by E. E. Holmes
“I asked you why you’re still here!” I repeated.
I’ve been waiting for you.
The voice shivered right beside my ear, and I knew this wasn’t the voice I’d been longing to hear. This was someone else, someone I didn’t know.
§
“PIERCEY! PIERCEY! We got a hit on the basement level!”
Pierce yelped as Oscar’s gravelly voice shouted over the two-way radio on his belt. I scrambled in a panic up off the rug. The sound had scared the life out of both of us and, I realized a moment later, severed the communication with whatever had been behind me. I could sense right away that it was gone; the heat that had been sucked from the atmosphere came gushing back over me as though an invisible dam had been holding it at bay.
“Okay, Oscar, we’ll be right down,” Pierce said into his radio. Then he turned to look at me, his face aglow with excitement. “What happened just now?”
“Someone was answering my questions from right behind me.”
“Well, hell, I could tell where it was. Have a look at this.” Pierce waved me over and began fiddling with the camera.
“What, did you catch something?”
I peered over Pierce’s arm at the little digital camera screen. The image it displayed was of me just moments ago, cross-legged on the floor, mouth open in mid-sentence. Behind me was a strange white shape that looked eerily familiar. It was just like the shapes that had appeared in the Polaroid photo Sam took of me on my first day at St. Matt’s. But, unlike that photo, when the misty cloud had taken no identifiable shape, this time the cloudy form of a human figure crouched just behind me, the profile and limbs clearly defined, down to the fingers outstretched as though to caress the back of my head.
“Shit.”
“You said it,” Pierce whispered under his breath. He scanned through the images he had taken in rapid succession. It was like watching a flip book. The figure’s hand reached closer and closer toward me until the moment that the radio had gone off. At that moment the head of the figure had actually turned and looked directly at the spot where Pierce had been standing, as though the sound of the radio had only just alerted it to his presence. It was already fading away, the doorway behind it clearly visible.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, not in over three hundred investigations.” Pierce’s face was mirroring my own feelings. We had been very close to something and it had slipped through our fingers. He was clearly disappointed. I was somewhat relieved, and yet, now that the fear had passed I was exhilarated. The investigation had only just started. What would happen next?
The truth was, not much for a good long time. As Pierce had warned, real paranormal investigation was about one percent action and ninety-nine percent mind-numbing boredom.
Oscar’s “hit” on the basement level turned out to be nothing more than a well-concealed circuitry box that was making his EMF detector go haywire. When Pierce showed him what we’d captured upstairs, his jaw dropped.
“Why the hell didn’t you just ignore me?” Oscar asked. “Nothing we were getting could possibly have compared to that!”
“No point, old man. Your call scared it away, whatever it was,” Pierce replied. It was a testament to his affection for his mentor that he kept the bitterness in his voice to a bare minimum. Oscar looked appropriately ashamed at this news, and offered to head up with his equipment and blanket the area. Pierce let him, but I knew whatever was up there was gone. If it was going to show up again, I realized, it was going to be wherever I was.
Eager to review the footage further, Pierce suggested we head down to central command. The picture quality on the monitors was far superior to the tiny little camera screen, but the creep factor rose in proportion to the clarity of the image; by the time Dan had blown up the photos and fiddled with the contrast, I could barely look at it. Pierce, however, was eagerly analyzing and picking out details.
“The form seems male to me,” Pierce said, his finger tracing it on the screen. “The face seems almost to have a shadow here, like a beard or something.”
“The voice sounded male, too,” I said. “But if it’s male, what’s with the dress?”
“Yeah, I noticed that too. The bottom of the garment has a flowing shape to it, like a gown or a cape or something.”
“Or a robe,” Neil suggested, making me jump out of my skin again. He was right behind me, leaning over toward the screen.
“Seriously, stop doing that!” I cried, throwing my hands up. “Can’t you clear your throat or drag your feet or something? You’re like a goddamn ninja!”
