Spookygirl: Paranormal Investigator

by Jill Baguchinsky

  I figured the boxes couldn’t all contain equipment. There were probably all kinds of clues and stuff in them. The idea of finding out more about Mom excited me a lot more than investigating the shower room hell gate.

  I opened the top flaps and found a scattered mess of papers, photographs, and assorted little things. It looked like everything had been packed quickly, without any attempt at organization.

  It was how I’d pack away the belongings and mementos of a loved one I’d just lost. I bet Dad had stuffed everything of emotional value in these boxes, and he probably hadn’t opened them since. At least he had kept them, but why hang onto a bunch of memories you won’t let yourself enjoy or remember? Sure Mom was dead, but the contents of the boxes might’ve let us feel closer to her all these years.

  I came across Mom’s address book, small and lavender, with a pair of cartoon owls on the cover. I remembered those owls. When I was little, Mom always made sure I wrote thank-you notes for any presents I got from friends and relatives (even Aunt Thelma, who always gave awful, useful presents like socks and savings bonds). When I had a note ready to send, Mom would tell me to look up the address in her little book.

  I found a drawing of a black cat I’d scribbled for her when I was five. I’d wanted a cat in the worst way back then, but Mom didn’t think it would be wise to trust Buster with small animals. She was afraid he’d get jealous and do something…unappealing to them.

  Then I found a tangled clutter of stuff that looked like it had come straight from the top of a dresser. Dad had probably swiped it all into the box at once, just so he wouldn’t have to look at it. A silver chain, a couple of movie ticket stubs and receipts, a really ancient tube of peppermint lip balm, a single earring, a pen, a ponytail holder, a small wooden jewelry box, some change. And a single gemstone—a tiger’s eye, shiny and smooth. I remembered that stone, remembered admiring it. Mom hadn’t carried it around with her, but she kept it because she thought the brown tones were pretty. I liked the way the textures shimmered and shifted when I rolled the stone in my palm.

  Dad had told me Mom’s things were gone. It was really hard not to be mad at him for keeping the boxes a secret; finding just a few small things gave me back parts of Mom I thought I’d lost.

  Under a to-do list and a couple of bank statements, I found a small, box-shaped object made of black plastic. It looked a little like an old television remote, only with knobs instead of buttons, and a dark digital screen. Okay, this had to be something important. There was a power switch on the side; I turned it on, but nothing happened. I flipped the box over and saw a battery compartment on the back. From the box’s weight, I guessed there were probably dead batteries inside. Please tell me they didn’t leak, I thought, opening the compartment. I was in luck.

  After changing the batteries, I tried the power switch again. This time the digital readout lit up in bright green. A second later it registered a 1.4, whatever that meant. I’d need to research how to use it, but from what I’d read in the Ramsay Court account, I guessed it was probably an EMF reader, a device that measured electromagnetic fields. The presence of a ghost was supposed to cause a surge in the reading. There was only one sure way to test that theory.

  “Buster!”

  I heard an unholy squeal rattle from the direction of the living room. Seconds later the temperature in my room dropped. Buster screeched with joy, levitated my pillow, and hit me on the head with it. Before getting bopped by my poltergeist, I saw the EMF readout change. The number went crazy, spiking up to 18.9, then wavering back and forth between that and 12.3 as Buster moved around the room.

  Buster picked up the pillow again; like a girl on a sugar high at a slumber party, he used it to whack me on the shoulder a couple of times. I did my best to ignore the smacks and watched the meter.

  “Okay, Buster. Wanna play? Go get your toy. Get your squeaky burger!”

  With a delighted cry, Buster left the room. The temperature returned to normal; the EMF reading settled back down to 1.4.

  It worked.

  A moment later, the rubber hamburger sailed into the room and landed on my lap.

  Buster reentered the room with a squeal, and the reading went back up. This was way too awesome.

  I switched off the detector, then squeaked the burger and threw it into the hall. “Go get it!”

