by Karina Halle
“This is very lovely,” Rebecca said admiringly.
Kelly nodded. She had this way about her that reminded me of a heron. Her movements were slow, lanky and calculated. “Down to our left are the administration offices. It’s a small school, only about a hundred students, so we don’t use all the space on the first floor. But Ms. Davenport made sure that every single corner of the first floor has been remodeled, some say even past its original glory.”
“Is your room down there?” Dex asked. “Rumor has it that it might be our bedroom tonight.”
She nodded again, not meeting his eyes. “If you’d like. It’s a very nice room. Come this way, please.” She started off down the hall, Rebecca’s kitten heels clicking as she followed.
“Oceanside was a very nice school,” Kelly called to us over her shoulder, “before it burnt down, of course. No one knows what caused the fire, but it destroyed absolutely everything. It was very strange and it displaced a lot of children whose parents…well, it’s not for me to say. But we needed a quick substitute.”
We passed by closed office doors with embossed names printed on frosted glass, complete with brass doorknobs. You’d think all this refurbishment and newness would do something to quell that creepy feeling I had, but instead I felt like the fog was following us into the building. I had to keep looking behind me to make sure no one was there.
Kelly came to a stop before an open door. She gave us a small smile, and now that I was closer to her, I could see she had kind green eyes that contrasted vividly with her strawberry blonde hair. “This school is for very gifted children who wish to specialize in the arts. Or whose parents think they should explore their talent. It costs a lot of money to attend here and yet you should have seen the fuss they made when it came to gathering funds to build the new school. Setting up Oceanside here was a no brainer for most people.”
“You don’t seem to agree,” Dex asked astutely.
She raised a brow. “I’d rather not work in an old sanatorium, if that’s what you mean.” She cleared her throat, looking around sheepishly as if she’d be reprimanded for speaking her mind, and then gestured to the room. “This is my office. If you go past the door in there, it opens up into the old nurses’ quarters.”
The first room was nothing more than your normal nurse’s office, though of high sanitary regard with its gleaming floors and sink, tidy shelves, and two single cots with tightly tucked in sheets. The walls were adorned with drawings from what I assumed were the kids, though they looked a million times better than any drawing I ever did. There were charcoal and pastel portraits of Kelly, watercolors of forests, and one portrait of a young boy holding onto a ragged teddy bear, dressed in 1930s garb.
“Every kid here has talent,” Kelly said, catching my eye and then motioning us forward. We stepped through the doorway and looked at our potential dwellings as she flicked on the light. I guess I was expecting something rotten and decrepit but it didn’t look bad at all. It was a little sparse—the children’s drawings didn’t extend this far and the walls were bare. There were four twin beds in a row, each separated by a gauzy curtain that attached to a rod on the ceiling. The beds looked like hotel beds—clean but not plush.
“So this used to be where the nurses slept back in the old days?” Dex asked.
“Half of this floor was like this,” she said, patting the end of one of the beds. “There were five hundred patients here, sometimes more, and at least thirty nurses and administrators. Once people came to this place as staff, they never left.”
“Never?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. TB was considered the White Plague, you know. They all thought it was highly contagious, and until there was a cure, everyone was stuck. I’m not sure if you noticed, but halfway down the road between here and the town, there’s a small building on the side of the road. It’s hidden by trees so you have to look for it. That used to be the post office. The mail carriers would only come so close to the building for fear of catching the disease.”
“Jesus,” Dex swore. “So if you took a job here, there was a good chance you wouldn’t see your family for a long time.”
“Not until the 50s when the cure was found and the hospital was closed,” she said sadly. “It explains why so many of the nurses killed themselves. Why so many of them…eventually went crazy.”
The skin at the back of my neck puckered. Just great. Not only did we have the potential ghosts of kids who died from TB but also their nurses who went crazy and killed themselves. I started to have one of those “maybe this isn’t a good idea, maybe we should pack up and go home, maybe I should listen to my crazy dead grandmother in my dreams” kind of moments, the ones that either mean nothing or make you regret not trusting your gut.
