Ghost Trapper 17 Fallen Wishes
Contents
Fallen Wishes
Copyright
Also by J. L. Bryan
Acknowledgments
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
From the author
Fallen Wishes
Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper,
Book Seventeen
by
J. L. Bryan
Copyright
Copyright 2022 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.
Also by J. L. Bryan
The Night Folk series (NEW!)
Sable
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
The Monster Museum
Fire Devil
The Necromancer’s Library
The Trailwalker
Midnight Movie
The Lodge
Cabinet Jack
Fallen Wishes
Sunset House
Urban Fantasy/Horror
The Unseen
Inferno Park
Time Travel/Dystopian
Nomad
The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)
Jenny Pox
Tommy Nightmare
Alexander Death
Jenny Plague-Bringer
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my wife Christina for her support. Thanks to my son Johnny for always doing his homework and his chores.
I appreciate everyone who helped with this book, including beta reader Robert Duperre (check out his books!). Thanks also to copy editor Lori Whitwam and proofreaders Thelia Kelly, Andrea van der Westhuizen, and Barb Ferrante. Thanks to my cover artist Claudia from PhatPuppy Art, and her daughter Catie, who does the lettering on the covers.
Thanks also to the book bloggers who have supported the series, including Heather from Bewitched Bookworms; Michelle from Much Loved Books; Shirley from Creative Deeds; Kelly from Reading the Paranormal; Lili from Lili Lost in a Book; Kelsey from Kelsey’s Cluttered Bookshelf; and Ali from My Guilty Obsession.
Thanks to Stratton and Hunter Lawrence, proprietors of the Sea Pear Cottage on Folly Island (available on AirBnB) for being great hosts while I researched some of the historical sites in Charleston. Stratton is also the author of the Folly Beach volume of the Images of America series, which are those local history books full of vintage photographs, and he filled us in on far more local history than I could use in just this book.
Most of all, thanks to the readers who have supported this series! There are more paranormal mysteries to come.
Dedication
For Rick & Amelia
Thanks for the drinks
And I think the appetizers
Chapter One
“Whew, what a scorcher,” Stacey said, leaning into the breeze from the van's open windows, her short-cropped blonde hair dancing around her ears. It was a blistering hot July, smothering us under a heat wave that was intense even for the Deep South, and conveniently enough our van's air conditioner was broken. We were about sixty minutes from home, halfway to our possible new client's location, and we'd been drinking water to stay cool the whole way. “I hope this client's big, fancy location has a swimming pool. Or at least some powerful AC.”
“I wouldn't bet on it,” I said. “They're mid-restoration—”
“—and workers keep quitting, and strange accidents happen at night, et cetera?” Stacey asked.
“They actually still have an active work crew, so far.”
“Doesn't sound too dangerous, then. Hopefully we can wrap it up quickly and head someplace colder.”
“If it is a real haunting, let's hope it offers spine-chilling cold spots, because my spine could use some serious chilling right now.” I'd pulled my hair into a ponytail to cool off the back of my neck, but it was still sweaty back there.
The walls of towering pines lining the rural highway broke to give us a view of the Edisto River, a waterway flanked by marshy forest. Its swampy water looked so fresh and cool, I almost felt tempted to jump in, never mind the mud and the gators.
I drove as fast as I could to try to generate some wind-chill for us, but we got stuck behind a wheezing, smoking pickup truck that forced us to move slowly.
We drove through woodlands broken up by barns and pastures behind split rails and wire fences, the smell of pigs and cattle pungent in the broiling summer heat. We passed the gated driveways of secluded estates, many described on signs and markers as historic plantations, while driving through a tunnel of live oak whose branches created a kind of pergola roof over the road. Spanish moss hung thick from the heavy old limbs.
The GPS guided us to a closed metal gate. The digital map's robot-lady voice confirmed we had arrived at our destination, Canterbury Gardens, shown as a vast, sprawling green area stretching all the way to the bank of the Ashley River. A little wooden sign by the gate confirmed we were in the right place.
I pushed a callbox button and smiled for the security camera. Hopefully I didn't look like I'd just stepped out of a steam room. The van felt like a big rotisserie oven, roasting Stacey and me like impulse-purchase chickens at the grocery store deli.
“Hello?” a woman's voice asked.
“Hi, I'm Ellie Jordan, here to see Brenda Watkins—”
“You can park by the ruins of the main house, then walk down the left-hand path until you see me at the Temple of the Sun.”
