Speed Dating with the Dead

by Nicholson, Scott

  Groovy effect, now all I need is a ragged sheet on a coat hanger...

  The shadows shifted again, though the air was still.

  Wayne crept forward, keeping his head low so he wouldn’t bump it on the rafters. The flashlight’s globe bobbed in front of him and the boards creaked beneath his boots. The hairs on his neck tingled–the wiring, it’s an EMF effect on my brain circuitry–and the air seemed charged with an expectant weight. A papery rustle in the walls, probably the migration of disturbed mice, sounded almost like a whisper.

  Cumulatively, the various phenomena could be called an “encounter,” but Wayne knew them for what they were. Suggestion, a mild alteration in the physical environment, and cultural folklore meant that if it walked like a ghost, talked like a ghost, and shat like a ghost, it was ghost. The image of ghostly turds made him suppress a grin.

  Then the shadow moved again.

  Mice.

  A chunk of darkness pulled itself free and moved near a crusted brick chimney. Wayne flicked his beam toward it, and the black outline grew more vivid.

  It was a human form.

  A brittle, high frequency pierced his ears and his teeth jolted as if he were chewing tin foil.

  The whisper came again, and this time the wind was quiet and the words were clear and in a language mice never spoke outside of Saturday-morning cartoons: “You’re blinding me.”

  Wayne retreated a step and his skull knocked against a support post, sending squiggly lime sparks across the backs of his eyelids. His flashlight bounced to the decking and went out. He wobbled and hugged the post for balance.

  The temperature in the attic dropped 10 degrees and the electrical surge rippled from his head to his toes.

  The wind, dummy, it’s November. And mice. Yeah. Mice.

  He squinted into the darkness, orienting himself by the distant square light of the access door and the zebra-striped vent. The dark form now blended into the black space of the attic, and it was easy to believe he’d imagined the whole thing.

  But that didn’t stop his heart from hammering like a man trapped in a coffin.

  “Wayne?” Burton called.

  He swallowed and his throat chafed as if the air had turned to sawdust. “I’m okay,” he croaked.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I heard a couple of bumps.”

  “I dropped my light.” Wayne reached out with the tip of his boot, probing for the flashlight, wondering what he would do if something grabbed his foot.

  Burton’s head poked up through the access opening and he swept a flashlight across the attic until Wayne stood in its spotlight like a cabaret dancer on stage. He blinked into the light–You’re blinding me–and then glanced toward the chimney.

  The shape was gone, just as he knew it would be.

  Because it had never been there.

  We made a promise, Beth, but neither of us believed it. And lying gets easier as you get older.

  He stooped and gathered his flashlight from its bed of shredded paper. He tested it and found it still worked. “Okay, pass me a couple of the cameras,” Wayne said, pulse returning to normal.

  He was a little embarrassed at his suggestibility. He’d never considered himself a skeptic, and he wasn’t interested in all the physiological changes that caused people to hallucinate. Ghosts were good business, from campfire storytelling to blockbuster horror movies. With thousands of people running around chasing them with fancy electronics, the poor souls were probably hiding safely under ground instead of rattling chains and slamming doors.

  Burton set a plastic case on the decking and slid it toward Wayne. “Two Sony DVMs,” he said. “Hey, it’s cold up here.”

  “November in the mountains,” Wayne said. “What do you expect?”

  He mounted the first camera so that it would catch the main section of the attic, though one wing of the hotel would not be visible. He aimed the second camera so it would take in the chimney. He connected the cables that Burton had snaked toward him, and then used the viewfinder to test the chimney cam. As he zoomed in, the camera’s auto focus fixed on a hand print in the chimney’s soot and grime.

  Made by a worker’s glove, probably.

  He zoomed out and duck-walked over to the chimney, keeping his head low. He ran his flashlight over the bricks and masonry joints. The hand print was gone.

  He went back to the camera and set it to record, the satellite hard drive in the control room capable of recording an entire weekend’s worth of footage. “Come on out and play,” he called into the dead air of the attic.

