The Proctor Hall Horror
Page 9
“I’m requesting a polygraph to be sure you’ve given us accurate information. You’re free to contact an attorney, although one cannot be present with you when the polygraph is administered. You’re not under arrest, although as we gather evidence, that could change. I’m sure you understand that.”
He gulped. “What if I decide I’d rather not take the polygraph?”
“If you have nothing to hide, then you also have nothing to fear. You have a lot to explain, sir, and so far you can’t remember anything. A polygraph helps us decide whether you’re forgetful or you’re hiding things. So if you turned me down, I’d go to the DA. He’ll say we have probable cause, we’ll arrest you, and that’s when you’d be needing that attorney you mentioned.”
Julien had no choice but to cooperate. Neither spoke as he and the lieutenant rode to Baton Rouge and entered a small room on the third floor of the state police building. Be calm. Just be calm, he said to himself as a female officer attached a pressure cuff, straps and connectors to his torso and fingers.
His voice cracked when he said, “I’m so nervous, there’s no way I can pass this.”
“Don’t worry, sir. It happens to everyone. The machine compensates for anxiety.” She sat at a desk across from him and explained how things would work. There would be control questions — verifiable ones like his age and occupation. Others were moral questions — “Have you ever stolen anything?” “Have you ever wished you could kill another person?” His answers to these would establish a basis to evaluate the direct questions about Michael’s murder.
Julien held his breath for a moment, forced a total exhale, and steeled himself. He’d faced problems before, and he knew how to control his emotions. If there was ever a time to steady his nerves, this was it.
The examiner asked questions in a steady, even tone, and Julien paused before answering even the most basic of them. He willed himself to take things easy, think before answering, and offer a simple yes or no.
After thirty minutes, she told him it was over, unhooked him, and asked him to wait for Lieutenant Kanter to return.
“Just tell me — did I pass?”
“Most of your answers were inconclusive. That means the machine couldn’t determine their veracity. No, Dr. Girard, you didn’t pass. But you didn’t fail either.”
“So am I free to go?”
“Please wait here for Lieutenant Kanter.” She turned and left him alone in the little room for fifteen minutes. Julien imagined the two of them going over his answers, and he wondered if “inconclusive” meant freedom or jail. Soon he found out.
Kanter walked in and snapped, “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Back to Thibodaux, where your car is.”
They rode in silence until they were close to the sheriff’s office. Kanter said, “People react to polygraph examinations in many ways. The innocent ones do the worst. They sweat bullets, answer questions too fast, get wordy — that kind of stuff. Other people sit there without emotion, give answers designed to confuse the machine, and think they’ve outwitted the system. Today you looked like the second kind, Dr. Girard, but for now you’re free to go. I want you to keep something in mind. I’m going to spend every hour of my time working to solve that kid’s murder. As you go through each day, think about me. If you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about. If you’re not, you’d better sleep with one eye open, because I’ll get you eventually.”
Julien gulped. “Are you threatening me?”
“No, sir. Not at all. I’ve been in this business for years. In my experience, people with nothing to hide don’t answer questions like you did this afternoon. You just gave me a little more work to do, that’s all. Here we are. Have a good week.”
He walked to his car on wobbly knees, the tension gone at last. As he started the engine, his body relaxed for the first time in hours.
It was over. For the moment.
Julien opened the car door, leaned out, and threw up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
April listened to Henri explain why they must return to Proctor Hall so they might learn how and why Michael died. She understood how the Ouija board might help, but she also appreciated Henri’s ulterior motive. Michael’s death wasn’t the only thing he and Landry Drake were keen to solve.
“We don’t have to do the Ouija board at the house,” she said. “We can ask the same questions right here on campus, and it will answer.”
“My plan is to use more than just the board this time. I want to go up a notch. Let’s conduct a seance.”
“I’ve never had the nerve to do that,” she said. “I discovered my psychic abilities using the board, but to me a seance is way more than going up a notch. Have you ever seen one?”
Henri said he had attended three over the years. One was pure fakery, another was a dud — nobody was home on the other side — and during the third, they contacted a spirit. At least it seemed so to Henri, who admitted he wasn’t a believer in seances. To him it was more likely things happened because of energy emissions from the persons around the table than otherworldly entities.
April said, “What worries me about conducting one at Proctor Hall is the evil entities there, especially in that one bedroom. I contacted a spirit last time we were there, but we never established if she was friendly. I don’t want to create problems for me or anybody else. What if we learned the hard way seances are real? What if we opened a passageway to the other side and let even more evil things in?”