  Soon it flew back into the room and bounced off my arm. Buster made one of his unearthly chuckling noises.

  I could hear Dad downstairs; it sounded like he’d just gotten home. I put the reader back in the box and crammed the whole thing into a dresser drawer, carefully hidden under a couple of shirts. Then, to thank Buster for being so helpful, I played fetch for a few more minutes and rewarded him with a cookie. Overcome with happiness, he screamed and pulled my hair.

  * * *

  Over the next week, I went through the rest of the boxes and unearthed a scientific digital thermometer, a motion detector, and a sound recorder. Everything was years out of date, technologically speaking, but it would do. In exchange for attention and cookies, Buster was my willing guinea pig for each. The thermometer registered the temperature fluctuations that occurred around him, and the sound recorder picked up his cries and squeals clearly. He was a loud ghost, though; even people without abilities like mine could hear him. I wondered how the recorder would do in the locker room, if it could pick up any EVP.

  The motion detector did absolutely nothing, even when I riled Buster up. It only detected movement when he levitated or threw a solid object, but even then, it only registered the floating item, not Buster. He was invisible, even to me. Maybe the detector would work better on the kind of ghost I could see. Not that I thought I’d have luck with it in the locker room, anyway—I needed tools that could take fast readings, like the temperature gauge and the EMF reader. I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit around for hours and wait for the motion detector to go off.

  I had hoped to find a camera with some kind of infrared feature, or maybe a film camera, but nothing turned up. My own digital camera would have to do if I couldn’t locate anything better. I’d just have to hope for orbs or weird spectral mists.

  I also found lots of Mom’s personal stuff during my search. Some of it, like the address book and the tiger’s eye, I kept out of the boxes and hid away in my room. I kept some of her jewelry, too—the silver chain, a pendant made from a shard of obsidian, a ring embedded with tiny crystal chips, and a rose quartz necklace. I couldn’t wear any of it and risk Dad recognizing it, so I hoarded it away in Mom’s wooden jewelry box and tucked everything into a nightstand drawer. I kept my own jewelry in the box as well—the spider earrings and the various purple bracelets and rings I’d collected.

  But even though I was thrilled to find so many of Mom’s things, it wasn’t until I opened the last box that I realized what I had really been searching for.

  The box held a stack of file folders, and each folder represented a different ghost hunt. All of Mom’s notes and research were there: the pre-investigation interviews the team had conducted, the measurements they’d taken, and Mom’s post-investigation accounts. I wanted to read everything; I paged through file after file. Reading Mom’s notes and reports was almost like having her peeking over my shoulder, telling me more about how each investigation had progressed.

  Then I came across a folder I wasn’t sure I was ready to read: the Logan Street file. It was unfinished and disorganized, and that seemed really wrong. Mom was so meticulous about arranging the elements of each investigation, but the Logan Street notes were jumbled and messy, and, of course, there was no final write-up.

  A strange thought hit me then. Maybe I could finish it—I could look over Mom’s research, add a little of my own, and, based on what I found and what I already knew, write an account of the investigation for the folder. It would be difficult, but I knew Mom would appreciate the effort, and it might even provide some closure. Plus, I really wanted to learn as much as I could about that night. I still only had a sk
eleton of an idea of what had happened on Riley Island.

  According to Mom’s notes, the Logan Street property had been bought and sold a number of times over the years. Each new owner thought he had gotten a deal until he or his family spent the night. The weird thing was how different each experience seemed to be. The men usually noticed some pretty typical paranormal activity—strange noises, cold spots, stuff like that. But the women heard whispered threats and sometimes got manhandled by invisible beings. I’m not even kidding—one woman said she felt someone grab her arm and wrench her toward the main staircase. Even the local historical society had refused to accept the house as a donation and take ownership of it after one of their female representatives had a bad experience there.

  Mom had suspected the house was haunted by the ghosts of James Riley, Jr., and his wife, Abigail, who both died on the same night back in 1932. She hadn’t been able to find more information than that; the local historical archive’s old headquarters had flooded during a hurricane in the 1960s, and a lot of the early history of Riley Island had been lost.

