“Well,” Ed said to break the silence. “If you don’t need anything else from me I guess I’ll leave you to it. She’s all yours.”
“Question,” Boyd said. “You pick anything up on those video cameras?”
Ed was sliding into his jacket, but stopped. “Like what?”
Boyd looked away, decided to forget it. “Never mind,” he said. “Teddy thought maybe someone was sabotaging the site and I’ve been kicking a theory around in my head that maybe someone’s doing it from the inside.”
“Inside, like inside job?” Ed asked furrowing his brow.
“Not exactly. More like someone else is here. Someone possibly with intimate knowledge of the site. I don’t know … maybe I’m grasping at straws.”
“Have you seen anyone?” Ed asked. Boyd had been looking away, but the thickness of the man’s voice brought his attention back.
“No,” Boyd said, maybe too quickly. “It’s just a theory, like I said.”
Ed bobbed his head. “Maybe you should set up camp in the security room tonight. You should be able to see everything now.”
“That’s a thought,” Boyd said.
Ed patted him on the arm and wished Boyd a goodnight, and Boyd watched him leave through the automatic doors. He turned and returned to the chair behind the desk. He figured he’d go back to the security room later, right now he needed to be in an open space. He was starting to feel anxious and uneasy about this whole rotation and the thought crossed his mind again about asking Donnie if there were any other gigs he could take.
There was something out of place here. There was no questioning it anymore. The feeling was almost tangible. Boyd thought it was like visiting an old house once lived in, only to find the walls were painted differently, the living room wasn’t as big as it used to seem, and the loose creaky door to the basement was locked.
Around two a.m, he got up to stretch and felt the need to step away from the computer, who had a ten-game winning streak going in chess. He took a slow walk through the first floor, the clacking rhythm of his shoes being the only sound.
“This would be a great spot to take up tap dancing,” he said out loud and laughed. “Go on, go on. Judge away.” He turned and extended his arms as if he were playing for a live audience. “Yes, I’m talking to myself. What are you going to do about it?”
His hope that talking out loud would ease some of the silent tension in the air failed. The only purpose it served was to remind him how alone he was and how far away he was from any people.
The door to the security room was open and Boyd couldn’t remember if he had closed it on his way out or not. There was a black leather love seat pressed up against the wall. He sunk in between the cushions and listened to the electrical hum of the room. Before he closed his eyes he stared at the wall of monitors, each one as empty as the one before it. It felt good to sink into the warmth of his jacket. He suddenly realized how incredibly tired he was. His thoughts traveled where they usually did when he was left to them, to Morgan.
Things hadn’t ended up working out with Miranda.
There were too many angry nights and upset words, which left him with a drinking problem and a stark studio apartment.
Morgan took the split hard, and she was already getting into some bad shouting matches with her mother, butting heads like most teenage girls and their mothers do. The morning he left — for good that time, there weren’t going to be any phone calls later on begging forgiveness — she had asked him to take her with him. He wanted to, more than anything, and the way she asked, pleaded with him —“Dad, please, I can’t stay here” — damn near broke his heart.
The phone at the front desk rang and it pulled apart the thoughts in his head until they were vapors. He sat for a moment, still faded and stuporous from sleep. He was trying to decide if it had really rung or if he’d only dreamed it. Through blurred vision he tried to read the time on his watch. It was almost three thirty in the morning. He stood with a groan and started toward the front of the lobby.
The phone rang again, a loud, electronic clashing. He figured it was Teddy, maybe apologizing for not calling him earlier to let him know about the shift swap. When he reached the phone, its chirping ring stopped as if someone had pulled the wire loose. Boyd tapped his knuckles along the desk and waited for whoever it was to call back.
The phone chirped back to life. Boyd picked up the receiver and the sound of passing cars in the distance filled his eardrums. A horn blared and Boyd momentarily had to pull the phone away from his head. Whoever was on the other end of the line had their mouth up close to the phone. In the break of a car passing by he could hear a sharp intake of air.
