The Haunting of Beacon Hill

by Ambrose Ibsen

  “Yeah,” she replied, easing herself out of the chair. “I think so. Thanks again for coming. I really owe you one.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Well, not to be a total asshole, but I do remember you promising me a meal for taking you by the hospital. Ya flaked on that one, so how about we meet up later today for a bite?”

  “OK,” she said. “That sounds fine.” Then, hesitating, she added, “I'll call Rosie in a little while and apologize. Maybe we can meet with Ophelia's friends and find out more about what happened that night they visited Beacon Hill.”

  “As good a place as any to start,” he said, striding to the door. “Let me know if you need a ride.” Slipping out into the hall with a wave, he jogged down the stairs and back to his Honda.

  After the night she'd had, comfort was awfully scarce. Still, having talked things through with August—having devised a plan, however vague—riled her confidence. Downing her cold tea, she picked up her phone and decided to give Rosie a call. She fished the slip of paper with her cell number on it from her purse and dialed while opening the blinds in the apartment. As she did so, she looked out each window and surveyed the scene outside. It was thankfully phantom-free.

  The phone rang three, four times. Just before it was set to go to voicemail, there came a clipped answer. “Hello?”

  Sadie cleared her throat. “Hey, Rosie. It's me, Sadie. I, uh... I'm sorry to call so early.” She paused. “And I'm so sorry about yesterday. Uh, I was hoping you had a minute to talk.”

  Rosie's voice had a gravelly edge to it, like she'd come down with a terrible cold overnight. “Thanks for calling, Sadie, but...” She wiped loudly at her nose. “I don't have time to talk with you right now.”

  Nursing immense guilt for having rushed out of the hospital the day before, Sadie apologized profusely. “I'm really, really sorry, Rosie. I shouldn't have stormed out like that yesterday. The truth is that I was scared. But I'm calling because I want to help, however I can.”

  “It's not that,” Rosie interjected. There was a pause on the line as the woman gulped and steadied her voice. “I don't have time to talk right now because there's been an... incident.”

  “An incident? With Ophelia?” Sadie shouldered her phone and walked to the living room window, looking down upon the parking lot where August was still situating himself in the driver's seat. “What happened?”

  Rosie spared a shuddering sigh. “Ophelia went missing last night,” was all she said.

  “Missing?” asked Sadie, brow furrowed. “From the hospital?”

  “That's right. Look, I'll call you later. The police are here, and...” Rosie trailed off.

  “Can I come by?” She struggled to open the window and waved frantically down to August, who was preparing to pull out. “Can I meet you there, at the hospital?”

  Rosie hesitated. “OK, sure. Give me a call when you get here.”

  Cutting the line, Sadie shouted out the window. “August! August!”

  The reversing Honda suddenly halted as its driver caught sight of her. August rolled down the window and stuck his head out, easing back into the parking spot. “What's up?”

  “Hey, uh, how about we do breakfast instead?” she asked.

  He peered at the clock on his dash and scratched his head. “Uh... Now? Sure, I guess. What do you have in mind?” he called up to her.

  Nabbing her purse and keys, Sadie locked up and rushed out to the parking lot to meet him. Plunging into the passenger seat, she finally replied, “I was thinking the hospital cafeteria.”

  12

  The psych unit appeared to run in its usual sedate mode, except that a handful of police officers stood in one of the consultation rooms near the nurse's station, speaking in hushed tones to a frazzled supervisor.

  Rosie met both Sadie and August near the unit entrance as the elevator spit them out, and she wrapped the former in a tight embrace as though she were hugging her own daughter. “I'm glad you're here,” she said. That morning, or the evening previous, the harried mother had attempted some self-care; she'd done her hair and makeup. Receiving the unexpected news that her troubled daughter had vanished from her hospital room overnight, the makeup had been mostly wiped away by tear-stained tissues now, and what little did remain had been smeared into a messy, clownish haze. She led the young pair past the elevators to the little alcove where they'd met the previous day.

