American Ghost

by Paul Guernsey

  CHAPTER 11

  Not long after Alice Poe-York had sacrificed her afterlife to save the church, we began to receive further uninvited company. Our new, mortal visitors were neither artists nor arsonists, but were probably the next-worst thing: a group of people obsessed with the idea of making contact with the dead. They must have gotten permission to enter the abandoned building, because on their first visit they arrived in broad daylight and parked their shiny white van in plain sight along the edge of the gravel road. They came with a key to the padlock that linked the ends of the heavy chain fettering the handles of the two front doors. Their long vehicle, on either side, sported elaborate murals of a haunted house, complete with airborne bats, and large lettering that said:

  GHOST HOUNDS: Paranormal Researchers of New England

  (ParanormalResearchersOfNewEngland.org)

  Virgil and Gib stopped playing chess when they arrived, and the three of us watched through the walls as they piled out into the late-summer growth of waist-high weeds—there were six of them, including two young women—and walked to the entrance. The chain rattled and clanked as they removed it and dropped it to the ground, and Virgil said, “Sounds like the Ghost of Christmas Past, coming for a visit.”

  One door groaned open and, carrying a white candle burning on a white china dish, in stepped a bearded young dude in a leather jacket whose blazing brown eyes darted above a sharply pointed nose. He tip-toed across the vestibule and stopped just inside the sanctuary to gather in as much of the scene as his flickering candle could illuminate and then, in a dramatic gesture, he pushed his open palm into the air and declared, “I am sealed from all imperfect energies!”

  Gib, who had risen and moved toward the front of the church and was now hovering about an arm’s length from the guy, looked back at us and said, “Oh, shit. I’d almost rather they just go ahead and burn the place down.”

  Speaking loudly enough for his friends outside to hear, the man in the leather jacket said, “In the name of all that is good, we beg safe passage!” This request was echoed by his five companions who then, carrying their own white candles on white dishes, all but the first of them gripping the shoulder of the person in front, single-filed into the church, together murmuring Safe passage! Safe passage! as they shuffled, caterpillar-like, through the vestibule. They continued chanting this hopeful mantra until they had assembled in the sanctuary and formed a circle by pinching thumbs and forefingers against the edges of one another’s candleholders.

  “Let us pray!” said the man with the beak-like nose, and they all fell silent and bowed their heads. He then recited:

  “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the Divine Power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.”

  Gib said, “I’m pretty sure that last part was all about Virgil. Don’t you think so, Thumb?”

  Virgil frowned and said, “This is funny now, but it won’t remain amusing for long.”

  “All right,” the praying man said when he was finished. “Headlamps and gloves, everyone.”

  “Peter,” said the darker haired of the two chicks, addressing the man in the leather jacket. As soon as she’d spoken, all of them but Peter looked at her, and then all but one immediately glanced away again. The fellow who kept his eyes on her was a curly haired, lumpy-looking dude whose face still bore traces of acne, and whose name I would soon learn was Ben—the same Ben who would shortly become my amanuensis.

  Peter, rather than acknowledging the girl who has called his name, said, “Place your candles in a circle on the floor.”

  The candles were circled, after which the six “researchers” slipped on white gloves and switched on the battery-powered lamps that were harnessed to their heads.

  “Peter,” the dark-haired girl repeated.

  “We’ll do our walk-through now,” said Peter, “in order to allow any spirits who may be present to get acclimated to our presence, and so that they may learn we mean them no harm. Choose a partner, and hold hands at all times. Don’t take any photos or video just yet. Walk slowly, and remember: no laughing or other forms of disrespect. We are here as guests.”

  Peter then turned to the other girl, the blonde girl, and he said, “Amber, I’d like you to come with me.” Only then did he answer the girl who’d had been calling him: “What was it you needed, Melody?”

  “Nothing,” Melody whispered, sagging a little.

  “Good, then,” said Peter. “Let’s walk.”

  Amber stepped over to him, took hold of his hand, and pressed her shoulder against his arm. The other four people then paired up as well. Ben turned his gaze to the floor, puckering his mouth as if preparing to whistle, and slowly oozed a few inches in Melody’s direction. Until then, the young woman had been more or less frozen in apparent disappointment over Peter’s rejection, but Ben’s movements sparked her flight response, and at once she stepped to the side of the taller of the two remaining men. That left Ben and the other man who, after another pause, joined gloved hands while staring at opposite sides of the church.

  The three teams strolled through our building, the beams from their headlamps climbing the walls and hopping between the pews. Virgil, Gib, and I all trailed Peter and Amber as they went about discovering, and in muted murmurs discussing, the discarded red gasoline can lying on its side in an aisle, the electric lanterns at either end of the chancel, whose batteries days before had faded and finally gone dead, and the random, river-delta pattern of gasoline stains in the finish of the chancel floor. The two of them spent several minutes studying the ambitious mural of graffiti with which Ed had tagged the high wall behind the choir box, and after that they moved on to the shorter and narrower work of art between the two plywood-covered windows.

