Dark Side: The Haunting

by J. M. Barlog

  Rick left Warren as suspect number one on his list. But he knew he needed real, hard evidence showing Warren wanted to kill his own wife, and had the opportunity to tamper with her car.

  15

  Dwight Mackenzie huddled beneath the porch’s overhang, hoping to be spared, at least slightly, from the driving rain that pelted him while he rang the doorbell to the Garrett house. The building’s impressive size and century-old architecture, replete with what had to be fully restored gables, caused him to raise a brow as he listened for sounds of life inside. He also liked the sense of rural ambiance the landscape created despite having other houses in the surrounding area. It became obvious that the Garretts had a meticulous sense of symmetry in their lives.

  After the second unanswered ring, he regretted not having called first. He figured Jenny would at least be home, since she was supposedly still convalescing from her auto accident.

  At last Warren answered. Dwight couldn’t help but wonder if Warren’s delay hadn’t been intentional. Maybe he just wanted the rain to soak him through before letting him in. Warren’s face fell in obvious disappointment at Dwight’s appearance. It had only been four days since their meeting at the university, and Warren never expected to see Mr. Paranormal at his doorstep.

  “Hold on to your checkbook,” Warren murmured to himself as he motioned Dwight into the foyer with a wave of his hand.

  “Please confine yourself to the carpet in the foyer until you have a chance to drain off some of the rain,” Warren said in a voice as level and stoic as a servant.

  Mr. Chips issued a threatening growl from between Warren’s legs. The dog, however, never advanced.

  Offering a beaming smile and a friendly handshake, Dwight quickly made peace with the animal. After one sniff, Mr. Chips allowed Dwight to pass unchallenged. With wagging tail nub, Chips offered his own greeting by sniffing at Dwight’s heels as he walked.

  “I’d like to do a follow-up interview, if I could?” Dwight asked.

  “Suit yourself. I’ll get Jenny for you. Living room okay?”

  “I believe Mrs. Garrett said she saw the apparition in her bedroom? I’d rather do the follow-up there.”

  “Fine. This way.”

  Dwight waited at the bottom of the stairs while Warren went up to announce their visitor. Leaning back some so he could take in the full breadth of the living room, Dwight whistled softly at the furnishings, and while he waited, he couldn’t help but wander into the living room.

  Very impressive,” Dwight said when Warren descended the stairs only to pause near the base.

  “Which part of ‘please remain on the carpet in the foyer’ did you not understand? I don’t think you can even comprehend the cost of that Persian rug you’re dripping on.”

  Dwight skipped an apology and hastened back to the carpet at the base of the stairs.

  “He’s not getting a dime,” Warren muttered to himself as he showed Dwight up to Jenny’s room.

  Jenny sat in a chair staring blankly out the window at a sky leaden and dreary. Her hair had been hastily brushed but still lacked any indication of primping. She looked pale without the make-up she had worn at their first visit. But Dwight still found himself staring at her eyes. The rain pelted the glass while a stiff north wind tousled the branches back and forth, occasionally bringing them to scrape across the window pane in a screech that resembled fingernails raking a chalkboard.

  “Look who’s here,” Warren offered with mock surprise, “Mr. Ghost Buster.”

  Dwight shed the remark as he had done a thousand times before. Only those who had really witnessed a paranormal encounter ever took paranormal investigators seriously. To everyone else, they were crackpot charlatans out to bilk people out of their money. Only the faithful shall believe. And for most, only seeing was believing.

  There was no way to gain public respect without first demonstrating some physical evidence. All Dwight carried in his water-soaked briefcase was a stack of interview forms—blank interview forms—and a tape recorder.

  Presenting as professional appearance as one could under the circumstances, Dwight scanned the bedroom, cataloging how the light came in through the window, and noting the door’s location relative to the bed. The room was spacious enough, with angles that could allow shadows to distort reality.

  After his carefully measured scan, Dwight set his briefcase on the bureau and removed the forms along with the pocket tape recorder.

  “Hope you don’t mind?” he asked as he waved the machine. “It’s required.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Good. Can’t make a case without it.”

  “Please, make yourself right at home,” Warren remarked sardonically. “Have you eaten? Perhaps I could fix you some lunch?”

  Jenny’s face had flashed a glimmer of hope at the sight of Dwight. Warren seemed to be working hard to stomp it out. She could only hope Dwight was willing to listen.

  “What I’d like to do is conduct a more in-depth interview here, if you don’t mind. It will be rather dry and technical. But I must also advise you that this doesn’t mean anything. This interview will help if I have to justify my investigation.”

  “S-sure, I u-understand,” Jenny said, though brimming hopefulness filled her eyes.

  Dwight found himself immediately attracted to the way the light played off her blue eyes when she smiled. He thought about how pretty she must have been before the accident. Terrible how a small scar in the wrong place could spoil such beauty. He busied himself with his forms while those thoughts ran through his mind, attempting not to stare at her disfigurement. Despite all efforts, Dwight’s eyes went to her scar.

  Jenny put her hand to her mouth, noticing Dwight’s stare.

  Dwight shifted his eyes back to his form.

