Ghost Soldier Read online

  Ellen sank back in her seat, silent for a moment. Not fair. He’d gotten her where she was vulnerable. Maybe the general had learned some diplomacy during his war games

  “Yes, of course we’ll try,” she answered calmly.

  “Great,” Renshaw said, slapping the desk boisterously. “Nolan, give them whatever they need.”

  Tom gave me a little salute of victory, causing only a small measure of irritation. “That’s great. Where do we get started?”

  Ellen rose from the chair, eying both men with her steely demeanor. Her paranormal game face. “We need to see Number Four.”

  Chapter Four

  Things weren’t going well. We had begrudgingly agreed to investigate their “situation” at Number Four. Beside me Ellen was stonily silent, concentrating on her own impressions, as we followed Tom’s car into the heart of Jackson Barracks.

  My thoughts wandered back to what Tom had said about the base. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it had entertained the illustrious footsteps of both Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee as young lieutenants, long before the Civil War.

  As we slowly drove on, the base itself melded somewhat from official-looking buildings into an almost residential setting, with huge palatial homes, landscaped sidewalks, and even some towering old trees. We passed a quadrangle and went down a street with an impressive row of nearly identical red brick, columned homes that wouldn’t have been out of place in Gone With the Wind. All of them were two-story, having two sets of white staircases leading up to the gallery on the second floor.

  Pulling up beside Tom into a driveway, I murmured to Ellen. “One family lives there, not too shabby. No wonder our defense budget is skyrocketing.”

  Her eyes seemed fixed on the side of the structure and had taken on a bit of a glassy quality. I waited but she made absolutely no movement to get out of the car.

  “Ellen, hey Ellen.”

  She turned slowly to me, seeming to come back to herself. “This isn’t good,” she whispered.

  “Well maybe it won’t be so bad. Looks like quite a place,” I said, a bit unconvincingly to even my ears.

  Tom was standing outside of our car, smiling equally as unconvincingly. I reached out to touch Ellen’s hand but it felt nearly icy. I couldn’t count the number of investigations that we’d been on together but somehow I could feel in my skin this one was different for her. “Come on, no harm in taking a look.”

  She looked at me again, wide-eyed with an unusual expression that disturbed me. Finally I placed it: confusion.

  That spooked me just about as much as whatever was in that house was spooking her.

  “It’s an impressive place. Wouldn’t you like to see inside?” This made me feel like a jerk, pushing like this, but wanting to get it over with so we could get back to riverboat gambling, drinking, and sweet, sweet romance.

  Maybe we should have just driven off then, forgetting Tom, and forsaking our patriotic duty to the military that General Renshaw had so eloquently foisted upon us. “Look, Ellen, if you want to leave. . .” I began

  But she wasn’t listening. I could tell. She had leaned her head back against the head rest on the seat, her eyes tightly shut. It seemed like an endless moment but then she finally opened her lovely blue eyes. “Okay, I tried to put up a shield around me.”

  “Shield?” I asked, feeling a bit clueless.

  “Surround yourself with white light as a protection before you go in. Haven’t you been listening to me all these years?”

  She opened the door and stepped out of the car. I followed her lead, concentrating as best I could on white light to protect me from something unnamed that Ellen had already felt on the threshold of Number Four.

  For some reason, all I could think of was the cheap fluorescent lights in Denny’s, where I could have been sitting eating pancakes at that very minute.

  I didn’t think that would offer me much protection from whatever waited inside.

  Chapter Five

  “Good lord, how tall are those ceilings?” Monty asked, his voice coming to Ellen almost as if he were underwater.

  “Twenty-four feet,” Tom said, equally muffled and distant.

  “Wow, unbelievable.”

  Ellen exhaled, concentrating on her breathing. What was essential was to maintain control. She thickened the wall she’d placed around her. It was such a flip, a strange turn to have to push out vibrations rather than encourage them.

  “The Blanchards haven’t moved all of their furniture out yet,” Tom said. “I hope that won’t interfere with you.”

  “No, could be a long night. We don’t mind having something to sit on,” she heard Monty quip.

  But there were other voices, murmurs, laughter. “Another round of drinks.”

  “Another? Randall is already passed out on the floor.”

  “It’s New Year’s Eve. He’ll sleep it off just like the rest of us.”

  Impossible, can’t they feel it? The screaming, all the death.

  “Ellen,” and then louder, “Ellen.”

  She focused on Monty. She concentrated on him pulling her back to the present. “Yes,” she said quietly.

  Tom was standing next to Monty, looking a bit befuddled, but then again she’d noted that was a common expression with him. “Honey, are you all right?”

  Good question. She felt her insides trembling, as though she’d run a long distance. She concentrated on the wall, the wall she needed around herself. Then she focused on Monty. He was her center, her rock, her strength.

  “So is there anything I can do for you two now?” Tom asked. He wanted out. She could feel his anxiety. So funny how people felt things but couldn’t admit it even to themselves.

  Monty was looking at her oddly. “No, I think I’ll just get some equipment out of the car.”