“Hello?” Boyd said, and he took a clammy hand to his face and tried to wipe the sleep from it. “Someone there?”
“I don’t know where I am,” the voice said. It sounded young, female, and startlingly close to the voice of the caller who had called his home the other day. “I’m trying to find my mom.”
Boyd’s jaw went rigid.
“Miss, you’ve called the number to a hotel. You’ve dialed wrong. You need to hang up and call the police.”
He heard the snowy hiss of static followed by more passing cars in the background. “Miss?”
“Do you think you could talk to me? I’m just really scared and — and I think he’ll be back soon.”
Boyd turned on his heels and looked out through the lobby doors into the parking lot. He took the phone with him and leaned over at the waist as he tried to see if he could spot someone on a cell phone having a laugh at his expense.
“Miss, I don’t know what’s going on there, but if you’re in trouble I need you to hang up and call the police, please.”
“Can you come get me?”
Boyd bit down on his bottom lip, inhaled, and tried to remain focused. He wanted to let go of the phone. The distant, almost confused tone of the girl’s voice unnerved him.
“Miss, why don’t you tell me where you are and I can see if I can get the police there. I used to be police. I can try to help you if —”
“Why’d you let them hurt me like that then, Boyd? I can’t ever replace what was taken from me.”
Boyd almost dropped the phone, all feeling in his hands went numb.
“What did you just say?
The unnaturalness of his voice alarmed him. He choked up on the phone to listen, but the line had gone dead and he waited for the dial tone, but there was none. He caught himself blinking hard as if that would help him push through the rapid-fire thoughts in his head. He left the lobby desk almost in a run as he returned to the security room. Boyd didn’t feel like tinkering with the controls, he just wanted to see all locations at once. All the other monitors showed the same thing.
No people. No one walking around or ducking around a corner to hide.
He pressed his fists down on the table and let them support his weight. His pulse throbbed in his neck. He told himself that it wasn’t her on the phone. That he was just tired and wound up from all that had been happening in the last few days. The caller was just some random girl. He didn’t know her. Morgan was dead and there was no questioning that. He’d buried her himself. He’d said goodbye.
But he had heard her say his name, hadn’t he?
An intense desire to leave the building and the grounds filled him immensely. He headed back to the lobby to gather his things and was still slinging his bag over his head as he made his way down the breezeway when he stopped.
The dome light in the cab of the truck was on. One of the doors was open.
He was already calling her name as he ran to the truck. The driver-side door was open. Boyd peered inside, but no Lady. He spun on his heels, eyes darting quickly through the lot. He called, yelled her name, but the way it echoed off the asphalt caused a rising alarm in him.
Lady was gone.
-12-
Boyd held a hand up to shield his eyes from the oncoming headlights of Teddy’s pickup. They washed over him mome
ntarily as Teddy pulled up next to Boyd, who was parked at the bottom of the hill. Teddy rolled down his passenger-side window so he could talk over to Boyd.
“You doing all right?” he asked.
Boyd nodded, but that was more for Teddy’s benefit than his own. His throat was still raw from calling Lady’s name, but it hadn’t mattered. The shepherd hadn’t turned back up. Boyd had gone back inside and awoken Teddy with a phone call, and Teddy had promised to get there as soon as he could. It wasn’t quite 5 a.m.; the sky was getting lighter, but everything had a slate-gray hue.
Boyd followed Teddy in his pickup back up the incline toward the hotel and he brought it to a stop next to the breezeway. He climbed out and started toward where Teddy was standing with his hands on his hips. “What the hell is going on?” Teddy asked.
He wasn’t looking at Boyd, but up towards the third floor of the hotel. Boyd followed his gaze and when he saw what Teddy was looking at he almost fell off his feet. On the far side, several windows were shattered, but the most alarming was what looked like a roving black net over the windows closest to the two of them. Teddy started toward it first, but was walking in a diagonal path so as not to get too close.
