by E. E. Holmes
“Oh, I know, you’re right. I’d probably pass out or throw up or something,” Tia said, flapping her hands helplessly. “I just hate the thought of you going by yourself.”
“I’m not going to be by myself,” I pointed out. “There’s going to be an entire professional investigative team there with me.”
“Oh, you know what I mean!”
“Just try to get some sleep, okay? I’ll wake you up in the morning when we’re all done.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll be sleeping like a baby, Jess!” Tia snapped. “Here, wait. Take this with you.”
She dropped Pierce’s tiny voice recorder into my outstretched hand.
“What do I need this for?” I asked.
“You said he wanted to review whatever you’d recorded on it, to look for evidence.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t even used it,” I said. I’d dropped it onto my desk and forgotten all about it.
Tia grinned a little guiltily.
“Wait a minute. Did you use it?” I asked.
“I couldn’t resist! It was sitting there, and it was so … scientific. I just ran it for a few hours on a few nights while you were sleeping.”
I pocketed the recorder, shaking my head. “I can’t believe you did my parapsychology homework.”
Tia smiled. “You know me and homework.”
I walked quickly across the campus, my head bent to the chill in the early April breeze. Even on the cusp of spring, the wind on the hill stayed stubbornly bitter. I kept the steps of the library in my sights and forced myself to march forward though everything, even the wind, seemed to be encouraging me in the other direction.
I’d made up my mind not to tell Pierce about my dream encounter with Evan. I felt guilty about it, because I knew that Evan had given me information about ghosts that Pierce would kill to know. After all that Pierce had done for me, I really did owe it to him to keep him in the loop. But I couldn’t make myself care about that when I thought about the privacy of the conversation, the intimacy of it. Didn’t I owe it to Evan to keep my mouth shut? After all, I’d told Tia and immediately regretted it. No, I wouldn’t tell Pierce, not yet anyway, and certainly not all of it.
The doors of the library were locked tightly. A boldly worded sign proclaimed that the floors were being waxed. The campus looked deserted, except for a pair of underdressed girls jogging hurriedly across the sidewalk. I could hear one complaining loudly about the library being closed.
“You’d think they’d wait until the summer to do that kind of stuff,” she said, clutching her books to her as though they might warm her. I wondered what kind of strings Pierce had to pull to get the library to close its venerable doors against even a single night of academic enlightenment; it wasn’t St. Matt’s style.
I pulled out my cell phone and called Pierce.
He answered after a single ring. “You here, Ballard?”
“Yeah, I’m outside.”
“I’ll send Iggy to let you in. Anyone around?”
I glanced behind me. The two scorned studiers had vanished. “Nope.”
“Alright, hang tight, he’ll be right out.” He hung up immediately. His tone was brusque, but excited at the same time. I had a feeling I was about to see Pierce in his true element.
I bounced on the spot for a few seconds, trying to keep warm, until the shadowy form of Iggy appeared in the frosted glass surface of the doors, amorphous at first, then solidifying into the very defined shape of a very large man. There was the clinking of a key in a lock and the right-hand door opened.
“Jess?” Iggy poked a heavily bearded face around the door frame. Did all of Pierce’s friends look like displaced hippies?
“Uh, yeah,” I said, trying to smile.
“Welcome to the party!” Iggy smiled back, revealing a large space between his front teeth. He pulled the door open and stepped back to let me in. He was every bit as big as his shadow had implied, at least six foot four, with broad shoulders and a very round stomach that was testing the elasticity limits of his Grateful Dead t-shirt. A worn purple bandana was tied around his head and several faded, greenish tattoos peeked out from under his sleeves. He wouldn’t have looked out of place at a biker joint, except that he was so obviously friendly.
“Thanks,” I said, as he held out a massive, callused paw for me to shake.
“So, you’re the ghost girl, huh?” Iggy asked as we walked past the circulation desk to the main reading room.
“Is that what they’re calling me now?”
