The Spook House (The Spook Series Book 1)

by Paul Emil

  We got low scores if we shot civilians. A lot of times, it was really hard to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, which I guess was the point.

  Overall, what I was doing here wasn’t that different from what I’d been doing in Texas, which made me wonder, Why fly me all the way out here to do the same thing? What do I have in common with the other guys? Why us, and why here?

  I had a feeling I wouldn’t like the answers.

  –––––

  Three weeks later, Sgt. Coles told us we were going to a new training site. We packed into three Jeeps. One of the “bosses” was in each one. Sgt. Coles was in the lead vehicle, Major Jones was in the middle, and Chandler was in the rear one. That’s right. The same Major Jones from the interview was out here. And this was the first time Chandler was coming out to a field exercise, so the day was already starting out strange. I had no idea how far that would go.

  MPs drove the Jeeps and we headed toward the Rock. At the base of it, the road forked around the outer rim of it in either direction. We took the road on the right.

  This is cool, I thought. I’ve never been this close to it. Now I’m going to get to see the back side.

  We only got about halfway around the natural tower when the convoy took a hard left and headed towards the rocky wall. There was no road. As we drew closer to the face of the closest cliff, I saw a fissure. The crack in the cliff was so narrow it was nearly invisible. It was barely wider than the Jeeps. The caravan entered the chasm. It was freezing in there. I gazed up at the thin strip of blue sky high overhead, and then looked forward.

  “It’s … It’s hollow!” Paco said excitedly. He was right. I could see the light of the sky overhead joining a narrow, growing slit in front of us. My imagination ran wild. I felt like I was in a James Bond movie, and I was seriously expecting to seeing something spectacular inside, like a rocket, a giant radar dish, or a doomsday device.

  Kaz’s imagination was activated too. He leaned toward me and said (not too loudly), “I told you Abe! This is it! We’re going to see aliens and flying saucers and shit!”

  I couldn’t call him crazy. Fantasies bloomed in my head too, and although they were different from his, who was to say who was wrong? In a few minutes, he might be proven right.

  Our small convoy exited the canyon of rock and entered an enormous open area surrounded by the towering rock walls. As impressive as this natural arena was, it was nothing compared to what was in the middle of it.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Chandler, who was riding in my Jeep, turned around and looked at me with a wicked smile. “Oh, this is nothing,” he said. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  There was a gleam in his eyes that seriously freaked me out. I imagined it was the same look Dr. Frankenstein had right before he threw the switch to animate his monster.

  The Jeeps stopped. As we all got out, I tried to read everyone’s faces. The MPs showed no emotion, as usual. Major Jones looked deadly serious. Chandler could barely contain his excitement. Sgt. Coles looked worried. All of the troops (including myself, judging by the wrinkles I felt in my forehead) looked nervous.

  Before us, in the center of the space, was an enormous fortress. It had shear walls of smooth cement that were at least two stories tall. Guard towers stood tall at the four corners of the square structure. Spotlights and mounted machine guns pointed inward and downward from the turrets. This wasn’t a fortress to keep people out. It was designed to keep things in.

  “What the hell have you got in there?“ said Dubois. “King Kong?”

  “Shut up!” shouted Major Jones.

  “It’s like, a secret prison,” Dubois said, absent-mindedly echoing what I was thinking.

  “It is NOT a prison!” barked Jones, as if personally insulted.

  Chandler looked over at Jones to make sure the man was finished, and then said, “It is something else all together … something … special. You want to see it don’t you?”

  Amazingly, the answer that came to mind in my head was both yes and no at the same time. I think everybody else was thinking the same thing. Nobody spoke.

  “Well good,” Major Jones said, “because we’re going in. Now.”

  We entered a door and went through a series of sealed chambers - airlocks, actually. Security was so tight I doubted a spider could scurry through without being detected. The innermost chamber had four doors: the one we came in, one in front of us, and one on either side. One of the side doors opened with a hiss, revealing a long, sterile hallway. We were about to step towards it when Jones shouted, “Halt! That door is for me only! This is as far as I go.”