“Okay,” I replied, as if those were perfectly ordinary sorts of directions to receive.
The gate lumbered open. We headed down a brick driveway lined with boxy formal hedges that divided the front lawn into small garden areas. Benches and little statues, columns, and urns created the impression of outdoor rooms connected by decorative wooden archways and gates.
The driveway became a wide circle. Two matching Georgian-style brick mansions with granite front steps flanked the circular drive, one to the north and one to the south. A third, much larger mansion of the same style had once stood in the middle, facing east and west, but now lay in ruins. Chimneys and chunks of fire-blackened brick walls remained, a partial skeleton of a house that had once been impressively gigantic.
I shuddered involuntarily, trying not to think of my own childhood home, burned to the ground by a nasty fire-loving ghost
who'd taken both of my parents' lives and set me on the course to chasing ghosts for a living.
“Wow, what happened to that place?” Stacey nodded at the scorched ruins. I didn't say anything.
The driveway encircled a small garden centered on a fountain where three marble women held empty pitchers that would probably have been pouring water if the fountain had been working. A few workers were busy repairing the water system, including a couple guys who'd opted to go shirtless in the scorching heat, and actually did not look bad that way. A particularly good-looking, deeply tanned guy with long, unkempt blond hair, in his late twenties or early thirties, in tight, mud-stained jeans directed the others. He wasn't much older than Stacey and me.
The workers glanced toward us as we passed.
“This day just keeps getting hotter,” Stacey said. “Do you see that one guy?”
“I saw him, before I quickly looked away like a mature, professional type of person.”
“I should try that next time.”
We parked in front of the shattered ruins and stepped out, grateful for the shade of the huge old trees surrounding the houses. I'd slipped on my black suit jacket, to look more like the kind of mature professional I'd just been describing to Stacey, but another layer of clothing was about as welcome as a thick wool blanket in the heat.
A shrub-lined brick path led us between the ruins and the northern house, then through a grove of sweet-smelling citrus trees. The curving path eventually took us to a building with rows of square columns. Its triangular pediment was engraved with a frieze of flying birds around a circular window that glinted in the hot daylight.
“Looks like a Temple of the Sun to me,” Stacey said. “Not that I've seen very many.”
A woman emerged from the shadows of the temple and descended its wide front steps. She looked about forty, as tanned and fit as the younger working guys out front. She wore shorts and a sleeveless shirt, a straw hat shading her face. She removed her sunglasses as she approached us along a path banked with tall, dense masses of sunflowers, appraising us coolly with her bright green eyes, like we were overpriced jewelry at a rundown department store.
“So, this is really happening.” She seemed to be talking to herself as much as to us.
“I'm Ellie, who you spoke with on the phone, and this is Stacey, our technology manager.”
“This is an amazing...uh, whatever this place is,” Stacey said, looking around.
“They're pleasure gardens, created by the Canterbury family who settled here in the colonial period. It was neglected for decades before we started here a year ago. You should see the 'before' pictures. And we've only focused on the houses and the smaller front gardens. There are still a lot of wild patches in back.” She gestured toward the paths curving away beyond the temple, vanishing among high trees and thick, flowering undergrowth.
“What did they use the Temple of the Sun for?” I asked.
“Outdoor dining, mostly. Party guests would move from one building to another between courses.”
“No actual suns were worshiped here, then?” The more I looked at the temple, the smaller it seemed to become, as though its initial impressive size was an optical illusion, boosted by the small hill it was placed on, the slight upward grade of the approach, and other subtle visual details. Despite its gleaming divine exterior, up close the temple wasn't too different from a covered picnic-table pavilion in a public park.
“It was never an actual religious site, no.” Brenda led us up the steps into the shadow of the temple roof. Buckets, painting supplies, and a cooler sat beside a couple of folding chairs.
“This does look like an amazing place for a party,” Stacey said. “You can imagine it all decked out in the olden days.”
“Our vision was to convert the estate into an event center and the northern flanker house into a hotel. We're living in the southern flanker house for now, but eventually that will become part of the hotel, too.” Brenda nodded in a direction currently blocked off by trees. “Where the enslaved people lived, my brother-in-law Sam restored their small church and the picket fence around their graveyard. That will be an educational environment, honoring the past, which helps with the restoration grants.”
“That's all very ambitious.” I looked down a stone path that twisted out sight through the woods behind the temple, wondering where it led.
“Ted—my husband—dazzled the investors,” Brenda continued. “He also got public grants and private donations because of the historical preservation aspect. He could talk anyone into anything. That's what made him such a great lawyer.” She took a breath.