  Peter dropped his voice to a whisper and said, “This is where it happened. Right here is where the orb appeared to them, and where they saw and heard the apparition.”

  “It feels cold here,” said Amber. She gave him a quick look. “Doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Peter whispered. “Yes it does. We’ll have to take some temperature readings in here to verify, but it seems like we’ve detected a cold spot.”

  At that point Ben, who was up on the chancel staring at the big mural, and whose hand and that of the other man were still entwined in mutual distaste, began to whistle. The sound he made was tuneless and shrill, the echo of each note ricocheting through the place like a shrieking bullet. Peter turned and shushed him.

  “Don’t whistle!” Peter said. “Are you stupid? Don’t you know how dangerous that is? Hum, if you have to make noise. My God, Ben, think of the consequences … ”

  “Sorry,” said Ben.

  “We discussed this in training.”

  “I know,” said Ben. “I forgot. Nervous, I guess.” At that, he laughed nervously.

  “Just stop talking, Ben!”

  Melody, on the other side of the church, called out, “Peter! You need to have a look at this!” The other two teams hurried over to her, and all six Ghost Hounds focused their trembling headlamp beams on a contraceptive still life made up of the Minotaur’s condom, lying there like a sliver of colorless road kill, and its partially spilled contents, which were flaking against the linoleum floor.

  “They never mentioned this when they called us,” Peter murmured. “And that was unbelievably irresponsible of them, because they’ve placed our lives in jeopardy. There’s nothing more provocative to spirits than this—not even trying to burn the place down would make them as angry.”

  I looked at Virgil and said, “Any clue how they come up with this shit?”

  Virgil rolled his eyes and shook his head, and Gib said, “Never mind where they get it. What it means is I don’t guess they’re planning on giving us another live performance.”

  Peter said, “We n
eed to purify. To make amends for the disrespect that’s been done here. Ben, go out to the van and get incense and holders. And bring our cameras in. Quickly.”

  “You want the digital cameras, or the film ones?” Ben asked.

  “Both. Sometimes one will pick up an image that the other misses. And bring a couple of rolls of infrared film. And both of the camcorders, too. Hurry.”

  “How about the EMF meters?” said Ben.

  “EMF … what? We can’t do anything that intrusive just yet. Go, would you? Stop asking questions.”

  “EMF?” I said, and looked at Virgil.

  Virgil said, “I would guess electro-magnetic field.”

  “For what?”

  “For detecting us. Apparently, they think we’re magnetic.”

  Ben brought back sticks of incense, which were lit and placed in ceramic holders that they set at the four corners of the church, as well as on the chancel.

  “It’s too bad we can’t smell anything,” Virgil said.

  I told them, “My girlfriend, Cricket, used to light some incense once in a while. She’d pick them up whenever we went to a head shop. I’d kind of like to smell it if I could.” At that, Gib made a motion as if to comfort me with a pat on the shoulder.

  Ben retrieved several cameras from the truck, and the Ghost Hounds began wandering through the place individually, seemingly intent on documenting every inch of the walls, floor, and ceiling. Peter recorded the scene with a video camera, while the two with the digital still-cameras—Amber and the man Ben held hands with—carefully checked each image they captured for things that might not have been visible to their own eyes. From time to time, one of them would call out in excitement, and the Hounds would all huddle around the camera; but in every case, the possible “visual manifestation” was determined to be nothing more than a reflection or a shadow caused by an errant headlamp beam. After a while, Peter walked over to Ben and handed him a hundred-dollar bill. “We need something more than the incense,” he said. “Go to the nearest florist’s shop—not a supermarket—and buy us a nice arrangement in a white vase.”

  “That would be about fifteen miles from here,” Ben said.

  “What’s your point?” said Peter.

  “It’s just a long way.”

  “Something nice,” Peter said. “Like for a funeral. If you don’t know what ‘nice’ is, ask the sales person. No carnations. Spirits hate carnations.”

  Ben sighed, then called out, “Anybody want to go for a ride?” When there came no answer, he repeated, “Anybody?” They continued to ignore him until he left. It was well over an hour before he returned to the church carrying the flower arrangement.

  “Look at that!” said Gib. “It is quite beautiful. I for one am touched.”

  Without meeting his eyes or speaking to him, Melody took the flowers from Ben and placed them on the front of the chancel between the lifeless electric lanterns. They all gathered to look at them.

  “Ben,” said Peter after a moment.

  “Yes?” Ben said, hope and dread mixing in his voice.

  “Did the flower shop give you any change for that hundred?”

  Shortly afterward, they extinguished their circle of candles and left the church, replaced the chain that held the front doors closed, and snapped the big padlock back into place.

