“Well shit,” she cursed as she pulled off the headphones and made another note in her book.
“A bit early in the morning for that kind of talk,” Tony said as he descended the stairs.
“It’s all your fault,” Jorden said as she put her pen down and looked up at him. “Your damned recorder died just after you entered the shock therapy room.”
Tony gave her a surprised glance. “Really? Saph didn’t mention anything.”
“She probably didn’t realize it. Unless you’re concentrating on the small red light on the top of the recorder, you’re not going to think about looking.”
“That means both of her devices drained on her last night.”
“Both?” Jorden questioned.
Tony gave her a nod. “The thermal went down too sometime while we were in the shock therapy room.”
That was strange. From time to time one of their devices would die, but until now, never had two. “What about your camera?” she asked.
Tony shook his head. “Mine was working fine when we got to the room with the chairs.”
Jorden looked up at him with a curious gaze before she remembered that he’d mentioned something about a disturbance that had her keeping a close eye on the fourth floor thermal camera. “Was that the room you had me keep an eye on?” she asked.
Tony gave her a nod. “Some peculiar things were going on there that I have no explanation for,” he said. “I was going to head over there this morning…you want to come with me?” he asked.
Jorden was somewhat surprised by the offer. “I’m a bit persona non grata at the moment. You sure that you want me to go with you?” she questioned.
Tony gave her a dark smile that was more friendly than dismissive. “I already said that I didn’t agree with you and Matt, but I also said that I did understand it. You’re still my friend and I trust your judgment better than most.”
Surprisingly that was exactly what Jorden needed to hear, and before Tony had a chance to change his mind Jorden saved her work and shut down the computer, and before any of the others had a chance to wake up they were out the door.
“So after you knocked the chair-tree down last night, did anything else unusual happen?” she questioned as they headed down the path towards the hospital grounds.
Tony shook his head. “Before we wrapped up we took a final look in the room and the chairs were still scattered on the floor where they fell. What about you? Did you see anything on the camera after I pointed it out to you?”
She shook her head. “Not before I finally shut it down for the night at around five. You think that someone is playing tricks on us? That someone else could still be on the island?” Jorden questioned.
He shrugged. “Unless they’re hole up somewhere we haven’t been I don’t see how. Besides, if that was the case I’m pretty sure that we would have seen some sign of their presence by now,” he said then hesitated a moment. “Unless the chairs were stacked that way when you and Matt did your walk through and you failed to mention it.”
Jorden shot him a sideways glance but remained composed. “You know that I wouldn’t do that,” she said evenly. “If we saw anything like that you know it would have been one of the first things out of my mouth.”
Tony remained tentative. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, because you know how highly I think of you and Matt, but there’s always the possibility that you saw it and dismissed it as one of Jonas’s bullshit activities.”
“And I still would have mentioned it, but there was nothing to mention. We went through every room in that hospital and I never saw any kind of chair stack in any shape or form.”
Tony looked at her a moment then smiled. “And that’s exactly what I told Saph,” he said.
Jorden didn’t mean to but she let out a small laugh. “It’s nice to be believed,” she said though still wasn’t entirely convinced that Tony trusted her.
When they approached the hospital Jorden was filled with the same dread she had the first time she saw the looming, masonry structure. She hated the building and when Matt listed the teams the night before and she found that she was staying back at the cottage she couldn’t have been more relieved; in spite of her frustration with Matt. She only hoped that her luck would hold out for the rest of the trip and she would be absent from the active investigation; it may have been something she wanted to do just a few short weeks ago, but now all she wanted to do was go home.
“You with me?” Tony asked.
Jorden hadn’t realized it but in thinking of how much she didn’t want to go inside the hospital, she had actually slowed down and nearly stopped. “Yeah,” she said then picked up her pace.
“You seemed a million miles away,” Tony said as she caught up to him. “Something on your mind?”
She shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s just something about this place that has me on edge. And it isn’t that it’s haunted because I’ve been in haunted structures before, but there’s something darker about this place; something beyond the tragedy of the plague or mistreated mental patients.” She hesitated a moment. “My experience with the paranormal is limited and I admit that, but if I had to tell you exactly what I think is wrong with this place I’d tell you that it’s evil.”
She might have thought that Tony would laugh at her amateurish observation but instead he grew even more serious. “I know that not all of the evidence is in, though this place is clearly haunted – with or without Jonas’s devices. But I would have to agree with you,” he admitted, shocking her to the point where she stopped again and gave him a curious stare. He turned away from the looming edifice to face her. “I’ll admit that I’m not sensitive like Isis or you, but I can feel it too.”
“I’m not sensitive – certainly not like Isis.”
Tony gave her a questioning grin. “You are, you just don’t know it yet,” he said then held up a hand to halt her argument. “My point is that I agree with you.” He looked back at the hospital that loomed over them like a mountain that could not be moved or conquered before he looked back at her. “I just hope that we’re both wrong.”
Jorden wanted to give him a reassuring smile though it was difficult when she felt as much dread as he did, if not more.
“Come on,” he said finally. “Let’s get this over with.”
