THE SPIRIT IN QUESTION

by Cynthia Kuhn

When the waiter returned with his whiskey, I paid for both of us and left. At least I’d learned a little something.

  I hoped.

  At home, I called my mother and asked about the early years with Jean Claude and Tolliver.

  “Darling, it was such a lovely time! We were young and open to everything. We had no money and only our dreams to sustain us...” She sighed happily.

  I’d heard so many stories about her salad days that I knew I needed to focus the conversation so that she wouldn’t begin regaling me with a cascade of memories about the time she went here or there with future celebrity x, y, or z. Once that train left the station, there would be no stopping it.

  “What was the relationship between the two of them?”

  I heard ice tinkle in a glass. I went into my little kitchen and turned on the kettle to make some tea. Might as well join her in a drink.

  “Jean Claude was toujours larger than life.” She paused. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

  She’d heard about it on the news and had texted to ask if I was okay, though she hadn’t specified that Jean Claude was a friend. Now that I knew that, I gave her more details, and we comforted each other as best we could. I promised to keep her updated, then asked about him as a young man.

  “He commanded attention—not only because of his size but also because of his energy. He was a passionate, vibrant soul. And once he got working on a creative project, he was wholly committed to ensuring that it was exactly as it should be.”

  That summed up the man I knew.

  “Tolliver, on the other hand, was always worrying about being overlooked, or not measuring up to the others.”

  That rang true as well.

  “He genuinely worshipped Jean Claude, who was fond of him too. They were always together—”

  Interesting. I hadn’t gotten a super-close-friend vibe from them.

  “—while we were living in the Village, long before you were born. Then Jean Claude went back to France for a job and Tolliver moved to California for a while. We moved around so much, trying to find our way.”

  “I know.” At first, we’d lived upstate near my Aunt Rose. Then we’d gone all over the United States while my mother pursued her dream—art colonies, teaching posts, gallery jobs, you name it—until we finally settled in New York City.

  “You and Calista were so good at adapting.”

  Well, that was debatable—we loathed always being the new kids at new schools—but it was a conversation for another day, in any case.

  “Did the two of them ever have a disagreement?” I pressed to the heart of my query.

  She laughed. “Always.”

  “About what?”

  “Oh, you know. Art. Love. Life. Beauty. Making it. Selling out. And so on. Whatever was the topic of the day. Jean Claude, Tolliver, and our other friends would stay up until all hours of the night, discussing everything from music to politics. But the two of them especially loved to argue.” She laughed again. “Make that drink and argue.”

  “Was there any kind of pattern or longstanding undercurrent of tension?”

  The ice cubes clinked in her glass again as my kettle whistled.

  “Not that I can remember.”

  I poured the hot water into a mug and submerged a bag of peppermint tea to steep.

  “Was Tolliver jealous of Jean Claude?”

  “Why do you ask, darling?”

  “We were talking today—”

  “Oh right, you’re working on his show. How is that going?”

  “Um...” I stalled, then decided to come clean. She was my mother, after all. “I like working with him, but I’m not sure about the play.”

  “He’s always been pretty out there, but Tolliver’s a true visionary. I don’t think he’s ever really been understood.”

  “Maybe this audience will get him.” I wasn’t holding my breath but I hoped so. I told her about some of the challenges we were facing—minus the ghost-related issues—and she reassured me that they all could be overcome.

  “Good luck with everything. It will be fabulous.” Her confidence was heartening.

  We veered into a discussion of her latest endeavor: she was painting a series of portraits of famous authors, though they were faced away from the viewer and recognizable primarily through items they were holding. She was having a difficult time pinning down Emily Dickinson, hemming and hawing between a feather or a candle for her left hand.

  “How is Tolliver handling Jean Claude’s death?” she asked suddenly.

  “It’s been a little odd. He doesn’t seem overly affected by it. He appears to be more excited about directing his own show.”

  “Regardless of how he’s coming across, he’s a man of deep emotion. Perhaps he’s trying to keep a stiff upper lip in front of the company. But he’s definitely grieving inside.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I’d be grateful if you’d please give Tolliver my best? And of course all my love to you and Calista.” She blew some kisses over the line.

  “Love you too, Mom.” I spooned out the tea bag and squeezed it. Steam rose from the fragrant cup.

  “And with that, I need to meet some friends soon, darling. Ta ta for now.” She disconnected.

  I glanced at the clock; it was almost one a.m. there. She had plans to frolic in the big city, and I had a hot date with a mug of tea.

  Typical.

  Chapter 16

  On Thursday, I lost track of time while preparing my classes and had to hurry to rehearsal, arriving just before it was about to begin. I did a double take at the large screen onstage. Tolliver came racing up the aisle to meet me, his scarf unwinding itself with each step.

  “We have a change in plan,” he said breathlessly. “The paranormal guys...spirit busters...whatever they’re called...are going to show us a rough cut of the episode.”

  “Why?”

  “The chancellor wants them to. I have no idea why.”

