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  I hesitated only a moment. I started by telling her about my sleep paralysis issues that started after my brother died, the sense of a presence in the room, how terrifying it was. Then I moved on to the out-of-body experiences that started, coincidentally, the day I had the reading with her. I explained the recurring places and people I'd visit, especially the old man I called The Butler. "I want to make it stop," I told her. "I need to make it stop. My life is messed up enough without having to deal with this."

  "I don't think having out-of-body experiences is anything all that unusual," she said. "I think what's significant, though, is your rememberin' 'em. Why now, of all times?"

  "Nicole!"

  We jumped simultaneously. Aunt Alice stood on the back patio near the open French doors looking as prim and well-dressed as she had on every occasion I'd seen her. She grinned through gritted teeth. "May I have a word with you?"

  Nicole smiled at me uncomfortably. She had gone from a relaxed but poised reclining posture to something stiff and self-conscious. "Just a minute," she said quietly. "I'll be back in two shakes."

  She moved reluctantly toward her aunt. Alice hissed for several breaths. Nicole answered, "Yes, Aunt Alice. No, Aunt Alice. I'm sorry, Aunt Alice."

  Finally, Alice went back into the house, closing the door with a bang.

  "I'm sorry," Nicole said when we were alone again. "I'm afraid we're gonna have to cut our visit short. But we'll talk again. This is just the beginnin' for us. I promise. Charlie doesn't lie." Nicole reached for my hand and squeezed it before pulling me close and giving me a hug. "I know there's a lot goin' on right now," she whispered so closely that I felt her breath tickling my ear. "Please trust me, sweetie. Help's comin'. I can feel it. Just hang on, okay?"

  Chapter Six

  Tyson

  Natchez, Mississippi

  September 24

  "This here is what you might call a hotbed of paranormal activity," I said, peering through the tall oaks draped thick with Spanish moss to study the antebellum house in the deepening twilight. "I've been wantin' to get my mitts on her for five years now and for one night — tonight — she's all mine. You couldna picked a better place to get branded, cowboy."

  The mansion, built in the late 1810s in the Federalist Style, reminded me of something out of ancient Rome, with its tall, stately columns and grand marble portico. But it was the second-story gallery and high cupola that told of its true southern nature. I could almost imagine carriages winding along its gravel drive, delivering their cargo of hoop-skirted belles for a formal cotillion.

  I pulled off my black cowboy hat and removed the pack of cigarillos I kept there, drawing a stick of the machine-rolled tobacco from the box with my teeth. The flame from my lighter illuminated us in the fading light.

  "How long you been a ghost hunter, Tyson?"

  I narrowed my eyes by way of showing my irritation, puffing on the end of my cigarillo until its end began to glow. "Not 'ghost hunter'. Paranormal investigator."

  "Sorry. Paranormal investigator, then."

  I flicked the lighter closed with a jerk of my wrist and tugged my cowboy hat back down over my head. "Since I was seventeen. Just about six years now."

  I puffed out three perfect smoke rings and watched them drift like phantoms in the still, sultry air. I liked Rex and hoped he might eventually join the team. Rex reminded me of myself when I was just getting started. He had the same curiosity. The same sharp, critical eye. I saw potential the minute Rex had been hired on as an apprentice mechanic at the garage where I worked. But tonight was the true test.

  "You know, it's liable to get pretty dicey in there tonight," I warned him. "Crazy things can happen. All this is just theory until the manure starts hittin' the spreader. The trick ain't just explainin' the thumps and bumps in the night, it's keepin' your head screwed on tight when somethin' you can't see grabs you from behind."

  Rex chuckled. "I think I can manage."

  I raised my eyebrows and exhaled more smoke. "Ohhh-kay. Whatever you say."

  Plymouth Plantation was the quintessential haunted house. The mansion and the land that sustained it had seen more than its share of lives taken prematurely. In 1729, two hundred and twenty-nine settlers had been massacred here by Natchez Indians, enraged by the French fort constructed on what had been for countless generations Natchez land. When the plantation was built well-on ninety years later, it was dependent on the dozens of slaves who were housed there in the worst of living conditions and subject to the high mortality rate of the times. During the War Between the States, Federal troops occupied the plantation after the fall of nearby Vicksburg. Hundreds of soldiers camped here, many dying of dysentery, typhoid, and other diseases common before antibiotics existed.

