by JL Bryan
“He's coming for you,” a voice whispered from the other side of the door. It sounded like a child. “He'll be so angry.”
I reached for the moving knob. The rattling of the door intensified, the door slamming again and again within the frame, sliding back and forth with so much force it seemed like the wood was going to crack.
My palm was slick with cold sweat when I grabbed the knob, and it slid back and forth in my hand, as the unseen entity knocked harder and harder against the inside of the door.
“Maybe we shouldn't open it,” Stacey said.
“Get ready,” I replied. Then I opened the door and jabbed my flashlight forward, ready to blast the entity with light if it attacked.
Nothing waited inside but sheets and towels, neatly folded and stacked, just as Stacey had left them. All was silent and still inside the closet, as if nothing had been happening at all.
A floorboard creaked down the hall.
Stacey and I, already on edge, spun to look at it. The lights along the hall had dimmed, and the far end was completely in shadow. Something formless and dark seemed to take up the far end of the hall, like a thin black mist, extending from wall to wall and ceiling to carpet.
It swelled slowly toward us, and it seemed full of raspy, overlapping whispers, but I couldn't decipher the words. The voices chilled me.
Lights winked out as it grew toward us. It felt like a cluster of entities, tangled together, filling the hallway.
Then they were gone, but the lights that had turned off remained dark, as if to leave some sign they'd really been there.
I watched and listened for a minute, waiting to see if they would return.
“I'm ready to go downstairs now,” Stacey whispered.
After a moment, I nodded. The entities seemed to have gone, and my heart was racing way too fast. It was time to head down.
Chapter Fifteen
We'd picked up a few basic groceries while out on our prison field trip, including coffee, but neither of us really needed coffee after what we'd seen upstairs. Stacey and I were wide awake. Something about the voices up there had sent my nerves and my heart rate into overdrive. It's like getting some cardio, I guess, but without all the healthy aspects of actually exercising. Anyway, it was going to be a while before the adrenaline tapered off.
“Should we...go back upstairs with the cameras?” Stacey asked. “Because I'm not liking that plan as much anymore. The sixteenth floor may have a ghost or two, but things are even worse up on seventeen.”
“It's safe to say that something knows we're here and doesn't like us poking around,” I said. “Maybe the ghosts of Thurmond's ancestors are territorial.”
“That would explain why the top floor is like a deserted wasteland,” Stacey said.
“I don't think we should go back up tonight. Let's wait until daylight.”
“Good idea. And maybe not even then.”
“We'll have to go back, but I'm in favor of putting it off as long as possible.”
“And maybe even longer,” Stacey said.
“For now, let's hole up in here and go through some of the data we have. Make sure we didn't miss anything while we toured around. Have you checked my voice recorder from the entity I saw last night?” I glanced over to where I'd seen the shadowy girl ghost floating through the room. “I replayed it but haven't done a deep analysis.”
“I'll take care of that,” Stacey said. “Because I'm definitely in the mood to listen closely to a dead girl's voice right now.”
“Great,” I said, pretending not to notice her sarcasm. “And I'll look through Vance's ghost notes, and keep trying to piece together what's been going on in this tower all these years.”
“The fun never stops,” Stacey said.
I moved to the apartment's dining room table, which was long and walnut with round edges and pedestal legs, and I spread out the scrawled notes and sketches collected from Vance's fireplace room. It seemed strange that the notes and books hadn't been put away in the months since Vance's death, but apparently the apartment had just sat empty since then. I wondered again about the wife and son in Vance's photograph and where they'd gone.
Looking it over made me think of the rattling door and whispering voices upstairs, the entity we'd apparently provoked with our presence. I wondered whether we shouldn't go back and double-check on the unconscious Millie in her apartment, but apparently the woman had been safe and healthy there up until now. We might upset the balance by inviting ourselves in. Also, we could get fired for just inviting ourselves in, so there was that to consider.
