by Mark Lukens
“We should check it out,” Shane said. He glanced at Nick and Kristen. Nick seemed like he was ready to go down there.
Kristen’s eyes widened in fear. “They were just stuck down there,” she said. “Why would we go down there?”
“The door’s broken now,” Shane said. “It can’t close on us now.”
Kristen didn’t look so sure about going down there.
“Shane’s right,” Nick said. “We need to check it out. Get something on film. That’s what we’re here to do.”
“Is that why we’re really here?” Laura asked Nick.
Nick didn’t answer her.
Laura turned her attention to Shane. “Don’t go down there. We need to leave this place right now.”
“Maybe she’s right,” Kristen said. “She’s the psychic. She can feel what’s going on here. You guys trusted her earlier. Why aren’t you listening to her now?”
Shane stepped into the basement doorway and shined his flashlight beam down the steps. The darkness swallowed up the light about halfway down. He felt someone move up right behind him. He turned and saw Nick with the camcorder in his hand—he was ready to go. Shane nodded at him and then turned back around. He went first with Nick right behind him.
Moments later Shane and Nick stood at the bottom of the basement steps. Shane looked back up the stairs at the doorway where Laura, Warren, and Kristen watched them, all of them huddled together. A flash of lightning lit up the kitchen behind them for a moment, silhouetting their figures there in the doorway.
“Let’s go this way,” Nick said. He had his camcorder up to his eye, already filming. Shane followed the older man with his flashlight, helping to light the way.
They walked past the stacks of boxes and crates, meandering through the aisles that ran through the stacked-up furniture.
The main part of the basement gave way to the smaller stone rooms through the low archways. The ceilings were lower here, the wood older, the stones black with mildew. Nick shined his camera’s light on the moist black walls. “You think this is what they saw?” he asked. “Mildew.”
“They said it was following them up the stairs,” Shane reminded him.
Nick stopped when they came to a bare wall. “And Warren saw his daughter down here.”
“What he thought was his daughter,” Shane corrected. “Laura’s right. Something evil is here and it’s making us see things.”
Nick just nodded.
This might be more than just a haunting, Shane thought, something far more dangerous. But something else was bothering him more than that, something Laura had said to Nick upstairs. “What did Laura mean when she asked you why we were really here?”
Nick sighed and lowered his camera. Shane noticed that he had turned it off … he didn’t want any of what he was going to say to be recorded.
“Why are we really here?” Shane asked again. He realized that Laura had touched a nerve with her question earlier. Laura sensed something about this expedition; she had figured something out that none of the rest of them could see.
They heard voices from the darkness. Light beams danced around wildly, and then a moment later Billy, Harold, and Nigel came towards them from the archway at the other side of the room. Harold had the camcorder up to his eye, filming as he approached.
Shane glanced at Nick who had clammed up now, obviously not wanting to talk about what they were really doing here while Harold was filming.
“Laura said she and Warren saw some weird things down here,” Billy said. “Warren said his daughter was down here.”
“We haven’t seen anything down here so far,” Nick said.
“What about the camera down here?” Nigel asked. “We should see if it picked anything up.”
“I can check on the laptops,” Billy suggested.
Nick nodded as he looked around the basement. The darkness was so thick down here it was like black walls pressing in around them.
“Do you want to get some more footage down here?” Billy asked Nick.
“No,” Nick said, exhaling the word out with a sigh. “We just looked around and we didn’t see anything.” He glanced at Shane.
Shane didn’t say anything.
“Let’s get back upstairs and look at the footage from the camera down here.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
The base of operations
Kristen inspected Warren’s wrist as he sat on his sleeping bag with one of the battery-powered lanterns next to him. Warren’s wrist was rubbed raw, but there were no lacerations and it wasn’t swollen too badly, nothing seemed to be broken. “You can move your fingers okay?” she asked him.
Warren wiggled his fingers and swiveled his hand around, working his wrist in every possible direction. He nodded. “I think it’s okay. Really. Thanks.”
“Why were you down there in the basement with him?” Nick asked Laura.
Warren looked at Laura like that thought had occurred to him, too.
“I knew something was wrong,” Laura answered. “I knew Warren was in trouble.”
“Did you see his daughter, too?” Shane asked Laura.
She shook her head no.
They all looked back at Warren who had a cup of steaming coffee in his hand now. Billy had made some coffee on the propane stove and a few of them were sipping from cups.
“When the generator ran out of gas,” Warren began and then stopped like he’d just noticed that the lights and computers were still off. “Why is the generator still off?”
“All the gas is gone,” Shane told him.
Warren looked confused like he was trying to figure out how they had gone through their entire supply of gasoline.
“Somebody dumped all of the gas out of the cans,” Nigel said. Then he looked right at Nick. “Perhaps to create a more dramatic ambiance.”
“I didn’t empty the gas cans,” Nick said. “I don’t know who … or what did it, but it wasn’t me.”
Billy had the camcorder back up to his eye, filming the conversation while walking around in a circle beyond them and the glow of the battery-powered lanterns.