“Pardon?” Neil asked, brow furrowed. Apparently he didn’t get my reference. Dan was snorting amusedly, but Pierce seemed not to have noticed the exchange. He was studying the picture further.
“A robe, huh? Yeah, I can see that,” he said.
“The shape of the sleeve supports it, too,” Neil continued, sliding into the seat beside Dan, and pointing with the tip of a pen. “It hangs down here, too wide for a typical shirt or coat. And see the slight bulge at the back? It looks like it could be a hood.”
“A robed figure in the library. Hmm. I guess that would make sense,” Pierce said.
“Um, how does that make sense? Why would anyone wear a robe in a library?” I asked.
Neil pulled a pile of files toward him and beckoned me over to him. “It makes sense because of the history of the library building itself. It is built on the site of an old monastery, so there is always the possibility that what you saw was the spirit of a monk, tied to the area from hundreds of years ago.”
Somehow, an ancient monk didn’t fit my vague perception of the presence that had spoken to me, but I listened. Anything was possible at this point.
“Or there was the Swords Brotherhood, which would be much more recent,” Pierce suggested, and then turned to explain before I could even frame the obvious question. “They were this secret society on campus, back at the beginning of the 1900’s, when the school was still an all-male institution. It was kind of like the Skull and Bones at Yale, a privileged fraternity of sorts. Not many records of its activities exist, but we know that it met in this building.”
“A secret society? Wow, I didn’t think this could get much weirder,” I murmured, but something about it fit. I was finally starting to understand what Pierce had meant all those weeks ago when he’d first spoken of the vague certainty of the sixth sense. I hadn’t seen the ghost with my own eyes, nor had he said anything to confirm or deny the idea of the Swords Brotherhood, but something in me was whispering that this was right. Instead of trying to ignore this whispering, I decided to start listening to it.
“Neil, you start going through those files and see if the photos can offer anything concrete on either possibility,” Pierce said.
“Focus on that brotherhood. That’s the right track,” I added.
Pierce turned to look at me. His expression was surprised, but pleased. “You feel confident about that, Ballard?”
I nodded solemnly.
“Good. Good for you.” Pierce unholstered his radio and called all of the teams back to central command to regroup. From the depths of the stacks, bouncing flashlight beams led the investigators back to us. Batteries were changed, equipment was swapped out, and memory cards were emptied with impressive efficiency onto Dan’s computers. Pierce decided to reorganize as we entered into the second phase of the investigation. We all chugged some of Pierce’s atomic blend coffee, but I didn’t feel particularly tired, despite the fact that it was now approaching three o’clock, a time Neil eagerly referred to as “the witching hour”.
“I think we should refocus our energies on some new areas of the building we haven’t covered yet, especially the stacks where Ballard had her encounter with Evan’s spirit. That okay with you?” he asked me.
“Sure,” I agreed. “I’m gonna run to the ladies’ room first, though.”
“Okay, everyone. We’ll head back out in five,” Pierce said.
My flashlig
ht lit the way to the nearest bathroom, which was in the entry hall just beyond the circulation desk. I instinctively flipped the light switch when I entered the room, but then remembered that Dan had killed the power from the circuit breakers. So instead, I stood my flashlight up in the center of the tiled floor, casting a dim circle of light onto the ceiling and creating just enough illumination to see by.
Every sound echoed hollowly off the tile and unusually high ceiling, and I finished quickly, eager to get out of there. I was just refastening the walkie-talkie to my belt when I felt it: a creeping sensation beginning at my toes and crawling like insects up my legs and spine.
Swallowing back the fear, I slid the catch on the door of the stall and poked my head out into the bathroom. Nothing. No shapes, no shadows that couldn’t be explained by the inanimate objects in the room. Calming my breath, which had begun to speed up, I walked to the sink and began to wash my hands.