But then again, if it wasn’t for doing the more interesting option, I would have never met Dex and would have never joined Experiment in Terror. There was something to be said about moving forward in the face of fear. I swallowed down my uneasiness and listened to Kelly.
“Nonetheless,” she went on, “since the whole first floor was redone and the rest of the nurses’ rooms were made into offices, Ms. Davenport kept this as it is to try and keep the flavor of the past. Her words, not mine. You’re more than welcome to stay here though. There’s a bathroom with showers just next door. Sometimes when I’m too tired after work to drive home, I sleep here.”
“Anything strange happen to you?” I asked.
Her eyes grew momentarily large, focused on the door. “Just that.”
We all turned to see what she was looking at. A small orange rubber ball came rolling into the office, bouncing to a stop when it hit the doorframe. It was followed by a few impish giggles that seemed to fade into the air.
I felt an absolute chill blanket me. I looked at Rebecca, my heart racing. “Did you see that?”
She nodded, though to my disappointment she didn’t look the least bit scared. “It’s a ball. Probably one of the kids from here, am I right?”
Kelly smiled at her. “You’re right. He’s from here. Except he’s not one of Oceanside’s students. He was from Sea Crest. And he died in 1932.”
CHAPTER SIX
I looked over at Dex and almost smiled. I mean, as creepy as this was, it was almost fun to see the physical evidence of a ghost and especially in front of people who could be described as skeptics. Though when I looked back at Kelly, she was already smiling apologetically.
“I don’t really see much,” she said, as though she knew what I was thinking. Maybe she did. “Just here and there. Nothing terrifying, nothing that makes me want to quit my job. Sometimes I get creeped out, especially if I’m here alone. Sometimes things happen that I can’t explain. But for the most part, I don’t feel any…animosity here. Maybe Brenna will tell you differently, but aside from the never-ending ball game that Elliot plays with his friends, I don’t ever feel uneasy.”
“Elliot?” Dex asked as he walked over to the rubber ball. He picked it up in his hands, looking it over and then smelled it, as if that would tell him something.
“He’s one of the ghosts that Brenna sees. Brenna McIntosh. Some other people report seeing him, too. That drawing in my office of the young boy with the teddy bear? One of the students, Jody Robinson, she drew that. She sees him. I just see glimpses, I get a feeling. But I don’t actually see him.”
“So you mainly stick to the first floor?” Rebecca asked. “Do you ever go upstairs?”
Kelly shook her head rather vehemently. “This is about all that I can handle. I can handle Elliot. I can handle the fact that he apparently has other friends, friends I never see evidence of and I’m happy to keep it that way. But when you go upstairs, things change. Only Brenna goes up there, and Carl, our custodian. I can’t even get halfway up the staircase before I start feeling dizzy. No one goes upstairs.”
“Well, it’s fairly safe to say that we’ll be going up there,” Rebecca said. “Can you tell me—us – about—what we could expect?”
<
br /> Kelly rubbed her hands up and down her arms as if she were cold. “I think I should keep showing you around.” She walked out of the room as Dex came around to me and held out the ball.
“Touch it,” he said.
I grimaced, pushing his arm away. “No. That’s a dead kid’s toy.”
“But you’re so good with balls.”
“Shut up.”
He put the ball on top of the first bed and we hurried after the two of them. Kelly led us back the way we came and down toward the classrooms. Almost all the doors were closed so we just read the signs on them as we walked past. Mrs. Collins. Mrs. Keats. Mr. Murphy. Ms. Ross. There were about fifteen rooms in total and the last ones we’d come across as we went further into the west wing were all the artistic electives.
“We’re an arts school,” Kelly explained, “but we still believe in having a proper, well-rounded education. Most of the teachers here just teach the basics for each grade—math, English, science, history. But two hours of every day the kids get to take art classes, and that’s where the teaching becomes more specialized. Like Brenna, here.”