  “Of course it is,” the handler said snidely, giving Jones a look that would have gotten any of us troops beaten for disrespect. In fact, he was practically calling him a coward. Jones’s face fell, and for a second, I thought there was going to be a brawl right there. Then Jones’s eyes narrowed and the corners of his lips curled up to make a smug smile.

  “Good luck with your … exercise,” he said. His eyes drifted from Chandler to Sgt. Coles. The sergeant was not smiling.

  With that, Jones looked at all of us. I might have imagined it, but I think I saw him shaking his head knowingly when he smiled. He stepped through the door and it sealed shut behind him.

  “Asshole,” Chandler said.

  Sgt. Coles said nothing. He was acting weird, making a deliberate effort not to look at any of us in the eye. What was going on here?

  The door in front of us opened to short hallway. At the end of that was another door that opened to daylight.

  “Right,” Chandler said, remembering the mission and getting back to business. “He were are, kids. It’s time to see what the Rock is all about.”

  This is it! I thought. I’m going to learn some of my country’s biggest secrets!

  I was almost trembling. I was about to see what the government was hiding from everyone. Maybe America was running a secret space program out of here with top secret spy satellites or orbiting lasers or something. Or Kaz could be right. Maybe we were going to see an alien spacecraft or a time machine or some sci-fi thing like that. At this moment, anything was possible.

  We stepped out into the courtyard surrounded by the wall. I heard gasps. Somebody said, “What the fuck?”

  Expecting to see something big and bizarre, I wasn’t disappointed. My imagination had been conjuring up images of every possibility and it still couldn’t come up with what I saw before me. Let me tell you what it was.

  12

  “It’s a house,” Kaz said, sounding a little disappointed but mostly uncertain. I was with him. I wasn’t sure of what I was looking at either. A flat, barren strip of “no man’s land” about 50 meters wide spread before us. Stretched between us and the clearing was a high chain link fence topped with razor wire. Inside of this pen lay another 50 meters of wasteland. At the center of this stood a house. It was a big, two-story Victorian relic. It looked old – ancient, even. Its skin of paint had long ago flaked away, revealing the bleached, bone-like boards beneath. Wood covering the windows also looked weathered. What this thing was doing in the center of a volcanic vent was beyond me.

  The weirdness didn’t end there. There were SAMs (Surface-to-Air Missiles) positioned inside of the fence. They weren’t pointed skyward. They were aimed at the house.

  “Welcome to the Spook House,” Chandler said, staring at the monstrous dwelling in front of us.

  He turned around and smiled at us. The weird gleam in his eyes was back, along with a wicked glint in his smile. I swear, the look on his face was almost as freaky as the sight in front of us. He didn’t even try to hide his delight. He scanned our faces, savoring the looks of awe and fear he found on each one of them.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said, deadly serious.

  “Sir. What is it, Sir?” Boudreaux said quietly, as if afraid he might wake a sleeping giant monster in front of us.

 
“This,” said the handler, “is a test. Consider it your final exam. Your mission is to clear the house. You do that, and you pass.”

  “You want us to go in there?” Dubois said incredulously. He didn’t verbalize his next line, which I think we all silently heard: “No fucking way.”

  The handler’s smile dropped. He was obviously irked at the break in protocol. Still, he sensed a rebellion brewing, and he acted quickly.

  “Up until now, you’ve been doing house-to-house searches in the mock Iraqi village. As a unit, you’ve have shown promise. But this is something completely different. This environment is big and it’s dark. You clear this, and you graduate.

  The use of the word “graduate” sounded deliberate and thought-out well in advance. What would happen if we didn’t pass and “graduate”?Why, we would fail. We would be “drop-outs,” and nobody wanted to be that.

  “I don’t want to go in there,” Dubois said.

