“And you believe that?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe any single one of these accounts. But an entire haystack of them starts to gain credibility.”
“Of course it looks legit,” he said, flipping crinkled pages. “I’m not doubting that something really vicious haunted that armory. I’m just wondering why this rifle is better than any other place we’ve investigated. Why not come with us to Old Briar tomorrow? That mine sounds plenty haunted, too, and—”
He froze. He’d stopped at a page. A black-and-white photo.
I knew which one.
His eyes thinned. “I wish I could un-see that.”
I continued: “The Kalash was also a magnet for transients. Bums, drunks, criminals, the general fringe of society. They were drawn to the building like mosquitos to a zapper. This was a military complex, with guards and barbed-wire fences, and Vlad Six-Pack still wandered right in. There was one story about a homeless guy from Moscow in the seventies. Just cheerfully telling his friends out of the blue one day, Well, the Gasman has summoned me, and walking off on his own to—”
“The Gasman?”
“He hitchhiked over three time zones to Saint Petersburg. And when he got inside the Kalash, he climbed up to the metal beams on the ceiling and did the same thing everyone else did.”
Holden set the photo on the table, looking nauseous.
It was a corpse, dangling upside-down from the high ceiling, hung crookedly by one leg. A human Christmas ornament, zebra-striped with drips of black blood. The details were blurry and the lighting was murky, but you could just make out the thorns of barbed wire knotted around his ankle (stolen from the outside perimeter fence). With his limp head and fingertips hanging over the storage tubs below, he looked like a whitetail being drained of blood in someone’s garage.
“Died of blood loss?”
“No. Gravity.”
“Gravity?”
“Hanging upside-down. Blood pressure in the brain.”
He swallowed. “I didn’t know that could kill you.”
I thought of that The More You Know shooting star.
And even now, I felt my eyes tugging to that black-and-white photo. It was wrong; an illogical and painful way to commit suicide. And then there was the way the corpse seemed to be . . . well, reaching. Hanging by a leg pivots your body weight, so it made sense that one arm would hang a little lower, but it still looked like this poor guy was consciously straining, reaching downward for something. Like he’d hung himself from the ankle — instead of the neck — for that very purpose. I guess he’d be reaching forever.
Well, the Gasman has summoned me.
And who the hell was the Gasman? He sounded like an anesthetist, or a gas meter reader, or a superhero with a dismal superpower. W. Louis’s book didn’t know, either. Did it even matter? It was all fiction. I knew it was fiction, just the workings of many separate, overactive imaginations hardened into legend by groupthink, but still I couldn’t help but imagine being alone in the Kalash after midnight. Now that would be a ghost hunt. Patrolling acres of interior space, slicing darkness with a cheap-ass flashlight, and suddenly hearing that rotten voice echo from the elevator shaft, giddy with anticipation, like a starved dog watching a food bowl finally arrive: Yes, please, thank you . . .
Yes, please, thank you . . .
Yes, right up there, please, with the barbed wire. Thank you . . .
Holden couldn’t take his eyes off the photo, either. “How many . . . how many people hung themselves like that?”
“You’re happier not knowing.”
“And . . .” He glanced across the dining table, at the Mosin Nagant. “And this gun was stored there, during the Kalash hauntings, and you suspect it absorbed some of the—”
“No,” I said. “This rifle was believed to be the culprit.”
He looked at me.
I lowered my voice, my words cleanly spaced: “Everyone who has ever been issued this rifle has shot themselves with it.”
As if on cue, the chandelier flickered.
“Every. Last. One.” On the kitchen counter, I spread out black-and-white photos — mug shots of flinty, unsmiling farm boys in fox hats with nothing in their futures to smile about. “As an infantry rifle manufactured during World War II, it passed between at least four different enlisted men. Two artilleries, one motor, and one undefined, which probably meant something classified, like a gulag or something. Guess how every last one of them died.”
Holden held an index finger to his temple.
“Twenty-four hours,” I said. “That’s the record.”
“How long have you had it?”