  But it was the Pendleton sisters who interested me most. Ruby and Agnes Pendleton had lived their young lives as mistresses of Plymouth, just long enough to get a taste of the life they would soon be denied. When Lee surrendered to Grant in 1865, the two young women had done everything they could to keep possession of their home, including doing business with the Yankees and bartering with their former slaves. For decades the young and then very old women had run a boarding house here, renting out all the rooms in the mansion, excepting two upstairs parlors, where they'd stored all their fine furniture that had managed to survive the war.

  I motioned for Rex to follow me and together we moved toward the house in the growing darkness. Our footsteps crunched on the drive as we made our way around back, where the vans was parked. What had once been a sizeable working estate now looked more like a park, lawns dotted with noble-looking Spanish oaks. Flowers and square hedges were planted near the main house, outlining a rose garden, a gazebo and smallish pond. After the Pendleton sisters passed on — tragically, some said — the mansion and its outbuildings had fallen into disrepair. The property changed hands more times than you can count. But the owners never did anything with it, not so much as live in it for more than a week. Eventually, it'd been purchased by a small group of investors, who converted it into a fruffy bed and breakfast.

  Now, instead of formal balls, wedding receptions were held here. I'd seen fuzzy photographs on the reception desk; brides posing in the garden in their frothy white gowns among a riot of bright-colored flowers. Plymouth Plantation had been one of the finest hostelries in the area until the investors went broke from other shaky business deals and had been forced to sell. The new owners purchased the entire property and everything on it, including the furniture, and thought themselves generous to allow the innkeepers to walk away with their toothbrushes. Escrow would close on Monday afternoon, so that meant tonight was me and my team's last chance to investigate the old place before it once again changed back into a private residence.

  "You see that buildin' over there?" I nodded toward a two-story building some yards apart from the main house. "That used to be the kitchen. Kitchens in these old mansions was separated from the livin' areas. That kept the smoke and smell from cookin' out of the residence and, if a fire broke out, it could be contained without the whole place going up. The slaves who took care of the house slept in the upper level.

  "This path here, where the kitchen links up with the house, was called the whistlin' walk. The servants who brought food into the dining room for supper were made to whistle. That's so's they couldn't sample the food on the sly. Can't chew if you're whistlin'.

  "Since the Civil War, people have been seein' a ghostly little black boy carryin' a tray to the main house. Usually happens just about now, just after sunset." I smiled at Rex's unsettled look. "We've got infrared cameras aimed here, so if anythin' walks by, we'll catch it."

  I caught sight of my team's two white vans parked in the lot once reserved for inn guests. The back doors of the larger van were open and a half dozen orange and grey extension cords sprouted from it, like veins linking the vehicle to the house. A pale glow oozed from the van's cargo area, throwing moving shadows along the stony ground. I could detect the faint hum of el
ectronics amidst the chirp and buzz of crickets and cicadas.

  "I'd like you to meet my team. This here's my brother, Jake."

  Rex shook hands with a younger, plumper, shorter-haired version of myself. Jake smiled self-consciously.

  "And this skinny piece of work is Travis, our tech man."

  A bespectacled, acne-scarred youngster behind the computer monitors raised his hand. "Howdy."

  "If you join the team, these two will be the ones you'll be helpin' to set up equipment. For tonight, though, I want you to stick close by me.

  "Now, this here's Tommy, who's bringin' a lot of new instruments to the concert."

  "Thomas," Tommy answered in a fancy British accent. Tommy was in his early twenties, just about my age. "Pleased to make your acquaintance. As you can hear from my voice, I'm not from around here."

  "Tommy's visitin' from England."

  "When I heard they were going to let Tyson in to investigate Plymouth Plantation, I couldn't pack my bags fast enough."

  "Tommy's got these gadgets, basically sophisticated cameras, that'll allow us to see in the dark."

