by Nancy Holder
She sat and sighed. That embarrassing photo. She was standing behind Abby with her elbow on her shoulder. Behold. We are brainy. They looked like teenage-girl versions of one of their heroes, the late, great astronomer Carl Sagan, who had sent a golden record on one of the Voyager spacecraft for the aliens to listen to. They also looked like beat poets. And Simon and Garfunkel.
They did not look like serious scientific investigators.
“You carry a lot of tension in your shoulders,” a woman’s voice said, startling her. Erin turned.
The speaker was sitting at a worktable with her boots up. She was blond, her curly hair billowing upward, and she was wearing glasses that looked like an oversized pair of safety goggles. She was playing with a small blowtorch. Over a stretchy olive crop top she wore a pair of gray overalls splattered with paint; over that, an army jacket. She had on a pendant that was a big screw angled through the letter U. Screw you. Har-har. The woman was surrounded by piles of miscellaneous metal parts, what appeared to be scavenged electronics components, and conglomerations of the two that looked like weapons. Behind her, a pegboard was overloaded with more junk on hooks.
Already on the defensive, Erin felt her dander rise. She said, “Okay who are you?”
Abby acknowledged the woman, saying, “Holtzmann works with me in the lab. She’s a brilliant engineer. And loyal.” She emphasized the last word. “Would never abandon you. Unlike some people I know—”
“Yes, I get it,” Erin snapped. Even a guilty party could only take so much, well, guilt.
“She specializes in experimental particle physics. She almost got into CERN.”
That was the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and infinitely harder to become a part of than Columbia University. Erin said, “Almost?”
Holtzmann was still playing with the blowtorch. Pffft, pffft, on and off. “There was a lab incident.” She grimaced slightly, but her eyes twinkled. She seemed a bit like one of those feral children you saw in documentaries from France.
Abby glanced over at her. “He’ll wake up.”
“They said he moved a finger yesterday,” Holtzmann said, brightening a bit.
“Oh, good.”
Erin couldn’t figure them out—if they were toying with her or all this was true. Abby seemed genuinely pleased at the news. She returned her attention to Erin. “She and I are bringing the ideas in our book to life. We’re close on a hollow laser for the reverse tractor beam.”
Oh my god, she’s serious. That’s what’s on the table. And the walls. And the floor. I’m surrounded by bits and pieces of our shared delusions.
“Terrific,” she bit off.
“It is terrific,” Abby said coldly.
Holtzmann cocked her head. “Abby, why don’t you just let her listen to the EVP?”
Abby shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
EVP stood for electronic voice phenomenon. As in recordings of ghostly voices. Despite herself, Erin said, “What EVP?”
Holtzmann flashed a cajoling smile at her colleague. “Let her listen. It’s the only way she’ll know.”
Know? Know what? That they’re both insane?
“Fine,” Abby said. “But she doesn’t deserve it.”
Holtzmann and Abby walked over to a tape recorder on one of their crowded worktables. Holtzmann gestured to it. “A few months ago, we spent eight days at the Chelsea Hotel.”
A registered national historic landmark, Erin filled in. Home to musicians and avant-garde celebrities for decades. Of course, such a place was said to have its share of ghosts. Sid Vicious’s girlfriend, Nancy, had been stabbed to death there.
Holtzmann continued. “We didn’t get anything—”
Of course not, Erin thought, but she was beginning to get uncomfortable.
“—or so we thought,” Abby cut in. “We found this later, going through the tapes.” She was looking at the device.
Without thinking, Erin said, “Did you use only one recording device? If you had multiple ones you could’ve located the source—”
Abby snorted. “Did we only use one recording device? I’m not a moron, Erin.”
“I should warn you…” Holtzmann leaned forward and hit play. “This … it’s upsetting. What you’re about to hear … it’s just not from this world.”
Erin leaned in. White noise, static, jittered from the speaker. Holtzmann turned up the volume. The static grew louder, but it seemed to be more organized, containing a rhythm, perhaps even a pattern. The skin on Erin’s face prickled. Her chest tightened as she caught her breath, alert, listening as hard as she could. Had Abby really done it? Finally made contact?