  “How long will this take?” Warren asked with a sudden rising interest.

  “An hour or so. Maybe two, tops. It depends.”

  “Great.”

  Warren’s remark brought a raised brow from Dwight.

  “Jenny, I want to make a trip into the city. You’ll be okay with Mr. Mackenzie here, right?”

  “Sure Warren, but won’t he need...”

  “Before you go, I will also need some information from you.”

  “Why? I see nothing; I hear nothing.”

  “It’s just general background. I can get it later.”

  Warren kissed Jenny gently on the forehead and hiding a relieving smile, made a hasty exit.

  While Jenny left her chair for the greater comfort of the bed and the propped pillows placed behind her to sit upright, Dwight opened his notebook, switched on the tape recorder and brought the chair next to the bed.

  “Are you comfortable?” he asked.

  “Sure. That’s where I saw her first,” Jenny said, anxious to begin. She pointed to the space the chair had previously occupied beside the open bedroom door.

  Dwight rose, returned the chair to its original position at the far wall and measured the distance with a compact 25-foot tape measure he pulled from his pocket.

  “And you were where you are now?”

  “Yes.”

  Dwight measured the distance a second time, this time more accurately from Jenny’s position, and jotted the finding in his notebook.

  “And you said it was the middle of the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there any extraneous light in the room at the time? Wait before you answer, I need to get the header on the recorder first. Jenny Garrett interview, November tenth, Nineteen Ninety-eight. We have to record everything you say, so don’t worry if you sometimes forget details. I go through the tapes later and get everything in order. I’ll provide you with a complete transcript, for the record.”

  Dwight fumbled between his folder and his notebook. A growing excitement emanated from him. Though he sought to hide it, it became infectious. A second later, he had the folder back in order and open, and he quickly sketched the room’s layout.

  “Okay. It’s
the middle of the night, and you saw the apparition there. Was there any extraneous light?”

  “None.”

  “Door open or closed?”

  “Ah...closed...no open a crack.”

  “No light coming in from the hall?”

  “None.”

  “What about the window curtains?”

  “Closed.”

  “Completely?”

  Jenny nodded.

  “Then how could you see it?”

  “I just could. I could see the outline of the body clearly. I thought it was Warren the first time I saw it.”

  “Did it radiate light of its own?”

  “Not really light. But I could see it.”

  Dwight was busy writing, indicating Jenny’s location relative to the chair. In a pitch dark room, at a distance of thirteen feet four inches, Jenny Garrett saw an apparition sitting in her chair.

  “Where was Warren at the time?”

  “In the den....I guess asleep.”

  “He doesn’t sleep with...”

  As Dwight said it, he realized how awkward the question was. For a moment, he wished he could take it back.

  “Warren sleeps in the den...until I’ve healed more.”

  “So then, you were alone in the room. And you thought it was your husband sitting in the chair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where was your dog at the time?”

  “Downstairs. He sleeps in a cage in the kitchen.”

  “Then he’s not free to roam the house at night?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Could he have been sitting up in the chair that night?”

  “No. I know Warren put him in his bed for the night and closed the cage door.”

  “Can you hear him if he barks or whines from his cage?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you hear him that night?”

  “No.”

  “Jenny, you said earlier the dog became agitated, growling and shaking the last time you saw the apparition.”

  “Yes. He was beside my bed like he is now.”

  “But during the previous sightings here in the house, which you say were two, the dog did not act in anyway unusual.”

  “Both previous occurrences were at night. Mr. Chips could have reacted...but wait. There was another time. Mr. Chips was outside in the yard. He began scratching at the door. I screamed when I saw it. But I distinctly remember Mr. Chips raising a ruckus.”

  Dwight jotted a note to himself to check the door.

  “Could you allow your dog free run of the house for a while? If he does sense the spirit’s presence, he could help corroborate your story. Or, at least, act as early warning.”

  Dwight was spellbound as he wrote feverishly during the two-hour interview. When they finished, Warren had still not returned. Dwight said nothing while he packed his briefcase, telling Jenny only that he would let her know as soon as possible what he intended to do.

  He did, however, offer to remain with Jenny until Warren returned. He felt ill-at-ease leaving Jenny alone in the house, and he needed to talk to Warren anyway.

  “What would happen next, if you decide to investigate further?”

  “If I decide to go ahead with this, I’ll bring in some very sophisticated equipment. I’ll wire the upstairs for audio, video, infrared and magnetic flux detection. Then we wait and hope that the ghost returns and we can get some kind of reading on one or more of our instruments.”

  “Has that ever been done before?” Jenny asked, uncomfortable with what she had just heard.

  “Actually, a couple of times in the last year alone.”

  “And?”

  “I wish I had more to offer in the way of hope. Jenny, if you want to nap for awhile, I know this must be exhausting for you, I’ll nose around the house to get a feel for the milieu. I’ll be downstairs until your husband returns.”

  In the kitchen, Dwight confirmed the scratch marks on the outer rear door. He had no way of knowing when the scratches had been left. But at least on the surface, they tended to corroborate Jenny’s claim that the dog may have been scratching at the door like she had said.

