Ghostbusters

by Nancy Holder

  Abby grabbed her shoulder and shoved her forward. Erin instinctively aimed the video camera at the dancing light on the other side of the doorway as she was pushed bodily through it.

  Intense light blasted into their faces as they burst into the ruined kitchen, and Erin was momentarily blinded.

  “Who the heck are you?” said a shrill voice. “I’m armed!”

  Erin’s eyes quickly recovered and she saw a diminutive woman in an olive-brown down hat and matching parka holding a portable lantern in one hand and a dinner fork in the other.

  “We’re scientists from U of M,” Abby said, stretching the truth with what sounded like absolute conviction. “Who are you?”

  “Martha Kinsler. I’m a writer, doing research for a book.”

  “A book about ghosts?” Erin said.

  “Well, it’s sure as hell not interior decorating,” Kinsler retorted. “Why are you here?”

  “Ghosts, same as you,” Abby answered. “Only we’re using applied science to uncover the mechanisms of the spectral plane. We have some theories…”

  “What’s that smell?” Erin gasped. “Is that him?”

  Kinsler showed them her open Tupperware container and the still-steaming turkey, gravy, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. An insulated bag sat on the floor. “My Thanksgiving dinner. Sorry, there’s not enough to go around.”

  “No problem.” Abby lowered the PKE spectrometer’s nozzle. She carried the makeshift analyzer on a webbed strap over her shoulder.

  “That thing’s kind of intimidating.” Kinsler nodded at the ten-inch black probe. “What does it do?”

  “Samples the air, and what’s in this box measures the ionization energy,” Abby said. “We believe that could be a component or maybe the chemical signature of spectral appearances.”

  Kinsler raised her brows. “Wow, you weren’t kidding about being scientists. Have you taken any readings yet?”

  “We just got here,” Abby said.

  “What do you know about Charles Lemayne?”

  “Got mad after the Lions lost and killed himself right there,” Abby said.

  “There’s a bit more to it than that,” Kinsler said. “I interviewed his widow a few years ago. He was about to lose this house to the bank—because of a serious gambling problem—when he had a vision about the outcome of the Thanksgiving Day game. Not a hunch, but a real vision, according to the widow. Came to him while he was brushing his teeth two days earlier. He saw something in the bathroom mirror—she wasn’t clear about what it was—but it told him to bet his last nickel on the Lions. He was so scared by the experience and so financially desperate that he did what he was told.”

  “His widow was convinced this was the truth?” Erin asked.

  “I am certain she believed it,” Kinsler said. “Even talking about it forty years later shook her up so badly she could hardly speak.”

  “Do you think he had been contacted by something from the other side, something malignant?” Abby said.

  “That’s for you to find out,” the little woman said. “And when you do, you’ll want to write a book about it; everyone does, and sensational paranormal is hot with publishers right now. If you ever decide you need a ghost writer—ha-ha—to help you, here’s my card.”

  As she passed it to Abby, blue and red lights flashed through the narrow windows at the far end of the living room, spinning over the ceiling and walls.

  “Crap!” Kinsler cried. “It’s the Ypsi cops. We’ve got to get out of here fast or we’re going to get busted. I can’t do more jail time.”

  “We are so in for it if we get caught,” Erin told Abby. “We could even lose our scholarships.”

  The three of them barreled out the back door, squeezed through the gap in the fence, and didn’t look back as they ran across the snowfield behind the house. They got about a hundred feet across the field when a dog started barking; it was running close behind them.

  “Police dog!” Erin cried. “Oh my god, the cops sicced their dog on us!”

  Abby broke out in laughter. Erin turned and saw a poodle fighting hard to keep up through the deep snow—it was apricot colored and about knee high. When they reached the street on the far side of the field Abby was still giggling.

  Erin didn’t think it was funny at all.

  * * *

  In the years that had passed since that crazy night a lot had changed.