“Maybe the construction crews that were here had some extra gas,” Shane said.
“We looked already,” Nick answered.
“Well, maybe we should look some more.”
“We don’t have any gas here!” Nick snapped. “I don’t know why someone emptied them, but that’s the reality we’re faced with now. We don’t have electricity, but we’ll get through the night and carry on with our jobs here.”
Everyone was quiet. Nick’s outburst seemed to put an end to the argument about the gas cans.
“Please,” Nick said to Warren. “Continue. Why did you go down to the basement?”
Warren sipped his coffee again, and then took a deep breath. “When we were all running to the foyer, I was the last one to leave. I was about to follow you guys outside but the I stopped when I heard my daughter calling me.”
“And your daughter is …” Nick let his words hang in the air.
But Nick already knew the answer to that question; Shane was certain that Nick had done extensive research on everyone here before inviting them along. Nick just wanted it confirmed for the camera, for his film.
“Yes,” Warren answered Nick. “She …” He struggled for a moment, trying not to cry. “She overdosed on pain pills in our home. She had snuck off to a party in the middle of the night and I caught her coming home early in the morning. I was mad … so angry. I yelled at her. I said some things I shouldn’t have said. She stormed off to her room. I didn’t realize that she had taken so many pills. I was working in my office that day while she was … she was … dying.” Warren wiped away at his tears.
“It’s okay,” Kristen said. “If you don’t want to—”
“No,” Warren said, clearing his throat. “No, I need to tell the rest of it. I saw her that day she died. I saw her after she was already dead.”
Warren let those words sink in.
Ever
yone was quiet, waiting for him to continue.
“Like I said, I was in my office, burying myself in my work when I heard her in the kitchen. I went to the kitchen and I saw her standing by the door that led out to the garage. She smiled at me and told me that she loved me. She looked so happy, almost glowing. And then she left. I followed her out to the garage, but I couldn’t find her. She wasn’t out there. She wasn’t outside. I ran back inside, calling her name. I had this strange feeling that something wasn’t right. I went to her bedroom and knocked on the door. She didn’t answer. Normally I wouldn’t have barged in, but I just had this feeling. I opened the door and … and I … I found her there.” He wiped away at more tears. “She’d been dead for a while—that’s what the paramedics said once they got there.” Warren sniffled and rubbed at his eyes. “But I saw her spirit that day. I saw her in the kitchen and she spoke to me. She smiled at me. She told me she loved me. And then tonight … I saw her again. She was so afraid. She was in trouble. She needed my help.”
Nick looked at Laura.
“That person he saw tonight wasn’t his daughter,” Laura said to Nick.
Warren looked at Laura. “You don’t know that for sure. What if it was my daughter? What if Erin followed me to this island somehow? What if she followed me and now this thing here has got her? What if she’s really in trouble and needs my help?”
Laura shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think this thing here … this evil presence, it’s making us see things.”
Shane thought of Mike’s face in the hole in the wall and Old Lady Cranston trying to crawl out of that same hole in the wall.
Nick still stared at Laura. “And you followed Warren when he went down to the basement?”
She nodded. “I knew something was wrong.” She looked away from Nick and then at the others one by one. “There’s something wrong with this manor, with this whole island. There’s something very evil here. Something very powerful.”
Nigel sighed loudly, protesting his discontent, but he didn’t say anything.
“I think we’ve all seen some things here,” Laura continued and this time she looked right at Nigel as if challenging him to tell the truth about the things he’d seen. “I think we’re seeing our deepest fears, our worst memories come to life.”
“Or our imaginations are making us see these things,” Nigel countered.
“Why don’t you give it a rest?” Shane snapped at Nigel.
“I have a right to express my opinion,” Nigel told Shane. “That’s why I was asked to come along, to give rational explanations for what’s really going on here.”
“Yes,” Nick said, jumping to Nigel’s defense. “We all have a right to our opinions.”
“So, what’s your rational explanation for what happened to Warren and Laura in the basement?” Shane asked Nigel.
“Warren imagined he saw his daughter, imagined he needed to help her to appease some kind of guilt he is feeling.”
Warren glared at Nigel, but Nigel continued quickly. “Laura noticed Warren leaving, and her imagined psychic skills picked up that something was wrong so she followed Warren down to the basement. Down there, both of their imaginations went haywire and they saw things that weren’t there.”
“Both of them saw the same thing?” Shane asked dubiously.
“Yes. It can happen. Power of suggestion between people. Like UFO sightings. One person sees a light in the night sky and he believes it’s a UFO, and pretty soon the other people around him are seeing the same thing, seeing what he has suggested they see.”
“That’s bullshit,” Warren spat out. “I know what I saw. I saw what Laura saw. I saw that black liquid, that black blood or whatever it was, following us, coming up the steps. I saw that pink thing that used to be the door handle wrapped around my wrist.” He raised his wrist up to show the marks on it as proof. “Laura saw it, too.”
“But the stairs weren’t wet,” Nigel said. “There was no evidence down there that there was any kind of liquid on the steps.”