  “So,” began Sadie as they all took seats in the stiff chairs on offer, “what happened?” She looked down the hall at the sturdy metal door fronting the unit; that a patient could slip through it undetected seemed impossible. “You say she disappeared from her room, but... how can that be?”

  August divided his gaze between the two of them, then stood to help himself to a cup of coffee from the machine set out for visitors.

  “They only just told me about an hour or two ago,” said Rosie, dabbing at her eyes. “Except for the shift checks, they hadn't entered Ophelia's room all night, figured she was sleeping, I guess. The last check was at 3AM. The morning nurse came by four hours later, and...” She grappled with the lump in her throat. “She was just gone.”

  Sadie nodded, though she still failed to understand how that was possible on such a closely-guarded unit. “She... walked out? Escaped?”

  Rosie could only shrug. “They're... not sure. You know, they put a camera in her room to keep an eye on her, but they haven't let me see the footage yet. Maybe the recording will contain some clue, but... They've been combing the hospital ever since—called a 'Code Adam'—and they're thinking about contacting media outlets to start a local search in case she actually made it off the premises.” She was wearing a flannel shirt, and she ran the sleeve past her nose with a loud sniff. “I just don't know how this could happen, or where she's gone.”

  August sat back down with his cup of coffee and blew on it. “Does anyone know how she got off the unit? There have to be a million security cameras in this place, right? I'm sure that if the security guards run through all of the night's footage they'll find her passing through a door someone forgot to lock.” He sported a polite smile. “Anyway, I'm sure they'll find her. The police are involved, so you know they're taking this seriously.”

  Rosie was little comforted however. “I went home last night and felt like something was wrong. It was just a feeling I had in my gut; a feeling that things were getting worse, rather than better. And then, as I'm driving in this morning, I get the call...” Her teeth creaked against each other as she held the tears back. “I just want this to stop. Whatever it is. Is that too much to ask?”

  Sadie wasn't of much help in these situations and maintained an awkward silence as Rosie collected herself for the umpteenth time. Finally, she said, “Listen, Rosie, about yesterday...” She scooted forward in her chair till she occupied only the edge of the seat. “After meeting with Ophelia, I think you might be onto something. I don't know what's gotten into your daughter and I have no idea how to stop it, but... it struck me as unnatural. Something dark is behind this recent change in her. I wanted to deny it, but there's just no other way for me to explain what I felt in that room yesterday.”

  Here, August chimed in. “Sadie and I both are interested in helping. This morning we were actually trying to think of some way to move forward—stage a kind of investigation, I guess. Um... She went to an old house, right?”

  Rosie nodded. “The one on Beacon Hill.”

  “And she went with friends of hers, right?” added Sadie.

  “That's right. Her friends Joey and Leslie, from school. They're pretty good kids—close to my daughter.” Rosie sighed and looked at the two of them in turn. “What are you planning? How can I help?”

  Sadie chuckled, throwing her hands out in a preemptive gesture. “I don't want to get your hopes up. We're winging this completely. But we were wondering about these friends of hers. You mentioned that she started acting weird after returning from Beacon Hill. Have you spoken to her friends about it? Maybe they saw something
, noticed something, while they were there?”

  “I spoke to them a little,” said Rosie, “but they didn't have much to say. I think they were worried about getting into bigger trouble and they didn't even want to admit they'd gone there. If you think it would help to speak to them, I can arrange that.”

  “That'd be great,” replied Sadie. “The sooner the better, I think. Can you arrange for us to meet them this afternoon, maybe?”

  “I'll try. I imagine they'll be more open to talking to you, seeing as how you're younger.” Rosie shrugged. “Is there anything else I can do?”

  August took a gulp of coffee. “I think we're going to need to look into the history of that house. If the house has anything to do with what's happened to your daughter then we need to cover our bases. It sounds like it's ground zero for this entire thing. But Sadie and I will manage that easily enough. We're librarians, after all; all we do is research.”

