southern ghost hunters 01 - southern spirits (16 page)

No response.

When Ellis drew near, I cleared my throat. "Maybe we should wait until daytime," I told him. "I already saw most of what there is to see and, well…" I had to be honest. "I'm not getting a good feeling."

"I'm not either," he said, in a way that made me wish he were the type to sugar coat things. "Which is why we should head down there. We'll figure this out together, okay?"

Right. Together. I nodded.

I let him go first down the ladder into the darkness. As he descended, I saw Frankie, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, motioning me back. Or at least that's what I thought he was doing. He'd lost the other leg from the knee down.

"What?" I hissed. He needed to come over here and tell me if we were walking into an ambush. If he was just trying to warn me we were running out of time, I knew that.

When the gangster started arguing with someone I couldn't see, I made my decision and followed Ellis down.

***

Ellis shone his beam on onto the stone floor of the cellar as I stepped down off the ladder.

This time, I witnessed no silver light, no ethereal objects. The space felt cold and dark, as if the ghosts had abandoned it. I reached for my flashlight and flicked it on.

"This way," I whispered, screwing up my courage and pressing forward, leading us deeper through the subterranean rooms. 

"Did you see anything else down here?" he asked, studying the brick walls as the light bounced off them.

"One secret passage isn't enough for you?" I asked, half-joking.

"I like to be thorough," he said, moving slower than I'd have liked.

The less time we spent down here, the better.

We passed under the archway into the space where I'd found the tunnel. My beam caught the plywood board on the floor. "It was behind that."

Ellis crouched over the board and turned it over. I watched it rattle against the cold stone. "This doesn't look like it's been down here long," Ellis mused.

He was right. I didn't see any signs of wear, no cobwebs or water damage.

I stood and ventured as far as the light allowed, rubbing my tennis shoe along the floor. The dirt was moist, fresh. 

"Is this where you tried to hide?" Ellis asked, closing in on the passageway cut out of the wall.

"I was hoping to escape," I clarified. Too bad that hadn't worked out. It appeared smaller, more cramped than I remembered next to his overlarge frame. "I'm not sure we should go in." For all I knew, the poltergeist could cause a cave-in and bury us.

He gave a slight grin at that. "I just want to take a quick look."

I chewed my lip.

"We can't get a good idea of what we're facing if we don't know all the facts," he pointed out. He sounded so reasonable. Too bad what we were dealing with went beyond normal logic.

"Let's do it quick then," I said, ducking inside. "Follow me." 

Now that I wasn't scrambling for my life, I found myself noticing more. Where the cellar had been painstakingly constructed, this tunnel felt rushed. The bricks didn't line up as precisely, the space felt claustrophobically tight. 

Dirt covered the stone floor, or perhaps that was the floor. The ceiling dipped a few feet in and he had to duck in order to move farther. 

A cold chill slithered down my spine. Instinctively, I stepped back. Straight into Ellis.

"Walk much?" he asked, catching me.

"Hush," I said, forcing myself forward.

I took one step, two. I made myself keep going. 

Ellis followed close behind. I could hear his deep breaths. 

When I didn't believe I could make myself move another inch, we came upon the wall of debris. I fought the urge to bite my lip. "It didn't occur to me before, but this could very well be a cave in," I said, tone hushed as if my voice alone could trigger disaster. 

The tangle of bricks and stone blocked the passageway and ate at my light. I lowered my focus to where the debris scattered over the ground, directing the beam so that I could see the immense pile in front of me. It reached as high as my chin and seemed to stretch back pretty far. 

Ellis stood close. "One sec," he said, touching my shoulder, reaching his other arm past me, in order to raise his light up over the blockage. He held it as far back as possible. The passage continued into the abyss, but to where, well, that was a mystery. "The ceiling's missing up ahead, but that's not what caused this pile ahead of us." He let out a small sigh, his warm breath tickling hair near my cheek. "One thing's clear," he continued, "a real, live person is in the process of excavating this tunnel. The next question is why."