  Erin and Abby had both graduated from U of M and Erin had entered graduate school at Princeton. Abby decided to find someplace in New York to further her research on the paranormal, and Princeton wasn’t it. While other undergrads had been partying at the frats and sororities or tailgating at football games, the two of them were sneaking into supposedly haunted houses looking for ghosts, conducting experiments, and theorizing how quantum and nonquantum mechanics might define what was on “the other side.” Based on those original concepts, they had developed a brand-new technology for ghost hunting and capture, albeit mostly hypothetical. And spurred by Martha Kinsler’s comment on that cold Thanksgiving evening, they had compiled a massive book on their scientific investigations of the paranormal.

  The book had seemed like such a good idea at first. It came together in a string of no-sleep, overcaffeinated weekends, a compendium of their field notes, hypotheses, and foundational equations. Erin and Abby had a unique synergy—each one’s excitement and inspirations fueled the other. The arcane science and math challenged and stimulated them both. It was thrilling to feel they were on the cusp of doing something truly novel: taking the paranormal out of the Dark Ages.

  At first.

  Now, not so much.

  As Erin hurried across the Princeton campus to a crisis meeting with her physics department graduate advisor, her heart was filled with dread. What she was considering doing was not just cruel, it was unforgivable, and she hoped the advisor could provide her with alternatives that had eluded her.

  Initially she and Abby had tried to get some interest in the book project from university and mainstream science publishers, but no one wanted to touch it. The academic reviewers’ comments they got back on the partial manuscript were painful and eye opening:

  “Made me a believer. After reading this manuscript I know what being dead feels like.”

  “Science, this is not; incomprehensible rubbish, this is.”

  “A hodgepodge of science and science fiction. This effort proves the old saw: a little education can be a dangerous thing.”

  “How old are these authors? Twelve?”

  Abby wasn’t put off by the possibility—or the fact—of rejection and ridicule. Keeping the anticipated goal in sight, she simply ignored it. If she had self-doubts, they took a backseat to what she saw on the horizon. So they had agreed to publish it themselves. But with the ghastly academic reviews, Erin felt herself withdrawing intellectually and emotionally from the enterprise. She hadn’t told Abby or her parents, but she’d gone back to therapy, which was offered through the Princeton student health program. The therapist had helped her reassess what had been going on, her own motivation and mechanisms since childhood.

  In fact, after six years of diligent searching, Erin and Abby had not found a single ghost. With no car at their disposal, as undergrads they had traveled all over southern Michigan on foot, bike, bus, and train, and still could not confirm that the spectral plane they were researching even existed. Part of her was relieved, because her memories of Mrs. Barnard were so deeply disturbing she didn’t want to see another ghost. Part of her was terrified, because not finding any ghosts meant she had probably been crazy as a child, that what she’d experienced had been a recurring, violent hallucination. If she gave up the search, she’d never know the truth about herself, whether she was a nut job or not, but to the rest of the world, including her parents and her academic peers, the searching for ghosts in itself was the act of an irrational person.

  Her therapist asked her to consider the possibility that she was caught in a repeating, self-generated
, irrational loop fueled by fear and guilt. She was afraid of finding out the truth, and guilty about pursuing it. It made perfect sense to her.

  Writing the book had been great fun, and so far at least, hardly anyone knew about their private research, their secret adventures. Publication and its implications were bringing the underlying issues to a head. The book’s impending release threatened Erin with exposure and made her vulnerable. Deep down she knew she had come to a fork in the road, that she couldn’t combine a career in conventional science and the science of the paranormal without paying a dear price.

  Putting it all out there was exactly what she’d done with Darla Murray back in elementary school, and look how that had turned out—she had become Ghost Girl, a perpetual joke. Her therapist helped her to see that beyond the very real concerns about her future professional life, she was afraid of history repeating itself. The early ghost experience had left Erin wounded. The fact that her parents hadn’t believed her and thought she might be mentally disturbed had undercut her self-confidence and shamed her. What happened in grade school and after had only made it worse. Whom could she trust to protect her? The lesson she had learned was: no one.