And then … the unmistakable blat of a fart punctuated the ambient vibrations. Holtzmann and Abby cracked up, and Erin’s cheeks flared with heat.
“Wow,” she said, not wanting for anything in this world for Abby to know how disappointed she was. Because she was disappointed. “Really? That’s disgusting.”
Holtzmann’s eyes glittered with mischievous humor. “Is it more or less disgusting if I tell you it came from the front?”
“Cool joke,” she snapped back. “You guys are just killing it in here.”
“Oh, we have fun,” Holtzmann said.
“I’m so glad we could have an adult conversation about this,” Erin said irritably. She was outfunned and outgunned.
Abby regarded her, hostility resurfacing in those familiar eyes. “If you really don’t believe in this stuff anymore, why were you looking for the book? Huh?”
“I wasn’t,” Erin said. “Some man came to see me because he thinks his building is haunted.”
Abby and Holtzmann traded looks.
“What building?” Abby asked.
“Aldridge Mansion,” Erin replied.
Abby and Holtzmann burst into action, zooming over to a computer and beginning to type. Batman and Robin. Frankenstein and Igor.
“See, that’s the problem, Abby,” Erin said. “This book … this science … it encourages troubled people to indulge their delusions. People who need real help, not stupid theories … Okay, you’re not listening.”
Abby wasn’t listening. Neither was Holtzmann. They were quietly murmuring to each other as they hovered over the computer. Finally, Abby stood and said, “Let’s go see some ghosts.”
As if they had completely forgotten that she was there, they started packing a plethora of strange-looking equipment into a large duffel bag. Erin fought to remain a detached observer, but she couldn’t help checking out everything, trying to remember the various diagrams and sketches they had put in their book. Crazy ghost-hunting equipment. Useless and preposterous. But was that an enhanced MEL meter? And what about—
Abby zipped the bag shut. Thusly prepared, she and Holtzmann made a beeline for the door. Then Abby looked over her shoulder at Erin.
“All right, let’s move.”
Erin gave her head a shake. “I’m not going on your mission.” Although for a second there, she had really wanted to …
Abby looked at her sourly. “Well, thank you for sending your regrets, but I didn’t invite you. I just can’t lock this door until you’re out of the room. Move it. Or you can just lock it and shut it on your way out.”
Erin was stung. “Oh. It was an understandable mistake.” She was fully aware that the reason for her visit was getting buried in this so-called “mission.” Why had she provided such a detailed explanation? All she’d needed to say was that someone had seen it on Amazon. That was it. It was the scientist in her, the good scientist, dealing in facts. Ed Mulgrave was a fact. But ghost hunting?
Fiction.
Dangerous fiction.
Trying to maintain her dignity, she walked past Abby toward the hallway.
“That’s a beautiful suit, by the way,” Abby said.
“Oh. Thank you.” Erin was pleased. Inordinately so. Still, it was the first kind thing Abby had said to her after all these years apart.
My doing, she thought. My fault.
She trailed after Abby and Holtzmann as they staggered down the street with their stuff. They giggled and chattered. They were having fun.
If you want tenure at Columbia, she reminded herself, you cannot have fun.
Abby hailed a cab and looked back at Erin. With mock obsequiousness she said, “Oh, I’m sorry. Did you want to take this cab and leave us behind? You’ve always been so good at that.”
Erin rolled her eyes, but inside, her feelings were hurt. She’d thought the compliment on her suit had been an olive branch, not a wooden stake.
“That was very pointed,” Holtzmann declared, and Abby inclined her head.
“Thank you.”
Erin called after her, “Abby, please take down the book.” Please, please, please don’t ruin my career.
