by JL Bryan
Even as she spoke, a scraping and rattling sounded from the ceiling like something was being dragged across the attic floorboards.
“What is that?”
“Looks like a... roller skate?” Stacey said. “Um, I think something's about to—”
A loud crash sounded, followed by scattered thuds in its wake.
“That whole table of old sports equipment got turned over,” Stacey told me.
I leaped to my feet, my hand on my holstered flashlight. My gaze flicked from the ceiling to the open windows nearby. “What's happening now?”
“There's a couple things still moving. A baseball and a bat. The bat's just about stopped, but the baseball's rolled off into a corner. And that cold front is back, it's everywhere like a fog, floating through, it's—no. It's gone completely.”
“That was fast,” I said.
A heavy footfall sounded on the porch outside. I stiffened, watching the nearest of the two big windows, listening intently for the sound of another shoe to drop.
After waiting for what felt like several long, slow years, I finally whispered, “Did you hear that?”
“Huh? Which thing?”
“The porch down here.”
“No, I haven't really been focusing on the downstairs, sorry. What happened?”
“I thought I heard... something.” The curtains swayed in the outdoor breeze; it was easy to imagine someone standing just out of sight out there, listening to me, perhaps watching from the shadows. I'd only heard the one footstep, but it had been loud and clear, like the clomp of a heavy boot.
I couldn't bring myself to say the word footstep to Stacey, though, or tell her that I felt like someone was out there. It was as if saying it would cause the unseen entity to spring into action, to attack me while I was alone.
Trembling, I closed my laptop and turned off the desk lamp, extinguishing all the light in the room. This made it easier for me to watch the gloom outside the windows for any odd shapes or movement. It also made me feel less like I was on a lighted stage, fully visible to anyone stalking around outside.
“Are you sure you don't see anything down here?” I whispered, hoping she caught my urgent tone.
“Downstairs? Nope. Sorry.”
I approached the windows cautiously. The heavy canvas curtains shifted in the wind. I could feel the chilled air move across my skin, smell the damp green of the forest. The calling of the owls picked up. Hoo h-hoo, hoo h-hoo.
“The owls must have gotten into the peanut butter, because they are acting nutty,” Stacey whispered in my ear. She would have been watching through the cameras behind me, seeing me in shades of green on the night vision, probably yellow and orange on the thermal.
I leaned closer to the window where I'd heard the single footstep and peered out into the moonlit night. The central hub of the big fire pit was easy to see, as any overhanging limbs had been wisely cleared away to leave a clear path to the open sky. A few blackened logs lay there, left from the Conners' last fire.
The porch itself was much darker, hooded by its low roof.
It was hard to make myself speak, to intentionally draw the attention of whoever or whatever might be out there.
“H-hello?” I hated the shakiness and hesitation in my voice. I cleared my throat and tried again, a little bolder: “Is someone there? Show yourself.” That second part took some effort, because I wasn't sure I was mentally ready at that moment to see some dead thing stepping out at me, even if it meant progress on the case.
I leaned closer to the window screen until my face was against the cold metal mesh. I looked to the left, saw nothing but floorboards and an old rocking chair. Then I looked to the right. Nothing again, just some firewood stacked under the shelter of the back porch.
With a sigh, I stepped back. “I guess it was nothing. Anything upstairs?”
“Not since the cold front vanished like my mom's dog when you pull out the vacuum cleaner.”
Another floorboard creaked. Behind me, inside the room somewhere.
“Did you hear that?” Stacey whispered.
I turned toward the sound, bracing myself for whatever might be standing there.
Across the room, a shape moved in the doorway. It was gone as soon as I saw it, like someone had just walked past and out of sight down the hall.
“There is someone here,” I whispered. I hurried to the door, drawing my flashlight but keeping it off.
“Want me to come in?”
“Stand by and keep watch.” Drawing a deep breath, I stepped into the hall.
There was nothing to see, either in the hallway or in what I could discern of the main fireplace room up ahead. Moving up the hall, I looked into the open door to a small classroom with microscopes, test tubes, and ecology posters. Nobody was there.
The big fireplace room was shadowy and dim, lit only by moonlight, quiet and still.
I debated whether to head back to the office or go check the museum area, but then Stacey's voice broke in: “Ellie, something's upstairs.”
“Something like what?”
“It looked like a person, but it just cut the corner of the night vision camera. It was heading toward that cabin-type area with the bedroom and bathroom inside.”
“I'll check it out. Could be the one I was just following.”
“I'm coming with you.”
I should have protested, because the dead are more likely to appear to one person than to two, but this campground made me feel more uneasy than the average haunted house. Perhaps there had been a lot of tragedy or violence here. Maybe it was the stony owl that made the difference, an ancient burial ground that had been disturbed, just the kind of thing that could give an environment a deep and powerful negative psychic charge—a curse, in effect.
But that was just one possibility. The stony owl could be entirely benign; any souls associated with it should have moved on centuries earlier. However, any spirit that had clung to the earthly plane that long was likely to be a twisted and dangerous type, in my experience.