An icy breath caressed the back of my neck. My face snapped up towards the mirror, where two ghostly faces stared back at me. The first was my own terrified reflection. The second was just over my right shoulder, shrouded by a hooded robe. I screamed as loudly as I could.
The scream pounded against my ear drums and multiplied itself as it shattered into echoes. The figure behind me did not react to it, except to raise a luminous finger to its shadowy lips. At his gesture, the echoes muffled and died, as though the walls that were creating them had suddenly decided to absorb them. I clapped a hand over my mouth and spun around to face him. Part of me expected him to disappear, but there he was, no more than a few feet from where I stood pressed against the cool porcelain of the sink. He had a slight glow that illuminated nothing but his own form, the darkness seeming to double around him. His face was gaunt and bearded, his chin pronounced, and I could see dark hair in the recesses of his hood. I registered all of this in a fraction of a second before I was drawn to his eyes, deep pools of darkness set into his face.
Somewhere from outside the room, I could hear voices shouting and footsteps clattering toward the bathroom, but they were not nearly as loud as they should have been. The ghost’s presence seemed to muffle everything except the sound of my own blood pounding in my ears.
“W-who are you?” I whispered.
“I’ve been waiting for you. It’s been agonizing.” The figure’s mouth moved, but I didn’t hear his voice in the room. It was in my head, echoing against the insides of my skull. I shook my head, trying to dislodge it. It felt unnatural for it to be there, an intrusion.
I took a deep breath. “That’s not what I asked you.”
“My apologies, witch. My name is William. I was a student here, just like you.”
“Why did you call me ‘witch’?”
William just stared at me. I tried another question.
“You were in that group, right? The Swords Brotherhood? Isn’t that why you’re wearing that robe?”
“I had the distinct misfortune of entering their ranks, yes.” He had a slow, drawling voice.
“Why misfortune? What happened to you?”
“A regrettable error occurred during one of our ceremonies. I was meant to be sacrificed—symbolically, of course. However, the brother playing the part of the executioner got a bit, ah … carried away.” At this William parted the robe and revealed a dark stain splattered gruesomely on his white shirt. “They covered it all up, it was very hush-hush. But I would not be silenced. I stayed so that others would know what happened to me. I haunted them all, until their precious little society disbanded altogether. But by then, I was stuck here.”
“Ballard? JESSICA? Are you in there?” Pierce’s voice bled faintly into the oddly deadened atmosphere of the bathroom. There was also a dull tapping sound, which I realized was pounding on the door.
I turned to William. “Did you lock that door?”
“I did. I wanted to speak with you and I did not want to be disturbed, as we were so rudely interrupted earlier.”
I ran for the door, expecting him to try to stop me, but he did not move. I pulled on the handle and tried to turn the deadbolt. It wouldn’t budge.
“Jessica! Are you alright?” Pierce sounded frantic but very far away.
“I’m here! I’m here with the ghost from upstairs and he won’t let me out!” I shouted back.
Again, the pounding on the door was reduced to a pathetic tapping by whatever William was doing to the room. Frustrated, I turned back to him. He was just staring at me, the slightest of smirks on his face.
“I’m not finished speaking with you,” he said softly in my head. “When we’ve concluded our business here, I will gladly allow them access.”
“What business could you have with me? I don’t even know you,” I replied, trying to keep the growing hysteria out of my voice.
“Don’t play stupid with me, witch. I’ve been waiting a long time. We all have.”
“We?”
“Eighteen years is a very long time to be trapped between where you’ve been and where you are meant to go. We’ve been waiting for you.” With that he took a small but decisive step toward me. As he did, the room filled with a buzz of whispering, many voices at once, a quiet cacophony.
I turned and pounded on the door. “Pierce! Get me out of here!”
I could hear him saying something to someone else, and other voices behind the door, which had started to rattle. They were trying to get me out.
“So eager to go? But you’ve only just arrived.” Another step toward me. I slipped away from the door and past the stalls, which gave me more room to maneuver away from him. It might have been pointless, trying to evade a ghost, who could conceivably appear wherever he wanted to be, but my flight response seemed unwilling to acknowledge this.
