by J L Bryan
“Not a chance,” Michael said. “Come on.”
We headed up to the second floor via the sagging, cobwebbed old stairs.
“Here's where things get exciting, Melissa,” I said, leading her into the office. “Somewhere in here, among all this paperwork, lie clues to the identity of the ghosts in this building. Possibly. So we get to search for them.”
She frowned. “Really?”
“You can start with the recent decades,” I said, opening a drawer crammed full of yellowed papers. “Our only lead is the name 'Amil,' which could be Arabic or Indian. It's associated with a boy of around twelve or thirteen years old, so keep an eye out for any names that sound Arabic or Indian—that could be a relative or a parent.”
“How am I supposed to know if they're those languages?” Melissa said. “I'm not some expert.”
“If you think it's a possibility, pull it out for me to look at,” I said. “Also, keep an eye out for any signs of conflict, like lawsuits or legal correspondence. Or tragedies, like someone who died in the museum.”
“Ew,” she said. She found a chair, moved the tilted heap of paperwork off the top of it, and sat down, the old leather upholstery creaking underneath her. Then she cleared off a corner of the desk and started to work.
Down the hall, Michael and Ryan were in the workshop. I could hear them through the open door.
“Yeah, we can work something out,” Michael was saying. “I can pack up some of the non-functioning ones while I'm here.”
“Most of them are non-functioning, unfortunately,” Ryan said.
“I'll see which ones can be saved. A couple of them shouldn't really be moved—too big and fragile. They should all be packed like crystal.”
“Can you fix the merry-go-round?” Penny asked. “It's my favorite.”
“I'll try,” Michael said.
“Can we go now?” Polly asked, her voice almost too soft to hear, floating like a faint draft up the hall.
“I want to go, too,” Ronan said.
“You can go if you take your brother, girls,” Ryan said, and footsteps indicated that at least a couple of the kids had left.
“I want to stay and watch the toy fixer,” Penny said. “Is that what you do, Mr. Michael? Travel around the world fixing broken old toys?”
“I don't do much traveling around the world, unfortunately,” Michael said. “And mostly I'm a firefighter at home. This is more of a...weird hobby.”
Penny snickered. “Very weird.” After a moment, she said, “Firefighter, huh? That's pretty major. Have you ever seen someone all burned up—”
“Penny!” Ryan interrupted. “We're busy right now. You can stay and watch, but stay quiet.”
“Fine! I was just trying to make things less boring.”
Over the next couple of hours, Melissa and I dredged through horrifically tedious paperwork, focusing on employment records.
Down the hall, Michael tinkered and worked on the merry-go-round automaton while Penny peppered him with questions.
“Are we really not even close to done with this?” Melissa asked after a couple of hours, rubbing her temples. She was visibly irritated, “I haven't found anybody named Amil or Muhammad or Patel or anything.”
“What are those?” I indicated the stack of files she'd set aside.
“Probably nothing,” she said. “Looks like a bunch of boring lawyer stuff. When can we do something else?”
“You're not enjoying yourself?” I asked. “This is a real ghost hunt.”
“What about all those cameras and junk? When can we see the ghosts?”
“Oh, you'd like to review video footage instead?”
“It would have to be better than this.”
I smiled—this was working out as I'd hoped. Staring at hours of unchanging video was even more tedious than wading through yellowed old paperwork with mice-sized type, in my opinion. “Sure. Let's go have a look at the footage.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The footage review proved as slow as I'd hoped. I suppose I could have hurried things along by cross-checking the video records with audio anomalies, but my short-term goal was to drive into Melissa's head the idea that my work wasn't interesting at all.
While she watched hours of nothing happening, I looked through the files she'd pulled aside.
They were a bit hard to decipher. There was a lot of correspondence between Leydan and an attorney in town, dating to the mid to late 1960s.
I frowned as I leafed through it. Gradually a picture emerged: someone had petitioned the county commissioners to alter the zoning along Highland Road, where the museum was located. They wanted the area zoned purely residential, with no commercial activity allowed.