Abby looked at her and seemed to see her for the first time. Erin began to seriously lose it. Yes, what she had done to warrant Abby’s present behavior—and she did warrant it—had been churlish, backstabbing, thoughtless. But she had been very young then. And maybe she had gotten some bad advice. She wasn’t sure. After all, she was up for tenure at Columbia. And Abby was mired in the boondocks of weirdness at the Kenneth T. Higgins Institute.
My career is my life. The esteem of my colleagues is crucial to my future. Please, please, please, Abby, this punishment does not fit my crime.
Something in Erin’s chest wrenched, and wrenched hard. And Abby’s face softened, as if somehow through the white noise of bad history she could hear Erin’s distress call.
“All right,” Abby said. “Introduce us to this guy at Aldridge Mansion, and if we don’t pick up anything there, I’ll consider taking the book down just until you get your tenure to Bullshit University.”
“Thank you,” Erin breathed, deflating like a popped balloon. She was saved. And maybe, just a little bit curious about Aldridge Mansion …
No. No, no, no, I. Am. Not.
But it did look like fun. Back in the day, it had been a lot of big, scary fun.
Erin got into the cab. Next stop, Aldridge Mansion—with a side trip down Memory Lane.
6
This is going to be fun. In an it-might-kill-us way.
Bundled up for the cold, college freshman Erin sat side by side with Abby on the bus from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to the town of Ypsilanti. The side windows were fogged with condensation, but against the darkness on the street she could see dim white mounds of snow banked up in the gutters. There was hardly anyone on the bus so late on Thanksgiving Day. A drunken man was talking to himself in the backseat, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying because the engine noise was so loud. There were a couple of teenage boys in hoodies jacked in with earbuds and a thin middle-aged woman in a knit beret with overstuffed shopping bags who was trying to read a yellowed paperback book while the bus lurched and swayed sickeningly.
The ride between campus and Ypsilanti took about fifty minutes, and though Erin wouldn’t admit it to Abby, she was terrified out of her mind the whole way. Their ultimate destination was Depot Town, which lay north of the gentrified section of Ypsilanti, a place where two freshmen girls had no business after dark. Instead of being home for Thanksgiving dinner surrounded by family and love, they were risking robbery, rape, and worse.
On top of that, they both had lied to their parents about the reason for not coming home for the holidays: they said they had to hunker down and study—a lie of omission. What they were studying was not the science or math their parents would naturally assume, but the paranormal.
“This is it,” Abby said, pulling the stop cord for Depot Town.
They trundled off the bus, backpacks loaded with scientific equipment and recording gear. Abby took the lead, turning north on the empty sidewalk, leading them away from the lights and life of the restaurants in Depot Town’s historical buildings, and toward the address on Norris Street.
They speed-walked through a mixed neighborhood of stark Victorians, bungalows from the 1930s, and small, bunkerlike brick homes from the 1950s. The lots were big, full of bare mature trees and drifts of snow that almost completely buried the underbrush. The sidewalk was cleared and salted, but icy in the shadiest spots. They both had their flashlights out because the streetlights were sparse. Erin could see into some of the houses that were close to the sidewalk. Some looked warm and comfy. Others were dark, dead, and forbidding.
Every time a car’s headlights flared behind them, Erin cringed, waiting to hear the screech of brakes and the sound of car doors banging open. The route was dotted with empty lots and abandoned houses: convenient places to commit murders and hide bodies. How had she ended up here? The answer was simple: Abby had talked her into it. With the sheer force of her personality, her friend had convinced her they had no choice but to come here Thanksgiving night, which meant blowing off going home for the holiday and risking their own safety. Abby had the ability to pull Erin past the edge of what was comfortable and into the realm of what was decidedly not. Abby wasn’t fearless or stupid; she was just willing to take a calculated risk.
“This could be the big time,” she said. “We’ve got to go for it.”
And so they had.
Cold seeped into Erin’s feet and hands and her eyes watered. The lower part of her face was wrapped in a muffler. After walking for what seemed like miles, they finally saw the street number they were looking for. It belonged to a 1950s ranch house with narrow, high-set horizontal windows. Gang tags covered the redbrick veneer. The entrance was on the side, up the driveway, the entire property enclosed in a rusting, six-foot-tall hurricane fence decorated with No Trespassing signs. The snow-mounded yard was studded with unidentifiable junk that had been either dragged out of the house or thrown over the fence.