  Tom nodded, “Okay, you can reach me on my cell if you need anything. I’ll just leave the keys here.” He let them drop onto a small table near the entrance of the house. “Oh and the General said you should stay as long as you need.”

  He smiled broadly but exited without another word. Monty looked back at her, “Strange guy Tom, hard to know what to make of him.”

  “He hates being here,” she commented dryly.

  Monty crossed right in front of her, holding her arms with both of his hands. “He’s not the only one.”

  It felt good. She could feel warmth flowing out of his hands into her, balancing and grounding her. That was what she needed now. “What is it you’re picking up?” he asked.

  She swallowed; another good question. “Honestly I haven’t really tried yet. I’ve been trying to keep it all out, a bit unsuccessfully. It’s a confusing, powerful, heavy atmosphere. I need a little time.”

  He smiled, pulling her into a strong embrace that helped so much more than any psychic wall she could build. “Take your time,” he whispered. “But this is quite a place, really impressive. Is it really that bad?”

  She pulled back from him. “You’d be surprised what poison is often hidden in the most beautiful camouflage.”

  Chapter Six

  I’d insisted Ellen take a walk outside to get some fresh air while I began to take some initial readings with the equipment. The house echoed, but of course it did, with its twenty-four-foot ceilings and three-foot-thick walls. It seemed as though every footfall of mine on the wooden floors reverberated somewhere else, or then again maybe it was my imagination getting the best of me.

  I set up my stuff in some sort of den on one end of the house situated on the ground floor. The Blanchards had considerately left us a nice long coffee table and a sofa and that was about it in this room other than the brick fireplace built into the outside wall. Looking around, I couldn’t help but be taken by the sense of history in the place. It wasn’t hard to imagine people from so many different eras wandering through these enormous rooms.

  But then again maybe that was the problem.

  I started with the EMF thermometer, trying to
pick up any temperature variations. We were in April here in New Orleans, which seemed to be comfortable short-sleeve weather. But I didn’t need a thermometer to tell me there was a temperature variation in this old mansion. A distinctive draft seemed to drape itself randomly through various parts of the house. Of course it could be attributed to the high ceilings, the profoundly insulated construction. But given Ellen’s initial impressions, I was doubtful.

  I wandered through the rooms on the ground floor, starting with the den. It was cool but it seemed at least initially to be at a constant level, nothing strange in that. From the den I passed through what appeared to be a large dining room, although I only gleaned that from its connection to the kitchen. The Blanchards had cleared the furniture here. There was a bit of a dip in temperature in the center of the room but again explainable.

  I walked through the connecting door into the living room where we had entered. With the exception of a small table and a few chairs, this room was also vacant. We hadn’t even looked at the upstairs yet. And I had to admit I wasn’t anxious. As I moved toward the long interior staircase that hugged one of the walls of the room. it happened.

  The EMF recorded what my perceptions told me, a tangible drop in temperature just at the foot of the staircase. My eyes followed the lonely staircase upward.

  “The stairs gave way. One of the children broke his leg.”

  Wonderful. There was a definite cold spot here. I continued into the last room at the front of the house on the ground floor. And completely situated at the center of the room was another cold spot. There were at least two tangible cold spots on the ground floor and I hadn’t even been in the kitchen yet.

  As I began to head out of the room, Ellen intercepted me at the door. “Cool,” I said, trying to assume a somewhat cheerful demeanor to counterbalance what I was really feeling, “Seems as though we have some definite cold spots here.”

  Her face seemed a bit pale. I didn’t like the strain this seemed t be putting on her. “There’s more upstairs,” she said, a bit too calmly.

  “You’ve been up there?” I asked.

  “I didn’t have to. This house is full.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Aim it right on the staircase,” she said.

  “Okay but don’t you think. . .”

  “Keep it fixed on the staircase.”

  “Got it.” I so loved it when my wife barked orders in my direction. But I let it slide, given the stress of the situation. I was aiming the FLIR, thermal imaging camera directly on the interior staircase in Number Four where I had picked up the cold spot not half an hour before. Ellen had returned from her brief walk with a plan, which I was more than willing to jump on board with, given that I had none of my own.

  “Picking up anything yet, Monty?” Ellen’s voice was unnaturally stern, unnaturally fixed and, I had to say, unnaturally stressed.

  “Not yet, hon,” I murmured. Granted it seemed like an odd mix using a thermal camera that detects and creates images of concentrations of heat on a cold spot. But paranormal disturbances did have a habit of wreaking havoc with temperature. If there were concentrations of cold in this field of investigation, it wouldn’t be out of line for there to be concentrations of heat.

  “I’m going to open myself up slowly now to see what I can pick up,” Ellen said.”

  “All right, but be careful.”

  I was standing at the foot of the stairs and Ellen just to the side a few feet behind me. For all the intense vibrations and impressions she’d already picked up at Number Four, she hadn’t really been trying. She was now going to lower the psychic defenses that she’d been using as shields to try to get a clear picture of what was happening in the house. I quickly glanced over my shoulder to a small recording device I’d placed on the lone round table near the front door to pick up any sound effects we might stir up. I continued to focus on the video frame of the camera and hit record.

