Terminal (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 4) by JL Bryan

Author:JL Bryan [Bryan, JL]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: www.jlbryanbooks.com
Published: 2015-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

I stood in place and held up my hand. I guess we’d all seen enough movies, because the others stopped behind me. I motioned at Stacey, then pointed at the red light.

She came up beside me, taking video of it. It moved like a stray flame on the wind, blowing alongside the track, except there was no wind at the moment. It glowed red, but not brightly enough to shed any light on the tunnel around it.

We watched it make its slow, bobbing retreat until we lost sight of it, either around a bend ahead or because of the feebleness of its glow. Or maybe it had vanished altogether.

We followed it silently, and caught sight of it ahead, drifting its slow but steady way along.

It was moving in the same direction we were planning to go, so we continued following behind it, saying nothing. Moving as quietly as I could, I opened my backpack and drew on my thermal goggles.

The same blue shape carried the light, which again looked extra-cold on the thermals, not radiant at all. The shape appeared female, clad in a long dress, her back to us as she walked along the tracks, waving her red light.

I thought of what Grant had said, that someone had stopped the train with a red lantern, signaling an emergency. There had been a female member of the gang of bandits. All things being equal, wouldn’t a train conductor be more likely to stop for a woman in distress than a rough-looking man?

Maybe she’d hailed down the train for the robbers. Now she repeated that criminal act, initiating the robbery that had led to murder, night after night, doomed to walk the earth with her cursed light like the original jack-o’-lantern guy.

In time, we passed the hole in the undergrowth Stacey had cut with her shears, revealing the narrow path through the woods toward our clients’ house.

“I wonder how Ember’s doing?” I whispered to Stacey. My phone showed no calls or messages from them, but it also had only one blinking bar’s worth of signal. Reception can be spotty in any haunted place. Being in the woods next to a wildlife preserve didn’t help.

“Are we talking now?” Stacey whispered back.

“I don’t think we’ll disturb Jill O’ Lantern if we stay quiet,” I said. “She’s pretty far ahead.”

“I’m picking up some strays,” Jacob whispered.

“Cats?” Stacey asked.

“Souls,” he said. He knelt and held his hand over the rail.

“Don’t touch it,” I reminded him.

“Don’t have to.” He closed his eyes. “There are spirits...apparently...who roam free on the railroads. Not rooted to a spot, but haunting the tracks themselves. Drifters from earlier times who loved the freedom of the rails, back when they were new. A few of them drifted down this way and got trapped somehow.”

“Maybe when they severed this line from the main one,” I said.

Jacob nodded. “Mostly male, with a wild, restless look...”

“Hobo ghosts?” Stacey asked.

“Basically.”

“Then that explains...stuff,” Stacey said, probably remembering not to give the psychic too much leading information. It certainly made casual conversation difficult.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.