“This Mosin Nagant was a legend,” I said. “A sort of Red Army boogeyman that passed from corpse to corpse. Rumor has it the Nazis even captured it on the battlefield — and gave it back. Everyone checked the serial numbers of their rifles to make sure it hadn’t gotten to them next. They called it the Head-Scratching Rifle.”
“Why would you scratch your head with it?”
“It’s a joke.”
“Oh.”
“So fast-forward to 1995,” I said. “One of the Kalash’s engineer guys — Nikolai Something-Or-Other — puts two and two together. He suspects that this legendary Head-Scratching Rifle from five decades ago was actually one of the outdated guns being stored in the armory, and that’s the cause of the suicides, the nasty voices, et cetera. People believe him. He claims, to a TV station, that his brother works in archives somewhere and that he even knows the serial number of the Head-Scratching Rifle. ‘B3065,’ he tells the camera. And he and his buddies pull some strings and go through the armory and rebuild that Mosin Nagant. And then they take it to a foundry and melt it down.”
“So . . . did the Kalash’s paranormal activity stop?”
“No way to tell,” I said. “The depot shut down pretty soon afterward, and the Mosins were imported into the US surplus market.”
Holden leaned over the rifle, squinting in the light, and studied the stenciled numbers on the receiver, just under the five-pointed Tula star. He read aloud: “B3066.”
I nodded.
He looked up at me. “One digit off.”
“Exactly. I think they screwed up.” I felt a grin tighten my face. “I think Nikolai What’s-His-Name had the right idea, but then he reassembled and destroyed the wrong gun. And the real Head-Scratching Rifle got imported to America with the others. Just ask Ben Dyson.”
Or that unfortunate forklift driver in West Virginia.
I caught another whiff of the Mosin Nagant’s stench — that yeasty odor of digestion — and nearly gagged. It seemed to come and go, like a sentient cloud, scouting the rest of the house and returning. It had a way of creeping up your nostrils and ambushing you. My headache was intensifying; I plucked an ibuprofen bottle from the junk drawer and swallowed two.
“Well.” Holden glanced at the red-tipped bullet on the table. “You’re right, Dan. That makes me feel much better about the live ammunition resting a few inches from the demonic gun.”
I picked the round up with my good hand and rolled it over my palm. It should’ve felt subtly heavier than the other 7.62x54R rounds I’d handled last week, but I just couldn’t tell. The difference was fractions of an ounce. “Like I said, this is my backup plan.”
“How so?”
“You don’t have to be a part of this—”
“Yeah, well, I am now. What’s with the bullet, Dan?”
“Addie showed me this once.” I held the brass cartridge up to the dining-room chandelier, which flickered again. “The casing is full of explosive gunpowder, which is ignited by the little circular primer here, at the base. The pointed metal tip is the actual projectile. The true bullet; the part that flies out and kills Bambi’s mom. Everything else is just the delivery system—”
I paused. I thought I’d detected motion in the corner of my eye. In the decorative mirror Adelaide hung by the pantry door—
“Dan?”
&nbs
p; It had been nothing, I decided. Just a shadow, or reflected glint.
“You can pull the bullet out.” I looked back at Holden and brushed my thumb over the marred copper jacketing where my pliers had left ugly divots. “And the gunpowder just pours right out, like black sand. I cannibalized a few, and consolidated their powder into this one. This special cartridge, Holden, contains almost twice as much explosive force as the Mosin Nagant is designed to handle.”
I’d been careful to avoid the phrase bullet bomb. But I think he got it. He sat down, shoulders sagging, rubbing his eyes. “Jesus, Dan.”
The blot of red candle wax was just to mark the cartridge, since black Sharpie kept rubbing off the curved metal. Still, I thought as I rolled it between my fingers, it did give the round an oddly fatalistic quality. The wax was a brilliant tomato-red, as red as freshly splashed blood, still hot and pulsing with oxygenated life.
“I’m not going to load it into the Mosin Nagant,” I felt the need to clarify. “I never will. But in the million-to-one event that this rifle really is cursed, possessed, self-aware, whatever — if it makes me shoot myself, it’ll also blow itself into shrapnel and split the barrel like a banana peel. I can die satisfied that the Head-Scratching Rifle won’t take any more lives. And again, Holden, I’m okay with risking my own ass, but I don’t like having you here. This is my stupid ghost hunt. Not yours.”
