Tim came with me, but he wasn’t his usual pro-spooky self at all. “I thought you decided you weren’t going to worry about this. You said it wasn’t a hell gate.”
“It’s not. But I gotta know what it is, especially if it’s out to get me.”
“You really don’t think you should have help?” He wasn’t going to stop me, and he knew it, but the fact that I was going in alone was making him nervous. It was making me a little nervous, too. Still, I wasn’t about to make him go in with me again. At least I had the ability to sense this thing; he’d be going in totally unarmed.
“Who would I ask?”
“Your dad?”
“Like he’d want anything to do with this.” The only person I could think of was Sabrina Brightstar, who would spout a bunch of nonsense about auras and echoes.
“But if this thing is as strong as you think…”
“I’m just going to sneak in and look around one more time. Maybe take a few more pictures. Try to talk to it.”
Tim shifted from one foot to the other. “What if something, you know, happens?”
I handed him my cell phone. “My dad’s the first number on speed dial. If something goes wrong or if you hear anything weird, call him.”
Then I went in.
I suppose part of me almost hoped I’d find a bloody ritual going on in the shower alcove after all. There’d be Coach Frucile in a long black robe, standing over a scared freshman, ceremonial dagger at the ready. At least that kind of thing could be reported to the police.
But the alcove looked as empty as the rest of the locker room, and the presence was strong. Stronger than I’d felt it before. I could almost feel it pulling the fear from me in long threads, feeding on them, growing. It pulsated around me as I crept toward the locker banks, and I thought it might crush me, literally squish me like one of those booby-trapped rooms with the moving walls you see in spy movies.
And it was all drifting out from the alcove. When I concentrated, I was sure of that. So that was where I had to focus my efforts.
I resisted the feeling as much as I could and went on. Like a cop with my gun drawn, I moved forward, darting around each row of lockers, getting closer and closer to the alcove, and the thing seemed all too happy to guide me along. I started to feel dizzy; the presence was just so horribly strong. It physically hurt now, like a headache and a slap in the face and a punch in the gut, all at the same time. If I hadn’t felt it yanking me toward the alcove, I would’ve thought it wanted me out of there.
I knew I should leave. Just turn around and run. But I’d come too far to chicken out now.
The tourmaline. I should have it out; it should be in my hand, along with the rest of Mom’s lucky charms.
Why hadn’t I thought of that earlier? Before I could fumble for them, though, my messenger bag was wrenched away, the strap pulling against me and bruising my chest, before I managed to wriggle out from under it. The bag flew across the locker room and smacked against the wall near Coach Frucile’s office door, and I was propelled all the way into the alcove.
Okay. I could do this. I was strong and awesome like Mom, and I could handle this.
“Who are you?” I yelled.
The shower curtains began to whip around as a whirlwind built up in the alcove. My hair flew in my face, making it hard to see.
“Answer me!”
One by one, the showerheads turned on, blasting out hot water and filling the alcove with steam.
“The last time I was here you tried to talk to me!”
Beyond the alcove, the banks of lockers began to vibrate, the doors opening and slamming shut like they had before.
My head was muddled and swimmy. I was dizzier than ever, and I felt like my body was going numb from all the pressure. Was the alcove getting smaller? Was the floor getting closer? I couldn’t think. I couldn’t focus.
“You said I could do something! What did you mean? Do you need help?” I had to fight for enough breath to get the words out; I felt like I was choking. Drowning. On air.
Then someone grabbed my shoulders. I was pulled from the alcove and sent stumbling across the locker room, the grip on my shoulders loosening and letting go.
When I passed the central locker bank, its dozens of metal doors began to fling themselves open and slam shut, fluttering back and forth like loud mechanical wings. The creepy pulling sensation grabbed me again, but instead of forcing me back to the showers, this time it shoved my head into an open locker. That’s when I saw the words scratched into the unfinished sheet metal interior, sloppy graffiti engraved with a knife blade or maybe the sharp point of a compass:
Beth Chase
Brenda Thompson
Birch Street Badasses
The words looked unnaturally clear. They almost seemed to glow. Someone wanted me to see them, so even though I was close to fainting, I focused on those words as hard as I could.
Then a grip on my shoulders—a very flesh-and-blood grip—took hold of me, pulling me, roughly guiding me. Coach Frucile’s office door was open. I was shoved inside. The constriction was gone and I could breathe again. I stayed conscious long enough to fill my lungs. Then I passed out.
Icy water splashed my face, jolting me back to something resembling consciousness.
“Addison! Wake up!” A sharp voice. Female. Coach Frucile.
For a second, I panicked. Then I realized something odd. Her tone sounded almost…concerned.
Another splash of water. “Addison! Can you hear me?”
“Ugh. Yeah.” I sat up slightly, wiping water from my eyes while trying to relocate my sense of balance. My eyes fought to focus on the unfamiliar room.
“Are you okay? Do you need an ambulance? What the hell were you doing out there?”
“No, I think…” With a groan, I stood up. I had no idea what kind of story to concoct this time; I couldn’t think clearly enough for excuses. But maybe I didn’t need one.