He grimaced and looked toward Boyd. “Locusts,” he said. “A whole swarm of them are on the windows.”
“How?” Boyd asked. His stomach was sour and the last thing he wanted to do was look at a swarm of insects.
“Don’t know,” Teddy replied. “They should’ve died out in July. It should be too cold for them.”
Boyd put the back of his hand to his mouth and tried to keep the contents of his stomach down. He felt light headed and his felt knees rubbery. He went back to his truck to fetch his canteen.
“You want to tell me what happened last night?” Teddy said as he made his way back toward Boyd. “Looks like someone vandalized the building.”
Boyd shook his head. “I don’t know what happened. Like I said on the phone, someone called the lobby and shortly after I came out here and my truck was open and Lady was missing.”
“And you didn’t see anybody?”
Boyd paused. He wasn’t sure he liked the tone in Teddy’s voice. Teddy lowered his eyes at him and noticed the canteen in Boyd’s hand.
“Just keeping water in that bottle, Boyd?”
“Oh come off it, Teddy. Who are you, Donnie, now? If you’re thinking I got sloppy drunk and let my dog run away you’re wrong.”
Teddy held his hands up in defense. “Easy now, partner. I’m not trying to get you hot at me. I’m just trying to piece this together. Take a look at it from my point of view for a second. You call me in the middle of the night in near hysterics —“
“—cause my dog is missing and someone is fucking with me!”
“—and there’s damage to the building you’re supposed to be watching.”
Boyd sighed. “I know how it looks, Ted. I — I don’t know what happened. Honest truth. There’s something going on here and I’m not quite sure I understand it. Soon as I get in touch with Donnie I want off this detail.”
Teddy gave a small nod and put a hand on Boyd’s shoulder. “I’m sure there’s an explanation for this. We’ll get it figured out.” Teddy wasn’t looking at him, his line of vision still stuck on the damage to the windows on the third floor.
Boyd leaned in against the door of the truck so he was facing Teddy. “That first night you told me that you thought there was something else going on. Have you brought that up with Donnie? Because I think we have some real evidence here that we’re not alone.”
Teddy shook the question off. “I’m not even sure how I’d bring this up with Donnie.” He ran a hand down his face and let it linger on his chin when he was done. “To tell you the truth I’m not sure how much good it’d even do. Too many people have money sunk into this place. When the stakes are that high they’ll overlook anything.”
“Like fires and people getting hurt on site?”
“Exactly,” Teddy said. “You’ve been around long enough to know how the corporate machine works for places like this.”
Boyd threw his hands up. “We’re supposed to just ignore it and hope it goes away then? Even if that’s the case, Teddy, you can’t deny that there is something here. I’m sure as hell not going around smashing windows for the thrill of it.”
Teddy took a hard swallow. “What are we talking about then, Boyd? Some mysterious squatter running roughshod over the building at night?”
“No,” Boyd said. “I think … I think there is something here that cannot be explained. Something that is not human.”
Teddy narrowed his eyes at him. That was the first time Boyd had admitted out loud a feeling he had suspected all along. Neither said anything for a long moment. They stood there as the autumn wind reddened their noses and cheeks.
Finally, in a quiet voice, Boyd said,”You’ve been here during the day. I can’t believe this is just happening to me. Have you seen anything?”
Teddy turned his head and gave Boyd what he thought was a pitying look. “Yes,” he said. “But I wish I hadn’t.”
-13-
They regrouped back in the lobby and Teddy passed him over a styrofoam cup of coffee. It wasn’t the best tasting stuff, but Boyd had to admit that it helped clear his head a bit. He looked over as Teddy fished out a small tape recorder from his jacket pocket and set it down on the counter of the front desk.