Leydan's attorney explained that the rezoning would require Leydan to close down his museum. He could use it as a personal residence, but that was all.
What followed was a flurry of correspondence, but the final resolution of the situation remained unclear to me. The letters themselves were out of order, jammed haphazardly among unlabeled folders.
I supposed it had eventually worked out fine for Leydan, though, because his museum still existed today.
I jotted down the lawyer's name, as well as that of the neighbors who had apparently been most concerned about the issue. One was a commissioner himself, a Peter McWhartor, local attorney. Another complainant was a neighbor named Georgina Charrington.
Unfortunately, the local paper's online archives only extended back to 2009, and nothing came up about those individuals when I searched. Learning about their ultimate fate would have to wait until the local library and courthouse re-opened the next day.
I searched the local online directory for the surnames McWhartor and Charrington. There was nothing for Charrington, but I did find a 'Gus McWhartor' listed in the area. He was the proprietor of Foxboro Tow n' Trash. Which, I learned, offered both tow-truck and trash collection for those who lived in the mountains around Foxboro.
I made a note to call him the next day, too.
Running into dead ends in that direction, I decided to search online for any stories about the supposedly legendary Snake Man of Foxboro.
“Nothing is happening,” Melissa complained, indicating the monitors in front of her. “I don't think this place is even haunted. Can I go explore the museum now?”
“No. Not alone.”
“Yeah. Because Settler Sally's going to come to life and choke me with her plastic hands.” Melissa wrapped her own fingers around her throat and made gagging sounds while sticking out her tongue.
“I've seen stranger things.”
“Strange would at least be interesting.” She shuddered and stood up. She'd grown increasingly fidgety and restless over the previous couple of hours. It was tedious work. “I need a break. Where's the bathroom?”
“I think there's one down the hall,” I said. “You probably want to make sure it works first.”
“What luxury.” Melissa grabbed her purse and walked out. At least she'd been working all this time, I thought, and not texting her friends back home.
I remembered what Michael had said, that she'd been going out a lot lately, staying out late and he didn't always know where she was at night. He didn't know who she'd been going out with and what she'd been doing. I was starting to wonder, too.
It seemed like a good time to stretch my legs anyway, so I stood and headed down the hall.
Michael sat on a stool in the workshop, peering at the clockwork innards of the carousel through a magnifying glass on a movable arm. Lions, horses, and a number of tiny cogs and gears were spread out on the table in front of him.
“...and so Bryce—that's girl Bryce, not boy Bryce, who's a totally different Bryce—so Bryce goes and tells Shiloh what Deandra said about Kelly, and of course she totally blew a basket when she heard about it, and went and told everyone about Deandra and Matt...” That was the chattering voice of Penny, sitting on a stool watching Michael work. If he had any idea what she was talking
about, or was even listening, he gave no indication.
“Hey, Penny,” I said. “Where's the rest of your family?”
“Upstairs,” she said. “Dad said I could stay down here as long as I keep quiet and don't bug Mr. Michael.” She gazed at Mr. Michael with obvious admiration. The bored little redhaired girl seemed to be developing a crush on my boyfriend.
“And how well are you following those instructions?” I asked.
“I'm not bugging him,” she said. “Right?”
Michael let out a grunt that was neither confirmation nor denial. Maybe it meant something in man-language, but certainly not in English.
“You and Melissa should probably be moving on soon, Michael,” I said. “Before nightfall. I think she's getting tired of her ghost-trapper internship, anyway. It really is ninety-nine percent drudgery. And I really don't want her around for the exciting parts. Or you.”
Michael, focused on the bit of machinery he was trying to fix with the world's smallest tweezers and screwdrivers, let out another indecipherable grunt.
“Does he ever say anything besides that?” Penny asked, and I couldn't help letting out a laugh before I covered my mouth.