Amberly had mentioned the high cost of private nurses keeping Millie alive. I hadn't noticed any sign of a nurse running out screaming in response to the presences up there.
I avoided Vance's notes and drawings for an extra minute by looking up A. Truthteller, the one who supposedly had the most extensive records about The Great Horned Owl and might shed some more light on the bombing and the underground newspaper's investigations into the Pennefort family. It sounded like the family had a few skeletons in its closet, a few bodies buried in its history. I needed to exhume those bodies and have a look at them to see how they might be affecting the present. (And I needed to stop thinking about exhuming old bodies, because yuck.)
Isaiah Halberson was still listed in the public phone directory at the same address that Jackie Duperre had given me, so at least his information was current. A look at Google Earth showed me a neighborhood of small bungalows, some quite run-down, others well-maintained with gardens and cheerful yard art, all of them old and painted bright colors. It was within Atlanta, only a short drive away. Well, depending on traffic.
Strategic Googling helped me track down the website of the school where he worked. Halberson was a history teacher at a public high school in the city. His picture on the website showed an elderly, stern-looking black man with white hair and thick glasses. He looked like he was trying very hard to smile. He'd won a state teacher of the year award in 1998, the website noted.
“Looks like A. Truthteller is still around, so that's good news,” I said to Stacey. She didn't reply. I looked up to see her staring at soundwaves on her laptop, her ears completely covered by headphones. I snapped my fingers, then I said, “I saw your boyfriend kissing another girl and she was much prettier than you.” No response. She definitely couldn't hear me.
I jotted down Halberson's home phone number, which was also publicly listed. Then I walked over to Stacey and tapped her on the shoulder.
Stacey jumped and screamed, so I guess she didn't see me coming. She whipped off her headphones. “Why would you do that?”
“I tried talking first.”
“I'm already creeped out enough over here,” Stacey said. “Listening to this ghost.”
“You can hear the ghost?”
“I assume that flat, dead voice isn't yours.”
“This is from my EVP session last night?”
“From Grabby the Girl Ghost, yeah,” Stacey said. “She doesn't say much, but it's worth hearing.”
She passed me the headphones and I slipped them on.
“First, here's you...” Stacey said.
“Hello,” my voice whispered on the recording. I winced a little, never totally thrilled to hear my own voice on tape (or to see what I look like in pictures, for that matter). “Can you hear me? What's your name? Why are you here?”
I listened closely to the long pauses between my questions, but didn't hear anything.
“'Who are you?'” my voice asked. Something scratched in the background. “Do you need help? How can we help you move on?”
“There!” Stacey said, pausing it. “Did you hear that?”
“I heard...maybe something?”
“Now listen to it closer, cleaned up and amplified...” Stacey clicked at her laptop.
“...falcon...” said a voice in the background, in the typical flat, cold tone of the dead when you record them.
“What? Stacey, play that again.�
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“Exactly,” Stacey said.
“...falcon...” She put it on repeat. “...falcon...falcon...”
“Pink Falcon? Millie?” I looked up at the ceiling, toward the apartment above.
“Sounds like Aunt Millie is out wandering around, haunting the place from her bed,” Stacey said. “Hey, maybe you could just hop out of your body for a minute—”
“Nope.”
“Man, I wish I could do that, and you can, and you don't even want to.”
“Have you ever panicked about not being able to get back inside your own body again?” I asked.
“Um...no.”
“Exactly,. Anyway, that's a good find, Stacey. Calling herself 'Falcon' fits with how she presents herself. Maybe she's focused on her younger days.”
“It would be hard not to, if the building's also haunted by the bomber guy from 1969, and maybe even some of the people he killed, right?” Stacey said. “I mean, she brought him here.”
“Good point. She could be tied into the drama of their deaths. We should get a camera out in the lobby where the bombing happened. Maybe there are ghosts who visit late at night.”