“Did something happen?” I couldn't help noticing she was talking about her husband in the past tense.
“Ted died a few months after we moved here. About eight months ago. Sam's workers found Ted in the canal under the Chalice Bridge back in the gardens. The police examiner thought Ted must have fallen from there and maybe hit his head on the way down into the water. The canal was only a few feet deep, but he was unconscious...and drowned.”
“Oh, I'm so sorry,” I said.
“Obviously, it was horrible for the kids. That's why I thought it would be better for all of us to meet out here away from the house, where they can't hear us. They've already had such a rough time.”
“How many kids do you have?”
“We each had one child from a previous marriage. Payton, my stepson, is just fourteen and lost his father. He still lives with me because his mother, with her new marriage and new kids, has basically abandoned...well, I won't go into it. My daughter Ceci is sixteen. Ted was her stepdad for nine years, so it's a shocking loss for her, too.”
I nodded. “I can't imagine.”
Brenda nodded, turning away from us. She was quiet for a minute.
“What led you to get in touch with us?” I finally asked.
“Before Ted died, we all joked that the place was haunted. You'd get a spooky feeling walking around the gardens, especially after dark. Sometimes you'd think you saw things. But, of course, with the marble statues, and these buildings meant to imitate old ruins, the place is meant to get your imagination going. It was easier to dismiss those occasional feelings back when life was good and we were full of optimism about this place.
“But now, we've all seen and heard things. The upstairs balcony doors are sometimes open in the morning, like someone went out in the middle of the night, and both kids insist they didn't do it. They're teenagers, but neither of them is really the type to go sneaking out.
“I started to hear someone walking inside the house at night. The first time, I thought it was an intruder. It walked past my bedroom door while I was lying awake. It was shadowy. It wasn't really there as fully as a person would be, if that makes sense. I felt so cold. Then it disappeared, but I still heard its footsteps moving down the hall.
“I took Ted's gun from his nightstand—I never really like sleeping with it there, but I've never gotten rid of it, any more than I've gotten rid of his other things—I took the gun and went out there. I would have stayed put, but I thought of Ceci in her room. And of course Payton, too.
“The kids were fine, still asleep, so I started back to my room, and that's when I saw it.
“It was shadowy, like I said, but up close I could make out some of it. It had one of those wigs like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson wore, with a tricorn hat on top. The whole colonial look. His face wasn't all the way there, just holes for his eyes. I'll never forget that. He marched past me, carrying a lantern that put out a little cold light, maybe one firefly's worth. He seemed like he was searching the house for something.” She shivered despite the heat.
“That sounds terrifying.”
“I couldn't move, and I couldn't make a sound. The air was so cold it felt like my lungs would freeze up. Then he disappeared, like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Like a nightmare ending. I stayed out in the hall all night, sort of guarding over the kids in case he came back. Not that I was much of a gu
ard. I fell asleep sitting on the floor, with my back against the wall. I was sore by morning. It's hard to believe I could get back to sleep after that, but I was just so tired, so drained.”
I nodded. “The ghosts of the dead can feed on the energy of the living. Any entity who does that is extremely negative.”
“It's negative around here, all right. It's not just me. Payton saw a man hanging from a tree over by the Temple of the Moon. And Ceci heard a voice by the old wishing well in the Witch's Garden.”
“The Witch's Garden?” I asked.
“That's what most people call it. The Canterbury family called it the Garden of Sorrows. It's full of grotesques, gargoyles, and mock idols. Really the ugliest statues you've ever seen. The woods around it are overgrown with poison ivy, poison sumac, you name it. We've barely begun to clear that area, it's so far back. But Ceci rides her mountain bike all over the place, cleared or not. She used to, anyway.”
“What did the voice say?” I asked.
“Ceci said it was singing, some kind of old-timey song with a heavy accent. She got scared and ran to Sam for help. He checked around but couldn't find anyone.”
“Sam's the brother-in-law you mentioned?”
“Yes, Ted's younger brother. He's been helping out with the landscaping ever since we leased the place from the county.”
“Has Sam seen anything?” I asked.
“He hasn't, but he's not usually here at night. When he is, he likes to stay out in the Hermit's Cottage. I'm worried he thinks the rest of us are a little crazy.” She forced a chuckle. “Kidding. Maybe. What do you think? Are we all going crazy out here?”
“I can assure you we've seen our share of crazy things,” I said. “How big is this place, altogether?”