“Naw, don’t worry, I’m just teasin’ ya. Pierce filled us in on the background of the investigation and all, and he told us you were gonna join us. Should be fun, huh?”
I just shrugged in response. The idea that this little adventure could be anything but terrifying or disappointing hadn’t really occurred to me— fun was about the furthest thing from my mind.
“So you’ve actually seen a full-body apparition, huh?” Iggy asked.
“Unfortunately, yes. Several times.”
“That’s wild, man! I hope that means we’ll get one tonight! I’ve only ever seen free-form stuff, and a few shadow forms, too.” Iggy was looking at me with totally undeserved admiration.
The library reading room looked like a high tech stake-out. Two of the large tables had been pushed together in the middle of the room and were buried in wires, laptops and a number of closed-circuit television monitors. They must have been using every outlet in the place; there were orange extension cords snaking out in every direction like the roots of some crazy technological tree. Lined up on a third table were a number of gadgets I couldn’t even identify. Pierce was leaning over the table, deep in conversation with a lanky younger guy. There were two other men setting up video cameras.
“Glad you could make it, Ballard!” Pierce said as he looked up. His eyes were aglow like a kid’s at Christmas.
“Well, there was a kegger at the dorm, but I decided to skip it,” I said.
“Good call. This is going to be way more fun than some drunken dorm party, I can guarantee you that!”
What was it with these guys and fun? It was like they didn’t even appreciate the fact that we were about to spend the night in the company of dead people—by choice.
“Let me introduce you to everyone, and then I can give you the lowdown on the plan for tonight.” Pierce took me by the shoulder and started steering me around the room, introducing me to his group one by one. The youngest team member, the one Pierce had been talking to when I walked in, was Dan, a recent MIT grad who was only a few years older than I was. He sat stationed at the tech table, barely looking up when Pierce spoke. Instead, he gave a half-hearted flicking gesture over his shoulder that seemed simultaneously to say “hello” and “don’t bother me.” He wore dark-framed glasses and his hair had the disheveled appearance of one who had just rolled out of bed.
“Dan is our tech specialist. He coordinates our technological components and makes sure that everything is running smoothly from one central location. He has live feeds to all of our video cameras and audio hook-ups to all our team members while the investigation is going on. And this is Neil Caddigan.”
A slight man fumbling with the video camera looked up quickly and gave me an appraising glance which quickly jerked into a nervous smile. He extended a pale, blue-veined hand out to shake mine.
“Hi, Neil, nice to meet you.”
“Charmed, Ms. Ballard. Very interested to work with you tonight. Very interested, indeed.” Neil’s voice undulated forth on the wake of a very refined-sounding British accent. His protuberant eyes were a strange, milky-blue color, reminiscent of blindness. His stare made me uneasy; it had a vaguely hungry quality that was unsettling.
“Neil has just joined the team, while researching in the U.S. He’s a theologian and professor in London. He’s been working on a book about hauntings of former religious sites, and St. Matt’s used to be the site of a monastery. He’s also a demonologist,” Pierce said.
“You
study …?”
“Demons. Yes, indeed,” Neil said with a little bow, his eyes never leaving mine. He didn’t seem to need to blink.
I must have been staring, because Pierce felt the need to clarify as he led me away. “Obviously, there are many religious beliefs that can be called into question in a field like this. Theologians are sometimes drawn to paranormal investigation as a means of further researching what we can gather about the theory of life after death. Surely you can see the appeal.”
There was a sudden and insurmountable closing of my throat and I temporarily lost the ability to swallow, so I just nodded in response and tried to look calm. I didn’t fool Pierce in the least.
“Ballard, we don’t think there are any demons here. Seriously. Demon-free zone.”
I tried to breathe.
Lastly, Pierce introduced Oscar, who shook my hand so hard he nearly dislocated my arm. Oscar looked like he’d just leapt from the deck of a barnacled fishing vessel. His face was covered in white stubble, and his skin looked several sizes too big for him, hanging loose under his chin and at his elbows. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a wooden peg sticking out from the leg of his battered jeans. Captain of the S. S. Paranormal.
