by J L Bryan
“We'll figure something out,” I said, not at all confident that we would. I thought of the small, poorly wrapped packages under their Christmas tree. The ghost removal I might have done for free, if needed, just to protect the kids. But the hotel room and such were on the company credit card, and I couldn't exactly afford to eat that cost myself, either.
This was going to be a problem.
I'd never let money stand between me and my work, though, when it came to protecting the innocent from the evil dead. If money were my main motive, I'd be doing something more lucrative and with greater future opportunities, like making fries at Burger King.
Ryan finally went to check on his kids. I finished stringing together the screens and turning them on, making sure they were picking up feeds from cameras and microphones in the museum below and the apartment above.
It was time to figure out just what was haunting this place.
Chapter Twenty
I'd originally planned to go back to the hotel and sift through the previous night's data on a couple of laptops. With my work station set up, though, I couldn't resist the temptation to have a look at the footage. Plus, the idea of setting up even a small area of the hotel as a secondary work station just seemed exhausting after setting up my primary one here at the client's property.
“Staying here longer than planned,” I texted Michael. “I can't meet y'all for lunch.”
“Everything okay?” he texted back, my phone chiming.
“Yeah, I'm just checking out some footage. I'll see you in a few hours.”
“Stay safe,” he replied.
“The only scary thing here is the dust and mildew,” I said. “I'll be fine.”
“Can't wait to see you again.”
This whole group vacation idea wasn't really working out, but now I was stuck with it. I felt bad for spending even more time at the client's.
I watched the videos from the museum at double speed, looking back and forth among the screens for anything odd. I missed having Stacey's eyeballs here to help with this part.
There might have been a plethora of entities down in the museum, given the dubious nature of some of the items down there. However, checking our footage for any sign of them was a long, dreary task. There was no telling when something might have happened in the night.
With audio recordings, we get a little bit of a boost from technology: our software can flag anomalies, helping us pinpoint interesting sections out of hours of audio.
That was how I managed to find the small bit of valuable audio long before I had a chance to spot anything on video.
I isolated it, amplified it, and played it over all three speakers I'd set up.
The voice was cold and flat, as the voices of the dead tend to be. Sometimes they convey more emotion in person, but when recorded, they sound almost like machines.
“...ushallah...”
Well, that was what it sounded like. I played it again, and again. Ushallah? Ushallee?
I turned up the volume, and I slowed it down by degrees, play it at lower and speeds.
“...you-should-leave...”
There it was.
I shivered. This was definite evidence that something strange was afoot in the old museum. The voices of the dead typically make my skin crawl, and this was no exception.
The voice raised some obvious questions: who was speaking? Who were they telling to leave? The living? Another ghost?
The recording was from the dead of night: two fifty-one in the morning, specifically. Nobody alive had been down in the museum at that time.
Or had they?
I jumped to that time in the assorted videos, then played them in slow motion, one by one, looking for any hint of movement.
On the thermal camera, something cold passed in front of the Hall of Monsters. I slowed that video down for a closer look.
The deep blue blobs of cold hinted at a human form, suggesting a torso and an arm, maybe part of a head. It passed through for just a couple of seconds.
When I synced it with the sound, I saw the figure appear as the words spoke on the recording. It disappeared just after.
I sat with the paused image of the blue blobs down in the museum, staring at it, then squinting a little as if that would make it clearer. It didn't.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
The frozen image sat there, as if looking back at me with its elongated, partially formed blue blob of a head. Maybe that was Ryan's uncle in his striped stove pipe hat, but I was just guessing.
Even the most innocuous ghost looks chilling when you get an image of it—the body may only be partially formed, the face might be pale as a sheet, the eyes like blots of black paint. There might be a suggestion of a nose or a faint line of a mouth. Or they may simply be a strange shadow in the corner of the room, something that doesn't belong, that can't really be confused with the solid objects and living people in the picture.
Whether they're abnormally dark, like an abyss in human form, or transparent and colorless like a jellyfish, or appear as a strange unnatural white glow, you can usually tell they don't quite belong in our reality.
I kept looking for more evidence, but the audio analysis didn't provide any more handy indicators of unusual activity. I was back to looking at video that was mostly of nothing. Everything sat still in the museum for hours.
As a perfect complement to this, I got to listen to hours of empty, static-crackling audio, straining to hear anything too subtle for the analysis software to detect. Maybe there would be a whisper of a voice, a single footstep, a cough. Something. Anything.
There was nothing.
My phone chimed, and I realized I'd missed a couple of messages from Michael while absorbed in my work. The latest one asked, “Are you still alive?”
“Still alive,” I texted back. “Just got distracted. I'll be back soon.”
“Drive safe tonight.”
Tonight? I looked out the window, and it was already dark. I'd spent the whole day at the museum, looking for ghostly evidence. And I meant to come back tonight for an observation. That left only a few hours in between to spend with Michael and Melissa.
I headed into town, my tires crunching snow and slipping on the steep, winding road. I slowed to a crawl as I rounded the turn where The Bloody Jaywalker had jumped out at me.
Nothing jumped out at me tonight, nor did I see any hint of the bloody figure in the shadowy woods by the road, traveling his overgrown stone steps.