“With all that tagging, there’s got to be a way in,” Abby said. “Maybe it’s around the side.” She shined her light on the ground and it cast a bright ring in the snow. She set off across the empty space between the fence and the side of the darkened Victorian next door.
Erin followed her through the snow, turning her own light through the fence, onto the plywood nailed over the house’s front door and picture window. KEEP OUT had been spray-painted on the plywood, but was barely visible beneath the graffiti.
They had embarked on the field trip because something horrible had happened at the Norris Street address on Thanksgiving Day 1966. According to news accounts, the man of the house went berserk after the Detroit Lions lost to the San Francisco 49ers, fourteen to forty-one, and chased his family out into the icy street with a baseball bat. After locking the door, he threw the cooked turkey out of the oven, blew out the pilot light, stuck his head in, and gassed himself. Ever since, and particularly on Thanksgiving, supernatural events had been reported at the house: an eerie green glow from inside, crashing noises, moans, curses, shrieks, and most disturbing of all, the unmistakable smell of roasted turkey. That’s why the place stood abandoned—people were afraid to live in it.
“Over here,” Abby said. “I knew it. There’s a break in the fence.”
They had to take off their backpacks to squeeze through the slit in the wire, then reach back to retrieve them.
Abby reshouldered her pack and hurried for the boarded-up back door. “It’s loose,” she said as she pulled the edge of the plywood aside and reached into the gap. “The door isn’t locked. Let’s go in.”
Erin followed her through and into a little mudroom with a curling linoleum floor. Beyond it, their flashlights lit up the spot where the washer and dryer had been.
“Kitchen must be just ahead,” Abby said.
Their breath steamed in the light of the flashes.
“Stove is gone,” Erin said, noting the gap in the counter under the range hood and the capped-off gas pipe sticking out of the foot of the wall. “But that’s where he died. Those Formica countertops are original.”
“Nice cigarette burns,” Abby said.
Erin swept her flashlight around the room. Some of the acousti
c tile ceiling had fallen out and pink fiberglass insulation was strewn all over the floor. “Rats have been in here. Ugh.”
“Let’s check out the rest of the place,” Abby said.
They moved through the dining room and into the living room. The walls had big holes kicked in them and they, too, were tagged. Glass from broken windows glittered on the floor. Plumbing fixtures had been ripped out of the bathroom, the mirror shattered into confetti, and all the bedroom doors were gone. Someone had dragged an old, stained twin mattress into one of the rooms. Their flashes lit up empty whiskey bottles and fast-food trash. Someone had been camping there. Not recently, though—the dates on the moldy newspapers on the floor were a year old.
“This is so cool,” Abby said, taking it all in. “Do you feel the vibe? Spooo-ky! We’re going to catch us a ghost; I know it. We’ve got to spend the night!”
“It’s freezing in here and the floor is disgusting,” Erin protested. “We didn’t bring sleeping bags, or even blankets.”
“We can take turns on the mattress.”
“You’ve got to be—”
“Wait,” Abby said in a hushed voice. “Did you hear that?”
A faint creaking sound came from the other side of the house.
Erin’s heart began to pound.
“Hurry, get out the gear,” Abby whispered.
Erin dug the video recorder out of her pack. Abby unwrapped the unwieldy, portable photoelectron spectrometer they had cobbled together from parts filched from U of M physics and chem labs.
When they tiptoed back to the living room, a greenish glow was moving around in the kitchen, very erratically. From the doorless doorway came a sharp clatter and disembodied curse.
Erin breathed in the aroma of roast turkey and a wave of dizziness swept over her. This was it. This was really it. She was about to see her second ghost, only this time with a witness. Her legs went weak. She suddenly realized she wasn’t ready for prime time. She was all talk and none of the walk.