That, at least, made Michael look up, a baffled look on his face, like he had no clue why I was laughing. “Huh?” he asked, which was close enough to yet another grunt to make both of us laugh. Maybe I was just getting punchy after hours of looking through chaotic, smudged paperwork dating back six decades.
“So, enough with the boring stuff!” Melissa bounded back into the room. “Let's go explore that museum. And the caves. There has to be cool stuff down there, I can feel it.”
“I'll go!” Penny said. “I mean, if y'all are going.” She looked at Michael.
“I was just saying that you two need to get back to the hotel before dark,” I said.
“Back to the hotel? It's so early. I'm not going to sleep for hours,” Melissa said. “Come on, this icy mountain air is so...energizing. We should go have a snowball fight! Or go down in those caves.”
“What's your obsession with the caves?” Michael asked.
“What's your obsession with being boring?” Melissa replied. “This is our first vacation in forever and all you want to do is fix up some old clattertrap nonsense?”
“'Clattertrap nonsense'? Are you eighty years old?” Michael asked incredulously.
“Bite me. I was reading the old ads all over the wall in the bathroom.”
“You don't have to stay at the hotel,” I said. “You can hang out downtown.”
“What if I want to hang out here? Are you trying to get rid of us?” Melissa asked me.
“No, I'm trying to keep both of you safe from my work. It's kind of a major personal goal of mine.”
“Yeah, it's all so dangerous,” Melissa said, gesturing around. “So dangerous I could sleep for a month. If I wasn't so awake. Come on, let's go do anything else.”
“That's what I'm recommending,” I said. “You and Michael can go.”
“But I like it here,” Melissa said. “I want to search for ghosts and monsters. I want to stay all night.”
“We should get going,” Michael said.
Polly appeared like a wispy ghost in the hall, having come down through the hidden stairs behind the cupboard, which seemed to be the family's preferred way of traveling within the museum. She hung back and mouthed something at us.
“I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you,” I said.
“She said that my dad is inviting you for dinner,” Penny said.
“It's just macaroni and cheese, and fish sticks,” Polly said, her eyes darting nervously among us as she spoke. “And broccoli.”
“That sounds good,” Michael said.
“It won't be,” Penny said. “He'll burn it.”
“Yeah,” Polly said. “The kitchen's already getting smoky.”
“Seriously?” I said. “I'd better go straighten that out before he burns the place down.”
“At least that would be interesting,” Melissa said, drawing a scowl from me. She didn't seem to notice, though, but instead jogged ahead of us, clearly happy to be away from all the paperwork.
All of us ended going up to the apartment together, where I fixed a couple of basic problems, like the remnant of pasta that was burning underneath the pot of macaroni, and the insufficient amount of water inside said pot.
“Seriously,” I said to Ryan, once I'd eliminated these very simple issues. “How do you even survive?”
“Barely,” Penny spoke up. “I bet the fish sticks are burned, too.”
“The fish sticks!” Ryan ran to the oven and opened it, unleashing more smoke into the air. Polly tossed him an oven mitt so he could remove the pan. “They're fine,” he coughed. “Just...extra crispy. We can probably eat like ninety percent of these.”
“That thing's loaded, right?” I glanced at the fire extinguisher by the stove. “In case we need it?”
“Very funny,” Ryan said. “I invite you into my home, I let you tinker with my gadgets, I offer you a fine seafood dinner, and you imply I'm going to kill us all with fire.”
“Please don't,” I said quickly.
“Ellie's fire-phobic,” Melissa said in a whisper loud enough for everyone to hear it.
“Oh, I didn't realize,” Ryan said. “I would never have invited you anywhere near my cooking if I'd known.”
I laughed. “It'll be fine. Just tell me the broccoli is okay.”
“The broccoli is okay.” Ryan cast a doubtful look at the steaming pot. Something about his expression made me laugh again.
