The ruins of the old mill, three stories of cracked stone walls and hollow window holes, occupied an intersection of the railroad tracks and the wide creek. My phone's map software indicated that the creek eventually joined the Ogeechee River, which ultimately reached the Atlantic just south of Savannah. Perhaps timber had once been floated here to be cut at the mill.

  Beside the mill stood a two-story brick building, also long abandoned. The front door area and a few of the lower windows were sealed with graffiti-tagged rotten plywood, but other windows were open portals to the darkness within. The faded letters peeling off the front read Wandering Creek Wood Products. Smaller words elaborated the products that had once been available. Housewares - Furniture - Cabinets - Coffins - Etc. Finest Quality! A similar but smaller building had been the Timbermill Tool Company.

  “Look at that graffiti.” I stopped the van to take a snapshot of a spraypainted stick figure climbing out of a squarish door, armed with a pointy blade. “It's like what Dave found in his attic.”

  Stacey leaned over me to read the words aloud. “'Close your doors up tight or Jack will come for you tonight.' Well, that's a fine message for welcoming people to town.”

  We drove past the stone-walled town cemetery, where the trees grew tall and wide, providing deep shade for the dead.

  Past the cemetery stood a row of completely empty shops. A yellowed sign behind a dust-caked window offered radio and television repair. Beside it, Jude's Diner hadn't fared much better, its door padlocked and its booths abandoned.

  The gas station had shuttered decades earlier, too, as indicated by the lone, rusted-out pump on the raised concrete island and the promise of FULL SERVICE on the sign. The petroleum racket in the area was now monopolized by the El Cheapo Gas we'd passed on the highway several miles back.

  On the next block stood houses of two and three stories with intricate, layered woodwork around their doors and windows. Lacy gingerbreading or rows of hourglass-shaped spandrels hung over every porch and balcony. It had been a well-to-do neighborhood in its prime, the rich Victorian-style facades and window trim embellishing the fronts of otherwise plain big-box houses. Some of the houses looked abandoned, their lots overgrown. They faced a small central neighborhood green, which looked recently mowed.

  “This area could use a few of those yoga studios and smoothie shops,” Stacey said.

  “Here's the client's address.” I parked on the street in front of a wrought-iron mailbox.

  The old boardinghouse was enormous, with first and second-story front porches that ran the width of the house. While the entire neighborhood featured impressive woodwork, this one looked like it had received extra attention and artistry. The balusters and rails were carved to resemble trees with sprawling branches and ripe fruit. Leafy wooden grapevines spiraled up around one of the upper porch's corner posts, looking almost lifelike despite their brown wood-stain color. More of the delicate, flowering tree-limb carvings formed an upper trim across the tops of the upper and lower porches.

  “It's so pretty,” Stacey said as we hopped out of the van. “Now I see why they're willing to live on the creepy side of the tracks.”

  The front gate was open, admitting us to a cobbled path through a small front yard with recently planted squares of emerald green grass. A yard sign featured a picture of Nicole in her blazer, advertising her realty services—I recognized her from the card Dave had shown me. Presumably, Dave would be added to the sign when he passed his exam.

  “It's kinda treehouse-esque,” Stacey said, tracing her fingers along a thick, spiraling newel at the base of the front porch steps, part of the organic tree-branch design. She touched the budding flowers and fruits of the supporting balusters. “Someone put a lot of work into this.”

  We ascended the wide, welcoming front steps, made of wood that looked antique but remained as solid as brick. The tree-branch upper trim created an arboreal arch over the steps, seeming to invite us into the enchanted forest of the front porch, offering cool shadows where we could escape the scorching sun.

  I rang the doorbell.

  Rapid footsteps sounded inside. A curtain fluttered in a nearby window, and then the door was wrenched open from the inside by an elementary-age girl who gasped with the effort.

  “Hi!” she said, regarding us through the screen door with a gap-tooted smile. She'd used makeup to draw a curly mustache under her nose, and she wore a chaotic ensemble of cowboy hat, bedsheet cape, and fuzzy bear-faced slippers. “What are you selling?” she asked cheerfully, like she couldn't wait to hear our amazing offer.