  *

  The Ghost Hounds returned the following night, but instead of coming directly into the building, they spent a long while working among the weeds between the road and the front doors as they set up and adjusted a squad of aluminum tripods, each supporting either a bright light or a video camera. They ran electric cables from the tripods through the weeds to the back of the van, where they connected them to an array of large batteries. Ben, when he wasn’t being ordered to do something else by one of the others, wandered aimlessly around with a microphone attached to the end of a silver boom and connected by a long cable to a black sound board, covered with tiny switches and jumping needles, that rested on a card table beside the van. Wearing a set of headphones, the tallest Ghost Hound—the one who had held Melody’s reluctant hand—hovered over this control panel, making fussy adjustments and snarling at Ben.

  Virgil, Gib, and I drifted out of the church to get a closer look. We watched as Amber, wearing makeup and a pretty red dress, minced around on the uneven ground in a pair of crimson heels, all the while balancing herself with open hands held in the air, her freshly lacquered nails gleaming beneath the camera lights.

  Once the illumination and the electronics had all been calibrated to Peter’s satisfaction, Peter and Amber took turns standing in front of the church, making sweeping gestures at the padlocked doors and explaining to some future audience why the Ghost Hounds had come to this place, what they had discovered, and what they hoped to find over the following days and weeks of their investigation. Ben stood close by, holding the microphone above each of them in turn, his arms stretched over his head in an awkward and uncomfortable-looking pose that pulled apart his pants and his t-shirt, exposing a smile-shaped protrusion white belly.

  “Weeks?” said Virgil. “Did she say weeks? Oh my God.”

  After staring at Amber for a few moments, Gib said to me, “Boy, she cleans up nice, doesn’t she?”

  “I like the other one,” I said. “Maybe it’s a hereditary preference, but I prefer a girl who looks like she could soak up a little strong sunlight without turning into a giant blister.”

  “Speaking of, where is your new girlfriend?”

  I looked around and found the other five Ghost Hounds: Peter and Amber taking their turns in front of the camera, Ben grimacing and exposing his stomach, the tall guy wearing earphones and fiddling with the sound board, and the short guy sitting behind the wheel of the idling van, smoking a cigarette and looking as if he’d rather be almost anywhere else. But Melody seemed to have disappeared. Then, using my ghostly vision to peer all the way through the church, I spotted her at the rear of the building, holding a flashlight and standing near the back corner of the fenced-in cemetery. Unlike Amber, she wore jeans and a flannel shirt; clearly, she had come tonight not to flutter before a camera, but to get down and dirty, hounding ghosts.

  “There she is,” I said. “I think I’ll go see what she’s up to. Want to come?”

  “No,” said Gib. “I’m enjoying the view from right here.”

  I drifted back to where Melody stood, and I watched as she stared off into the lightless woods behind the church, gnawing at her lower lip. I said to her, “I think you’re way hotter than that other girl. You could stand to work on your personality, though.” At once her eyes narrowed, and a fierce emotion crossed her face like a gunmetal cloud sliding over the sun. After a moment, she pulled a cell phone from her pants pocket and calmly snapped a couple of photos of the cemetery.

  “It’s too dark,” I told her. “And you don’t have a flash.”

  When she had finished her photography, she lowered the phone, drew a breath, and screamed. I wasn’t startled—that’s a physiological reaction—but I was astonished. “Dude,” I said. “What the hell?” She screamed once more and began walking quickly toward the front of the church. Led by their headlamp beams, Peter and the tall ghost hunter met her halfway, with Ben stumbling behind.

  “I saw!” Melody said. “I saw!” She grabbed the lapels of Peter’s jacket with both hands and buried her face in his shoulder.

  “What?” said Peter, his open hands lifting into the air behind her. “What was it?”

  “Are you all right?” said the tall man—but he went unanswered.

  “Peter. Oh my God,” she said, gasping as if to catch her breath. “I know you told us not to go anywhere without a partner, but I needed to pee.”

  “What did you see?” Excitement, worry, and impatience were mixing in Peter’s voice.

  “It was—he was—an old farmer dude. Standing on the other side of the fence. In the cemetery.”

  “Do you mean an apparition?”

  “I thin
k so. It just … happened.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “He had white hair, and bright blue eyes that never blinked, and he was wearing overalls.” She pressed a trembling finger against her forehead just below her hairline. “There was a black hole above his eyes, like maybe from a bullet. Something black was leaking out and … running down his face.”

  “This is incredible,” said Peter. He put his hand on the middle of her back. “Did he seem to have risen from any particular grave?”

  “I couldn’t tell. But I took a couple of pictures with my cell phone.”

  “You did? Can … could I see them?” By then Amber and the short man had also made their way along the dark cemetery side of the church. Amber had removed her heels to walk through the weeds in her stocking feet, and she was looking angrily unhappy as well as uncomfortable.

  “What is it?” Amber said. “I’ve got burrs on my dress. What’s going on?” Nobody answered her.

  Virgil and Gib had come floating back as well. Virgil said, “It’s good you’re still here, Thumb. For a second we thought you might not have been able to resist the temptation of making yourself visible to a pretty girl.”