I continued down through the snowy night as fast as I dared. Which wasn't all that fast.
Chapter Twenty-One
On my way back to El Grande Chateau, I stopped at a gift shop and grabbed a couple of last-minute gifts for Michael and Melissa. This trip was getting more expensive by the hour.
The hotel room was empty; Michael had texted me that they'd gone out to look at all the Christmas lights and such.
That worked for me. I had a quick sandwich from the ingredients in Michael's cooler, just sliced cheese on bread, enough to stop me from doing something stupid like buying one of the giant cookies I'd seen an elf selling from a red cart. Or any food sold from a cart, really.
I can't say I was eager to go out at all. It had been a long day for me. Yet again, I cursed myself for letting Michael and his sister tag along on this trip. Surely no good could come of it.
A change of clothes later, I was outside, texting Michael that I was coming.
“We're at the Santa village,” he wrote back.
“I'll come there,” I replied. “I'm sure I can manage a couple of crowded, well-lit blocks on my own.”
I bundled up, which is to say I had a couple of shirts and a hoodie on. As it was still just below freezing outside, this wasn't really sufficient, but at least the cold perked me up as I headed down the sidewalk. I was determined not to drop money on a thick winter coat for this case...especially given that my client had pretty much confessed to being unable to pay his tab anytime soon,
Outsi
de, I passed a kid screaming something about Santa Claus while his parents wrestled him toward the same hotel I'd just left.
Ahead, bells and music rang out from brightly lit storefronts. Every kind of Christmas carol ran together in a soundscape of overdone cheer, fusing into something like “Frosty the Herald Angels Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”
The square was crowded, between gift shops trying their best to dump inventory on the tourists before the shopping season ended, and tourists themselves eating big pretzels and cookies from that one elf cart and watching some country band croon Christmas songs on the bandstand in the town's square. I couldn't hear them very well over the recorded music streaming out of the shops, but I could see the old bearded man on the steel guitar, the chubby acne-scarred guy on banjo, and the lead singer girl with waves of waist-long hair spilling out from under her cowboy hat.
I looked for Michael at the Santa's Village. Though it was after dark on Christmas Eve, there were still kids lined up to see Santa. Kris Kringle occupied a golden throne surrounded by ornaments and blinking lights in a large shed with three walls and a space heater. The missing fourth wall looked out on the line of kids, most of whom were coughing, sneezing, wiping their noses, or crying as they waited. It looked like there might be some nasty viruses going around along with the holiday cheer.
“Excuse me, ma'am, but I'm afraid you're too old to sit on Santa's lap.” The voice had a deep, cop-like sound, but I knew it was Michael before I turned to see him.
“I think that's up to Santa,” I said.
“Ew, who would want to?” Melissa added, looking at the sickly kids in line. “His fur coat's probably crusty with snot by now.”
“Gross,” I said.
“Probably his glasses are smeared with snot, too,” Michael added.
“Let's not make this a gross-out contest,” I said. “Besides, I'm sure at least one of these kids has peed on Santa's lap by now. Should we get in line?”
“Let's get in line for a hot chocolate instead,” Michael said. “You look like you're freezing cold.”
“I'm fine,” I said, shivering.
“You have to get the chocolate,” Melissa said. “You can get it North Pole style with marshmallows and whipped cream, or Feliz Navidad style with hot peppers, or Reindeer style with brown sugar and antlers. Which are cinnamon sticks, not real antlers.”
“And it's made by elves.” Michael was already leading me to a cottage that looked like it had been constructed out of gingerbread and gum drops. A chubby, graying lady with a big smile, plastic elf ears, and a Santa hat stood inside a window, and the smell of extremely good chocolate rolled out around her. She could have been Mrs. Claus herself, especially with her little rectangle-rimmed granny glasses.
“I'd like one hot chocolate, Tennessee style, please,” Melissa said.
The old lady frowned. “I'll need to see your ID.”
“Oh! I mean, uh, Reindeer style.”
The lady nodded curtly, but Melissa's request had drained her good humor.
I looked at the hand-painted wooden sign—which looked like a huge chocolate-colored mug, with menu items and prices listed in white curly writing that suggested cake icing. Melissa had attempted to order a hot chocolate laced with bourbon. Not exactly appropriate for a seventeen-year-old.
“Ellie?” Michael asked, after scowling at his younger sister.
“Um...I'll go for the Minty Mountain,” I said. Peppermint and whipped cream.
“Y'all have a nice Christmas,” the hot chocolate elf lady said, with a big grandmotherly smile for Michael and me, followed by another curt glance at Melissa. “Try and keep this one off the naughty list. You can see she's trying to get on it.”
“I'm sure I've been on that list for a long time,” Melissa said, smiling wide, which only made the older lady look more sour.
“What was that about?” Michael asked her as we walked away. “Are you trying to embarrass me?”
“Yes, Mikey. I'm trying to embarrass you in front of the old lady in the green elf shirt who doesn't know us at all and will never see us again. It's all part of my elaborate plan to slowly destroy you.” Her bright green eyes shifted toward me, and she gave me a mocking little smile. “Both of you.”