  I followed him down to our usual chairs and pulled out my notebook. Tolliver had positioned a few cast members at each door, and they directed the arriving company to sit in any row. The auditorium filled quickly.

  After a few minutes, Vance materialized in front of us, brushing his long bangs off to the side. I wondered how many times a day he did that or if he was even aware that he was doing it. Every conversation we’d had to date had been punctuated by a hair swoop.

  “Hey guys,” he said excitedly to the crowd, thanking them for coming, as if they weren’t here for rehearsal in the first place.

  “What’s all this?” Parker asked, gesturing to the screen.

  “You are the first to see our rough cut of the Stonedale episode.”

  The students cheered.

  “I need you to watch closely,” Vance said. “If you see yourself, even in the background, we’re going to ask you to sign a release form. While we were shooting, we may have inadvertently caught you on film.”

  The students cheered again, more loudly.

  So that’s why the chancellor wanted them to screen it for us—to obtain permissions. He always had one eye on the legal ramifications.

  “Am I going to get my SAG card for this?” Parker joked.

  Vance ignored him and waved at someone in the back. “Roll tape!”

  The lights went down and the brick facade of our building appeared onscreen, the gold letters spelling out “Stonedale Opera House” glinting softly in the dim sunlight. There were no protestors. They must have been on lunch break.

  The camera zoomed in on Vance emerging through a glass door. He greeted the audience and welcomed them to the show. “We’re here in Stonedale, Colorado, a sunny but sleepy college town—”

  Not so sleepy, I didn’t think.

  “—where a strange legend has endured for decades. Locals will tell you ab
out the ghost who roams these halls. There have been noises, sightings, and unexplained phenomena for over twenty-five years after a college professor committed suicide here. You see, he had discovered that his wife,” Vance paused and moved closer to the camera, “was in love with someone else.”

  He continued through the rest of the story as the shots switched to the much darker interior and a quick tour of the lobby. It looked different—probably an effect created by purposeful lighting and angles—and the shadows seemed more menacing than usual. Surely I’d have noticed if it looked like something out of Nosferatu every day. Then again, it was a television show. They had viewers to entice.

  Soon, Vance and the crew were onstage, where they demonstrated the various tools they’d be using to ghost bust, as they did on every show. Fans of the series already knew about Spectrometers and Electric Voice Phenomena recorders and other gadgets, but they had to recap for new viewers, and it was interesting to hear them explain how they captured indicators of paranormal activity in measurable ways.

  Vance moved stage left to where Jean Claude had been shot—which he used to introduce fluctuations on a small black box in his hand. He took two steps away to show the device registering what he said were regular levels, then went back to the original spot, where the numbers shot upward.

  “This,” he said excitedly, “is what we call a ‘hot zone.’ Usually when we get this kind of reading, we can expect to see some additional signs of paranormal activity.”

  I was thankful that he had decided not to include our dearly departed director in the show. He must have sensed that we were all too raw for that. But it was fascinating to see the readings change there.

  The camera pulled back into a wide-angle shot of the very seats in which we were sitting. In a voiceover, Vance told the audience that they’d be looking for lights or other evidence.

  The camera rose slowly to capture the area above our heads, then zoomed in. Gradually, four small white balls of light became visible. They swooped and looped in what resembled a waltz. Gasps broke out behind me. I twisted in my seat and looked at the students. Most of them were checking the air over their head in real time, even though the screen was projecting something that had previously been taped. I couldn’t help peeking upward as well, where of course I didn’t see anything. I turned back around and focused on the screen, where the camera was tracking the movement of the lights.

  “Orbs,” Vance announced. “Some of the brightest we’ve ever seen on this show.”

  The screen displayed a slow-motion replay with the orbs circled in green so that viewers would be sure to see them. It repeated several times as Vance waxed rhapsodic about the quality of the footage.

  The episode moved next below stage, capturing the claw marks on the wall and pausing at the corner dressing room where, Vance informed us cheerily, “the readings were off the charts.” It was pretty dark beyond the doorjamb—you could just barely make out the rose pattern on the wallpaper inside.

  “What happened next,” Vance said, “surprised us all.”

  We stared at the screen.

  Suddenly, the door to the room slammed shut, as if someone had been standing behind it and pushed with all their might.

  The audience gasped again. Onscreen, Vance raced into the frame, opened the door, and went inside the room. The camera followed, the shot whipping wildly around the room to record the fact that no one else was there.

  I knew about the secret staircase, and so did Vance. But was there enough time for someone to use it as an escape after slamming the door, with another person hot on their heels? Or had the door been slammed by an actual spirit?

  As if reading my mind, Vance moved to the far wall. “This room has another mystery,” he said, pushing on the rose wallpaper to pop open the door. “See this? It leads to a staircase. No one knows why it exists.”

  That wasn’t technically true, but it was much more dramatic than “it was built so that the star of the show could quickly access the stage.”

