Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Also by J. L. Bryan

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  From the author

  Other books by J. L. Bryan

  Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

  by J.L. Bryan

  Copyright 2014 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.

  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 covert art 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 Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)

  Jenny Pox

  Tommy Nightmare

  Alexander Death

  Jenny Plague-Bringer

  Urban Fantasy/Horror

  Inferno Park

  The Unseen

  Science Fiction Novels

  Nomad

  Helix

  The Songs of Magic Series (YA/Fantasy)

  Fairy Metal Thunder

  Fairy Blues

  Fairystruck

  Fairyland

  Fairyvision

  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.