The Dead Show

by Amanda Fasciano

  “That kid does know how to tell a creepy story,” Liam said with a slow nod.

  “See? It’s perfect,” Teeny said with a triumphant smile.

  “If you guys are good, I want to go check on Lauren,” Aiden said.

  “Yeah sure, we’ll grab our gear, lock up, and we can all get out of here,” Liam said.

  Cadence could see Lauren’s color had mostly returned, and she looked steadier than when she had left the prison. Derrick and Snow were already with Sam and Lauren at the van as Aiden and Cadence made their way over. Roy and Whitfield followed Liam and Teeny as they went about gathering their things and locking the front doors of the prison back up.

  “You okay?” Aiden asked, reaching out and putting a hand on Lauren’s arm.

  “Yeah,” Lauren said with a sigh. “You can all stop hovering over me now.”

  “We’re just concerned,” Derrick said.

  “I don’t know why I let her get under my skin like that,” Lauren said, shaking her head.

  “Dan is still a touchy subject for you, it’s understandable,” Aiden said. “And the way she phrased the question was like she was on the attack or something. If she had come at me like that, I might have walked out too, and I’m not nearly as psychically sensitive or as close to the subject as you are.”

  Lauren smiled at Aiden and gave him a hug. “Thank you.” She then turned to Derrick. “And thank you too. I didn’t mean to upset everyone.”

  “It’s all good,” Derrick said with a smile.

  Aiden’s gaze moved to Derrick. “And congratulations to you. They were seriously impressed with the history you gave and the way you gave it.”

  “Really?” Derrick was unable to keep the excitement from his face or voice.

  “Yeah, man, they were impressed. So was I,” Aiden said.

  “Me too,” Lauren echoed.

  “I’m so glad,” Derrick said with a happy sigh. “I was working on that for a while.”

  “It showed,” Liam said, coming up to stand beside the group. “You guys were all fantastic.”

  “And Lauren, I’m sorry,” Teeny said. “I should have phrased the question better, but it’s just how it popped into my mind. I really didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “It’s okay,” Lauren said with a sigh. “Thanks for the apology. It’s just that it’s been less than a year since he died. Ex-husband or not, I still loved him, and it still hurts. And I was on edge in there anyway, so probably a little more prone to over-reaction.”

  Teeny smiled and crossed the distance between her and Lauren with her arms outstretched, hugging the woman with affection. “We work in Hollywood, we’re used to over-reaction,” the small woman said, joking.

  “So, is that all you needed us for?” Aiden asked, looking over at Liam.

  “For today, yeah,” Liam replied. “But like we said last night, I want you guys on our team while we investigate. We want you to come in with us and be a special guest for the episode. You seem to be a great investigator, Derrick definitely knows his shit about this place, and if Lauren is up for this, it would be interesting to work that angle here. We don’t bring in psychics that often.”

  “I’m not so sure about me,” Lauren said. “Give me some time to think about it, but that place just feels evil. I’m not sure I can handle what’s in there.” Even with Sam protecting her, the prison was overwhelming. She was glad that Dan and Aiden had decided against it before. She couldn’t imagine having tried to go in there for an investigation without the help and protection Sam was giving her.

  “Well, it’d be a shame to go without you, but I can understand,” Teeny said.

  Teeny and Liam finished packing up their van and walked back over to the group clustered around Aiden’s van. “We’ll be heading back here tomorrow night for the investigation. We’ve hired an off duty cop to be here to make sure none of the locals try to screw with us,” Teeny said.

  “I think you’d find it difficult to find many locals who would willingly come out here at all, let alone to screw with you guys,” Aiden said.

  “People have done it on other investigations before,” Liam replied. “Better safe than sorry, right?”

  “Can’t argue that,” Aiden said with a nod. “You have my number. I’ll do it for sure, but I don’t know about Lauren, she needs to think about if she would go in there again or not. Derrick will likely come with me.”

