The funtime show, p.1
The Funtime Show, page 1
part #19 of GhostTrapper Series
Contents
The Funtime Show
Copyright
Also by J. L. Bryan
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
From the author
The Funtime Show
Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper,
Book Nineteen
by
J. L. Bryan
Copyright
Copyright 2023 J.L. Bryan
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Also by J. L. Bryan
The Night Folk series (NEW!)
Sable
The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series
Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper
Cold Shadows
The Crawling Darkness
Terminal
House of Whispers
Maze of Souls
Lullaby
The Keeper
The Tower
The Monster Museum
Fire Devil
The Necromancer’s Library
The Trailwalker
Midnight Movie
The Lodge
Cabinet Jack
Fallen Wishes
Sunset House
The Funtime Show
Miracle Mountain
Urban Fantasy/Horror
The Unseen
Inferno Park
Time Travel/Dystopian
Nomad
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my wife Christina for her support. Thanks to my son Johnny for always doing his homework and his chores.
I appreciate everyone who helped with this book, including beta reader Robert Duperre (check out his books!). Thanks also to copy editor Lori Whitwam and proofreaders Thelia Kelly, Andrea van der Westhuizen, and Barb Ferrante. Thanks to my cover artist Claudia from PhatPuppy Art, and her daughter Catie, who does the lettering on the covers.
Thanks also to the book bloggers who have supported the series, including Heather from Bewitched Bookworms; Michelle from Much Loved Books; Shirley from Creative Deeds; Kelly from Reading the Paranormal; Lili from Lili Lost in a Book; Kelsey from Kelsey’s Cluttered Bookshelf; and Ali from My Guilty Obsession.
Most of all, thanks to the readers who have supported this series!
Dedication
For Johnny, who picked the title
Chapter One
Driving north on the crowded interstate, with Stacey in the van's passenger seat, I was surprised and a little troubled when an immense shadow blotted out the sun. The road ahead darkened like the sky was falling, and a thunderous roar drowned out the music on the van's speakers.
“Um, doesn't that plane look like it's getting a little close?” Stacey scrunched down in her seat as if she could duck under the airliner dropping toward us. I resisted the sudden instinctive but misguided urge to stay back from the big roaring monster by tapping my brakes. That would only cause the cars behind us to barrel into us at eighty miles an hour.
“I'm sure it's fine,” I said, but I swallowed as the airplane skimmed over us as it crossed the road. It continued onward, dropping fast, hopefully toward a runway nearby. “Told ya,” I added, as if I hadn't been the least bit nervous.
We crossed under another large highway, the perimeter surrounding Atlanta, and the wide, already crowded interstate leading into the city gained a heavy influx of new cars, like a river swelling as a massive tributary emptied into it. The traffic turned slow and thick, though, as if the tributary waters were heavy with silt and mud.
“What's the neighborhood again?” Stacey scrolled the GPS map on my dash-mounted phone. “Witchy Heights?”
“Druid Hills.” I reached out and re-centered the map on the sporty red convertible icon representing our old blue van. “It's kind of an older neighborhood, from what I read.”
“I'm sure nothing spooky or supernatural ever happened in a place like that,” Stacey said. “It definitely wasn't founded by a coven of magicians practicing forbidden ancient arts.”
“Maybe they were just really into trees.”
“Or that's just a cover story for their secret rites and old pagan deities.” Stacey raised her eyebrows a couple of times. She'd cropped her blond hair extra-short for summer, the better for crawling around in hot, haunted attics, leaving just a few remnants of length in the front.
I warily navigated the interstate through the south side of Atlanta, past truck terminals, rail yards, and warehouses, like a giant industrial heart pumping merchandise through the arteries of the nation. That included commerce with the port of Savannah, my hometown, the state's first colony and the quiet, reserved grandparent of sprawling wild child Atlanta.
On Atlanta's north side, I knew from past visits, were forests of modern glass high-rises and skyscrapers, but those we saw from the southern approach were decades older, brown and gray with narrow, squinty windows.
The entire highway rounded a dangerously sharp curve, and a BMW nearly side-swiped me in its ruthless ambition to claw one car length ahead. I remembered that same vicious curve from our last visit to Atlanta. It wrapped around Grady Hospital, providing a short trip to the hospital for all the car crashes that surely happened there. I slowed slightly, avoiding a collision by inches as the car swept sideways across my lane and forced its way into the next. “I hate this road.”
“We'll get off in a minute.”
I proceeded warily until the GPS told us to leave the highway for John Lewis Freedom Parkway. It did this in Chris Hemsworth's voice, because Stacey had selected that option from the voice menu.