  "They do plenty more than that. In essence, they can see a broader range of the light spectrum than one can with the naked human eye. They use infrared, ultraviolet, thermal, and electromagnetic scans to give us the full picture of what's happening. They've even got advanced motion and vibration detection capabilities."

  "We've got the main house and a few of the outbuildin's covered with equipment," I explained. "A cockroach can't fart in there without us knowin' about it."

  I guided Rex toward the mansion's back porch. "That over there was once the stable. As you can see, it's been fixed up and given a new coat of paint, but it still looks like it did in old photographs taken in the 1880s. A Union army soldier is sometimes spotted in there. Seems like he's guardin' somethin'. He spoke to a gardener once. That was José's last day on the job, I can tell you that."

  My cowboy boots thumped heavily on the wooden steps leading up to the back stoop. I collapsed on a bench there and removed them. "Take off your shoes. Our job tonight is to move around as quiet and careful as possible so's not to screw with the equipment. This is how it works. We find a perch, set there as still as possible. You want to use this, this, and this," I pointed to my eyes, ears, and nose, "without using this," I jabbed at my mouth. "It's like deer huntin'. The slightest change could be important, so be ready to stretch out all your senses."

  I spoke into my headset. "Travis, we're goin' in for a baseline."

  "Copy that."

  The screen door moaned open. All the lights in the house was off but the barest outline was visible in the faint gleam from the naked windows. The space opened into a mudroom and, beyond, a small but professional-grade kitchen. We padded through it into the main corridor, pausing to let our eyes adjust to the darkness. The house was completely quiet, but there was a sense of it shrugging in answer to our presence, like the subtle shift of mortar and wood seams.

  "Most of the paranormal activity these days," I explained in the barest whisper, "takes place in the old part of the house, not those two back wings, which was added after the Pendleton sisters passed on. Agnes and Ruby was in their eighties when they died. Neither of them got married or even had a beau, from what I understand, so all their lives they only had each other.

  "They had gotten too old to take care of boarders, so they was alone here in this big house. Agnes was the older one. She was kind of sickly toward the end, so she couldn't travel very well. It was Ruby who left her alone to go to Jackson to attend their cousin's funeral, leaving Agnes behind. When she was in Jackson she twisted up her ankle so had to stay with her grandnieces a few days longer than she'd planned. They didn't have a telephone here at Plymouth, but Ruby called around to the market which made deliveries here a few times a week to get a message to Agnes.

  "Ruby didn't hear about what happened until she came home about a week later. Turns out Agnes took a tumble down the stairs and broke her hip. No one was around to hear her call out for help and she laid there in her own blood and filth for almost three days before she died. It was the grocery boy who discovered her body and called in the police. By the time Ruby got back, the mess had been cleaned and the body had been hauled away, which left old Ruby here in this big ol' house all by herself."

  I skated across the hardwood floor in my stocking feet. The floorboards shifted and creaked under my weight. The old furniture was still there, all of it true to the period, and in the dim light it seemed as if we might be traipsing through time to when Agnes had spent her last excruciating hours, alone in the dark, hollering for help that never came. Only cameras on tripods and extension cords crisscrossing the floor disturbed the effect.

  I led the stumbling Rex upstairs.

  "Why are the lights off?" he hissed.

  "That's just how we roll. Nighttime with everything shut off. The equipment we got's really sensitive and the less you got on, the less there is to interfere with."

  I guided Rex across the upstairs hall to the French doors leading to the second story porch. I removed my hat and fired up another cigarillo. From the gallery railing, I could see headlights through the trees about a hundred yards away, accompanied by the silvery whoosh of passing traffic. The noise probably wasn't loud enough to contaminate the site, but I took note of it, just in case.

  We set down on the gallery floor, leaning up against the house, looking into the silhouette of trees touching the night sky. "This is when I like to just stay quiet and get the feel of the place before I start out. It helps later on. Makes it easier to figure out when something's not quite the same."