“And hey, it's an extra chance to see SAFE-T-OFFICER Pauly,” Stacey said. “Sounded like he wanted to make friends with you.”
“Ugh, that guy.”
“Just be real flirty and maybe he'll ask you out.”
I smiled, but it faded slowly as I thought of my current relationship situation, the empty apartment waiting for me back home, except for Bandit and his topped-up food and water dispensers. I'd given Jacob a key to my place and asked him to check on the cat. Because I had nobody closer in my hometown than my co-worker's boyfriend, apparently. How had that happened? Was it my personality? My weird obsession with graveyards, haunted houses, and the souls of the dead? My breath?
“Hey, I was kidding, Ellie,” Stacey said. “I know you're still thinking about Michael—”
“I was thinking about Jacob, actually.”
“Huh?”
“And whether I left the cat food bag on the counter. Bandit will knock it down and spill it all over the place on principle, even if there's plenty in his dispenser. Maybe I should text Jacob about it. Or you could. So, anything else on my voice recorder?”
“Right towards the end, but I'm still messing with it...” Stacey grabbed another audio clip and played it.
“Let go!” My own voice screamed dorkily over my headset and into my ears. “Stacey! Stacey, wake up!”
“Did you hear that?” Stacey asked.
“Just a lot of me,” I said.
“There's something in the background.” She pointed at the graphical curves representing sound waves in her audio software. “I can isolate it...”
A soft moan sounded in my ear.
“Slow it down,” I said.
“...el..us..” whispered through my headphones.
I passed them to Stacey.
“'Elvis,' maybe?” Stacey asked. “I mean, there are a lot of different ghosts in this building, so you never know...Or it could be 'relish' like if the ghost was ordering a hot dog. Maybe 'bell rush'-”
“Don't try to guess, just clean up.”
“Oh, yeah.” Stacey went to work.
I watched the live feeds on the monitors. All seemed quiet inside the family's apartment. If they'd heard any of the paranormal events we'd witnessed on the floor above, they gave no sign. The family had gone to bed, leaving Christmas decorations scattered half-heartedly around the living room, mixed with dirty dishes and laundry. It was like the apartment of a badly depressed person, only there were four of them.
“Okay, this is it,” Stacey said. There wasn't even a hint of a smile on her face as she passed the headphones over. She looked pale, in fact.
I put them on and listened.
The tone was dead-flat, but the words were pleading:
“Help us.”
That was what she'd been saying while she grabbed my hand, holding me to the wall while I screamed for help and fumbled for the light. “Help us.”
“Did you hear it?” Stacey asked.
“It's pretty clear now. Good work.”
“Yeah. But who's 'us'? The whole family? Then who's keeping them here?”
“We don't know who she meant, or who they need help against,” I said.
“But if it's Millie, it seems like maybe her soul is trapped here. Or stuck outside her body, even. Either way, she would need help.”
“Yes. We have to discuss all this with the family. But we shouldn't jump to any conclusions.”
“Conclusions? I can barely keep all the facts straight, much less jump from them to anywhere,” Stacey said.
“There's some unifying thing we're missing. Something underneath it all, which keeps dragging all the family members down.” I took the old photograph out of my pocket, showing The Great Horned Owl staff in all their groovy glory. I pointed to one guy in an oversized pinstriped coat and an ascot, a purple top hat on his head. “I think that's the guy I saw on the twelfth floor. Gary Brekowski, the Owl reporter who dressed like...well, that. And he was investigating the Pennefort family for intimidation and arson, remember? Pressuring poor families to move, to get out of their way.”
“But then why would Millie and Elton, the terrorist hippies, want to kill him? Weren't they kind of on the same side, working against her family?”
“The bomb didn't go off as planned, remember?” I said. “If Brekowski was already investigating the Pennefort family, he'd probably go and cover a press conference at their building for his newspaper. So that's why he was there. We don't know exactly when the bomb was supposed to detonate, but the mayoral candidate hadn't even arrived yet, and it was his press conference.”