  “OK,” said Rosie. “I'll get ahold of Ophelia's friends so that you can meet them today. And—” At that moment, the door to the psych ward swung open noisily.

  A woman in a white lab coat, flanked by a pair of departing police officers, started into the visitor's lobby. The cops set off for the elevator, but the woman hooked a right and made a beeline for the seated trio. “Hello,” she said, flashing a gummy smile that lasted only an instant. “I'm Heather, the hospital supervisor.” Her bespectacled gaze settled on Rosie and she offered a hand to shake. “I want to let you know we're doing everything we can to find your daughter. This is a very strange case, and it isn't consistent at all with our core values. I'm very sorry for what's happened and I want you to know we have everyone at our disposal working to rectify it. Patient safety is our top priority.”

  Rosie forced a smile, uttered a pained, “Thanks.”

  Heather motioned back to the metal door. “If you could come this way, I'd like to show you the security footage taken within your daughter's room last night. As I'm sure you're aware, we put a ceiling camera in her room—standard procedure for patients with suicidal ideation—and we did pick up some movement around 4am. However...” She held her tongue in the interest of picking le mot juste. “The footage is a bit of a mess.”

  “How do you mean?” demanded Rosie, taking a step toward the unit.

  “Well,” Heather began, running a hand through her short, blonde curls, “our supervisors in both the IT department and in security haven't seen anything quite like this. The recording is somewhat scrambled as if the camera had been subjected to interference. What's more, it cuts out before revealing Ophelia's precise movements out of the room.” She pointed once again at the door. “If you head to the station, the secretary there can show you the footage on her computer.”

  Rosie nodded and charged for the unit entrance—but first asked, “These two are friends of mine and Ophelia's. Can they watch, too?”

  Sadie and August looked to one another.

  “Oh, certainly,” said Heather. “That's no problem.” Pulling a business card out of her pocket, she handed it to Rosie and added, “I'll be working around the clock to find your daughter, and the minute I have news to share I'll let you know. Meanwhile, if there's anything I can do, any question I can answer, call me at my office number or have the hospital operator page me overhead.” With that, she joined the police officers in the elevator bank.

  Without missing a beat, Rosie pocketed the card and rushed at once into the psych ward. Sadie and August followed at her heels, slipping into the unit as the door clunked open.

  The young secretary at the desk—the same one from the previous day—gave Rosie a weary smile and said, “Did you come to watch the footage?” Having already queued it up on her screen, she picked up the bulky computer monitor and turned it so that the three visitors could see. Playback began when she tapped the space bar on her keyboard, and the girl adopted a curiously wary mien. Stealing a glance at Sadie, the secretary's feigned smile told all. This footage gives me the creeps was what she was thinking.

  The three of them stood before the nurse's station and watched.

  The camera installed in the ceiling of Ophelia's room—a cheap, portable thing—recorded in grainy black and white—and from the first frame, Sadie couldn't help but shudder for the resemblance between the recorded imagery and the charcoal trappings of her recent nightmare. Still, she watched on, and the time ticked by in the lower-right quadrant by the second. The secretary had advanced the footage nearly to the point of the alleged disturbance, when the recording had apparently ceased. Ophelia was seen to toss and turn in her bed for a short while.

  Suddenly, the picture went wobbly. Despite its being a digital recording, the footage adopted all the fuzziness of a tracking VHS tape. Visual snow crowded in around the edges where only moments ago the picture had been perfectly clear.

  The subject of the video behaved in a strange way during this period of graphical flux. She had gotten out of bed, though the intermittent clarity of the picture had lent even this simple act an impression of malignity, for the jittery distortion of the recording had seen her lying in bed one moment and then suddenly standing at room's center the next with no perceptible movement between. All three of the viewers startled somewhat at this seeming display of teleportation.