  “What’s that?” Burton called from below.

  “Nothing,” Wayne said.

  What was he expecting? Beth?

  Nothing.

  Just like always.

  Chapter 7

  Nailed him.

  These New Age flakes were too busy smoking fairy dust, drinking koo-koo Kool-Aid, and gazing into crystals to peek behind the curtain. Which gave Ann Vandooren all the power of the Wizard of Oz, and by Sunday, Digger Wilson and his band of merry pranksters would wish they’d never left Kansas, or Pluto, or wherever the hell these losers came from.

  Ann had hidden a closed-circuit television camera in the corner of the attic two days earlier, renting Room 306 so she could be across the hall from the infamous Room 318. She’d drilled a hole through her closet ceiling and surreptitiously ran two cables into the attic. One cable connected to her multiplexor to store video footage on a hard drive, while the other cable allowed remote operation of a pocket-size projector. She’d borrowed the gear from the Optical Sciences department at Westridge University, where she was a tenured professor of physics.

  The trick had worked better than she had imagined. With Duncan’s help, she’d collected footage of herself in a black gown and stage make-up, dancing and cavorting in front of a sheet while floor-level spotlights blazed up from below. In the editing process, she’d turned the image into a reverse negative, so that her body appeared almost translucent. She’d then dubbed the footage in slow motion, creating a rippling, almost sensuous ballet. It had taken an hour to aim the projector lens so that the image appeared to float across the attic, and the dust and sweat had been worth the result.

  Ann figured Digger would squeal like a pig on a hillbilly honeymoon, run from the attic, and cry “Wolf,” giving her an opportunity to retrieve her gear and let the mystery drive SSI batty for a few days. Then, after all the conference attendees had marveled over the “evidence,” Ann would come out with her own version of the facts, backed by a video recording of the hoax.

  But Digger had actually approached the image, more startled than afraid. She could almost respect him for that. After all, his sick obsession was a close cousin to her own scientific curiosity. A pity he wasted his energy and resources on bunk.

  “What did you get on him?” asked Duncan Hanratty, her graduate assistant and temporary lover. He was on the bed, propped against pillows and reading the latest issue of Popular Mechanics.

  “I’ll show you the clip later,” she said. “When the phonies stand up and start blathering, I’ll roll this out and dash ice water in their faces.”

  “You’re sexy when you’re mean.”

  “Lucky for you.” She wondered if Digger had reported the incident to his team. She might not get an opportunity to sneak back into the attic, especially if SSI got their cameras hooked up. For space cadets, they sure knew their stuff when it came to high-tech gear.

  “What do you have against these guys, anyway?” Duncan said, tossing the magazine aside and rubbing his tousled hair in that sleepy, Teddy-bear manner that made him so adorable for minutes at a stretch.

  “This pseudoscience gives real science a bad name,” she said. “We’re planning the first mission to Jupiter, we’ve mapped the human genetic code, and we’re making major breakthroughs in nanotechnology. But there’s no sense of wonder in it. People would rather engage in make-believe.”

  “Still
seems like a waste of our weekend,” Duncan said. “We could be logging some lab time.”

  “You’re too young to understand.” It was her favorite taunt, though he was in his mid-twenties and only 15 years younger than she.

  “I understand perfectly,” he said. “You need to know you’re right, and you need other people to know they’re wrong.”

  Ann checked her laptop and made sure the other pieces of bait were ready. She’d planted a few digital recorders around the hotel, triggered by wireless remote signals. The recorders contained cryptic sound bites such as the one she’d broadcast for Digger in the attic. “You’re blinding me” was one of the most obvious, given that ghost hunters tended to work in the dark and carry flashlights.

  “The trouble is they don’t know they’re wrong,” she said. “They’re trying to prove a negative.”