  “Sounds good man. Plan on 4 tomorrow afternoon, then,” Liam said, reaching over to shake Aiden’s hand. “We’ll call if there is any change.”

  “It’s good that they have at least had the foresight to have someone here who can call for help if there is some sort of emergency,” Snow said as the breathers began to disperse. “I have a feeling this investigation is not going to be the smoothest.”

  “I have a feeling you’re right,” Cade said with a nod. She glanced back over at the building. Roy’s presence, hovering just inside the open doorway was not lost on her. For all of his disappearing, while they were there, she was glad to see him taking his duties moderately seriously, and keeping watch over the living intruders.

  *****

  “Hey, Tom, how’s it going?” Aiden called to the man behind the lunch counter. The smell of barbeque permeated the air, making Aiden’s mouth water. Derrick and Lauren followed him in as Tom looked up, one hand holding a phone to his ear and gave the trio a wave.

  Pho-Q was a favorite place for the trio for lunch, as it was in the same strip mall as Lauren’s shop. The restaurant was a mash-up of barbeque and Vietnamese soup. Tom and his business partner Chris had owned the place for three years, and it was a popular local place. They chose a table near the counter and took their seats, not needing to see a menu. They knew what they wanted.

  “What do you mean they won’t let you do the radio ad?” Tom could be heard saying. He paused and then shook his head in disbelief. “It’s the name of the restaurant, that’s ridiculous!”

  Derrick chuckled and shook his head. He knew what the name of the restaurant sounded like when said aloud, he could believe that someone would be giving them a hard time about a radio ad.

  “Whatever, fine, we just won’t spend our advertising money with them,” Tom said and hung up the phone. He took a moment to calm himself and then walked over to the table. “Hey, guys, the usual?”

  “Three bowls of pho with pulled pork,” Aiden said with a nod.

  “You guys are in at a weird time,” Tom noted. “Got something going on?”

  “Yeah, actually,” Derrick said. “You ever hear of a TV show called The Dead Show?”

  “Haven’t watched it but I have heard of it. My wife’s friend loves all that paranormal stuff,” Tom said.

  “Well they are in town, and they asked us to help them investigate Barrington Prison,” Lauren said. “We’ll be on the show.”

  “Oh, that is sweet! You’ll have to let me know when they’re going to air it. We can have a viewing party here or something. I’ll go get your orders.” The man turned and made his way back to the kitchen.

  “Have you decided if you’re going back now that you’ve had a night to sleep on it?” Aiden asked as he turned his attention to Lauren.

  “I have,” she said after taking a deep breath. “I’m not going back. You and Dan said it seemed too dangerous of a place for me. And I’ll be honest, the feelings I got from that place were flat out scary, and that was in broad daylight. I had to shield myself, and even then the oppressiveness of the place was getting to me. And I was only inside for less than an hour. I don’t think I could manage to be there all night.”

  “Okay,” Aiden nodded. “That’s fair. What about you, Derrick?”

  “Oh, I’m in,” Derrick said with a grin.

  “Just keep in touch with me,” Lauren said. “That way I know the two of you are alright.”

  “Will do,” Aiden said, sitting back just a little, as Tom came back with their three bowls of pulled pork pho.

  Derrick looked up at To
m and shook his head. “I know, that you know what the name of this place sounds like. Why do you keep trying to get radio ads? You know they won’t let you.”

  “It’s fun to rattle their chains every now and then,” the middle-aged man said with a smile. A waitress came over and brought their drinks, setting them down with straws before scurrying off to take care of another table.

  “What does Chris think about that?” Lauren asked.

  “Who do you think is out there trying to get the radio ads done?” Tom said, laughing.

  “The two of you are terrible, and I feel bad for your wives,” Lauren said with a smile, shaking her head.

  “Eh, they knew what they were getting into when they married us,” Tom smiled before turning and heading back into the kitchen.

  Lauren laughed and shook her head. “Terrible.”

  “Yeah, but damn good food,” Aiden said.

  Lauren’s phone rang, preventing her from digging into her pho. She looked at the number and frowned before answering. “Hello?”