I set the red-tipped bullet back on the table for emphasis. Click.
Holden eyed it like it was a grenade.
I wished he’d go home. I felt guilty for allowing him into this. And in the descending silence, I wondered again exactly how crazy I must’ve sounded. It’s tough to appear rational when your backup plan involves an explosion. Being an on-air ghost hunter requires a special, reckless curiosity — we all had it — but this was something darker. More desperate, more self-destructive. Emotions were tangled up in it.
And worse, I’d already made a cardinal error. I’d allowed myself to believe in the Head-Scratching Rifle’s intoxicating little legend. I would’ve called BS an hour ago if we’d been scouting this rifle for an episode of Haunted, because nothing in real life was ever this clear-cut. From the soldier-suicides in the Siberian district, to the bizarre manifestations at the Kalash, to Mr. Dyson’s blood-splattered workshop — it all felt as tidy and plotted as a movie script. Hell, there was even a sadistic little cherry on top that I’d forgotten to mention: Nikolai What’s-His-Name, the aforementioned worker who believed he’d ended the curse and melted the rifle into a glowing puddle, killed himself in 1996. The year afterward. Apparently he’d gotten shit-the-bed-drunk one night, staggered outside, and passed out with his head on some railroad tracks. Not a pretty photo (in color, of course). By that time, the murderous rifle was six pallets deep into a West Virginian warehouse, but like the Corleone family, it didn’t forgive or forget. Convenient, right? Like a movie script, it all just felt too good (bad?) to be true.
And I needed it to be true.
Yes, I know it was crazy. And stupid, and selfish, and beyond reckless. But in a way, this was also my first honest ghost hunt in years.
Holden huffed. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just buy blanks?”
“Blanks can still kill you.”
“Jesus Christ—”
“It takes free will to load a bullet,” I said. “I’m not loading it. Are you?”
He shook his head rapidly.
“Terrific. We’ll be fine.”
He had a sad look in his eyes. I recognized it. I’d seen it in my parents, my coworkers, and my boss. Like they’re watching me adrift in space. Everyone wanted to rescue me, but no one knew how to build the rocket.
Finally, he spoke. “I don’t think Ben Dyson or those Russian soldiers shot themselves out of their own free will,” he hissed. “I think that’s pretty much the point.”
I forced a grin.
After all, that was what I hoped to find out.
* * *
Holden and I started the proper investigation just after eight o’clock. After nineteen webcasts and two seasons of televised ghost hunting, it was all muscle memory. We unzipped the same duffel bags, clacked in the same batteries, and double-checked the same digital cassette tapes and thumb drives. For electronic voice phenomena (EVP) capture, we placed an analog microphone on the table. For apparitions, we telescoped a tripod and ran a full-spectrum DVC camera. Last, we powered up the EMF meter to detect any electromagnetic or thermal fluctuations.
Like I told Holden, I wasn’t interested in mere anomalies tonight. But, I supposed, there was no harm in being ready to capture them for our fans.
Haunted had a surprisingly active online forum, and you could learn a lot from the anonymous viewer comments. Apparently I was a dead ringer for Jim from the sitcom The Office (the American version). Our John Carpenter-esque synth soundtrack was almost universally mocked. And they were especially vicious about Holden’s weight:
Maybe Holden should ghost-hunt a gym next.
Do they have to pick haunted places without much stairs?
Hey holden hume, maybe theres a ghost in that CHEESBURGER!
My best friend had always laughed these off, saying that the world is full of critics and short on artists, but since last season he’d switched to a low-carb diet and lost almost sixty pounds. Not that it helped:
Hey anyone notice that the fat one looks slightly less fat now?
As we set up our equipment in my dining room, he only spoke twice. The first was his customary Haunted prayer, but with a minor addition on my account: “Dear Lord in Heaven, in Your infinite wisdom and grace, please bless our investigation, protect us from unclean and hateful spirits, and forgive Dan here . . . for being a complete idiot.”