We came to a stop outside an open door and peered inside. The room was covered in paintings with paint splattered stools and stacks of easels in the corner. At a large desk was a woman asleep, dark brown hair pooled all around her.
Kelly cleared her throat. “Like Brenna here,” she said a bit louder, but even then her voice was quiet as a mouse.
“Brenna!” Dex yelled.
I smacked him on the chest as the woman jumped up from her sleep, her hair all in her face. “What? What?”
“You’re a jerk,” I told him.
He shrugged. “Got the job done, didn’t I? Don’t say I’m not a man of results.”
Kelly waved at Brenna who was trying to clear her messy desk and appear like someone who hadn’t just fallen asleep on the job. “Hey, Brenna, sorry to wake you. The ghost hunters are here.”
Brenna got out of her chair and smiled at us. “Hi,” she said exuberantly. For some reason I was expecting Brenna to look like a meek and put-upon person but that wasn’t the case. She was young-looking, maybe just a few years older than me, with wavy brown hair and an apple-cheeked glow about her. “I’m Brenna McIntosh.”
“I’ll leave you guys with her now,” Kelly said politely before walking off down the hall like a wisp of a person.
“Can I tell you how happy I am to meet you?” Brenna said as she came around the desk. Dressed in boot-cut jeans and a black tunic, she seemed even more personable. She stopped in front of me and pulled me into a hug. “Sorry, I’m a hugger,” she said to my back while I was brought forward into a cloud of strawberry perfume.
“That’s okay,” I told her, getting my bearings as soon as she released me. “I guess you watch the show?”
“All the time,” she said proudly. She looked over at Dex. “And you, I loved you in the Sasquatch episode, well at least the parts of it that you were allowed to air. But poor Twatwaffle.”
He stuck out his lower lip in mock sympathy then sighed. “Yes. Thank god all good llamas go to heaven.”
She didn’t seem to catch on—or she didn’t mind—his sarcasm because she went onto Rebecca next. “And you must be the new manager. You’re doing a great job.”
I could have sworn Rebecca blushed at that. “Thank you.”
“Brenna,” Dex began, “do you mind if we talk to you on camera? Is this a good time?”
“No problem,” she said. “I’ve been preparing for this. It’s too bad I fell asleep, I probably ruined my Hollywood face.” She burst into a flurry of giggles.
“You look great,” I reassured her as Dex touched my shoulder and let me know he was running out to the car.
“So are you sure you’re okay with us filming right here today?” Rebecca prodded, ever mindful of a lawsuit. When Brenna nodded she went on, “Even with the kids and everything?”
“Oh,” she said, “well I guess you shouldn’t really film the kids. I mean, interview them and such. I think we would need permission for that. On camera, of course. Off camera I think it’s fine.”
“But doesn’t the school care if the school—or their kids—are being featured in a ghost hunting show? That’s bound to scare a lot of the parents, isn’t it?” I asked. I know I’d be concerned.
She leaned forward, her hair swinging in her face. “Davenport doesn’t care. She’s been wanting to build a brand new school since the other one burnt down. As far as she’s concerned, she doesn’t care if parents get scared. It will only make them want a better school, the one she thinks we deserve.”
“And what do you think?” Rebecca asked.
Brenna’s eyes darted around the room. “I’d have to agree. I need this job though and I can’t chance getting hired elsewhere. If we could move, I would be a lot happier.”
At least it explained why they were so willing to go on camera. Still, with that amount of determination and attention, a part of me wondered if the whole thing wasn’t exaggerated a little. Perhaps the little boy and his bouncing ball were a fake, perhaps we’d already been lied to. Perhaps there were no ghosts, just a faculty who really wanted a new school.
I looked quickly at Rebecca and I could see from the skeptical raise to her forehead that she was thinking the same thing. It was better to start treating this episode with a side of caution.