  Both men with her paused in their eating, as they watched Lauren’s face quickly change expressions from concerned to alarmed.

  “Are you okay?” Lauren’s voice was sharp with worry. She paused, listening to the person on the other side. “No, it’s fine. It may just be me who comes, Aiden and Derrick have another appointment. I’ll be there soon, I just need to gather some things.”

  “What was that?” Aiden asked after she had hung up the phone.

  “That was Robin Owens,” Lauren said. “Apparently, she was physically assaulted by Emma a little while ago.”

  “That escalated fast,” Derrick said.

  Aiden nodded, agreeing. “Yeah, a little too fast for my liking. Dude, I know you want to come to the prison tonight for the investigation, but I would feel a lot better if you were with Lauren. If things have gotten that serious, I don’t want her alone.”

  “I’m not alone, remember?” Lauren was referring to Sam as she spoke.

  “I know, but I still don’t want you being the only one of us there. I want a physical person there to help, not just an ethereal one,” Aiden said. “I can do the prison, I’ve been there before anyway.”

  “But then you’ll be alone,” Lauren said, pointing out the obvious.

  “Not really,” Derrick said with a shrug. “He’ll have Liam and Teeny with him. And you know Cadence and Snow will be there.”

  “And you’re fine with not going to the big television shoot?” Lauren lifted a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Yeah, I’m good. I did my thing yesterday with the history. And to be honest, I’m a little scared I would slip up and say something I shouldn’t,” Derrick said. “Besides, doing a TV show is cool and all, but this is helping a family. That’s more important.”

  “Let’s finish lunch first,” Aiden said. “Then I can help get you guys prepared to go, then I’ll head off to the prison.”

  Sam, hovering nearby as always, pulled out his phone and dialed his sister.

  “Hey Sam,” Cadence said as she answered the phone.

  “Hey sis,” Sam said. “They are splitting the party on us tonight.”

  “What do you mean?” His sister's voice was half confused and half concerned.

  “Lauren just got a call from Robin Owens. Apparently, Emma attacked her. I don’t know how bad the attack was yet, but now Lauren and Derrick are going to the Owens home, and Aiden is going to the prison.”

  “Hang on a sec,” Cade said. She then relayed the information to Snow. Sam could hear Snow’s voice in the background but couldn’t make out what he was saying. After a few minutes of muted conversation between Cadence and Snow, Cadence came back to speak with Sam.

  “Okay, we think we have a solution,” Cade said.

  “Okay,” Sam said, waiting for her to continue.

  “Snow and I have to go to the prison. We have no choice, really. Whitfield will go with you. He said he had something to finish up for the NHD but that he should be able to meet you soon. Sound good?”

  “Sounds good,” Sam said. “I’ll see him when he gets there. Oh, and Cade?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You and Snow be careful tonight,” Sam said.

  “We will be. You too,” Cadence said before hanging up with her brother.

  Chapter 12

  Aiden pulled his van up into the gravelly parking lot of broken cement. The van that Teeny and Liam were using was already there, the back doors open wide, though the two investigators were nowhere to be seen. Aiden killed the engine and got out of the vehicle. He knew Snow and Cadence would be here somewhere as well since the living were traipsing through a haunted building. He leaned against the door and waited, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Good timing,” Liam called to Aiden with a wave as he came down the small hill from the prison. “We’ve got most of the equipment in already, but I’ll need your help for this last piece.”

  “You could have called me in earlier, I would have helped,” Aiden said as he pushed off the side of his van and crossed the few feet over to The Dead Show van. Glancing in the back, he could see there was indeed only one thing left. A strange case the size of a large dog cage that looked as if it were made out of glass or thick clear plastic was attached to a black base about three inches thick.

  “Nah, it’s all good,” Liam said as he climbed up into the van and dragged the box toward the opening so that he and Aiden could carry it inside.

  “Bet you’ve never seen anything like this,” Liam said with a smile.