  Despite the ghastly reviews, they persisted with the book, primarily because Abby wouldn’t let it drop. Unlike Erin, she didn’t give a damn what people thought of her. Unlike Erin, she wasn’t in graduate school at a prestigious university. The harder Abby got pushed, the harder she pushed back. Erin still felt there was solid science behind their work, but the prejudice against the subject matter was too deeply ingrained for it ever to be taken seriously. She began to have doubts about the wisdom of publishing it at all, and tried to get Abby to delay. But she wouldn’t hear of it.

  “Someone will find it and take notice if we just put it out there,” Abby said. “Stuff like that happens all the time. If we get some interest, we can get funding and push forward faster.”

  In the end they agreed to self-publish the manuscript using a print-on-demand site. After the costs of editing, layout, and promotional package, they each had enough money left over to buy two bound copies. And they were on their way.

  Without telling Abby, Erin had given the manuscript to her graduate advisor for a quick, confidential read. Professor Emil Hazan’s office was on fifth floor of the sprawling—and intimidating—redbrick and concrete Jadwin Hall complex. The office itself was much less impressive, a windowless cubbyhole so tiny and narrow that Erin wondered how he got the desk in—by disassembling it in the hall first? She also wondered whether he had to climb over it to reach his office chair on the other side.

  Hazan was fiftyish with gray in his close-cropped beard and hair, and definitely not a neat freak. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were crammed with books, folders, and physics journals turned every which way, and the carpet was covered with heaps of printouts, books, and folders that wouldn’t fit in the overstuffed bookshelves.

  There was no chair for her to sit on—no room for a chair, either—so she stood in a small clear space on the floor, which the inward swing of the door made necessary.

  Her advisor clapped a hand down on top of the massive manuscript perched on the edge of his desk, the cover page of which had somehow become badly coffee stained. “You can’t let this get out,” he said emphatically. “If you do, you’ll never land a position in a reputable institution; it could make you unemployable except in a city college somewhere unpleasant. What on earth were you thinking?”

  There was anger and negative judgment in his small, dark eyes. She felt she had to put up a defense and answer his question. “It’s been an interest of mine since I was little, so I’ve pursued it.”

  “Some interests should be kept private,” Hazan said. “The preposterous subject matter aside, your main conclusions are shaky at best. Using particle beams of an as yet indeterminate type to repel or hold hypothetical spectral forms ‘because they are polarized’? Really? You present no evidence that ghosts exist, let alone have polarities. The proton packs and wands you describe are bad pulp science fiction. Assuming you could actually ‘trap a ghost,’ what would you do with it? Keep it confined forever in a polarized field? Try to return it to its own natural environment? Based on the logic of the math you’ve used throughout, that kind of, for the lack of a less dramatic term, membrane breach could create an instantaneous black hole. What you’re suggesting here cannot even be safely tested without risking the end of the world!”

  At least it seemed Professor Hazan could follow the math.

  There was a related issue, something that had to be dealt with immediately, so she gamely pressed on. “I’m supposed to do an interview on TV later today, part of the promotion—”

  Hazan slapped the stack of pages, creating an avalanche of piled folders and magazines off the side of his desk. “There’s a lid on this now,” he said. “You told me there are only two extant printed copies, plus the raw manuscript. You can just take the book down off the Web site. No one will know it ever existed.” He paused and gave her a deep, soul-searching look. “Erin, you’ve worked too hard and you’re far too talented to throw your career away with this nonsense. As you know, we physicists live in a fishbowl. Word will spread beyond Princeton, that is guaranteed. If that happens, you might as well drop out of grad school and put your application in at Walmart.”

  That was the last thing Erin wanted. She loved science too much.

  “Everyone in the graduate department here will think you’re crazy,” he went on, “and treat you accordingly. You will become a pariah. There’s no way you could stay and succeed.”

