiring and leaving things in my hands? I couldn't possibly be ready for that. Stacey was still much too green. So was I.

We'd faced our fears and come through alive. The illusion of Anton Clay had been almost too real, too intelligent compared to the other forms taken by the boogeyman. Maybe my parents' murderer really was inside me somehow, connected to me, following the course of my life from where his spirit remained anchored, on the overgrown empty lot where my childhood home had once stood. Calvin had declared Anton too dangerous to attempt trapping.

I knew I would need to confront him one day, somehow remove him from that patch of ground and make sure he never harmed anyone again. But not tonight.

I dropped Lachlan at a bed and breakfast on State Street a few minutes later. Then I blasted the stereo, summoning music to chase the ghosts from my mind.

# From the author

Thanks so much for reading the first three Ellie Jordan books. If you enjoyed it, I hope you'll consider leaving a review of one of the books (or this boxed set) at the retailer where you bought it. Good reviews and word of mouth help other readers discover the books. Thanks!

Books 4 through 8 in the Ellie Jordan series are already available, with book nine coming out soon. I hope you'll continue the adventure! Here are the titles of the rest of the books in the series:

Terminal

House of Whispers

Maze of Souls

Lullaby

The Keeper

The Tower (coming soon!)

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Website (www.jlbryanbooks.com)

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Thanks for reading!

# More by J.L. Bryan:

### The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

Cold Shadows

The Crawling Darkness

Terminal

House of Whispers

Maze of Souls

Lullaby

The Keeper

The Tower (coming soon!)