  I figured I could research Riley Island online, and hopefully find some historical details Mom hadn’t been able to uncover. And maybe I could even use Mom’s address book to track down the other members of Palmetto Paranormal and see if they could tell me anything about the night of the investigation. The idea of contacting Mom’s old friend Sabrina Brightstar didn’t exactly thrill me, but I needed all the firsthand accounts I could get. Anything to learn more about that night.

  Unfortunately, though, officially reopening the Logan Street file would have to wait until after the locker-room investigation. I had to face whatever was in there head-on, and soon, especially if Tim was right and it had some kind of weird interest in me. I’d send that thing packing, and then I’d have one less thing to worry about. And maybe I could even stop dragging my gym clothes home with me every day.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  who ya gonna call?

  Since I’d been disgusted by the overcrowded cafeteria, I did at Palmetto what I’d done at Lakewood—I started hiding in the library. As it turns out, a high school library can be a safe haven from many things besides greasy food and obnoxious peers: nagging teachers, assemblies, pep rallies. Yeah, especially that last one. Noisy, boring, stupid things where cheerleaders jump around and some guy in a mascot costume acts like an idiot and everyone yells and screams a lot, and you’re supposed to care and “show school spirit.”

  Show school spirit? No thanks. I had enough school spirits to deal with already.

  By the time the first pep rally of the year came around, Miss Walters, the head librarian, and I were old buddies. It wasn’t hard to get on her good side—I offered to help shelve books a few times, and once I proved that I understood the Dewey Decimal System—it’s not that complicated!—she adored me.

  Pep rallies were always held during the last period of the day, so it was easy for me and Tim to sneak away together after drawing class. Technically, attendance at pep rallies was mandatory for the entire student body; when Miss Walters saw me, though, she waved me inside.

  “Sit near the back so Mr. Stoltz won’t see you if he peeks in,” she said. Mr. Stoltz, the troll-like vice principal and dean of discipline, loved ferreting out anyone who dared to default on his or her school spirit.

  Tim and I sat at a small study table, the view of which was blocked from the library’s entrance by a couple of bookshelves.

  “So have you decided yet?” he asked.

  I was too distracted to figure out what he was asking. Earlier that day, Ms. Geller had assigned our midterm English project—a descriptive essay about our most vivid childhood memory—and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. She was giving us plenty of time, she said, because she wanted us to put a lot of thought into our essays and turn in something meaningful and full of concrete detail. Her expectations were high, and the essay would count for a quarter of our semester grade.

  Great. My most vivid childhood memory was the night my mom died. No way was I writing about that. Finishing Mom’s Riley Island file was one thing, but I wasn’t about to yack about her death in an English essay. That night was no one else’s business, and the thought of putting it down on paper for my teacher to read was enough to make me moody. I’d think of another memory. Or I’d make one up.

  Tim gave me a look, and I realized he was still waiting for an answer.

  “Sorry. Decided what?”

  “How you’re going to do the ghost hunt. The investigation.”

  “Not yet. I need to get in while the locker room’s empty, and I can’t risk just sneaking in again. Coach Frucile keeps an eye on me now.” Ever since I’d shown Tim the equipment I’d unearthed, he’d been dying to know when I was going to investigate the presence—and he wanted to help. However, I didn’t know how to get myself, let alone a boy, into the girls’ locker room when I wasn’t supposed to be there. My inhaler excuse had gone stale.

  “Fake an injury during gym.”

  “Like I need to fake them.” We’d moved on to the track unit by then, and track was nearly as unlucky for me as volleyball. I had already skinned my knee at the end of one class, and…Something wiggled in my mind. “The first aid kit.” The one on the wall near Coach Frucile’s office. She’d gone into the locker room to get me a bandage while I hovered outside. “Wait, that might work.”