  “Andra! Don't open the door…” Nicole emerged from deeper within the house, dressed in the same royal blue blazer and white blouse from her signs and business cards. She wore small sapphire earrings and a matching necklace, all of which seemed selected to go with her bright blue eyes.

  “Somebody's hee-ere!” the small girl called Andra sang to her mother.

  Nicole seemed taken aback by the sight of us, but instantly snapped a professional smile onto her face. “Hi there,” she said, approaching the screen door. “It's so nice to meet you. Would you mind holding on just one more moment?”

  “Of course not,” I replied.

  She nudged the door most of the way shut, but it didn't close, and we heard them through the screen.

  “Put that bedsheet back in the laundry basket,” Nicole's voice admonished, fading as they retreated from the front door. “That's not one of the old ones you're allowed to play with. Where's Penny?”

  “She's in her room.”

  “She's supposed to be watching you and Jason.”

  “I know. Duh!”

  “Don't say 'duh.' It's rude and crude.”

  “But Penny says it all the time.”

  “Fold that sheet properly, Andra.”

  “But folding sheets is hard.”

  “That's why you practice.”

  Stacey paced up and down the wide porch, which cried out for rocking chairs or a swing but only had a few mismatched lawn chairs.

  A vehicle approached along the otherwise deserted square of narrow, unlined roads that surrounded the neighborhood's common green. It was Dave's mega-family-sized Ford Explorer, which he parked in the driveway behind Nicole's fairly new silver Subaru station wagon.

  “Hey, did we get here at the same time?” Dave climbed out, carrying grocery bags with the logo of Garden Gnome Grocery, another store over in the trendy part of town.

  “Just about,” I replied. “Can we give you a hand with those?”

  “Oh, no, no,” he said, though he had about half a dozen bulging bags. “Just trying to support local businesses. I didn't have time to drive to Food Lion in Springfield, anyway.”

  I pulled the screen door open to let him into his house, just as Nicole was returning after disposing of her daughter. Nicole and Dave nearly collided in the doorway, like ill-fated trains entering opposite ends of the same tunnel. He dropped a bag, and she reached out to catch it.

  The bag slipped past her, though, and struck the threshold of their house with a smash of breaking glass. Red juice soaked the cloth grocery bag, making it look like the smiling gnome on the front had just been gored through the chest. The acidic tang of tomato rose from the mess.

  “Great.” Nicole shook her head and looked at us. “Would you mind waiting here…again? I'm so sorry.”

  “No problem,” I said. “We're happy to help—”

  “We can handle this ourselves,” Nicole said, smiling again, but it was a little sharper and less friendly, like she was trying to mask a tremendous amount of strain. “I just need a minute.”

  “Sure.” I backed away and joined Stacey in quietly studying the woodwork.

  Once they'd straightened things up, Nicole stepped out with her wide, photo-ready professional smile again. It looked a little fake, but probably less than the one big one I was putting up to try to cover any awkwardness.

  “This is my wife, Nicole,” Dave said, closing the front door as he joined us outside. “These are the paranormal investigators.”

  “I'm sorry, things are a little chaotic today. Everybody's on edge.” Nicole took a deep breath. “Dave says maybe you can help with some of our weirder problems.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “We often find the causes aren't even paranormal in nature. Usually we're just eliminating the possibility of a ghost more than anything.”

  “A ghost, I could handle,” Nicole said. “We had a ghost at Pendleton Avenue, our last house in Kansas City, by Maple Park. We called her Constance. I don't even know where the name came from. She didn't bother us often. Mostly she'd turn off the lights in the main stairwell, or turn them on. And sometimes she'd pull the duster out of the kitchen pantry and leave it somewhere in the house.”

  “A ghost who dusts?” Stacey asked. “That's convenient. No wonder you kept her.”

  “Oh, Constance didn't dust,” Nicole said. “She just left it as a sign that she felt a room needed dusting.”

  “Sounds kind of passive aggressive,” I said.