“You can feel that thing out there, can’t you?” Coach Frucile said. “Even when it’s not acting up like that. You know it’s there.”
I blinked at her. “You know about it, too?”
“Are you kidding? Why do you think my office looks like this?”
Only then did I really pause and take in my new surroundings. I had never seen the inside of Coach Frucile’s office before. She always kept the door closed; there was a window that looked out into the locker room, but the blinds on it were always drawn. Now I saw why. It wasn’t really an office at all. It was more like a sanctuary.
The walls were hung with fabric in soft blues and greens. A small portable fountain that looked like a miniature version of a mountain stream burbled in one corner. A pair of large cushions lay on the floor. The scent of lavender—real lavender, medicinal and herbal instead of perfumey—settled lightly in the air. A prism hung in the center of the room, reflecting tiny wandering rainbows all over. A CD player on a shelf played calming, gentle meditation music. Coach Frucile even kept a tiny Zen garden on her desk. I’d been expecting…I don’t know. A few sports posters and a weird smell, I guess.
Coach Frucile pointed me toward one of the floor cushions. She got a pair of water bottles out of a small refrigerator behind her desk; after handing one to me, she settled on the second cushion, her legs crossed like a meditating yogi.
“This is my escape from that,” she said, pointing to the closed door to indicate the locker room beyond. “If I’m relaxed enough in here, I’m able to block out what’s out there. Or I was able to, anyway. Lately it hasn’t been working as well as it used to.” She tilted her head and looked at me, and a few little frown lines appeared between her brows. “Ever since the school year began and you joined my class that thing out there’s been agitated. Any idea why that is?”
I knew she was right—after all, paranormal things do tend to get more enthusiastic when I’m around, and that phenomenon only seemed to be getting worse. But how could she know that?
“You got lots of new stu
dents when the year started. Why do you think this is my fault?”
“No one else seems to notice it, for one thing. And it gets stronger when you’re in the vicinity—especially if you’re alone.” She paused for a swig of water, but I could tell she wasn’t done talking yet. “Plus, I know who you are. I know what your family used to do. Their investigation business.”
“You know about Palmetto Paranormal?”
“Know about it? Once upon a time I thought about joining.”
“Okay. Wait. What?” This was too weird. Maybe I was still unconscious and dreaming. “You believe in ghosts? You don’t, like, have abilities, do you?”
“They’re nothing like your mom’s, but yeah. I can sense things sometimes. Psychic echoes, mostly. I don’t know if you know what those are.”
“Yeah, I know.” I knew all too well, thanks to Sabrina Brightstar’s big mouth. “So you knew who I was from the first day of school.”
“As soon as I saw your name on my class list, I knew. I wanted to say something, but I wasn’t sure how you’d feel.”
“Is that why you always pick on me?”
She looked a little surprised. “I pick on you?”
“Well, yeah.” I played with the label on my water bottle. “You’re not usually too nice.”
“I’m not overly nice to anyone, Addison. Violet. It’s how I keep my students in line. Maybe I picked on you more in the beginning because I knew your name. That wasn’t fair of me. But for a long time I haven’t known what to think of you. You sneak out of my class. You wind up in the locker room when you don’t have reason to be there. At first I thought you were just skipping.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I realize that now. You’ve been having trouble with that thing.” Again, she gestured toward the locker room.
“What is it? I tried doing an investigation, but all I could figure was that it’s probably not a hell gate or anything. If it’s a ghost, it’s not like any ghost I’ve ever met.”
“You did an investigation?”
“Sort of. I tried. So, do you know what’s out there?”
“I wish I did. My first thought was that it’s just one of those psychic echoes, but it’s too strong for that.”
“An echo of what?”
She gave me a look as if she were surprised I hadn’t already figured it out. “Violet, were you happy about taking gym? Were you happy about having to use the locker room?”
“Ugh. No.”
“Guess what? Almost no one is.” She spread her hands. “This is hell for just about everyone, and all that misery leaves a mark. I could always feel it, which is why I have my office set up like this, to block out the worst of it. If you feel the echoes, too, I don’t want to put you through any more time in the locker room after today. I’ll recommend you for a student aide position for the rest of the semester.”
“Will I still get credit for taking gym?”
“Yes. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Awesome.” I didn’t think the echoes were what had been bothering me so much, but I’d grab just about any excuse to get out of gym.
“Whatever this thing is,” she continued, “it’s much worse than just some built-up echoes. It’s like it’s been lying in wait. It’s been festering like gas fumes, and when you showed up, it was like someone lit a match.”
“Boom?”
“Boom.”
Something fwumped against the door, and I wondered if the locker-room thing could hear us talking. It was pretty freaky, but for some reason, I felt a little less afraid than I would’ve been if I’d been alone, though.
“Maybe we can figure this out together,” Coach Frucile said. “Do you have the results of your investigation with you?”
“I have some stuff, but it’s in my bag, and that’s still out there. Whatever’s in the locker room pulled it away from me and threw it.” As if the entity heard me and wanted to show off, the dull rapping noise bounced off the door again. Fwump.