Henri explained that sometimes spirits cannot rest or break free from whatever bonds tie them to a place. In his experience, contacting them often gave them the peace they so desperately sought. He wasn’t asking to do a seance in the bedroom. Instead, he planned to set up a table in the hallway just outside the door.
“The door Michael entered but never came out of. You can’t be sure something awful won’t happen.”
Henri wanted to learn the secrets while being honest with her. “That’s correct. No one can guarantee what will happen when one ventures into that world. We can take precautions to minimize the danger, but there will be a risk. I’m willing to sit beside you and find out what’s behind the mysteries. So are Landry and Cate and her dad. We’ll all be there together. Please allow us to try.”
She thought for a moment and said, “I don’t like all those guys with cameras and lights and stuff. Not only is it distracting, I feel like they’re crawling into my soul.”
“Okay. One guy with a video camera. No lights, no wires everywhere. Will you do it?”
“I want Marisol there. And Dr. Girard.”
“If I can get them to come along, will you go back?”
“I don’t want to. My better judgment is screaming ‘No!’ But for the sake of getting answers, and because you need me, I’ll do it. Please, Mr. Duchamp. Please keep us all safe.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said. In one respect, he was glad she consented, but he shared her fears about the place.
A few days later they were at the house again. Phil was the lone cameraman this time, and that suited Landry. They had worked together for so long, Phil could anticipate what Landry would do next. He hadn’t failed to capture an important shot yet.
Henri had left behind what they called his space suit, opting this time for an array of instruments he arranged in the upstairs hallway and bedroom. The energy from what they now called the haunted bedroom registered zero, and he worried that they might not raise a spirit today. He asked that the lights be off; the only illumination came through the windows at either end of the hall. The eerie half-light created just the scene he wanted.
As the others watched, Henri and April sat at a table in the hallway with the Ouija board between them. They placed their fingers on the planchette, and Henri said, “ME. Are you here?”
Nothing happened, and he called for the entity again. Still no response.
April tried. “Hello. We’ve come back to visit again. Will you talk to us?”
“You said you were ME, but it wasn’t your name. What is your name?”
ME.
“Is that a nickname?”
YES.
“What’s your actual name?”
M-A-Y-E-L-L-E-N
Henri raised his eyebrows and glanced at Landry. This was a breakthrough. “Let me speak for a moment,” he whispered to April.
“Are you May Ellen Proctor?”
YES.
“You said earlier you’re buried in this house. Where is your body buried?”
T-A-L-K-T-O-H-E-R.
April said, “Okay, I’ll talk to you. Where are you buried?”
HOUSE.
“What room?”
No answer.
“The person who killed you. The one you call Crazy. Is that Noah?”
The planchette almost flew out of their hands as it created the answer letter by letter.
CRAZY.
“I don’t understand your answer, May Ellen.”
CRAZY.
Henri said, “Let’s try a seance now.” They cleared the table, and he brought out three candlesticks that held purple candles, placed them in the center of the table, and lit them. Everyone except Phil stood in a circle around the table and held hands. He told April to summon Noah’s sister, May Ellen, who had been twelve in 1963 when the family died.
She began by saying, “I summon only friendly spirits to our circle. Right now I reach out to May Ellen Proctor. Please make your presence visible to us.”
In the half-light, the flames of the candles danced back and forth as if a breeze had arisen, although there was none.
“Are you here?”
The candles flickered more intensely, and someone spoke. It came from somewhere and nowhere — close by, at the far end of the hall, by the ceiling — it was impossible to say.
The voice echoed as if coming from somewhere deep within the walls of the house. “What is your name?”
“April. My name is April. Is it you, May Ellen?”
Without breaking the circle of clasped hands, Landry gave a hard nod to the left, where something ethereal stood just inside the bedroom. At one moment it was formless, but in the next it morphed into the shape of a girl wearing a long dress. A girl with no head.
April said, “I’m so glad to see you at last. Thank you for coming here.”
I’m sad.
“I understand. Your death was tragic and horrible.”
Sad for you.
“For me? Why would you feel sad for me?”
CRAZY is here.
“The person who killed your family. That is sad. Tragic.”
CRAZY is here. Danger for you. I’m sad.
April jerked her hands away from Henri and Cate. The candles stopped flickering, and the entity in the doorway vanished.
“This is what I was afraid of! Nobody knows what happened to Noah Proctor. What if he’s still here — hiding somewhere after all these years? It’s dangerous for us to be in this house! That’s what May Ellen is telling me. He killed Michael just like he killed his own family and Marguey Slattery.”
“We don’t know that,” Henri said. “You broke the circle before we found out what she meant.”
“She scared me. Didn’t you hear what she said? Crazy — whoever that is — Crazy is here, and that’s sad for me. That can only mean one thing.”