  “What about the first aid kit?” Tim was practically bouncing in his chair. He had bleached a white streak in his hair the week before, then dyed it with lime Kool-Aid. It was now a sickly swamp green, and it flopped over his forehead when he moved.

  “You know those cold packs you activate by bending?” I said. “There are a few of those in the kit. If I pretend to twist my ankle or something during class, maybe she’d let me hobble to the locker room to get one.”

  “Wouldn’t she just send someone else to get it for you?”

  “Oh.” Shoot. “I guess.”

  Tim’s eyebrows arched up evilly. “You need someone else to fall. Then you could be the one running for the first aid kit.”

  “Hmm. Wouldn’t it be a shame if that happened?” Not that I really wanted anyone to get hurt, but sometimes a good investigation requires a little sacrifice. I tented my fingers under my chin and began to consider the candidates.

  And so it was that the next morning, while several of my classmates prepped for a four-lap relay race, I accidentally nudged my foot over the painted line and into the first lane of the track. Gosh, how careless of me. Christy Palmer’s toes caught on the edge of my sensible white gym sneaker, and she went sprawling onto the hot asphalt with a scream.

  Whoops.

  “Omigod!” I said, feigning concern as she rolled over and sat up. Actually, I really was a little concerned. She’d gone down harder than I’d expected—I figured she’d, you know, at least try to catch herself—and she’d bumped her knee pretty hard. I had nothing against mousy Christy and her owl-eyed glasses, and I hoped her injury wasn’t too bad. On the bright side, a badly bruised, scraped-up knee was as good an excuse as any for me to fetch the first aid kit. I got Christy up and helped her to the nearest bench while Coach Frucile hurried over. When I offered to get the kit, Coach Frucile was too concerned about Christy (and the school’s liability, I figured) to notice I’d suddenly turned into Little Miss Helpful.

  I only had a few minutes to work before Coach Frucile would wonder where I was. I stopped quickly at my regular locker for my messenger bag, which held my equipment. Then I headed to the locker room. On the way in I almost smacked into Tim, who was skulking around its entrance like a kid working up the nerve to shoplift a candy bar from the drugstore.

  “I skipped out of English,” he said, holding up a bathroom pass.

  I shushed him and peeked into the locker room. When I was sure it was empty, I motioned for him to follow as far as the doorway. “How long have you been here?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Your teacher’s going to t
hink you have some kind of horrible problem.”

  He shrugged. “If she asks, I’ll tell her I went out for Mexican food last night and the refried beans tasted weird. I don’t think she’ll want more info than that.”

  I took a few steps into the locker room, and the feeling closed around me. It smacked at me in pulsing waves, and this time, my vision almost seemed to redden, as if the surfaces of the room were all coated with a thin veneer of blood. That creepy feeling of being watched made the back of my neck prickle.

  “So when’s the scary stuff start?” Tim asked, lingering near the door and glancing in toward the shower alcove.

  “You don’t feel that?” The room itself felt alive and angry, with a bloody heat thudding against the walls of the shower.

  He looked a little disappointed. “No.”

  There wasn’t time to discuss it—but was it just my imagination, or did the feeling seem a little less fierce and heavy than usual? Maybe because I had a friend with me? I handed Tim a notebook and a pencil. “Write down whatever measurements I read off. I’ll tell you what they mean later.” He stuck close behind as I began to make my way through the room.

  I started with the EMF reader. The readings I got were bizarre: 14.6 near the main bank of lockers; a comparatively low 2.9 outside Coach Frucile’s closed office door. At the entrance to the showers, the reading spiked to an incredible 31.3. The thing roared silently around me, shoving me toward the alcove. I nearly took a step inside; my sneaker was about to touch the tile floor when the EMF reader’s screen went dark. It wouldn’t turn back on.

  I switched to the digital thermometer, but it was also dead. Despite the fact that I stood in a hot spot, I shivered.

  “Do you feel that?” I asked Tim. “Feel how warm it is here?”

  “I figured the air conditioner needed some work,” he said.