I slid my light off. I missed it immediately, but I had an idea. I began digging through my bag. "I have GPS on my cell phone. We can map the tunnel."

I glanced up at Ellis and found him grinning at me. "I like how you think."

It embarrassed me, to have him look at me that way. It also made me proud.

"Think you can catch a signal down here?" he asked.

"Can't hurt to try." My fingers felt clumsy as I called up the app. It took a few extra seconds. The signal wasn't especially great down here, but at least we were far enough outside the carriage house walls that I got one. 

Within moments, the app gave me a happy spin of a cartoon compass and followed up with a readout. "Do you have a pen?"

Ellis pulled one out of his shirt pocket.

I wrote the coordinates on my arm: 35.48944, -82.53370.

He seemed amused at that. "What?" I double-checked. I'd copied them right.

"You surprise me," he said, as I handed his pen back.

As long as we were being honest, "You're not what I expected, either," I told him. "Now can we please get out of here? I want to see what's above this tunnel." And I wanted out. I'd never been crazy about closed-in spaces on a good day and this one had shot my last nerve.

"Lead the way," he said, as I ducked out around him. 

It's not easy rushing out of a secret passage, especially being the last one out, with the darkness at my back. Each step felt like an eternity. And while I was glad to have Ellis down here with me, it didn't mean both of us wouldn't feel a ton better above ground. 

When we hit the underground room, Ellis lifted the board and covered the passage again. He even kicked the dirt back around the other side. "I'm going to install a camera down here."

"Good," I said. In the meantime, I booked it straight for the ladder and launched myself right up in to the dark carriage house. I still felt the prickles on my neck, the sense that we weren't alone. "Hurry up," I called down into the hole. "You don't have to make it pretty."

The hole remained dark and silent. Oh my word. Something had gotten him.

"Ellis?" I asked.

Nothing.

I screwed up my courage. Lord almighty, I was going to have to go back down. I gave it one last shot. "Ellis?" I hissed, before I caught sight of a milky white light directly below. For a second, I thought it was a ghost. Then I realized it was simply the beam of Ellis's flashlight.

He grinned as he made his way up the ladder. "I went back and got a few pictures."

"You could have told me," I said, relieved. He placed the flashlight on the floor and slammed the trapdoor down. The
boom
echoed throughout the stables. 

But it was hard to stay too mad. We were out. Alive and together. A situation I most certainly did not take for granted as we both started for the front door.

He quickly drew ahead—longer legs and all—so I picked up speed.

Ellis pulled ahead again. "I don't know where you think you're going," I told him. "I have the coordinates."

"And I have the door," he said, unlocking the front of the carriage house and swinging the large wooden door open for me.

"Always a gentleman," I said, treading out onto the crumbling front steps. 

"That's open for debate," he muttered, joining me. 

I forced myself to slow down, if only to call up the GPS display on my phone. I plugged in the coordinates from my arm and it directed me to the right, toward the side yard and the old house. 

"This way," I said, following the compass, careful of the rocks and the discarded bricks. The security sensors popped on and cast the yard in light. "Nice," I murmured.

"I installed them after someone or some
thing
tore up a section of my new brick patio."

Earlier this evening, I'd have wondered if it was a ghost. Now, I suspected someone very much alive wanted to access whatever was housed in the tunnel.

"Here," I said, leading him to the exact spot of the tunnel blockage, wishing the bricks under our feet could give any clue as to what lay underneath. 

"Son of a bitch." I turned back toward where Ellis stood and saw the bricks had been ripped up in a neat circle, about five feet farther out into the yard. 

Oh, wow. "If the tunnel continues straight, and if we could follow it…"

"Then somebody's trying to find something right there," he finished. The bed of gravel underneath remained in place. "I'm still installing it and they're ripping it up." He took a stone from a mound that reached as high as his knees, turning the rock over in his hand. "This doesn't make sense if they're digging for something below. They'd get to it much faster underground."

"Yeah, that's weird," I said. "And I really don't get what this has to do with the ghost in the kitchen." 

He shook his head, tossed a rock out into the yard behind us. "And here I thought owning this place would help me relax."