“Finally,” I whispered, breathing a sigh of relief as we escaped down a not-so-busy street lined with parks, into hilly neighborhoods so thick with old trees that they formed dark tunnels over the roads.
We caught only glimpses of the houses behind those trees, palatial structures of different styles with no relationship to each other—a Mediterranean villa here, a columned neoclassical house there—each secluded in a private forested oasis of its own, concealed behind dense stands of trees and high shrubberies, as well as gates, walls, and fences.
“Are we really in the middle of the city?” Stacey whispered. She zoomed out the GPS map as if to be sure. The heavily forested lane dead-ended into another small, wooded park ahead.
Tall old trees and a high fence sheathed in ivy concealed the home of our new potential client. I pulled into the driveway cautiously.
“That's a pretty nifty house,” Stacey said when we finally saw it. It was impressively large, made of two wide stories of sloping, boxy, irregular shapes jumbled together, its powdery blue paint peeling away. The windows were enormous, especially upstairs. “Kinda confusing to look at. I like it.”
“I'm guessing that's the front entrance?” I pointed at a solid slab of a very tall pivot door outlined with opaque glass windows.
“I think so.”
I double-checked myself in the rearview, making sure I looked okay for meeting a new client. My long brown hair was neatly gathered back in a ponytail, and I was dressed in my fairly professional-looking black suit.
We hopped out and walked over. The driveway could have comfortably parked several cars, but there was only one, a black Porsche Cayenne SUV.
The lady who answered the door was a funky-looking sort in her late thirties or early forties, her short black hair tinged with purple, wearing a Kinks t-shirt over jeans and Fendi sandals.
“Are you Ellie?” She glanced from me to Stacey, then to our rickety blue van on the driveway beside her much pricier vehicle.
“That's me. This is Stacey, our tech manager.”
“I'm Iris. Come on in.” She stood aside as we passed through the oversized doorway, then swung the giant door shut on its pivot.
“Cool house!” Stacey said, taking in the front room, floored with bright blond hardwood. Sunlight from the tall windows fell on a second-floor landing that led into a hallway. High glass panels in the interior walls let the sunlight penetrate deep into the house. The stair railing was made of wire-thin metal threads, perhaps also meant to let the light flow freely.
A matching railing crossed the room like a fence, marking more stairs leading down to the basement.
“My husband thought the house was 'cool,' too.” Iris looked f
“What part of California?” I asked.
“San Diego. My husband's firm transferred him here.”
“What does he do?”
“Advertising. Omniview Global Strategies. I used to work there, too, when it was still Mueller, Whitehead, and Bernstein, before the rebrand.” She led us up four steps to a long, sunny kitchen with wide windows. It was an airy, spacious room, the rafters and high ceiling overhead sloping gently up and away from the tall windows that lined the back wall.
Iris removed a zebra-striped, gold-edged teapot from a burner as it whistled steam.
“Was it a workplace romance?” Stacey asked.
Iris gave a short laugh. She looked frazzled and exhausted, as people often were by the time they contacted us. “It was, actually. All we did was work back then. We were both in television production. He still is, but now they call it 'video content coordination.' Streaming, mobile, social—all the screens in the world.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“One thing I did was write catchy jingles. Real earworms.” She poured hot water over tea bags. “Would you like some? Tea, I mean. Not earworms. It's lemon balm, good for the nerves. I've had the worst nerves lately.”
“No, but thanks,” I said.
“What jingles?” Stacey asked. “Not Kars for Kids, I hope?”
“Nothing that diabolical. Though I did do Puffin-Up Biscuits. 'Puffin-Up Biscuits…they come in a can!'”
“I've heard that!” Stacey said.
“That was actually a joke version at first. It was supposed to be 'they're golden and grand.' But that's what ended up on the radio.”
“Well, they do come in a can,” Stacey said.
“And I wouldn't really call the biscuits grand, more like lumps of dry chalk, so they actually went the more truthful route.” Iris leaned against the counter and sipped her tea, looking us over quietly. Behind her, a glass door led to a huge rear deck overlooking a stand of woods. The woods bordered more woods on surrounding properties, adding up to a continuous wild patch of old-growth trees that connected with the forested park down the street.“So. About what we discussed in the email...”
“Right. Where did you see it?” I asked.
“The master bath.” She drew her mug closer to her chest, as if for comfort. “Which I avoid now. I shower in the kids' bathroom. That should tell you how desperate things are.”
She led us around a partial wall at the end of the kitchen. The dining room beyond continued along the same row of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the deck and the woods. The house was full of partial walls, half-flights of stairs, and interior window panes to help light flow, giving it a puzzle-box feeling.