“I want to preface,” Teddy said, “that I’m not sure if this is related to what’s going on here or not. I’m also not entirely convinced it’s real either. But considering the current situation, I think this may be worth revisiting.”
Boyd took a hard exhalation and glanced down at the recorder. His pulse drummed in his ears. “What is that, Ted?”
“Before Donnie brought you in I was getting what I assumed were prank phone calls during the day. When they first started they were ten seconds, tops. Usually a call and hang up deal without saying anything. Y’know, typical shit you see on a job sometimes when a bunch of kids are sitting around at home bored as hell.”
Boyd felt himself nod, but his mouth had gone suddenly dry.
“Anyway, ‘bout two days before you showed up I started getting calls from a young girl. I’d put her in her late teens, early twenties by the sound of her voice. She’d call, but wouldn’t say much, though sometimes she’d be a little flirty and I started thinking maybe Gina put someone she knew up to it. Don’t ask me why I thought that. It was just a feeling I got like maybe she was getting back at me for accusing her of having an affair. I don’t know.” Teddy picked up the tape recorder and ran his fingers over the ridges of the buttons. “Then the calls started getting a little strange. She’d call almost daily. I thought maybe she was lonely; hell, so was I, sitting around this place by myself, but then she started mentioning how she couldn’t stay long. That someone would be back soon. Real off-the-wall stuff. So last time she called I put the phone on speaker and recorded it.”
“Why?” Boyd asked, his voice almost cracking.
“I thought I might need to keep a record. Sometimes you never know what a stranger will confess to you.”
Boyd thought he knew it all too well. Teddy pressed down on the play button with his thumb and the near silent lobby was filled with the hiss of the tape playback on the small, rectangular device. “I don’t know where I am,” said a distinctly female voice. It sounded similar to his caller, but he couldn’t be sure. It was too condensed, all the fullness of it gone.
“Can you look around? What do you see?” Teddy’s voice on the tape asked.
“Nothing. I’m in a basement I think, near a set of stairs.”
“I’m going to call the police,” Teddy’s voice said. “Do you have any idea where you are?”
“No!” the girl yelled. “You can’t. He’ll be back soon and he’ll be angry.”
“If you’re in trouble I can get you help.”
“…he’ll hear me.”
The last part was a whisper
and something icy-hot ran up Boyd’s spine. Teddy was looking away as the tape continued.
“Listen to me,” Teddy’s voice said. “I’m going to call the police right now. Just stay on the phone with me and we’ll figure this out.”
There was no response for a moment and Boyd heard what he thought was crying.
“You gotta make them go away. This isn’t funny.”
“I’m going to put you on hold — for just a minute — I promise. I’m going to call the police and get you help.”
“Someone’s here…”
There was a rattle of a noise, possibly the phone being dropped, but it might have been coming from the bottom of a well, all things considered. The tape continued to whir forward before it was replaced with what Boyd presumed was Teddy’s breathing. “Hello?” Teddy’s voice asked.
In the distance was what sounded like something heavy being untied or unfolded and making a clumping noise when whatever it was flapped open onto solid ground. There was someone breathing again, but not Teddy; this was heavier, and too heavy to still be the girl.
“IWillFuckingRipTheSkinOfYourFaceOut!”
Boyd twitched, so startled that he almost lost his coffee to the floor.
The voice was vile, dripping with such hatred, and it was unlike anything Boyd had ever heard in his life. He knew he’d spend the rest of his days wishing to never have to hear it again.
“Who am I talking to?” Teddy’s voice said, but there was a dial tone reverberating in the background.
Teddy hit the stop button on the device. Boyd, hands still shaky, set his coffee down and tried squeezing his hands into fists as a numb feeling ran through them. Teddy finally looked up and forced a smile like they were two vets who realized they were in the hole together, which in many ways they were.
“Jesus…” Boyd mumbled. “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”
Teddy pushed a hand through his thinning hair and let out a long, tired sigh.
Ghost Box Page 5