“You stay here.” Coach Frucile stood up and stalked to the door. She opened it, then ducked as a stray towel snapped toward her. She was gone for only a few seconds before reappearing with my messenger bag and slamming the door, shutting us off from the thing once more. “Show me what you have.”
I guess I should’ve been terrified by that point, but strangely, I wasn’t. I mean, I was nervous. My heart was still beating quickly, and my hands were shaking a little. But now that I was with someone else who knew what was going on…
Maybe that was the point of a team. The whole safety in numbers thing.
I handed over the notebook with the measurements I’d taken, then turned on my camera. Luckily, being tossed across the room hadn’t busted it. It turned on just fine, and the photos I’d gotten were still on the memory card. I was going through them when Coach Frucile cleared her throat; when I looked over, she was holding up the notebook. She had it open to the page I’d been scribbling on the day Tim and I came up with the devil-worship idea, and there was her name, written out right next to “Lucifer.” I had no idea what to say; I could feel my cheeks reddening.
She just smirked. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve heard it before. You think you’re the first student to call me the devil? The name’s not demonic, though. It’s Italian.”
There went the Lucifer theory. Now that I’d spent a little time talking to Coach Frucile, I couldn’t believe I’d ever suspected her of ritual sacrifice or anything crazy like that. She seemed pretty cool when she wasn’t being an evil gym teacher.
She turned the pages until she got to the actual results. “Violet, how much do you know about paranormal investigation? How many have you been on?”
“Um, just this one. A few weeks ago. I read some stuff on the Internet about how to do them.”
“Your parents never taught you?”
“I was only eight when Mom died, and Dad doesn’t do that kind of thing anymore. Why?”
“You did a very good job with a lot of this,” she said. “Better than I would have expected for a first-timer. But you made some beginner’s mistakes.”
I tried not to bristle at her words. “Like what?”
“You didn’t take any baseline readings, for one thing. These EMF numbers are interesting, but without a baseline taken outside the room, you don’t have much to compare them to. And you’d have to research the school’s electrical system so you’d know an inflated number in one part of the room couldn’t be blamed on something mundane. In this case, the wiring for the indoor scoreboard runs through the wall that separates the gym from the locker rooms. There’s a lot of juice running through there, even when the scoreboard’s not on, and that’ll affect readings. I’m not saying your numbers aren’t from the entity—they could be—but you’d have to be very careful about where and how you take readings if you want more conclusive proof.”
“Oh.”
“Did you take any temperature readings?”
“My thermometer went dead before I could.”
“That could’ve been the thing out there. Or it could’ve been dead batteries. Did you use fresh ones?”
“Um.” Now that I thought back, I couldn’t remember. “This equipment was Mom’s, so it’s pretty old. The batteries were probably old, too.”
“You always have to check that sort of thing before an investigation. Otherwise you leave yourself open to too many possible explanations.”
“Oh,” I said again.
She held out her hand for the camera and flipped through the photos, looking at each on the screen. “Did you use a film camera as well?”
“I don’t have one.”
“It’s good to use one, even if it’s just a disposable. It gives you a negative to study. Digital photos can be unreliable; some investigators won’t use them at all. And it looks like you used a flash with all of these; it’s better to take some photos with a flash, and some without. Flashes can play tricks.”
“But I got orbs.” I grabbed the camera back and b
rought up a specific shot.
“Those look like specks of dust, unfortunately. Real paranormal orbs look more like little comets. They’re moving quickly, so in photos they look like they have tails.”
“What about the ectoplasmic mist in the shower alcove?”
Coach Frucile frowned at the shower photo. “It could be a mist. You’re right. Or it could be high levels of humidity reflecting your flash. Did you take this in the morning?”
“During first period,” I said.
“Did you know the cross-country team practices before school, then uses the showers?”
“No.” Like I had any reason to pay attention to the cross-country team’s schedule.
“That’s why the alcove is so humid in the morning. That’s the sort of thing you’d need to be aware of. A lot of your results do show possible activity, but they’re too easily discounted.”
“Oh,” I said once more. It was getting to be my standard reaction to everything. Then I remembered one piece of evidence that wasn’t in the notebook. “I got EVP, too.”
“Really? You got a recording of that thing?”
I was kind of impressed Coach Frucile knew what EVP was.
“Yeah.”
I thought back to how the recording had scared me, and how I’d deleted it off my computer at first. If I was lucky, there’d still be a copy on the recorder. I took it out of my bag, switched it on, and pushed play. The sound was quieter and tinnier through the recorder than it had been on my laptop, but I could tell from Coach Frucile’s face that she could still make out some of the words.
“Now that,” she said, after letting it play on a loop a few times, “I can’t disprove. You’ve got something there.”
I wished I could’ve felt smug about showing her up on at least one detail from my investigation, but hearing the recording again had given me goose bumps.
“I don’t know what it means, though. It said I could do something, but then it said no, and then it trailed off. And that part about the street—did you hear that?”
Spookygirl: Paranormal Investigator Page 12