  “Well, your scientific method is suspect, too,” Duncan said, with that infuriating smugness. Or maybe Ann was only infuriated because he had a point. “You can hardly consider your approach methodical and objective, because you hold the belief that ghosts don’t exist. Therefore, you are trying to prove a foregone conclusion rather than collect data in an impartial manner.”

  “What’s your point?” It was the common response of those in a weak position. But at least she had the authority to stop sleeping with him if necessary.

  “You’re in high dudgeon,” he said.

  “I have no idea what ‘high dudgeon’ means.”

  “Me, either, but whatever it is, you’re in it.”

  Ann scrolled through some programs on the laptop. She wasn’t in the mood to argue or play, which were usually the same when it came to Duncan. She’d seduced half her male assistants, and one of her female assistants, since securing her Ph.D., and Duncan was the first she’d actually almost loved. “You know what’s ironic?”

  “You as a NASCAR queen?” he said, his hand creeping toward his belt.

  She was wearing blue jeans and a Dale Earnhardt sweatshirt, her hair tied back in a pony tail instead of flaring in the usual defiant and deranged curls. The biggest insult was the Carolina Panthers ball cap clamped down on her forehead. But the disguise had worked when, during her preliminary scouting expedition, she’d blundered into a cramped rear room where the hotel staff sat sullen and tobacco-soaked. She didn’t quite have the wrinkled, defeated look of the permanent underclass, but she had passed for some sort of laborer, because she’d given a conspiratorial wave that said, “This place, what can you do?” One of the maids had even directed her to the service stairs, where traffic was minimal.

  “Shut up and listen for a change,” she said. “I’m trying to be objective here.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Assuming 50 people are here focusing their energy on ghosts, what if the combined electromagnetic force of their brain circuitry slightly altered the normal EMF state of the hotel? And subsequently that alteration led to hallucinations, feelings of disorientation, and a sense of being watched or touched?”

  “You mean the power of wishful thinking?”

  “Or maybe just projection or self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  “That’s the whole trouble with the supernatural,” Duncan said. “It’s beyond the laws of nature and, as such, can’t be measured, quantified, or compared. It’s like arguing religion. Say a child is swept away in a flood but gets snagged on a tree branch and survives. The rescue is called miraculous proof of God’s mercy, but what about the people who drowned?”

  “They come back as waterlogged ghosts?”

  “Have you noticed,” he asked, “that most of our conversations are in the form of questions?”

  “And this is a bad thing?”

  “You love to be bad.” Duncan rolled off the bed and stood behind her. He kissed the back of her neck and then peered over her shoulder at the computer screen. “Hey, did the light level just change in the attic?”

  “What if we accidentally discovered irrefutable proof of the afterlife while trying to debunk it?”

  “It would be a miracle,” he said.

  Ann clicked through the files on her computer. She had five more doctored videos and a folder full of superimposed still images. She’d spent one on Digger, but she could use that one again. Maybe she’d wait until several true believers were around to witness proof of the impossible.

  She switched to the view from the hidden spycam in the attic. Light fluctuated and she wondered if Digger had returned for a second look, but the shadow fell still. She smiled. Such imaginative impressions would have sent the average ghost hunter into a paroxysm of bliss.

  “We’ve got a few hours to kill before showtime,” she said, turning to meet his kiss.

  “Want to continue this conversation in bed?”

  “Will you shut up already?”

  Chapter 8

  People called him The Roach.

  Rodney Froehmer wasn’t sure whether it was because he could fit through impossibly tight crevices or because he was likely to survive nuclear winter as the last living human in a post-apocalyptic world. Either way, he embraced the role, from the rubber gloves dangling from his belt to the mini MAG light clipped on the bill of his black baseball cap. He only had one antenna, unlike his insect namesake, and it extended from a two-way radio headset. His night-vision goggles completed the bug-eyed appearance, but at the moment, they were draped from his neck.