  “It absolutely was,” Nicole said.

  “Too bad,” Stacey said. “It would be great to have a ghost duster.”

  I cringed inwardly. Dave laughed. Nicole cringed outwardly. I thought Nicole and I bonded a little, cringing there together.

  “Anyway,” I said. “Have you experienced any trouble in the house, Nicole?”

  “Not much that you could put your finger on.” Nicole jumped as a curtain twitched inside the window beside her.

  Andra stood at the gap in the curtains, spying on us. A boy watched over her head, moving her cowboy hat aside for a better view. He had big, dark eyes like Dave and midnight black hair like Nicole. He pulled the curtains tight when everyone turned to look at them.

  “I'll keep them busy.” Dave opened the door to reveal the two kids standing at the window inside. “Who wants to play Monopoly?”

  This was met with reluctant groans, but he herded the younger ones into a parlor on the left side of the foyer and closed the door.

  Nicole led us into the foyer, which was all wood, from the hardwood floors to the paneling inset with a labyrinth of shelves and nooks all the way up to the ceiling. Most of the shelves were empty, but a few displayed framed pictures of the family at different phases of their history as they'd expanded from a smiling couple at their wedding, to adding a baby, to finally becoming a family of six with two boys and two girls.

  “Is all the woodwork original to the house?” I asked, remembering Dave mentioning how much Nicole liked it.

  “Oh, yes. They don't make them like this anymore.” Nicole stopped to run her fingers over the flowery motif carved along the borders of the shelves and across the front of each shelf. She smiled as if intoxicated by the rich detail, knowing she'd scored a visual gem of a house. “It's in good repair, too. It's so well-made that we've barely had to do a thing to fix up the old woodwork except dust and polish it. And dust and polish it some more. That's a never-ending job.”

  Ahead of us, the grand front staircase wrapped around the far end of the room. With its wide steps, monumental posts, and intricately decorated posts and balusters, it was almost too big for the house, but certainly would have accommodated a lot of foot traffic during the boardinghouse years. Ornate shelves, cabinets, and small closets were built underneath the stairs, leaving no potential storage space unused.

  “It really looks amazing,” Stacey said.

  “Would you like some Greek mountain tea?” Nicole asked. “I was just about to make myself some. It's full of antioxidants.”

  “Sounds great, thank you,” I replied.

  We followed her through a side door into the dining room. I'd seen a lot of antique houses around town, but this was unique.

  While the foyer had felt cramped by the enormous staircase, the dining room was long and spacious. The artful carpentry continued here, in the form of a buffet with large cabinet doors and countless little drawers, next to a pair of glass-fronted china cabinets that could have held a restaurant's worth of dishware. The Brown family's china occupied only a smidgen of the available space. Their dining table with eighteen chairs, too, left a lot of empty room.

  “The built-ins just keep coming,” Nicole said, definitely sounding like a real estate agent now, as if automatically trying to sell her house to us, like selling was a comfortable mode for her. “This town was known for its woodworking. Local carpenters had their pick of material right from the source. This whole neighborhood is like hidden gold, yet it's been sitting here abandoned like a car on blocks for years. I know we can sell them to the right kind of buyer, the ones who see the intrinsic value of these antique homes.”

  “Just in time to catch the sprawl from Savannah, too,” I said.

  “Which has some of the fastest-growing suburbs in the entire United States, according to the census.” Nicole slid apart a pair of pocket doors into the kitchen, floored with hardwood tiles. Shelves, cupboards, and a heavy mantelpiece above the kitchen's brick fireplace virtually encircled the room with more woodwork.

  A narrow open door in the back corner of the kitchen stood open. Beyond it, stairs twisted down out of sight. Blistering music roared up from below, an angry male vocalist screaming himself hoarse over ultra-fast electric guitars and thundering drums, until Nicole closed the door to block it off.

  “Sorry. I don't care much for the cellar, personally, but Lonnie doesn't seem to mind it, and it's the perfect spot for all his weights and muscle magazines.”

  “Lonnie's your fifteen-year-old?” I checked my notepad as I took one of the six chairs jammed in around the kitchen table.