  She flashed back on her childhood shame and her fear of being delusional. And in that instant saw the only feasible route out of the situation was the one she herself had already come to.

  Denial.

  There was no ghost of Mrs. Barnard. There were no ghosts, period.

  There was no book about hunting ghosts, either.

  She was normal if she acted normal. And if she acted normal, the world would embrace her, not reject her. If I don’t let this go any further, she told herself, I have a shot at a dream life. A life without fear of what I might discover, or that I will be discovered. No one will think I’m crazy, so I won’t be crazy. She was intelligent and talented, and she could find a way to fit in. It’s not faking if you pull it off.

  “This is a big turning point for you,” Hazan said. “You have to decide what you really want. I can’t do it for you.”

  But he already had. If she had come here looking for permission from the Princeton Physics Department to dump on her best friend, she had received it. A wave of complicated relief washed over her.

  She thanked Professor Hazan and walked out of his office. Before she reached the elevators, the relief was gone and anxiety kicked in. How was she going to tell Abby? She knew she couldn’t say the words to her face. Not just because it would break her best friend’s heart. Abby was too strong, too committed. She had no doubts they were on the right track. As had happened so many times before, she would simply bowl Erin over, the book would come out as scheduled, and her professional career would be irretrievably ruined.

  The answer was cowardly, but necessary under the circumstances: she stayed home the rest of the day, did not go to the TV studio, and shut off her phone to avoid reading Abby’s frantic texts in the final moments before airtime.

  Back at her studio apartment, she watched a few minutes of the show and was proud of the way Abby presented herself and their ideas. When the interviewer got mean, she had to shut it off; she couldn’t bear to watch. She knew she should have been there; if she had any guts at all, she would have stood by her friend.

  Erin ran into the bathroom with tears streaming down her face and barfed into the sink.

  7

  That was then, this was now.

  Abby and Erin, ghost hunting again. And Dr. Hazan’s prophetic words had been made manifest: their fascination with the paranormal had ruined Erin’s career.

  As the trio
reached the gates of the illustrious Manhattan brownstone, a young man crossed the street and nervously approached them. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there, moving his gaze from the building beyond them to their faces and back again. As if he were watching Aldridge Mansion’s every move.

  “Can I help you?” he asked querulously.

  “We’re here to see Ed Mulgrave,” Erin told him. “He visited me earlier today.”

  His face went white. “Ed Mulgrave? But Ed died fifteen years ago.”

  Holtzmann cried, “Whaaaaaaaat?” at the same time that Abby exulted, “Yes. This is it.”

  Erin huffed. “That’s ridiculous. I just saw him.”

  Then the sixty-something man who had approached her in the auditorium walked up. He acknowledged Erin with a bob of his head.

  “Okay,” she snapped. “Who’s that, then?”

  The younger man collected himself. “Oh, that’s Ed’s son, Ed Junior.”

  Was this some kind of setup? She was abashed that she’d allowed herself to experience the tiniest twinge of anticipation. “All right, that’s obviously who I meant.”

  Mr. Mulgrave approached the three of them and said, “Thank you so much for coming. We’ve been so frightened.”

  Abby took a step forward, establishing primacy. “When is the last time the paranormal entity was sighted and what on a scale of T-One to T-Five was the level of physical interactivity?”

  Mr. Mulgrave gestured to the younger man. “Garrett here saw it Tuesday and I believe it made him soil himself.”

  “Jesus, Ed, really?” The guy—Garrett—flushed to his roots.

  “That’s a T-Three.” Abby was jubilant. “Awesome. Let’s set up inside.” She turned to the young man. “You can give us a tour.”

  Garrett shook his head. “I’m not going back in there. Here.” He reached into his pocket and hurled a set of keys on the ground in front of the mansion so hard they bounced. With that he turned for the sidewalk. Though he quickly stuffed his hands into his pockets, Erin saw how badly they were shaking. His walk was shaky, too, as if his knees were about to buckle under him.