I let out a small laugh. "Maybe after you figure this out."

"Maybe," he mused. He absently wiped the dirt from his hands onto his shirt. "Thanks for staying. I know it wasn't easy. I think most people would have been out of here." 

"Not you," I pointed out.

"Yeah, the corner of his mouth tipped up, "but I'm crazy."

"Then that makes two of us." His praise, and that dose of respect, meant a lot after tonight. I had worked hard and it felt good that he noticed. "Didn't your brother ever tell you?" I asked. "Set me to a task and I'm like a tick on a hound dog."

"No," he said, growing more somber at the mention of Beau and me. "No, he didn't."

Of course everything hadn't exactly gone according to plan. My enthusiasm faded. "I have to show you what happened in the kitchen."

"All right." We walked together in the dark, our footsteps loud in the utter silence surrounding us. 

"It's not as bad as before," I said quickly, leading him to the scene of the destruction.

"Why do I get the feeling I'm still not going to like it?"

"Because you won't. An angry ghost came straight at me. It smashed your lights and pummeled your stove."

He shone his light upon the mess in the kitchen and I caught my first full view of it as well. Shattered glass littered the floor, the half-dozen lamps smashed amid the chaos. Heavy cookware had been tossed around like confetti. I was lucky I hadn't been hit. 

Frankie lingered next to the fist-sized dent in the stove. He flickered in and out and he was still arguing with someone I couldn't see.

"I'm sorry," I said to Ellis. "I tried to stop it."

He scanned the room, taking in every detail. "I should have been here." 

"You couldn't have stopped it either."

His light searched the corners of the room, the floors and the ceiling, as if exposing the gloomy corners of this place could also reveal the darkness that dwelled here. "I never would have believed it if it hadn't been for that video. And now, you."

"I know exactly what you mean." Only for me, it was the terror of actually experiencing it.

He turned to me, wary. "Do you think you can get rid of it?"

"Yes." I wouldn't allow myself to think otherwise. Frankie and I would just have to rally our strength. This was our job. We had to learn enough about the ghost and the situation in order to make it safe for me and for everyone involved. "Meanwhile, you handle the living."

He drew closer. "I'll help in whatever way I can. Just tell me what you need."

It was disconcerting to have him this near. I shook it off, tried to focus. "I'd like a new lock on that side door."

"That goes without saying." He glanced around the room. "In fact, I'm sleeping here tonight. I can't leave the place unlocked."

"I'll stay too," I said, before I could change my mind. "I don't think the poltergeist will come back. It's used up a lot of energy already. But if there is a problem of the ghostly sort, I'd like to help."

He nodded. "Thanks."

So that was that. Ellis would handle the living and I'd handle the dead. I hoped I was up for it. 

He drew close to me. "I have some blankets in my cruiser that we can use to bed down. Tomorrow, I'm going to start removing the rock from the tunnel. Maybe we can figure out what someone's been digging for." 

I leaned back against one of the metal countertops. "I want to know what made them look at this property to begin with. Have you heard of anything being buried here?"

"No." He dug his hands into his pockets. "When this place came up for sale, my uncle mentioned something about a shootout back during prohibition." He glanced at the old brick walls, as if they could tell us something. "It was more of a passing interest than an actual concern."

I glanced at Frankie. 

"What?" he asked, defensive.

I waited for Ellis to head out and grab a few blankets from his police cruiser before I started interrogating my ghost buddy.

"Quick," I hissed. "Tell me what you know about this place."

The ghost frowned. His face appeared sweaty and his hair was a mess, like he'd been running his fingers through it. "How about, 'hey, Frankie. How you doing, Frankie? I see you're missing both your legs, Frankie.'"

"Right." Although we didn't have time for pleasantries. "I'm sorry." Oh, my. His waist had begun to disappear as well.

He notched a finger under his collar. "I don't know nothing about your poltergeist." 

"Not even from the ghosts who live here? Who are you arguing with?"

He drew back, angry, and his image flickered. "My brother."

"Oh." I hadn't expected that.