It wasn’t long before Dex came trotting back into the room with his camera in hand. His eyes were dancing, his body buzzing with adrenaline. “Get this,” he said, raising his camera up and flipping the viewfinder around for us to see. He pressed play, and as our four heads all converged around the screen, we watched as he filmed the ground, a paper plane lying at his feet. He picked it up and then aimed the camera up to the roof of the building. Within seconds, another paper plane came sailing down, barely visible against the foggy sky before it drifted lazily on an air current.
“There were only two planes,” he said, placing the camera down and pulling one of the paper planes out of his pocket, rubbing it between his fingers. “But still, I think that’s got to count for something.” He looked at Brenna. “Does anyone have access to the roof?”
She didn’t look shocked. “Just the custodian. I can get the keys. It’s locked for safety reasons.”
“So then it had to be a ghost,” he said.
“Unless the custodian’s taken up a new hobby,” Rebecca said, though I knew what she was thinking. Davenport herself or even Kelly could be up on the roof, tossing paper planes over the side, knowing they’d provide a pretty good show. “Brenna was just telling us that Ms. Davenport doesn’t mind if the school is featured on the show because they’re hoping the parents will want to move their kids into a newer school.” She stared hard at Dex, trying to pass on the message without saying anything more.
“Oh,” he said. He looked at Brenna. “Tell me, sweetcheeks, you wouldn’t happen to be pulling our leg about the whole ghost shit in order to get a new school, now would ya?” Leave it to Dex to be so direct. I knew for a fact that his bullshitting tolerance was pretty damn low.
Brenna’s mouth turned down, her eyes becoming rounder. “No. No, not at all. This is all real. And it’s only happening to me. No one else. They all feel it, they all believe me, but they don’t see it like I do. In fact, it’s gotten worse since I got here, at least that’s what some of the assholes here say, like it’s my fucking—sorry—my damn, fault. But I’m still the only one who gets haunted here. Me and a few students.”
“Jody,” Dex said slowly.
She nodded fervently. “Yes, Jody. They love her. Kyle too.” She stopped and looked at me. “You have to believe me, this is happening. I want to leave. I want to go to the new school. And if you guys can’t make the haunting stop, then at least the show will push the parents to make the move happen.”
“You do realize that we aren’t ghost whisperers,” Dex said sternly. “Perry and I, we just see them. Our job isn’t to fix anything, it’s
just to record it, report it.”
“Like batshit journalists,” I filled in. “Hacks. But we don’t banish anyone or anything.”
Except for that one time, I thought back to The Benson. I had to say that felt pretty good.
“I know that,” she said, and for once her expression wasn’t so jovial. “I’m just getting tired of this. And desperate. Please, you have to believe me.”
Rebecca walked over to a chair and pulled it out. “Here, love. Why don’t you sit down and we’ll start getting to the bottom of this.”
Brenna smiled gratefully and took a seat. “Okay. We have about an hour until my next class, but I should be able to wrap it up by then. If I start wasting footage, just let me know.”
Dex quickly got the camera set up and I pulled up a chair next to Brenna, feeling like a chump in my hoodie. Rebecca put wireless mics on the two of us and we got started.
I asked Brenna to go back to the beginning, from when she first started at the school. She’d only been hired at the start of the semester. The last teacher quit and no one really knows why. One day she had a nervous breakdown and resigned. According to her student Jody, it was someone called Shawna that made the teacher leave. Brenna said she eventually found out who Shawna was, along with Elliot. Both of them Jody described as her imaginary friends. When teaching first graders, imaginary friends weren’t normal but they weren’t that uncommon, either.
“At first,” she said, “the only odd things that happened were just Jody talking about Elliot and Shawna as if they were real people. Often children with imaginary friends still know that they are imaginary. But Jody acted like they were as real as her other classmates. Only…” she trailed off, her brow furrowing. “Only Shawna wasn’t someone that Jody liked…Jody feared her. That was another thing I found odd – I’d never heard of an imaginary enemy before.”
“Not unless the kid is batshit crazy,” Dex commented. I shot him a dirty look to which he shrugged.