  “You’d be right, what is it?” Aiden helped him turn the box so that the handles on its sides were easy for them to grab.

  “A ghost catching box,” Liam said.

  “A what?” Aiden couldn’t keep the chuckle from his voice at the ridiculous name.

  “Yeah I know,” Liam said with a shake of his head and a grimace. “We haven’t come up with anything better yet. We had been calling it a Faraday’s box, but it’s a little too different from what one of those really is. This is our first field test of it.”

  “What is it supposed to do?” Aiden asked. Both men grunted as they got it out of the van and the full weight of it pulled on their arms. “Damn…it’s heavy.”

  “I know, right?” Liam said, his voice showing strain from the physical exertion carrying the heavy box. “There’s science behind it. I guess Teeny is better explaining that though. All I know is it is supposed to suck ghosts near it inside of it and make them visible.”

  “How does it do that?” Aiden asked, feeling a knot form in his stomach.

  “Like I said, Teeny knows the science it’s based on. I just hope it works.” Liam would have shrugged with his answer, but the weight of the box made that impossible.

  Aiden frowned and glanced up at the prison. If this box did what Liam said it could do, this is exactly the kind of thing that Cade and Snow didn’t need. He debated “accidentally” dropping his side in the hopes that it would break something, but the last thing he needed was a television show suing him for breaking their experimental equipment. Given the disdain and indifference the two seemed to be showing to the profession they chose to be in, he hoped that it was a gimmick. Perhaps it would just have a projector in it that would show mist or a figure pre-recorded into the box. Theatrics for a television show, that had to be it.

  “Where do we have to carry this bad boy to?” Aiden asked at length, as they got nearer to the prison.

  “We were thinking of putting it in the open area between the second and third cellblocks. That also should put it in range of solitary and the death row,” Liam said.

  “Is that a wise idea?” Aiden’s eyebrow lifted as he asked the question. He had already told them those areas had bad juju.

  “Is what a wise idea?” Teeny asked as the men came into the prison. The lobby now boasted three white plastic portable long tables that had cases of equipment on them. Snow and Cadence were off to one side, unseen by the humans.

  �
�I think Aiden is of the opinion that we shouldn’t do anything near any of the so-called trouble spots,” Liam said.

  “I just have no idea what this beast of a thing is supposed to do is all. You get something violent, and it might backfire,” Aiden said as he and Liam set the box down on the floor for a moment.

  “Okay,” Teeny said with a sigh. “What it does is send out electromagnetic pulses that should give the ghosts more energy and draw them in. This place has been left alone for a long time, so the extra energy to feed off of should make them want to follow it back to the box like a starving person following the scent of food to a feast. At that point, the box should sense the signatures of a spirit’s presence. Lower temp, higher electromagnetic frequency, all those usual bells, and whistles. It will then put out an opposite signal to the EMF that the ghost is putting out to pull it into the box.”

  “Operating on the theory that magnetic opposites attract,” Aiden said.

  “Exactly,” Teeny said with a nod, looking pleased. “See, someone understands me,” she shot to Liam. “Anyway, once it is trapped in the box, we barrage it with high EMF to excite particles in the box to try to make it visible.”

  “But high EMF can cause hallucinations in human beings. What if you just imagine that you see something, like a self-fulfilling prophecy? You think you should see something, so you hallucinate that you do.”

  “Hence the cameras,” Teeny explained. “No matter what we think we see or don’t see, we’ll have a regular camera, a night vision camera, and a thermal camera trained on it, as well as a couple of audio recorders in the box to get the electronic voice phenomenon the ghost produces.”

  “It’s an experiment,” Liam shrugged. “If it works great, if it doesn’t, there’s no harm in trying.”

  Aiden nodded and shrugged. “I can’t argue with that,” he said, even though he really wanted to.

  “This is concerning,” Snow said as talk of the box died down, and the two television personalities began outfitting Aiden with his mic pack and go pro camera and such.

  “You think it will work?” Cadence moved closer to the box to get a better look at it as she asked the question.