“Sounds like they used enough dynamite to kill half the people in the room,” Stacey said. “It's hard to tell what was deliberate and what was just stupid.”
“It often is,” I said. “I'm going back down to twelve.”
“What? You mean in the morning, right?”
“Tonight,” I said. “The reporter was reaching out to me. He wanted to tell me something.”
“Yeah, maybe he was saying 'I want to eat your soul.' Let's wait here until morning, then go down there.”
“You can stay here if you want, but we have hours left to go tonight.” I stood and crumpled the wrapper of the granola bar I'd eaten. “Also, a ghost did walk right through this room while we slept in it, so I don't know that 'here' is any less haunted than 'down there.'”
“I'm not letting you go by yourself.” Stacey stood, sighed, and grabbed her backpack. “You're really making me earn my paycheck on this one.”
“You're a valued part of the team, Stacey.”
“You mean I'm the only person you've got.”
“That, too.”
We headed toward the service elevator and the twelfth floor, hoping Gary would put in another appearance for us tonight.
Chapter Sixteen
The twelfth floor wasn't as cold as on my previous trip. The service elevator loading area was still crowded with cabinets and boxes overflowing with old paperwork; that part certainly hadn't been an apparition.
“Hello?” I said, stepping out, Stacey beside me with a video camera. “Are you here? Do you remember me?”
The fluorescent bar buzzed overhead, but otherwise nothing stirred in the room.
“Gary?” I turned out the lights, leaving the place illuminated only by the glowing EXIT sign at the stairs. I walked slowly along the old steel filing cabinets. “Gary Brekowski? From The Great Horned Owl? Did you have a message for me? You reached out to me. Literally. And you left ink on my face. I'm ready to listen.”
Stacey and I stood in the loading area, waiting. The elevator doors rumbled closed behind us, leaving us in near darkness.
After I minute, I repeated my questions, wondering whether our video or sound equipment was picking up anything at all. Maybe the electronics were spooking the ghost away somehow..
.but hey, he was a reporter, surely he understood the need to document things.
After a few more minutes, I posed the questions again, while pacing around the room.
“Are you sure you saw a ghost down here?” Stacey asked. “Right in this room?”
“Yeah, Stacey, pretty sure. He touched me and left a mark on me.”
“It just feels so...not haunted. Like what kind of ghost is just hanging around the old file storage area? Wait, I know, give me a second...he's still working on a story for the newspaper, and...he's worried he's going to miss his deadline! Get it? Because reporters have deadlines? And ghosts are dead?”
“Well, now that you explain it, I do,” I said.
“It's a pun!”
“Is it?” I looked around the dark room. “Maybe you should wait...somewhere else.”
“Seriously? Just for one bad joke? You haven't even heard the one about how the hot dog was in a real pickle, but he mustered the courage to catch up to the hamburger—because, you know, mustard and ketchup—”
“I just meant because I was alone when he approached me,” I said. “So he might be more likely to come out if I'm by myself again.”
“Well, the creepy ghost might want you all alone, but that doesn't mean it's safe for you.”
“Yeah, maybe he'll write his whole name on my cheek this time. Let's give it a try.” I pulled on my headset. “Just stay in touch.”
“Where should I go?”
“Just up a floor, maybe.”
“To level...thirteen?” Stacey gasped. “You're sending me to the thirteenth floor of a haunted building?”
“Down to eleven, then. I don't think there's anything scarier than an insurance company down there.”
“Sounds good. I mean, boring, but safer.” Stacey pulled on her headset. “Call if things get hairy. Or inky. Whatever.”
“Thanks, Stacey.”
I watched her leave through the stairwell door, and then I stood alone in the room.
The newspaper-scarecrow ghost of Gary Brekowski didn't come bounding out to greet me, but things definitely felt different now that I was alone. It was certainly much quieter with Stacey gone.