“It could mean a lot of things,” Landry said. “We don’t know if Crazy is a ghost or a living person. If what she’s saying is right — and spirits don’t always tell the truth — then perhaps a live person followed us here. He could be inside the house right now. Or hiding somewhere nearby.”
As April’s eyes grew wide, Cate said, “Good job, Landry. You sure can ease a person’s fears.”
“I was just trying to convince April it could be something besides a ghost.”
There was a noise — a loud thump that came from below. “I’ll check it out,” Julien said, flying down the stairs two at a time.
After hearing nothing, Landry yelled, “Julien! Everything okay down there?”
After a long pause, he said, “I’m not sure. I don’t quite know how to explain this.”
Camera in hand, Phil sprinted down first, followed by Landry, Henri and the others. Julien stood in the sitting room, pointing toward the fireplace. On the mantel where the Proctor family’s heads once rested were three jack-o’-lanterns carved with grotesque, grimacing faces.
On the wall next to the mantel, someone had scribbled a single word.
CRAZY.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
From that point on, they made no more attempts to contact a spirit. April curled up on the floor, moaning to herself, while Julien stared spellbound at the bizarre jack-o’-lanterns.
Cate and Marisol helped April stand and took her out to the car while Landry asked Julien what had happened when he reached the first floor.
Unsteady, Julien sat on the fateful couch, realized where he was, and jumped up with a cry of alarm. He took a straight-back chair on the other side of the room, as far from the fireplace as possible. He spoke in disjointed words, as if his thoughts were difficult to articulate.
“I looked in here to see what made the noise, because this is where most of the spirit activity is. Then…well, when I saw them, I just stood there. I was frozen.” He pointed to the mantel.
It came as no surprise that the grotesque pumpkins shocked Julien. Two were the size of adult heads and the third smaller, like May Ellen’s. Skillfully carved and frightening to behold, they were the stuff of nightmares.
“I suppose it’s best to wrap things up here,” Henri said, but Landry had another idea. He suggested sending Cate, Doc, Julien and April home in the Jeep, while he and Henri stayed. Phil the cameraman too — just in case something else developed.
“There are things going on here that defy explanation, like the spirit who talked to you and April. But that isn’t all that’s happening at Proctor Hall. A ghost didn’t carve these pumpkins. There’s someone else around. Let’s find out where.”
Doc said he appreciated Landry’s wanting to ship him back to New Orleans, but he said he’d rather stay and observe. “Don’t forget whose house you’re in,” he kidded. “If I go, we all go.”
Julien also asked to stay, claiming to feel much better and wanting to see what they found, but Landry refused. He’d been through a traumatic episode, and after some half-hearted arguing, he agreed to go.
After they left, the men walked to the upstairs bedroom. Once again, Henri’s monitors reported no negative energy. They walked through the doorway and across the room to the bed. Landry pulled back the sheer netting and revealed the bloodstained covers and the clear imprints of two bodies. Julien had lain next to Michael’s corpse before being roused by their shouts. How had everything happened so quickly? And why?
That day Michael died and the deputies came to Proctor Hall, Landry and Henri had theorized about what happened. Henri reported high negative energy levels when Julien was in the bedroom. Did the spirits there take control of Julien’s mind? Could a phantom decapitate a person? Or was there a rational answer?
When seeking answers, Landry and Henri considered the logical possibilities before the paranormal. Today Landry asked if they thought Noah Proctor could be hiding in the house, carrying out his grisly work on strangers who dared to enter.
“Where might a person hide?” Doc asked, prompting Henri to inquire if Doc had a set of plans. He didn’t, and Henri said owners often installed hiding places, nooks and crannies in old houses. Many antebellum mansions had them; Proctor Hall wasn’t of that era, but perhaps it had secret places too.
“So you think it might be Noah?” Landry asked.
“Maybe, but if we limit our thinking to one possibility, we may exclude the answer. Let’s have a look around.”
They split up and went to work examining closets from top to bottom, moving larg
e pieces of furniture to see what lay behind, and looking at bookshelves, cabinets and panels. On the floor, Doc found the piece of burnt wood that someone used to write the word CRAZY beside the mantel.
An hour later Henri called to them from upstairs, saying he’d found something interesting in the hallway across from the haunted bedroom. He pointed to the oak paneling that lined the upstairs and lower halls, and moved his hands up and down each side, knocking on the panels every few feet.
He asked them to listen as he rapped on the walls. Every knock resounded with a solid thump until he reached one that didn’t. This one moved a little when he gave it a hard hit. It sounded hollow instead of muffled, like the others. There was an open space behind this panel.