“Jesus, Piercey, she looks like she’s gonna yack. You sure she’s up for this?” Oscar asked, eyeing me beadily.
“She’ll be fine.” Pierce said.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, parrot-like.
“Oscar took me on my first paranormal investigation when I was a high school student. Bought me my first camcorder, helped me capture my first paranormal footage. We’ve been investigating together ever since.” Pierce slapped Oscar fondly on the shoulder blade. Oscar grinned, revealing a gold tooth. “He also happens to be a New England historian, so that comes in rather handy on the research end of things.”
“All kinds of sordid tidbits to dig up on this place. Had a field day with this one.” Oscar winked. I was intrigued in spite of myself. Sordid tidbits at St. Matt’s? It didn’t seem possible.
“Okay, okay, we’ll get to all of that. Let’s not taint the sensitive, alright?” Pierce said. Oscar merely shrugged and went back to his camera.
Pierce led me back to the tech table where we waited for everyone to finish with their set-up work and then, when all the team members had gathered, Pierce laid out the game plan.
“Okay, Ballard, here’s how this will work. This team has conducted quite a few paranormal investigations together and over time we’ve developed a system that we feel works fairly well to meet the challenges we’re most likely to face. First of all, besides our live investigators tonight, we’ve got quite a bit of surveillance going on.”
Pierce gestured to the television screens that were stacked like Tetris blocks on Dan’s tech table. “It’s important to back our personal experiences with visual and auditory evidence. That’s where all this technological shit comes in.”
“Technological shit? Is that an industry term?” I asked with a smirk.
Pierce chose to ignore me and went on, “So, the entire library has been rigged with HD video equipment, which has already begun recording. There are three cameras on each of the three floors of the library, positioned to cover as much area as possible.”
I studied the dim grey displays on the monitors. I could make out the main circulation desk in the bottommost corner, the central staircase, and the corridor outside the bathrooms on the basement level. I also recognized, with a start, the carrels in the back of the Russian literature section, where I’d spoken to Evan. The view sent a shiver down my spine. The rest of the videos were practically interchangeable, revealing cramped aisles of books bordered by nearly identical groupings of desks.
“The cameras will be running all night. Dan will be stationed here, running communication with the team and monitoring the surveillance equipment. If an unmanned area starts showing some activity, Dan can alert us and we can get a team over there. Anything that shows up on the monitors will be documented in our log book, to be examined later. Hopefully, if there’s anything to be seen, the cameras will catch it.”
At this point Dan sat up straighter in his chair, as though to emphasize the importance of his role in this whole process.
“The other members of the team will be breaking into pairs to investigate the library. Each pair will have its own equipment to work with. First, every group will carry an infrared camera, which will be used to visually document the experience. Since the audio on those cameras leaves much to be desired in the way of quality, each pair will also carry a wireless audio recorder, to pick up any sounds, voices, or other auditory phenomena they might encounter.
“Finally, each group will also carry an EMF detector. This will alert you to any electromagnetic anomalies in the atmosphere.”
“Sorry, you lost me at EMF. What exactly does that thing do?” I asked. Dan sighed dramatically. I shot him a nasty look, but otherwise ignored him. I couldn’t afford to feign understanding; what if someone handed me one of those things and expected me to know what to do with it?
“Remember how we talked about energy in class?”
“Not likely to forget it, actually.”
“Right. Well, everything has energy, and many objects have electromagnetic energy that is measurable. That’s what the EMF detector does. Usually the kinds of things that have EMF readings are wiring, electronic devices, things like that. But there is a theory that ghosts use electromagnetic energy from the atmosphere around them in order to manifest themselves. The EMF detector can tell if there is a concentration of electromagnetic energy in an area. If we can’t trace it to any material source, then it could be a sign of paranormal activity.”
“And am I going to have to work one of these things?” I asked. “Because I inexplicably render most gadgets useless just by coming into contact with them. Kiss of death, I’m not kidding.”