On the other hand, maybe the campground was haunted by the deaths of the three boys I'd read about. Were they still hanging around the campground? Kicking around sports equipment in the attic, perhaps? Playing hide and seek with Shiloh?
The front door creaked open. Stacey entered, armed with a video camera. “Ready to capture these ghosts, ma'am. Well, images of them. Then the real thing. Unless there's a way to skip ahead.”
“I wish we could.”
We walked through the folding doors at the back of the utility closet, past a shiny new water heater, and up the narrow stairs to the second floor.
“I haven't been this nervous going into an attic since playing Postman at Baird Scott's party in tenth grade,” Stacey whispered.
“Shh.” I cut her off, partly so we could approach the entity in silence, partly because I was worried she would continue her story with more details.
At the top of the stairs, I brought out my EMF meter, a handy little doodad that helps identify any spikes in electromagnetic activity or drops in temperature.
We walked among the spilled sports equipment, Stacey recording video while I gathered EMF readings.
“They should just toss half this junk,” Stacey whispered. “And maybe the other half, too.”
The electromagnetic readings rose around the baseball and bat, possibly indicating some residual psychokinetic energy from whatever had knocked them over.
“It was moving that way.” Stacey pointed to the closed door of the indoor cabin dominating the back corner.
“Maybe there's still a resident in that old room.”
“And now we have to go poking around in it.”
“Feel free to wait here.” I started toward the door, taking readings.
“Forget that. I'm with you.” Stacey stayed close behind, watching me through her compact video camera.
Near the closed door, the EMF meter lit up. Stacey's gasp told me she'd seen it.
I touched the iron door handle
.
“It's cold,” I whispered, then opened it. I yanked my hand off the handle and waved it vigorously to shake off the cold, as though I were greeting whatever entity awaited us.
There was nothing obvious inside the bedroom of the indoor cabin, no sign of the walking apparition that Stacey and I had glimpsed. My EMF meter was lit up and flashing like a Christmas tree, though, and the room was noticeably colder even though its windows were shuttered.
“The ambient temperature in here is ten degrees lower than the rest of the attic.” I led the way through the clutter of boxes, past the mildewed heap of an old tennis net, following the EMF readings. I squeezed past the bed, barely visible under a crumpled tarp, rusty paint buckets, and old boxes.
Like the bread crumbs in Hansel and Gretel, the EMF spikes and temperature drops led inexorably to the dark, windowless bathroom in the corner. I would have preferred a candy house, personally.
Leaving the light off, I stepped inside. There was barely enough room to turn around; dusty cardboard boxes were heaped in the bathtub. Hooks, lures, and a coil of fishing line lay in the sink.
“Anybody here?” My voice echoed back in the small chamber. I caught movement at the corner of my eye. Turning quickly to look, I faced my own reflection looking back at me from the medicine cabinet mirror over the sink.
Stacey opened her mouth to say something, but I motioned for her to stay quiet. I followed my own advice and went as still and silent as I could manage, watching and listening.
“I'm not seeing anything,” Stacey finally said anyway, still looking at her camera display.
“The temperature's almost back to normal. The EMF spikes have stopped, too. Whatever we followed in here, it's gone now.” I looked over minute cracks in the unadorned plaster wall, as if I'd find some sort of ghost-goo left behind.
“Maybe it just came by to brush its teeth before heading out,” Stacey said.
I swung open the medicine cabinet and looked over the narrow steel shelves. A few items were inside, neatly arranged as if for inspection by a drill sergeant.
“Look at this.” I eased aside so she could bring the camera closer. It was a tight fit with both of us in the room. “A can of hair pomade. A straight razor, with a rotten leather strop for sharpening.”
“It's like stuff my grandpa's grandpa would have used.”
Carefully, I lifted the straight razor and swung it open. The blade was dull and rusty.
“I hope you brought tetanus shots, Ellie,” Stacey said, in a warning tone.
I gently replaced the blade. “Okay. I don't know about you, but I'm about ready to get out of here—”
“So ready. My bags are packed. Not, you know, literally. But up here.” She tapped her head. “I'm all packed and ready to go. Mentally.”
“Great.” I continued to take readings as we made our way back to the stairs.
Before we left, I took a long look at the items scattered on the floor—the baseball bat, the deflated rubber ball, the lumpy wooden toy car that looked like it wouldn't have rolled very fast down even the steepest and greasiest of hills.
“What do you think?” Stacey asked me, waiting halfway down the steps.
“I think there's a good chance this place has a serious paranormal infestation,” I said. “Maybe it's those three kids, maybe it's something else. Whatever it is has enough psychokinetic power to bump objects around. And if it can move an object—”
“It can hurt somebody,” Stacey finished.
I nodded, and we moved on, not feeling at all uplifted by what we'd encountered so far. And there was still a long night ahead.
Chapter Fourteen
We returned to the van, where I popped open a cold canned coffee—not my favorite thing, but better than the carbonated herbal energy drinks Stacey brings, at least in my opinion.
“It's like a weight lifted off our backs the moment we came outside, huh?” Stacey said, between sips of something loaded with ginseng and guarana. “It's pretty wrong in there.”