“That's just what I suspected,” Michael said.
“Took you long enough to solve that mystery,” Melissa said. “Look at the bears. They're not as big as I remember.” She pointed to a family of four oversized mechanized toy bears, each one a different color, their fur glowing with the help of fiber optics. The dad bear waved at passing pedestrians on the sidewalk. The little-kid bears were focused on lifting toys from giant gift boxes—a doll for the pink girl bear, a slingshot for the baby-blue boy bear.
“You're just taller than last time,” Michael said. “Much taller. Freakishly tall, even.”
“Which scares you, of course.” She stopped to stare at him, almost eye level. “A woman who can look you right in the eyes. That's intimidating, isn't it?”
“Not really.” He sipped his cocoa.
“That's why you date little shorties like Ellie.” She nodded down at me. Yeah, I was the shortest of the group.
“My height is bell-curve average,” I said. “You're both freaks.”
“Not if this is a democracy,” Melissa said. “I vote Ellie is freakishly short. Michael, how do you...look!” She pointed ahead as the miniature train arrived at the candy-cane station on the south side of the park, where a few shivering, rosy-cheeked kids waited their turn to ride.
I could see why the train jutted out in Melissa's childhood memories. The locomotive looked like it was made of giant cookies with a milk-bottle smokestack. The train cars looked like toys—an alphabet block boxcar, a sleigh, a snow globe with a clear dome for its upper half. The song Melissa had sung played over and over: “Chocolate chip, peanut butter! Sugar for your sister, fudge for your brother...” And that was it, again and again. Nobody had bothered to write more lyrics.
“Yeah, let's get a quick picture by it.” Michael held up his phone.
“A picture? I want to ride it!” Melissa ran to get in line, as though afraid more kids would show up at any moment to grab more positions ahead of her. “Come on!”
“You come on, Melissa,” Michael said. “It's a ride for kids.”
“They'll let me on.” She glanced ahead at the mustached elderly man in the candy-striped engineer's hat who drove the red and green locomotive. He was admitting the kids ahead of them onto the train.
“Don't be that person,” Michael said.
“What person?” She approached the engineer. “We can ride, can't we?”
The man looked from her to us and frowned. “It's for kids.”
“Yep, just like I said. Sorry for the distraction, sir. Melissa, let's go...” Michael tried to pull her away.
“But adults can ride. I see two moms on the train.”
“That's because they have little kids.”
“My mom used to ride with me on the train,” Melissa said.
The engineer looked at me and squinted. “Are you her mom?”
“I...” My jaw sort of fell open with that word and hung there. “What? No. I'm only ten years older than her. Nine!” Why did I care? “Anyway, we don't have to ride.”
“You two can get on,” the engineer said. He pointed at Michael. “Not him. Too heavy.”
“Toldja not to get the one with marshmallows,” Melissa said, elbowing him in the gut like it was big and puffy, when of course his stomach was perfectly flat, and hard, and muscular...
“I'd rather save the three bucks anyway,” Michael said.
“Sure you would.” Melissa took my arm. “Let's ride in the sleigh.”
I shrugged and went along with it. The ride seemed pretty tame, following a track around the park past the various vendors and oversized decorations.
We squeezed together on the sleigh's small bench seat. The sleigh car might have looked fancy on the outside, but on the inside it was
pretty much bare plywood. I eyed the area for protruding nail heads and screws before settling into place.
“All aboard!” the engineer called. He climbed onto the miniature locomotive and blew the whistle.
The train started forward on the tracks.
Immediately, two toddlers in the pumpkin-shaped car behind us began to cry and scream.
“Isn't this great?” Melissa asked, with a level of enthusiasm that I figured had to be fake, or at least wildly overdone.
“Sure it is,” I said. The train trundled forward at sub-turtle speed, crawling past the various little attractions so slowly that we barely seemed to move.
“You hate it.”
“No. I'm just, uh, a little uncomfortable with the seating.”
“What? You don't like being crushed against me?” Melissa took my hand, a gesture that surprised me. She held it tight, squeezing. “Do you think you're going to suffocate?”
“Huh? No. Are you okay, Melissa?”
“I want to see the haunted museum,” she said. “I want to see the ghosts.”
“Why?”
“Just bring me with you. I want to see. I want to know.”
I nodded, beginning to understand. Then I took a breath and tried to explain.
“Like I said, I don't have any secret knowledge about life after death, or any other mysteries of the unknown,” I said. “I know it seems like I might, but this work just raises more questions than it answers. If I had any special insights about life and death, I'd be happy to share them with you.”
“What's the worst ghost you've ever seen?” she asked, squeezing my hand tighter. Apparently she'd decided my work was really exciting. Which it is. So is a car crash, but that doesn't mean you want to experience car crashes all the time. “Was it Anton Clay?”
“Yes,” I said, not wanting to talk about this again.
“What does he look like?”
I thought this question was strange at first, but then I remembered how many horrific-looking entities I'd encountered. Some of them, like the murderous “boogeywoman” who'd once haunted Michael's apartment building, could change shapes, looking different to each person they encountered.