“You know, if you just stand still, this ought to be easier,” William suggested.
I froze. “What will be easier?”
“This.”
Without another word, William flew at me like smoke on the wind. His face, as it approached mine, was full of a manic kind of anticipation, and then I felt only an intense cold as he passed through me. It was the last thing I registered before the pain started.
It exploded inside me, expanding through every vein and tissue. Gasping and screaming, I fell to my knees. It felt like every cell in my body was freezing and crystallizing to ice.
“JESSICA!” The voices outside the bathroom grew instantly louder; whatever William had done to the room had lost effect the moment he’d attacked me. The door flew off its hinges with a resounding crash as Iggy barreled into it. The team flooded in.
Pierce crouched beside me, shaking my shoulders and shouting for me to look at him.
My vision was clouded and oddly fuzzy, as though I was looking through a fogged-up windshield. I tried to speak, but could only continue to scream as the sensation morphed from intense cold to a new feeling, as though I was becoming too expansive to be contained in my own body. Emotions that weren’t mine skittered across the surface of my mind. Anger. Confusion. Desperation. They were William’s emotions. William was inside my body.
“Help … me! He’s in … here!” I gasped.
Pierce stared into my eyes with horror and I realized that he was seeing someone else entirely staring back at him.
“Move, David! Move! Jessica, look at me!” Annabelle’s face replaced Pierce’s above me, swimming in and out or focus. Neil’s face hovered over her shoulder as well, his eyes like saucers. I tried to speak to them, to explain what was happening, when the pain shifted again.
I was being torn apart inside, the very fibers that held me together were being severed, the connections between my body and whatever of me existed that wasn’t my body. I began to shake uncontrollably, my screams reaching a new pitch, and I found myself wishing, for the first time in my life, that I was dead. William’s anger and frustration fought for domination in my brain.
A tiny part of my consciousness was somehow able to focus on Annabelle, who had begun to chant some
thing over me, though I could not hear the words over my own irrepressible shrieking. I could barely register the sound of her voice. The last conscious, desperate thought that rose through the waves of agony was not mine, but William’s.
I can’t get through! Why can’t I get through?
And then the pain engulfed me and I knew no more.
15
DECEPTION
I WAS FLOATING. IT FELT LIKE WATER, like warm, untroubled water. If I could have remembered being inside the womb, I imagined that this was what it would have felt like. My body felt wonderful, weightless, but my head felt strange, like someone had taken out the grey matter and replaced it with packing peanuts. My thoughts rustled around in there, trying to surface. It wasn’t easy, though, and for a while nothing discernible or understandable came of it.
Presently though, disturbing images began to untangle themselves from the comfortable haze. I was vaguely aware that they bothered me, and I tried to push them back down. At first it was as easy as batting away soap bubbles, but soon they grew stronger and clearer, cutting through my cozy cocoon, turning the water cold and troubled. It rocked in my head like a stormy sea, bringing on waves of nausea.
I became dimly aware of my body, and as soon as I could feel it, I wished again for the numbness. There wasn’t an inch of me that didn’t ache horribly. The ache was being propelled through my body by my veins, my pulse pushing it sluggishly as though the pain made my blood viscous.
Sounds began to reach me, muffled and warped at first, then with sharpening clarity. An intermittent beeping sound. An occasional click. A steady dripping. Two voices, one male and one female, were conversing nearby. I forced a reluctant eyelid open. A sterile white hospital room swam into focus. I turned my head slowly towards the door. It seemed to take the room a few seconds to catch up with me. When it did, I was able to focus in on Annabelle and Pierce standing just outside the doorway.
Annabelle tossed her head, looking every bit the fiery gypsy. “I have been doing this all of my life. Since I was a child, I’ve been sensitive. And I can tell you now that I have never seen anything like it before.”