I’d nodded absently, staring at the cursed Mosin Nagant and my wax-tipped, exploding bullet on the table. If God existed, He’d probably agree.
I hoped He existed.
The second thing Holden said was barely a whisper, exhaled through his teeth as he thumbed tiny buttons to white-balance the camera, but the words hung in the air like smoke: “That’s a nice idea and a cute little backup plan, Dan. But it won’t un-splatter your brains from the ceiling.”
I ignored him and popped two more ibuprofen.
For a second, it had sounded like he was going to say something different.
That’s a cute little backup plan, Dan. But it won’t bring Adelaide back.
Sent: 3/19 7:09PM
Sender: kale@haunted
Subject: FYI
Hi Dan,
Hope you’re okay. Sorry to bother you but apparently you have a new #1 fan.
Jake says a guy wearing a gas mask came into the production office this afternoon looking for you. Like one of those full-face, bulgy HazMat masks, for poison gas or radiation. He didn’t give a name. He just asked to see DAN RUPLEY on the courtesy phone, over and over.
The receptionist didn’t let him inside, and Jake couldn’t see the man’s face (due to said gas mask) and the outdoor footage is too grainy to be any good. But I had them make a police report.
A really weird police report.
Stay safe. Holden said we might see you at Old Briar tomorrow?
Kale Wong
Talent/Tech Coordinator
Haunted (Sundays at 11pm and Wednesdays at 2am, only on KSPM)
14 Hours, 15 Minutes
Nothing happened for the next four hours.
Well, technically, lots of things happened. I went to the bathroom. Holden scribbled up shot lists for tomorrow’s Old Briar investigation. The Keurig burbled and made Italian Roast. We played War with a deck of fifty-one and speculated about LJ’s podcast plans for the third season. The baseboard heater popped. Baby scurried inside her enclosure. A barred owl screamed outside.
But nothing paranormal happened.
The audio recorder? Just our voices.
The full-spectrum camera? Just us.
The EMF meter? Don’t even ask.
As for Holden�
��s surprise in the moth-eaten cardboard box? It was a last-ditch attempt to contact the entity — a Ouija board. Our production manager LJ never allowed them on Haunted — “too occulty,” he’d said — but I’ve never believed in them, anyway. They’re powered by unconscious movement. Like dowsing rods. People love to pretend the Ouija board is a dangerous portal to a writhing, Lovecraftian darkness beyond our known world, while conveniently forgetting it’s a party game manufactured by Mattel. Like Mousetrap. Is Mousetrap also a gateway to unknowable horror? If it is, I’ve been playing it wrong.
But I’d seen Holden’s Ouija board once before, and it had some history. It was a dense wooden slab, walnut-colored, like my uncle’s antique poker table. Veneered with a gray film of ancient dust, as sticky as tree sap in spots. It smelled like old people. The black letters were scorched into the grain; a YES and a NO on the top, a HELLO and GOODBYE on the bottom, and in the exact center of the board, between two lines of alphabet: TURN. The planchette was the size of a hockey puck, a pale arrowhead with a cloudy glass lens. Mostly just the same standard-issue Ouija board you might recognize from your own misspent youth. But, I admit — the TURN was unique.
“It belonged to my grandmother,” Holden said. “She was a medium. A claircognizant.”
“A what?”
“A claircognizant.”
“What’s that?”
He lowered his eyes. “A phone psychic.”
I nodded. At least there was no Mattel logo on the board.
And the Mosin Nagant just sat there, like the dumb, inanimate object it was. The legendary Soviet rifle that had punched a 7.62x54R round through the skull of every last man who’d possessed it, here and abroad. The cursed relic that summoned innocents from thousands of miles to hang inverted from the ceiling of the Kalash like pagan offerings, and compelled some poor West Virginian man to chug industrial lye. The most infamous object since the Spear of Destiny had been sitting on my dining-room table for four uneventful hours now. Was there an on/off switch?
OUR LAST NIGHT: an edge of your seat ghost story thriller Page 4