  You got to admit, he had balls. He was only saying what we were all thinking, but he said it out loud. He was afraid. We all were, but that fact he could admit it and say it showed that he was braver than most. Either that, or he didn’t give a damn anymore.

  Chandler inhaled deeply through his nose and exhaled out of his mouth. He was breathing faster, trying to control his anger. He regained his composure and said, “You WILL go in there. All of you. It’s just a house. There may or may not be pop-ups in there. Your job is to sweep the whole house. If you leave before finding them all, you fail. If you don’t find any, fine. Just make sure you’ve searched the whole house before coming out and reporting that.”

  He added, “Remember! If you fail, you die.” We looked around each other.

  “… in the field!” the handler quickly added. “Drill it like it’s real. If you fail in the field, you die, or your fellow soldiers die. If you fail here, you live with the shame. And you get demoted. But you’re not going to fail, are you? You’re going to get in there and clean it out. The next Bin Laden could be in there, so go get him!”

  The handler’s speech may have worked if we were a football team about to play a game, but it had little effect here in front of this monstrosity masquerading as a house.

  This is what the military’s about. It’s about getting troops to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do. Right now, none of use wanted to go into the dark house. It seemed to radiate a vibe that said, “Stay away!” It would be like a child who had never been in the woods before coming across a mountain lion or a big bear. Even if the child had never learned to fear such an animal, the sheer size of it and its teeth and claws would trigger a warning alarm. The human survival instinct would shout, “Don’t go near that!” That’s how we felt now.

  So even though we were supposedly on our way in our “military careers,” as they put it, the brainwashing wasn’t complete. This task was putting everything in doubt. The handler sensed it.

  “I should add that there is a sizable pay increase with the promotions you’ll be receiving. Also, there is an unofficial competition among the supervisors. We like to bet how long it will take a team to clear the house. Maybe you’ll set a new record.”

  “What’s the record?” Boudreaux asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” the handler said. “It could affect your job performance. Besides, this isn’t a timed test. Just get it done.”

  The money, not surprisingly, improved some of the guys’ attitudes. Then there was the competition angle. That motivated a lot of people in the world. But I saw a more sinister side to it. I’m sure the handler’s words were carefully prepared in advance. He spoke casually as if this was all just a routine training exercise. We weren’t facing the unknown.

  It sounded like the previous teams had made it safely out without any trouble. This test happened so often the supervisors bet on it.

  But that story, just like everything else I’d seen and heard here, didn’t feel right. But I could already see the change in the group. The brewing rebellion was quelled. Its would-be leader, Dubois, was silent now.

  So that was it. I shuddered. I knew what was happening. We were going into the house.

  –––––

  I felt like a boy about to jump into a cold lake – scared to take the plunge, but once I got in, it probably wouldn’t be so bad. I’d get used to it, and maybe even enjoy it. After clearing a house in training or doing a pop-up run, I usually felt a wave of relief pour over me. And like a kid at a cold pool, the sooner I got in, the sooner I could get out.

  Growing up in the Midwest, I swam in my share of lakes. While they could both be refreshing on hot summer days, the experience of swimming in a lake was totally different than swimming in a pool. A lake had its benefits. You were out in nature and the water was pure. You didn’t have all of the concrete around or the chlorine smell.

  But it was scary too. Most lakes were cold and dark. You couldn’t see the bottom. There were fish and God-knows-what-else in there. Of course, there was a feeling of safety in numbers. If there were a bunch of people splashing around in the water, it was less likely that I would be singled out and targeted by “the thing in the water.” Of course, I didn’t expect to be attacked by anything. But the feeling was always there. It was a primal fear in the brain. The presence of others reduced it. That’s exactly how I felt now.

  I mentally prepared myself and was ready for the challenge when Sgt. Coles said, “Alright, then. Count off!”

  We did, and then he said, “We have three stations here. Go to each one, get your gear, and come back here. Alright. Number One, go.”