“Yeah, I can't say I'm in favor of them opening this place for kids,” I said.
“It'll be safe by the time we're done with it, though.”
“Not necessarily.” I let that hang in the air. We hadn't cracked every case, hadn't successfully purged the troublesome spirits at every turn. There had been cases where we couldn't help, or where the client had grown impatient and fired us. Josh was threatening to do exactly that, in his sales-friendly way.
I drove out of the parking lot and down the rutted gravel utility road, driving slowly so I wouldn't make a lot of noise approaching the caretaker's cottage where the Conners lived. We planned to keep our distance from the house, but we needed to get around the hill a little bit, close enough to receive clear signals from our cameras inside.
As we rounded the last bend to their house, I cut the headlights so they wouldn't blare through anyone's bedroom window. I parked in the road, still a few dozen yards from the house, and killed the engine.
The house was dark, much of its shape cloaked by the woods that had grown in close around it. Everyone was likely asleep; it was nearly three in the morning.
“Okay, let's see what we've got.” Stacey pulled the feeds from the cameras and microphone hidden in Allison and Josh's room.
Sitting in the back of the van with Stacey, I watched the monitors come online. We looked at thermal and night vision images of Allison and Josh lying in bed, which definitely felt intrusive on our part. It would have helped if Josh had worn a shirt.
“Josh doesn't look like he misses many days at the gym.” Stacey gestured at the night vision image of his muscular arm.
“That's inappropriate.”
“But accurate. I mean, maybe he skips leg day occasionally—”
“We're supposed to be focused on the windows.”
“I am, but nothing's happening. Do you think the tall shadow figure that walked through their room is the same one we saw at the lodge?”
“No idea.”
“If it's not, this place is starting to seem overrun with ghosts.”
“Yep. There's certainly space for them.” I looked ahead through the windshield at the dense, gloomy woods that surrounded the house and engulfed the hillside trails winding toward the ancient effigy above. “Space and time.”
Despite Stacey's comment, the house didn't seem overrun with ghosts at the moment. Josh and Allison slept peacefully. We couldn't see the rest of the house's interior. The microphone under their bed was large and sensitive enough to pick up the soft sound of Allison's breathing; if there was a noise anywhere in the house, we'd probably hear it.
Nearly an hour passed before I glimpsed something move—not on the monitor, but up ahead, in the woods. I grabbed night vision goggles and scrambled toward the front of the van to look out the windshield.
“What's up?” Stacey asked.
“Maybe nothing.” Sliding on the heavy goggles, I tried for a better look at the moving shape.
There it was—a roughly human-sized form weaving through the woods, sometimes visible and sometimes not, but definitely heading right for our clients' house. It could have come from the lake and the small village of activity huts there... or it could have come down from the hilltop.
“It's not nothing,” I said. “I'll check it out.”
“Should I come?”
I shook my head. “We may have chased away the entity at the lodge. I'll get a better chance at a closer look if I go alone.”
“The Rule of One,” Stacey intoned, with great solemnity, though I don't think we'd ever used that term before. It made sense, though—ghosts are most likely to show up when a living person is alone, will sometimes show up for two people, but are least likely to appear in front of a group of people. A ghost who does that is typically stirred up and active, very energized. Normally, they avoid the living, keeping to the dark and lonely places of the world where they can suffer in peace.
“Yeah, sure. The Rule of One.” I turned off the van
's automatic interior light before opening the door and stepping down onto the dirt road. I closed the door behind me as softly as I could, trying to make no noise at all.
I walked along the side of the road, staying under the shadows of the trees. My night vision goggles presented the path ahead in varied shades of green. I carried our smallest night vision camera in case I found anything.
Ahead, I saw no sign of the walker in the woods, but walls of undergrowth blocked my view. It might have gone toward Allison's bedroom, where she'd seen the tall shadow person enter their house.
I picked up the pace, not wanting to miss my chance to encounter the entity before it walked indoors or vanished back into the forest.
As I drew closer, approaching the clients' parked cars, a pale shape emerged from among the trees, moving rapidly in my direction. It was human-shaped and very solid. Either it was a very strong apparition or an actual live human out here in the predawn.
I stopped next to Allison's SUV, awkwardly trying to hide out of sight, but not trying to look like I was hiding in case I'd already been spotted.
Footsteps approached, solid and regular. They crossed in front of the car that I hid behind.
I held my breath as the footsteps came near. Definitely a living person, not a ghost. Yikes.
The footsteps walked right past where I hid, crossing in front of the car instead of behind it.
I leaned out from behind the car and saw the figure more clearly as it approached the front door of the cottage. It was male, shirtless and muscular; for a moment I took it for Josh, but then I remembered I'd just seen him in his own bed.
Nate, I realized. This was confirmed when he glanced around nervously, as if he sensed someone watching him, and I finally got a halfway decent look at his face.
I froze where I was; moving was more likely to attract his attention than remaining motionless in the shadows.
He wasn't looking at me, though, but at our van up the road, visible in the thin moonlight if one's eyes were sharp enough. Apparently his were.
Nate strode right up between the cars, toward the van and toward me. I backed out of the way, but there was nowhere to hide.