Dan shifted his chair protectively toward his toys.
Pierce laughed and shook his head. “We’ll handle the equipment, don’t worry.”
“And what exactly am I supposed to handle?” I asked.
“You reel in the ghosts, girlie,” Oscar replied as he limped by.
This was what I was afraid of. Was I expected to deliver on some sort of macabre party trick? Pierce read my mind and cut in before I could respond.
“We haven’t really tested Ballard’s abilities as a medium yet. She hasn’t been aware of them long enough to thoroughly gauge them, or to understand how to get in tune with them. So she’s just going to be here as bait, so to speak. The ghosts—or this one at least—seem to be attracted to her without any real effort on her part. Her presence alone should be an advantage here.”
“We set the bait and see what bites. I like it!” Oscar cackled. Seriously, the fishing metaphors were not helping me separate him from Captain Ahab in my brain.
“So, then it’s just going to be luck, whether I walk into the right part of the library at the right time?” I asked. It sounded like we were leaving an awful lot up to chance.
“Well, by splitting up we’ll be able to cover more ground, have a better chance of tracking signs of activity. And the equipment will be our eyes and ears in even more locations. But still, I thought of that, so I asked Annabelle to join the group tonight. She’s coming from her shop, so she should be here any minute.”
A satisfied murmur went through the group of men, who obviously approved of this unexpected addition.
“Who’s Annabelle?” I asked.
“She’s a good friend of mine, a medium who lives locally. She’s got a pretty powerful sense, great for locating concentrations of energy,” Pierce said.
“When she hones in on a spot, there’s a damn good chance that we’ll get some action,” Iggy added. Oscar grunted his approval.
“She should be here any—” Pierce was interrupted by a sharp rap on the door. “And that’s probably her.”
Iggy got up and trotted out to let her in. He appeared moments later not
with the expected Annabelle, but with….
“Sam!” I cried.
“Jess?” Sam looked even more shocked to see me than I felt to see him. For a moment we just stared at one another.
“Hey, Sam, what’s up?” Pierce asked sharply, rising from his seat.
Sam’s startled face snapped to Pierce’s and he seemed to recover. “Oh, Professor, you left these audio recorders in your office. These are the new ones that just came in. I figured you’d want to use them for the investigation,” Sam said as he handed Pierce a small cardboard box. His eyes kept flitting to me in confusion.
“Thanks, Sam, you’re right. I’d forgotten these had come in. I appreciate you running them over,” Pierce said.
“No problem. I’ll um … see you tomorrow, I guess,” Sam replied, still looking at me. I could feel my face reddening as I turned deliberately from his perplexed stare and feigned interest in a television monitor.
“Be up to my lab around 7:30 tomorrow morning at the latest. There’s going to be a lot of material to review, and I need everything set up and ready for analysis by noon,” Pierce said.
“Sure, no problem,” Sam agreed, and without another word to me, he turned on his heel and left.
Great. Yet another thing I was going to have to explain to Sam that had no logical explanation. Except the truth, of course, which was just about the least logical thing I could think of.
Just as Sam’s lanky figure disappeared around the corner, another figure took his place. It was a woman with familiar wild hair and a gypsy profile. The sight of her ejected me from my chair like an electric shock. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me!”
Only Dan seemed to have heard me. The rest of the team was up out of their seats to greet her. I just stood there, gaping. Annabelle was Madame Rabinski, the fortune teller from the carnival.
If my reaction was negative, it was nothing to hers. After flashing a wide toothy smile around the group of men, shaking hands and exchanging greetings, her eyes found me. As though I were a rabid pitbull instead of an aggravated co-ed, she stepped backwards at the sight of me and tried to shield herself with Iggy’s massive body. “What is this, David? What the hell is she doing here?” Annabelle shouted. Her expression was wild, and I momentarily forgot my annoyance as I realized that she was looking at me with unadulterated fear in her eyes.