  I could hear excited chatter behind me—the students seemed genuinely surprised.

  “And you’re not going to believe what else we caught on film,” Vance said enthusiastically. Next came the footage of the so-called floater, which pretty much wowed the room. Vance pushed the conclusion that the full-bodied manifestation was Malcolm Gaines himself keeping watch over the theater.

  “But there’s more to be discovered back downstairs.” Vance winked at the camera. They cut to him standing in the prop room.

  “There is a play in production here,” he said, “so we asked some of the company to tell us about their experiences.”

  Parker was the first to appear. “This place is freaky. It always feels like hidden eyes are watching. You get used to it, though.” He paused dramatically. “You have to.”

  Next was Rachel. She looked earnestly into the camera, pushing a hank of highlighted hair behind her ear before speaking. “A bunch of us have heard singing, but if you look in the hallway, no one’s there.” She smiled and shrugged adorably.

  The third was Luke Popper, our actor playing Sherlock Holmes. He looked down while he was talking, as if addressing his shoes. “During rehearsal, I had to go into the prop room. No one else was below stage. I heard someone singing, then it turned into a scream. I’ll never forget it.”

  A number of other cast members spoke about the lights going on and off in their dressing rooms, items appearing in different places than they’d left them, and hearing noises that didn’t seem to have an identifiable origin.

  Rachel reappeared. “The weirdest thing is walking through the cold pockets. They’re everywhere but never in the same place. Oh, except downstairs. That whole below stage area is freezing. Sometimes you can see your breath.”

  Suddenly, my face loomed above us.

  Oh crap.

  My hands flew up to cover my face involuntarily, as if attempting to provide a humiliation shield. But I couldn’t help peeking.

  The whole supposedly off-camera conversation with Vance was included. It had been shot with night vision so that my eyes were dark pools, and I looked like an extra from a horror movie. Sliding down in my chair, I watched through my fingers until the next scene began. It helped. Sort of.

  Onscreen, Vance was holding the walkie-talkie-like box I’d seen earlier. “Our final piece of evidence comes from the dressing room we visited earlier. Not only did the door slam, but we also caught some words on our EVP recorder—that stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena, new ghost hunters.”

  He began asking questions to the air. The box buzzed with low-level static.

  “Who are you?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you want to tell us?”

  Suddenly the static spiked and a muffled mechanical sound could be heard.

  “Did you get that?” Vance asked the camera excitedly. “Let me enhance it.” He twisted a dial on the box and played it back. A subtitle appeared on the screen as the voice was magnified and the word became clear: Beware.

  Ice crept up my spine.

  The screen played it back, again, in slow motion.

  Beware.

  After the screening ended, the students set up for rehearsal. It was going to be a challenge to get the actors to focus after all that excitement, but we’d just have to do our best. Tolliver hadn’t made any fuss about the spirit wranglers interrupting his work time, thankfully. Though since the showing was at the chancellor’s request, there wasn’t anything he could have done about it.

  Next to the stage, Vance handed out release forms to those of us who had appeared in the episode.

  I made a beeline for him. “That was gripping, Vance. But you said you weren’t taping me.”

  “I honestly didn’t think we were,” he said. “But one of the camera guys thought he was supposed to be filming, so he just, you know, di
d.”

  That was probably one of their tricks.

  “Point is, I don’t want to be in the show.”

  “But the chancellor wants you in it,” he retorted, pushing the form at me. “He said having a professor in it lent some credibility.”

  Now he wanted credibility? For the show he didn’t want connected to the university? I couldn’t keep track.

  “But you didn’t even tell me you were filming. I could have been more...”

  “More what?” He waited, brushing his blond hair to the side. I really wanted to buy him a barrette to take care of that.

  A student came up and took a form; he gave her a smile and she practically swooned. When he resumed his attention to the conversation, I grasped the first word I could think of.

  “Professorial.”

  He spoke reassuringly. “You were plenty professorial.”

  Untrue.

  “Plus, you cover every point we needed covering.”

  Unintentionally.

  I shook my head. “Not comfortable with it, Vance.”

  He took stock of my expression, realizing I meant it. “Please, Lila. We need your footage. And I need this show to be a hit.”

  “Your ratings are already huge.”

  “An even bigger hit, I mean.” He bent his head toward me and lowered his volume. “They’re thinking of replacing me. Someone up the chain thinks I’m not serious about the work. If I can show them that I am committed to find gripping evidence of paranormal activity, they’ll let me stay. Or so says my agent.”

  I could feel my resolve crumble. I understood job security worries.

  “And like I said, the chancellor wants you in it.”

  Probably so he could use it as evidence against me someday.

  “It would do me a solid favor. Help a bro out?” Vance fixed his blue eyes on mine intently.

  I read genuine worry there. “Okay.”

  He blew out a breath. “I appreciate it, Lila. You have no idea how much.”

  “No problem.” I turned to go, then paused. “Hey, have you ever heard a ghost say ‘beware’ before?”