  All of the Spirit Seekers International crew were hooked on technology, but The Roach was in his own special class of geek. His equipment dangled from loops and straps or bulged from the cargo pockets in his jumpsuit. While the SSI uniforms made all of them easily recognizable, The Roach particularly loved the attention from the paranormal community. He didn’t have Cody’s looks or the artistic flair of Digger Wilson, but he’d carved out a niche and been photographed with plenty of ghost-hunting groupies. The coup de grace was the silver crucifix that dangled down his chest.

  Since Kendra was running the check-in table and the rest of the crew was setting up gear in the control room, The Roach figured he could loaf by the front desk and serve as advertising. Besides, there were forces at work that merited a little surveillance, even if those things couldn’t be seen at the moment.

  A couple who appeared to be husband and wife came down the hall, the husband carrying a glass that contained either red wine or grape juice. He was balding and flushed, seeming to fade into his wife’s ample shadow. She was one of those overweight women who didn’t seem comfortable in her own skin, because she kept tugging at her lime-colored blouse and suit jacket as if somehow she could disguise the extra eighty pounds. She was formidable and brassy, her perfume running interference. She grinned at The Roach, her heels hammering as she increased her pace.

  “You’re one of the ghost busters.” she practically squealed with delight.

  “We don’t bust anything, ma’am.”

  “You’re on the team, right?”

  “Spirit Seekers International, at your service.” He touched the bill of his cap like a jet pilot about to embark on a flight. Digger had taught them the importance of showmanship.

  By this time, the husband had caught up. The glass definitely contained alcohol. “Don’t you try to catch the ghosts, tell them to ‘Go toward the light’ or whatever?”

  “That’s a misconception,” The Roach said, leaning forward to read the name badge on the woman’s generous breast. “We can’t vacuum them up into glass jars and release them in the woods like a raccoon trapped in a henhouse. For one thing, we have no idea where a ghost is supposed to be. For all we know, it might go toward the light and discover the light is caused by the flickering flames of hell.”

  The woman, Amelia G. according to her name badge, chuckled. “Religion and the afterlife shouldn’t mix.”

  “The television shows treat ghosts like they are a problem to be solved. The last thing a dead person needs is a ghost whisperer trying to psychoanalyze them.”

  “Well, I’ve had some success wi
th that,” Amelia said.

  “She has an Ouija board,” said hubby, Donald G.

  Kendra, who had finished registering a couple of women, said, “You shouldn’t mess with those things.”

  “Young lady, I’ve been communicating with spirits since you were in diapers,” Amelia said.

  “I had a friend who tried to commit suicide after a midnight séance.”

  “Not everybody can handle messages from beyond.”

  “It’s not the messages that are the problem. It’s the kind of people who need to hear them.”

  “Come on, Kendra,” The Roach cut in. “You know the rules of the road. There is no right or wrong in this field, only theories.”

  Kendra could never resist tweaking those who took the dead too seriously. A little humor was one thing, but nobody wanted to be around a sarcastic brat. The Roach didn’t like parenting Kendra, but Digger was doing a lousy job of it. And Digger didn’t realize how much danger his daughter was in.

  “All I’m saying is that it’s just a piece of pasteboard with some letters on it,” Kendra said. “But you better check your spiritual condition before you play.”

  Amelia sniffed. “The dead can tell who’s playing for keeps.”

  “Tell them about the Commodore,” hubby said.

  “That’s for the beach house,” she said. “I’m here to channel Margaret Percival.”

  “Why don’t you come say hello?” Kendra said, pointing to the wall. A portrait of a woman with short, curly hair and sad eyes hung above an antique tea table.

  According to hotel legend, the portrait had been found at a 1950’s flea market by a maid, and she’d sworn it bore an uncanny resemblance to the vanished Miss Percival. Taking it as a sign from God, the maid had purchased it and given it to the hotel. The Roach figured it was just another flea-market hype job, since the hair style was wrong for the era, but the hotel had gone so far as to attach a copper nameplate beneath it that read “Margaret Percival.” The nameplate appeared much newer than the ornate but chipped wooden frame.