“Ugh,” Iris said as she rounded a corner to another half-flight of stairs leading upward. A humanoid shape no taller than my knee sat at the top, slumped and lifeless against the stair railing, its large dead eyes staring at us.
“Yikes,” Stacey said.
“I'm always telling the kids to stop leaving these things around.” Iris grimaced as she ascended the steps and picked up the miniature man. He wore a gray old-man fedora with a hat band, big square glasses with no actual lenses, and a bowtie with a clock design. He looked like someone's wacky middle-aged uncle, with a fringe of white hair under his hat and a bulbous, red-tinted nose.
“I'd be saying the same thing,” Stacey told her, keeping her distance from the dummy and letting me go up the stairs first.
“Are your kids ventriloquism enthusiasts?” I asked, sort of hoping they weren't, if it meant seeing more figures with almost-human faces from deep within the uncanny valley.
“They're getting that way, unfortunately.” Iris stashed the dummy in a linen closet on the way to her bedroom, closing the door firmly. “Okay, sorry about the mess. I tried to straighten up.”
“Looks great to me,” I said as we entered a bedroom two or three times larger than my studio apartment. The soaring ceiling sloped up steeply to the back of the room, where a completely glass rear wall looked out at treetops and blue sky. Sunlight flowed down from two skylights high above.
“It's like a big treehouse,” Stacey stepped to the glass wall. “I love it.”
“It's great during the day,” Iris said. “All this glass, all these windows. But at night, I don't know. Jim works late now, and I'm alone a lot after dark. It's easy to feel like you're being watched, no matter where you go. It's like being on a stage. Anyone could be out there, watching. Sometimes it's nice to feel isolated here in our own private wilderness. Sometimes, less nice.” She crossed her arms as if cold, looking out the big glass wall. Then her gaze shifted to the glass double doors off to one side of the room, which led to a balcony overlooking the first-floor deck. “Less secure, I guess. There are so many places someone could just smash their way in.”
“Do you feel like someone's watching you here?” I asked.
“Sometimes when I'm alone. My youngest started kindergarten this year, so I'm suddenly home alone during the day for the first time since Cameron was born. She's our oldest, almost sixteen years. And there's a lot to do around here. This house obviously needs work to bring it into the current century. The last owner was very old and hadn't updated in decades. I used to love the skylights, but not so much anymore. Especially this one.” She opened the double doors to the bathroom.
It was sunny as well, the windows placed high for privacy. The sinks in the long marble counter were deep enough to bathe a bulldog. Doors led off to smaller rooms at the back, including a walk-in closet. The rain-style showerhead was placed so deep into its own tiled blue cave that there was no shower door or curtain, just a little floor ridge to keep water from flowing out.
The centerpiece of the bathroom was the deep, oblong blue marble soaking tub surrounded by opaque windows and placed directly under a skylight.
“This is where it happened,” Iris said. “Other things had bothered me about the house, but this was when I knew. This is when I started searching online, looking for people who could help but didn't seem crazy.”
“I'm glad we don't seem that way.” I leaned over the tub and looked up into the skylight. It was recessed, set in a deep rectangular cutout in the ceiling above, bringing the light down like a chimney. A loose white tuft of cloud floated in the blue sky. “You gave me some details, but can you tell us exactly what you experienced?”
Iris took a deep breath. “It was one of those nights when Jim was working late. Maybe he had to finalize some footage of happy retired people dancing through a voice-over of a hair-growth drug's horrible side effects, or whatever he's been doing. Maeve—my kindergartener—was finally asleep, and I was tired. I almost didn't bother with the bath, but I changed my mind. I filled it with hot water, bath salts, the works. Turned off the lights, lit a candle.”
“Sounds nice,” Stacey said, glancing at the shelf full of candles, gels, and oils near the tub.
“It was, for a while. I had a book, but I was too drowsy to concentrate. I almost fell asleep chin-deep in the water, looking up at the moonlight. Then I saw it.” She glanced up at the skylight, then quickly averted her eyes. “Up there.”
“What did you see?” I asked.
“A dark shape. A shadow, shaped like a person, face down on top of the skylight, looking in at me. I felt cold inside, painfully cold, like the time I was ice skating as a kid back in Michigan and the pond wasn't as solid as I thought. I could see my bath steaming hot all around me, but I felt like my insides were freezing.”
“Then what happened?”
“I was too scared to move! Too scared to blink, really, so I stared up at it, forcing my eyes to stay open. I kept expecting it to start hitting the glass, maybe try to break in…or maybe just float down through the glass like a ghost…but it stayed still, really still. I was afraid that if I moved, it would drop down and grab me. Then my little girl began to scream over in her room.”