  Beside me I heard her breathing deeply and then, “There’s a woman on the staircase, Monty. She’s leaning against the wall. She looks terrified, blood on her hands. I feel, I feel,” then her voice drifted off.

  And just as I heard her voice I did see it, like a big blob of red against the cool green of its background. “She’s terrified, angry. This is maybe forty or fifty years ago. Wait a minute…there’s a man behind her, also on the stairs pushing past her, but it’s different.”

  Phenomena was showing on the camera, more red trying to coalesce.

  “It’s different,” Ellen murmured. “I don’t understand. He was here at the beginning, before the Civil War.”

  Suddenly Ellen jumped back a bit. It startled me so much I almost dropped the camera.

  “What, what is it?” I nearly yelled.

  Her breathing was intense. “Right there, like they crawled right out from under the stairs. Two children, Monty, they’re sick, coughing and so scared.”

  With a slightly shaky hand, I aimed the camera down to the foot of the stairs. Sure enough, red images and then behind them more red, filling up the screen. It was like a lava lamp moving and melding so much that nothing discernable could be made out.

  “There’s more,” Ellen’s voice was trembling, not at all typical.

  “I know, I know. Where are they coming from?” I rasped.

  “I can’t tell, it doesn’t make sense, different times, it should be separate but they’re bleeding together.”

  “Ahh.” I jumped back. Cold hands grabbed my legs. “Ellen, talk to me.”

  I could hear her breathing, raggedly. I put down the camera and hugged her. She was just staring forward, eyes wide and fixed. Roughly I began to shake her. “Ellen, enough.”

  And then she turned to me, finally focusing. “Monty.”

  “Yes,” I said, grabbing her and pulling her tightly to me.

  “Monty, it’s too much. There are so many. So much terror, so much confusion and anger. What are we going to do?” she said, her voice already broken in defeat.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I think we’re going to need a bigger boat.”

  Chapter Eight

  If you ever wanted to know what a levee actually is, as far as I can tell it’s a big hill that keeps the river out. Ellen and I stood on the levee at the edge of Jackson Barracks and watched a respectably sized barge meander down the Mississippi River. At that very moment, I should have been taking my gorgeous wife for a cruise in a riverboat and all the thought served to do was make me really want to kick Tom’s ass.

  “Feeling any better?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I can still hear the moans of a million tormented souls in my head.”

  “Um, there weren’t really a million were there?”

  She turned to me. “Felt like it.”

  “Want to call it a day?” I asked, hoping against hope that she would say yes.

  She shook her head. “There was too much pain, too much confusion.”

  “Yeah, but this job just might be too big for us. Time to call in TAPS or Ghostbusters. Hell, I’d even take that actress from ‘The Ghost Whisperer.’”

  She turned back to the Mississippi, focusing on something far away. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s unnatural.”

  “Don’t hate me for saying it, but isn’t that the point?”

  “Yes and no. There is an order in things. Even in death, when the spirit departs from the body, there is an order.”

  “Yeah, and the ghosts are the spirits that are trapped or confused, somehow bound to the earthly plane.”

  “Bound but no longer of physical form. But even for them, there are characteristics. They are affixed to what is familiar, stuck on the time plane they remember, one in which we seem like intruders.”

  “Okay, so how’s this different?”

  “I saw a woman, the first woman, looked like she was out of the 1950s—that type of dress and the hairstyle. She seemed like...”

&nbs
p; “Like?”

  She sighed heavily, “Felt like a suicide.”

  “A suicide? How exactly do they—”

  “Some of them get trapped for a long time. Committing suicide throws the spirit into great trauma, great confusion. It’s already such dark emotion that leads to someone killing themselves and the desire for escape. But, of course, it doesn’t work that way. We never really escape anything. Unresolved issues just follow you.”

  “What about the others? You saw others.”

  “There was a man who died violently. But he was from the Civil War era. And the children, they were sick, very sick and frightened, and then there were others. So many I couldn’t separate them after awhile. But the problem is the time frames. They were different and should have been on separate metaphysical planes but they were sensing each other—scared, frightened, but aware.”

  “Is that a problem?” I mentally crossed my fingers but wasn’t hopeful.

  “In their state, I don’t think it’s possible. They shouldn’t exist on the same plane but they did.”

  I sighed deeply. All of this was a bit hard to follow, but what bothered me was they were on the same plane as Ellen and me. “So what could cause this? Some weird radiation?”

  She turned to me with a slight smile. It was a welcome sight that I hadn’t seen in too long. “I think we need to know more about his place.”

  “I guess we could call Tom.”

  She smiled again in her lovely way. “I know he’s your cousin, but the man is useless.”

  “That’s a bit harsh. True, but harsh.”

  “I thought I noticed some sort of museum across the road when we first turned in to the base. Let’s start there.”

  “Sure, as long as we don’t have to go back into that house right away.”

  Or ever.