  There were three tables set up in the no man’s land in front of the fence. A uniformed technician stood at each one. Open cases and equipment were spread out on each table.

  At the first table, my first thought was, Cool! We’re getting iPods! The device I got was black and had two long wires. But the wires didn’t end in earbuds. Instead, they terminated in electrodes in rubber pads that were gelled and taped to my temples.

  “Don’t take them off,” was the only instruction I got. I stood there waiting for more, and the man said, “You’re done. Move along.”

  At the next table, an Army nurse checked my vitals. A heart-monitoring device was attached to my belt. Electrodes were taped to my chest. I was moved along.

  I went to the last table. The officer standing in front of it had been replaced by Sgt. Coles. I didn’t see him taking this position while I was going through the other stations. I didn’t recognize him until this moment, now that I was up close. He checked the small camera and microphone mounted onto the sides of my helmet. I was surprised when he seemed to be extra concerned about the camera. He turned his back as if it bore a shield that would deflect wandering gazes and piercing stares. His eyes never left the camera he was inspecting. I heard a cryptic message breathed out like a ghostly warning.

  “Abrams … NO! Eyes forward! Don’t look at me! DON’T LOOK!”

  I kept my eyes forward, as ordered, as if I wasn’t hearing anything. Coles continued to “fix” the camera.

  “Listen to me. In the house, don’t shoot anything. Don’t kill anything. Don’t have sex with anything. You got that? You hear me, nod once.”

  I nodded. I saw the handler in the distance, looking over at us. Coles must have noticed him too, for at that exact moment, he declared the camera OK.

  “Good to go!” he barked. “Move!” He shoved me forward and on my way.

  I wanted to turn around and look at him, to see some verification in his eyes that he was serious and not joking or “fucking with me.”

  “Don’t shoot anything,” he had said. OK. Maybe that meant there were no terrorist pop-ups. Maybe anyone who fired his gun would be panicking and shooting at “civilians.” Maybe that was the test. It was about restraint. Firing on them could be grounds for failure. Maybe this was all about staying cool.

  But “Don’t have sex with anything”? What the hell did that mean? Was Coles jerking me around?

  My gut sa
id no. He had slipped me the warning in stealth, and disguised the effort so he wouldn’t get caught. He put himself at risk by doing so. I didn’t know what to make of what he said, but whatever it was, I would take it seriously.

  I resisted the urge to look back as I walked back to the spot where the handler and the other troops had reconvened. After I got to spot, I casually looked. Kaz, who was Number Six, was with Coles. There was no problem with Kaz’s camera. Coles didn’t delay him to check it.

  Passing the equipment check, Kaz walked over to rejoin the group. His face looked worried, but not more so than anybody else’s at that moment. I didn’t see puzzlement. There had been no secret message for him to ponder. That warning was for me alone.

  I did feel a little better after Coles gave me the “head’s up.” It sounded like he knew what was going on. That meant the house wasn’t a mystery that uneven the military didn’t understand. That thought had appeared in my head like an apparition. It was scary, but now I felt like a child frightened by a fake haunted house on Halloween. The truly scary thing was how easy it had been to unnerve all of us. Here we were, men with machine guns, afraid of spooks.

  Now it all made sense – the heart monitors, the cameras, and everything. Well, not quite everything. There was still something wrong here. What about all of the security? I mean, with that surrounding wall, this looked like some secret super-max prison or something. And the location. Could it be any more remote? This was like someplace they used to test atomic bombs. It was far from everything so civilians wouldn’t get hurt, or even know about it. But that was like, during World War II. The government didn’t do tests like that anymore, did they?

  Could all this security just be a part of the “atmosphere of fear,” or something to help create the illusion? No, that didn’t feel right. The security felt real. There were real secrets here that the government wanted to keep hidden. You could feel the fear. I know. Stress is like that. I used to feel it at school, right around finals, or even at my dad’s work sometimes. It was like an invisible vibe in the air. You couldn’t see it, but everybody could feel it.