  We waited in silence for several minutes. The tip of my thin cigar glowed like a demon eye every time I took a puff. Every time I exhaled, the air filled with the scent of burning tobacco. "So, Ruby comes back to this big house all alone, with no one here to talk to or listen to, no one here to take care of or to take care of her." I inhaled, held it, and let it out in a big, smoky cloud. "All their lives practically it was just them two sisters. Their mamma and daddy died during the war. All they knew was each other and now Ruby's all alone.

  "She lived another six months. Died over the Christmas holiday. No one discovered her for nigh on a week or two. It's Ruby they still see wanderin' this old house at night, lookin' for Agnes, half outta her wits with loneliness. Breaks my heart to think on it."

  We set quietly for another five minutes, listening, feeling, extending the tentacles of our psychic reach. Finally, Rex asked, "How is it you became a ghost hunter, anyway?"

  "I'm only gonna say this once more: Paranormal investigator."

  "Sorry, Ty."

  I took another deep inhale, wondering how much to tell him. "I was about thirteen years old, livin' in Beaumont, Texas, when my daddy left us. It was just me, Jake, and my mamma, and there was nothin' for it but to move to Sarasota where my mamma had kin.

  "We lived for a while with my aunt before Mamma finds this place to rent. Nice place, too. Big. Fancy. Dirt cheap, though. Turns out, there's a catch. It seems the old lady who used to own the place shot herself in the head. Caught the Old Timer's disease early in her sixties. Didn't want to be a burden to anyone, so she took the easy way out."

  "Holy cow."

  "Yeah, tell me about it. Course, we didn't know that when we moved in. Seems the room the old lady died in is the room we give my brother, Jake."

  "How old was he?"

  I hummed, trying to think. "I don't know. Couldn't have been more than six or seven at the time.

  "We were livin' there maybe a week before Jake starts havin' these bad dreams. Says he's hearin' a voice callin' to him. Says his stuff is bein' shuffled around. Tellin' us he's seein' shadows movin' near his closet.

  "Now, my momma at that time was workin' two jobs to pay all the bills and put food on the table, so lots a times it's just me and Jake at the house alone at night. And when she was home, she didn't have the time nor the patience for any of Jake's n
onsense. She tells him to quit his bellyachin' and go to sleep.

  "This musta been goin' on two, three, four months. I was maybe five when I learned that Santa Claus wasn't nothin' but a crock a crap, and I didn't believe in ghosts or the boogeyman or anythin' like that. I figure little Jake's just needin' some attention. He was pretty young when Daddy left and then we had to up and move and leave all our friends. I was a little older. Had some scabs on me by then. But not little Jake.

  "It musta been four months after we moved there when Jake he starts gettin' this stutter. See, Jake — now, if he knew I was tellin' you this, he'd bust me in the jaw, so this is between you and me, you understand? — Jake has this teddy bear he's sleepin' with. He's seven years old or so and still sleepin' with a teddy bear, but no one says nothin' about it, 'cause things was rough and we was all doin' what we needed to do to get by. Then one mornin', Jake wakes up and on the floor of his bedroom is settin' his teddy bear with the head ripped clean off it and the stuffin' comin' out of its body. I don't know if he did it in his sleep or what, but after that he starts developin' this speech impediment. Now ghosts, real or no, is one thing. But when my brother can't talk straight, that's when big brother steps in. Kickin' butt and takin' names, you know what I mean, partner?"

  "I hear you, Ty."

  "So, I start sleepin' in his room. There's two twin beds in there and I take the other one, all night keepin' one eye skinned. And you know what I see? Nothin'. Not a one thing. And I start to think that that little brat is just tryin' to get attention. But, you know, I say the little guy's been through enough, so I keep sleepin' in there and after a few days the boy starts talkin' right again, you feel me?

  "Then one night, maybe a week later, I wake up in the middle of the night and I see somethin'. There's this figure next to Jake, leanin' over his bed.

  "At first I thought it was Mamma, come home late from work to tuck him in. But then I notice the shadow I'm seein' isn't exactly solid. The middle part is, but around the edges, where the shoulder meets with the head, it's kind of transparent-like. I mean, I can see through it to the wall on the other side.