  Once squared at room's center, Ophelia could be seen to look upward, in the direction of the camera, though she did so in a most peculiar fashion—and once again, the choppiness of the video superadded a hint of the sinister. The cut in the video had occurred at the very moment she'd turned upward to look at the ceiling, with the result being that her head appeared to snap back at great speed, and at an unusual angle—the back of her head seeming flush with her shoulder blades. Coupled with the onset of a dark, whirring blur, only her eyes and mouth were discernible—and scarcely, at that. For the interference, her eyes had looked oversized and white; her mouth a yawning black blur.

  Perhaps most disquieting was what occurred next, as the visual interference ceased and the recording played on normally.

  The trio found themselves watching a recording of an empty hospital room.

  One moment, the patient had been featured front-and-center, albeit through a fog of distortion.

  The next, she'd simply vanished, like she'd been a speck of dust wiped from the camera's lens.

  For close to a minute, the three of them kept watching the video, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. “The rest of it is just like that,” said the secretary, standing up and pausing the footage. “The rest of the recording is crystal-clear, but she's not in it. It's like she just...” She shrugged. “Vanished into thin air, I guess.” She wrangled the computer monitor back into place, but not without loosing a full-body shudder.

  Rosie had lost her complexion and strayed a few paces from the station, looking like she was about to be sick. Without a word, she passed back through the metal door and steadied herself against one of the walls.

  Sadie followed close behind. “You OK, Rosie?”

  “It's like...” Rosie ran a palm across her stony face. “It's like she was carried off on the Devil's own wings.”

  August rubbed at the back of his arm and parked himself to Rosie's right, ready to catch her if her woozy legs gave way. “The thing that weirds me out is that the camera only malfunctioned during the most inconvenient time. Except for that minute or two when Ophelia got out of bed, the thing has been recording like a dream. What's up with that?”

  “Whatever is in her... I guess when it shows itself, electronics don't play too nicely.” Sadie massaged the back of her neck and was surprised to find the flesh still standing up. “Anyway, a video like that isn't going to help us find her. It raises more questions than it answers.”

  “Where do you think she could be?” asked Rosie, crossing her arms tightly and sagging against the wall.

  “Maybe she went home?” suggested August.

  “It's possible.” Sadie nibbled on her lower lip and took a few paces toward the bank of ele
vators. There was a window there, brightly-lit, and from it she could see three stories down and a fair bit into the distance. “If not home, maybe she went to a friend's house, or some place of similar significance.” Staring through the window, another thought occurred to her. “Or... maybe she returned to the house.”

  “The house?” Rosie shook her head. “Wait, you mean...”

  “Beacon Hill?” August arched a brow. “Maybe...”

  “We have to look for her,” insisted Rosie. “I can run home and see if she's there, but the two of you—would you mind? Can you go to that house? It's a few miles from here, but if that's really where she went it's possible she's still there. If we split up, we'll have a better chance of finding her quickly. It's been more than four hours since she disappeared—we don't have much time.”

  Most everyone in town was familiar to some degree with the abandoned house on Beacon Hill. It was something of an institution—a place that the locals referenced even if they'd never dare set foot there themselves, and which was implicitly understood as “haunted”. Stories of all shapes and kinds circulated about the place, from the grisly to the downright bizarre, but this was the extent of Sadie's acquaintance with it. She'd never dreamed that she'd one day have cause to become more familiar with it—much less enter it in search of a missing girl.

  “Absolutely,” replied August. He nudged Sadie's arm. “We can swing by and scope out the place, right?”

  “Maybe,” began Sadie, frowning with hesitance, “we should let the police know. They can scope out Beacon Hill and—”

  Before she'd even finished, Rosie was already stepping into the elevator. “Come on, let's hurry.”

  It seemed the decision had already been made for her.

  13

  “I still think we should get the cops involved. There's no reason for us to go into that house to find her,” insisted Sadie.