“Are you feeling okay, Ellie?” Michael asked. He'd taken a seat at the kitchen table, along with the kids. Melissa was pacing around, as if impatient to get on with the next adventure, whatever that might be.
“I'm great.” I went to sit next to him. “Just exhausted. I'll be fine.”
We finally ate, and it was sort of the weirdest Christmas dinner I could remember. Melissa kept chattering, and kept failing to bond with any of the kids, who all kept their distance from her. Not that she was trying, or that it really mattered, but I thought surely the twelve-year-old girls would be interested in an older teen girl hanging around.
Instead, Penny kept watching Michael, while Polly just stayed quiet and kept her eyes down on her plate. Ronan talked only when prodded by his father.
Michael and Ryan discussed the automata a bit, and Ryan described the renovations he'd already done around the museum, as if a little defensive about his own inability to repair the rare antique clockwork items.
“It's kind of a ridiculous hobby, to be honest,” Michael was saying. “I really just set out to repair my mom's old cuckoo clock, but by the time I managed that one, I had all these watchmaking tools and no use for them. So I started looking for other things to repair.”
“Where do you find them?” Ryan asked.
“Antique stores, garage sales, wherever unwanted junk washes up,” Michael said.
“I don't think it's that ridiculous,” Ryan said. “Bringing broken things back to life. Things nobody else knows how to fix. It's almost like they're from another world. No computer chips in there, no electronics. You know?”
“I do,” Michael said, and it felt like the bromance was well under way.
“So,” Ryan said. “You repair tiny fifty-year-old robots, you fight fires, and you capture wild ghosts on the side?”
“Oh, no, I'm not involved with the ghost stuff. I'm just in town with Ellie.” Michael mopped up ketchup from his plate with his last fish stick, then looked surreptitiously toward the platter at the middle of the table to see whether there were more. There weren't.
“Really?” Ryan asked. “So you two are...” He pointed to each of us with his two index fingers. Then, as if his hands reflected his thoughts in real time, he brought the tips of his index fingers together, very slowly. His eyes widened as his two fingertips touched, in a way that probably wasn't meant to look like an elementary school girl describing
two people kissing, but definitely did.
I felt uneasy, given the still in-progress, it's-complicated nature of my relationship with Michael, and my strange interest in Ryan.
“Yeah,” Michael said, sounding perplexed, like he didn't know why this hadn't been obvious all along.
“I have to go,” I said, standing suddenly. “It's getting dark out there. Which means I need to switch on all the recording gear. It's kind of a process. Probably missed a couple batteries there, too.”
“You seem jumpy,” Melissa said, looking me over with obvious amusement.
“I'm not jumpy!” I said, much too fast. Then, speaking more slowly as if to prove it: “I'm not. Maybe y'all should get going, too. Before it gets seriously cold out.”
“Wait, Ellie,” Michael said, “So...does this mean you aren't finishing those fish sticks?”
“Knock yourself out,” I told him, and he reached for my plate.
Eventually, they cleared out, after Michael made plans to come back the next day and look at the old gadgets some more. He was going to pack several of them for shipping, some to ride in my van on the way back to Savannah, others to be sent later.
I walked Michael and Melissa out. She hurried into the truck to get out of the cold wind from the mountaintop. More snowflakes coasted on the wind, collecting in Michael's hair and eyebrows as he stopped and turned back to look at me.
“You sure you're going to be okay?” Michael said.
“Of course. It's just my job.”
“That's what worries me. You alone in there.”
“I'm not to the capture-and-confront phase yet,” I said. “I'm not even sure how to go about it. And I'm not completely alone, anyway.”
“Oh, yeah. Ol' Ryan will just whip out his little guitar and start swinging.”
“Music can be effective against ghosts, though,” I said.
“So that's your plan? You get in a tight spot, Ryan comes and sings 'Amazing Grace'?”
“I do have that on my 'Potent Playables' list,” I said. “Clears any little wandering nasties out of the room. For a few minutes.”
“Sounds like you and Ryan are all set.”