  For the present, Dwight switched to his wait-and-see mode. Wait to see what happened in the next week or so.

  Dwight meandered from room to room looking mainly for any sign that might indicate Warren and Jenny were trying to perpetuate a hoax against him. People will do some pretty weird stuff in search of that elusive fifteen minutes of fame. The house’s third story had nothing but vacant unused rooms. The second story contained the three bedrooms and the den, of which the master bedroom, a guest bedroom and the den showed signs of use.

  In his wanderings, he descended into the basement using the staircase located near the rear of the house. A light switch on the pole at the bottom of the stairs switched on two incandescent lights hanging from the joists thirty feet apart. They provided barely sufficient light to walk the expanse and Dwight now wished he would have brought a flashlight with him. The exterior walls were the original walls built a century ago from mortared brick, and despite evidence of recent repair attempts to seal the old walls, water seepage found its way through the joints. Not enough to leave standing water, just enough to let the homeowner know his repair job had failed.

  What Dwight sought, as he picked his way around crates and boxes stacked head high, was a source of water rising up from below the foundation. A significant number of previous apparition cases he had the opportunity to study detailed sources of open water coming up through the sub-foundation. And it seemed an inordinate number of ‘haunted houses’ were close to streams or rivers, neither of which, at this point, influenced the Garrett case.

  Though the light in the northeast corner became almost totally absent, Dwight bent down to check a crack that zig-zagged across the floor. He probed with a finger to determine if water had filled the crack.

  Then a scratching sound captured his attention. It sounded as if it were originating on the other side of a stack of boxes to his left. Dwight stretched to get a glimpse around the boxes where the light was a bit better.

  A hand to his shoulder brought him up and swinging.

  “Easy, Mr. Ghostbuster. It’s just me,” Warren said, backing away.

  Dwight just knew Warren had come down the stairs silently so as to intentionally startle him. What a fun guy.

  “You find anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  Dwight moved quickly back into the light and toward the stairs. Warren followed him up the stairs and back to the door to Jenny’s room.

  “So your statement is that you’ve neither seen nor heard anything that Jenny has claimed took place in this house,” Dwight said before entering Jenny’s bedroom.

  “You got it exactly right. And if you’re thinking you can scam us for money...”

  Dwight ignored the remark, pushed open the bedroom door and forged into the bedroom.

  “So, any revelations?” Jenny asked.

  “I must say I am impressed with your house. If anything, it matches a little too closely to Hollywood’s vision of the proverbial haunted mansion.”

  “If you were going to investigate, what would that entail?”

  “A series of scientific measures would have to be put in place.”

  A quick sidelong glance confirmed to Dwight that Warren was clearly against the idea, and without his cooperation, any serious investigation could become easily compromised, and thereby useless in the scientific community.

  “Why do I have a feeling you’re going to tell me you’re going to be staying with us.”

  “Worse actually...I’d be staying in this bedroom.”

  “Wait a minute...where’s Jenny supposed to sleep during this?”

  “Right where she sleeps now. We disturb as little as possible during our investigation.”

  Warren crossed to Jenny on the bed and took her hand into his. She liked the coolness of his skin against hers. She wanted to speak but could only look up a
t him.

  “This isn’t going to work. You’re not going to be in this bedroom when my wife is asleep.”

  “I have to. I have to monitor the equipment and make certain the investigation is not compromised.”

  “I don’t like this, Jenny. I don’t like this one bit.”

  “It’ll be all right, Warren. You’re going to be in the next room.”

  “Well, you have some time to think about it. I’ve got everything I need for now. I will be in touch one way or the other.”

  Jenny knew in her heart Dwight would be back. She could see it in his eyes. A childlike fascination took over as he listened to her describe the encounters. He believed her—really believed what she had said.

  Before leaving the Garrett house, Dwight made a slow deliberate walk through each room on the main floor. Nothing appeared out of place. Dwight silently realized that each of Jenny’s ‘sightings’ occurred while Warren was in the house, and at a precise time when Warren was occupied out of Jenny’s sight.

  16

  Rick returned to his desk after a lunchtime bitch session with Perkins and stared at the official papers spread from end to end. But he saw nothing. His mind had drifted into a spiral and, as a result, nothing was happening inside. The lights were on, but no one was at home.

  There were at least three things he should be doing but found himself doing nothing instead. The Garrett case had become mired down in credits and debits for both Warren's trading business and the Matheson Garrett agency.

  “Detective Walker, someone to see you,” a round plum-faced policewoman said, poking her head into Rick's office.

  To Rick's surprise, Bridget Sterling’s lissome body stood just behind the policewoman’s round one. He rose clumsily, knocking his knee against a partially open desk drawer. It took all he had to keep from screwing his face up into a grimace.

  “Ms. Sterling, please come in.”

  The policewoman's eyes telegraphed her disgust at Rick’s behavior: you-typical-male-animal. Even Rick realized he was acting a little like a schoolboy.

  “Please, sit down.”

  “I hope you don't mind. You said I should contact you if I thought of anything else about Jenny.”