“The basement door was stuck,” Shane said. “How do you explain that?”
“They locked it without realizing it,” Nigel said and shrugged. “Or it was stuck from the humidity.”
“Like the door to Room 214 was stuck?” Nick said. “That’s a lot of doors getting stuck around here.”
“All I’m saying is that there are rational explanations for all of this,” Nigel said. He looked at Harold, his only other lifeline in this group of believers. “What do you think, Harold? You’re a scientist.”
“I’m a scientist, too,” Warren grumbled.
Nigel ignored Warren as a lost cause, waiting for Harold’s reply.
Harold shrugged. “I’ve seen something, too.”
Nigel exhaled, suddenly disgusted that everyone had turned against him.
“I saw my brother outside,” Harold said. “When I was …” He paused for a moment like he wasn’t sure how much he should say. He glanced at Nick and then continued. “When I was doing some tests outside, I saw someone standing in the woods right behind the manor. It was my brother. He’s been dead for years, but I saw him standing there in the brush plain as day. He was … he was just staring at me and he was reaching a hand out like he needed my help.”
Shane looked at Nigel, ready for his explanation now, but Nigel remained quiet. Shane was happy to see the frustration on the bitter man’s face.
“But I think there could be a scientific explanation for all of this,” Harold said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
“What kind of scientific explanation?” Nick asked. He stared at Harold like he was warning him against saying too much.
But Harold looked like he was caring less and less about Nick and this job.
Shane felt the tension between the two men. He had wondered why Harold, a geologist, was here with them on a ghost hunt and a documentary. There was a reason the scientist was brought along, and it had something to do with the “real” reason they were here. And if this other reason they were here on this island put their safety, maybe even their lives, in danger, then Shane wanted to know what it was.
Just then, as if the manor itself answered, the walls and ceilings around them rumbled, the wood creaking, the floor quaking. There was a loud popping sound from a distant room. Then everything was quiet except for the pouring rain and howling wind outside.
They all stared up at the ceiling. The chandelier still rattled a little from the rumbling that had just shaken the house, but the manor was quiet now.
“That quake we just felt is part of my explanation,” Harold said, still looking up at the ceiling.
The rest of them waited for Harold to continue. “I believe there’s some seismic activity here on this island,” he said.
“Well, that’s quite evident,” Nigel mumbled. He had his silver flask in his hand that never seemed to run out of whiskey.
Harold ignored Nigel’s comment. “There’s more seismic activity in the Caribbean than a lot of people realize: earthquakes and volcanoes. And I believe there’s something unstable under this manor.”
“It isn’t safe here?” Kristen asked. She seemed ready to use anything as an excuse to jump to her feet and bolt out of there.
Harold shook his head and glanced at Nick who glared at him. “I don’t think it’s entirely safe here. When could an earthquake happen? Who knows? It could happen in the next few minutes, few days, or few years. But if these tremors are any indication, I believe it could be soon. I believe these tremors are getting stronger and more frequent.”
“I think that’s reason enough to abandon this documentary,” Shane said, looking right at Nick.
Nick looked at Shane, but didn’t answer him. But his eyes seemed to say: We’re not going anywhere.
“I believe there might be some kind of … of fissure underneath this building,” Harold continued.
“What? Like a hole in the ground?”
Harold nodded. “Kind of like a natural cave or
hollow area. I think there might be quite a few of them underneath this building … more like a tunnel system. And I believe these tremors may have formed a crack between those caverns and the surface. It may have been cracked hundreds or even thousands of years ago.”
“So … what does that have to do with the ghosts here?” Nigel asked impatiently.
“I believe the fissure could be releasing certain … gasses.”
“Gasses?”
“Yes, there are many types of gasses below the earth’s surface; methane is one of the most well-known. But there are many other rarer types of gases, and some like mixtures of carbon dioxide and methane, and another gas called ethylene, can lead to certain side effects like disorientation, a narcotic effect, disassociated thinking … and hallucinations. Some geologists have theorized that the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece might have been breathing in hallucinogenic gasses, like ethylene, to come up with her visions of the future.”
“And you think that’s what’s happening here?” Warren asked.
Harold shrugged. “It could be a possibility. It might line up with the seismic activity here. Gasses can rise to the surface much easier along fault lines.”
Nigel seemed to come alive with excitement. “Yes! That could be it. We could all be hallucinating because of these gasses.”
“Like we’re being poisoned?” Kristen asked.
“I don’t know if we’re actually being poisoned,” Harold said. “I don’t know if the concentrations would be high enough to be toxic, but it could certainly be enough to cause side effects like hallucinations, paranoia, and strange thoughts. But any of these side effects would only be temporary.”
“Yes, it makes sense,” Nigel butted in. “We’re all seeing things that mean something to us.” He looked at Shane. “You’re seeing your childhood friend and the old lady from the Cranston House.” He looked at Warren. “You’re seeing your daughter.” He looked at Kristen. “You’re seeing the dead bodies buried around the house because you read about them in your research.”
“What about you?” Laura asked Nigel. “What have you seen here?”