  “Yes. Solon, technically. All of our kids have ancient Greek names, sort of in honor of my family.” She set the teapot to boil and placed herbal teabags in coffee mugs. “Solon, Penelope, Jason, Andromeda. It was partly Dave's idea, but my grandfather certainly approved.”

  “Has Lonnie reported any unusual experiences at the house?” I asked.

  “Lonnie hasn't reported much of anything except being angry that we moved here too late for his new school's soccer tryouts.” Nicole set out the mugs of tea, which smelled like flowers and citrus, and sat down with us. My mug advertised the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. “He qualified for varsity back home even though he'll only be a sophomore. Now he has to play at the YMCA, which he feels isn't good enough. He barely talks to us lately, just runs off to practice with the local soccer boys he's found. I'm glad he's making friends, though they seem a little rough. I don't want to judge, though. We're the new ones in town.” She took a deep breath and sipped her herbal tea. She was twitchy, unsettled, with dark bags under her eyes as she looked us over. “And now there's all of this.”

  “Your husband seemed to think you were skeptical,” I said.

  “Well, how can you really help us?” she asked. “Dave made it sound like one of the ghost shows on TV. You put cameras all around our house and then watch all night, waiting for things to jump out? How will that help? It sounds so, I'm sorry, but it sounds so intrusive. And things are so chaotic already.”

  I nodded, understanding now that she'd been less skeptical about the existence of ghosts, and more skeptical about the hiring of paranormal investigators to deal with them.

  “If we learn why the ghost is here, we might be able to make it move on,” I said. “But we have to understand its identity and motives.”

  “The kids call it Jack,” Nicole said. “They got the idea from the attic graffiti. They say we have to close every cabinet and drawer in the house to keep him away. And, well, you've seen the house.” She indicated the dozens of little doors and drawers around us. “So that's turning into an exhausting bedtime ritual. 'Close your doors and cabinets tight or Jack will come out and get you tonight.' It's like a threat invented by a parent for a kid who kept leaving a door open.”

  “Yeah, if you don't mind giving the kid nightmares,” Stacey said.

  “It wouldn't be the first time parents were willing to do that in exchange for obedience,” Nicole said. “I don't think that's what is happening here, though. There is something strange in this house.”

  “What have you seen?” I asked.

  She glanced at the doors in and out of the kitchen, then lowered her voice. “There's the master bedroom armoire. I haven't said anything to Dave about it, because we sleep in there, and…I've been sort of in denial until he started talking about bringing you out here.”

  “That's completely understandable. What happened with the armoire?”

  “Well, it's beautiful, like everything else here. But it has this mirrored front door, and more than once I thought I saw the reflection of someone else in the room with me, coming up behind me. I usually think it's Dave at first, but it turns out I'm alone.”

  “What does the figure in the mirror look like?”

  “I've never really gotten a good look at him, straight on. It's always at an angle, out of the corner of my eye. Then he's gone.”

  “But you think it's a male figure?”

  “I suppose, since I'm always thinking it's my husband.”

  “Do you have any other sensations when you see it? Sounds? Smells, even?”

  “I get the chills. And actually, now that you ask, there's a smell like wood shavings, or sawdust. It's not always unpleasant when I see it. It's almost like a little thrill.” She laughed. “I definitely need more sleep.”

  “So you don't feel the figure in the mirror is threatening?”

  “More like unnerving, or startling. Part of me doesn't even believe it's real.”

  “Do you mind if we have a look at this armoire?” I asked.

  “Of course. It's upstairs.” She took her mug of tea as we returned to the staircase to check out the ghost problem in her room.

  Chapter Five

  The staircase took us to a windowless upstairs room walled in almost completely by doors, except for a hallway that led deeper into the house.

  “Like I said, everything was cut up during the boardinghouse era. Some of these little rooms don't even have windows. Just look at this one.” Nicole opened a door to a dark little cave that would barely have fit a single bed. It was currently used to store moving boxes. “They carved it out of the original master bedroom.”

 

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