Both Tony and Jorden headed up the concrete and stone stairs to the main doors of the decrepit building, both of them staying as close to one another as possible without tripping over or physically holding onto each other.
Jorden hadn’t had the pleasure, or displeasure, of being in the hospital at night, though she couldn’t imagine it being any creepier than it was at the moment. Most of the windows were busted out and only about half of them were covered by boards; glass and other debris crunched beneath their feet as they passed through. A draft blew around them, though it could have come from any direction yet the air around them was thick and musty.
As they ascended the massive, main staircase that led to all four levels of the hospital, they stuck close to the paint-chipped and cracked wall. While it wasn’t appealing, it was certainly safer than the banister that guarded against a fall to the first floor, which was broken in several spots or missing large sections altogether.
“I can’t believe that you guys came up here in the dark,” Jorden said with a shake of her head.
“The smaller, emergency staircases are actually in better repair. I can’t speak for the others, but that’s how Saph and I got around last night. I just came this way this morning to get a good look at the place,” Tony admitted.
Jorden understood; while the building scared the shit out of her, in its day it must have been beautiful. Beneath the debris under her feet she could see that the stairs were marble, as were the columns that reached up through all four floors. Of course now they were cracked and crumbling before their very eyes and Jorden had to wonder just how much longer they would stand; probably forever just to spite the laws of time an
d nature, she thought with a grin.
When they reached the fourth floor it wasn’t much different from the others. Windows were broken though enough were boarded up to darken the marble floor and cast heavy shadows between the scattered, dusty beams of sunlight that broke through. The nurses’ station to the right of the stairs was still intact, though covered in dust and age-old, brittle leaves and branches that had blown in from the broken windows or crashed through one of several holes in the ceiling.
“With all the rain this place seems to get and the poor condition of the roof you’d think that this place would have rotted and crumbled to the ground years ago,” Jorden pointed out.
Tony led the way down the east hall to the last room on the left. Like the rest of the building the hall was cast in heavy shadows with only occasional light coming through the few windows in the rooms that weren’t covered by boards; as dark as it was it might as well have been night as far as Jorden was concerned.
Tony stopped just short of the doorway to the room.
“Is something wrong?” Jorden asked as she stepped up beside him, and she knew she could feel his dread.
Tony stood at the doorway and stared. “No,” he said finally then took a step forward, though again he stopped almost immediately.
Whatever Tony was feeling couldn’t possibly have been from fear of stepping into the room. Since the moment she had known him he hadn’t let on that he was scared of anything, including and especially the paranormal, so to see him so hesitant was unusual. “You sure?”
After a moment he smiled and looked down at her. “I’m sure. I’m just psyching myself up to expect the same thing so that if we walk in there I won’t be surprised if the chairs are stacked in another cone.”
“And if they aren’t?” she asked steadily. “Are you going to be disappointed?”
Tony had to think about it for a moment but then shrugged. “Honestly, I think that I’ll be relieved. It’s a lot easier to believe that someone is yanking your chain than it is to think that any kind of spirit can manipulate the physical world.”
She had to agree and to be honest, she too hoped that when they stepped through the door the chairs would still be scattered about the floor, just as they had been left by Tony and Saph.
Together the two of them stepped forward and Jorden’s heart nearly stopped when they stepped through the doorway.
“Oh shit!” Jorden nearly screamed while her heart sank to her toes and she fought to remain standing.
“What the fu-” Tony didn’t finish his sentence, nor did he raise his camera to film the sight.
With a shaking hand, Jorden took the camera from Tony and raised it to film what stood before them. She made sure that it was in the center of the screen and that she didn’t miss an inch of the fantastic sight.
In the center of the room, starting with just two chairs that sat back to back on the bottom was an upside down conical stack of chairs. Just how they were balanced or even how they could have so precisely been stacked was anyone’s guess, but there they were; defying both reason and gravity.
Though it was difficult for her to push herself closer to the curious structure she did so and she made sure that she zoomed in on the points where each chair was stacked on top of the other. Nothing visible was holding them together; no joints, nails, screws or glue.
“This is insane,” Jorden finally managed to spit out. “I never would have believed it…I’m still not sure that I do.”
“Should we take it down again?” Tony finally asked.
When Jorden looked back at him she could see him backing towards the door. “No,” she said. “We need to-”
Pain exploded in her head and the world went black.
Tony couldn’t believe what he was seeing; both horrific and fantastic at the same time. The cone of chairs seemed to explode from somewhere within the core and the chairs went flying with enough force to lodge one of the chairs in the boards that covered the broken window in the room. If he hadn’t ducked when he did he would have gotten smacked in the forehead and probably knocked cold. Jorden wasn’t so lucky.
“Jorden!” he called out in a near panic as he rose to his feet.
Lying in the center of the floor was his friend and someone who was as close to him as any of his sisters, and his heart sank when she didn’t even twitch at the sound of her name.
“Oh Lord, please let her be all right,” he pled as he reached down for her.
She did have a pulse and it was strong, but she also had a nasty knot on the back of her head. Fortunately there was no blood.
“Jorden,” he said firmly with a hand on her shoulder and a firm shake. “Jorden, wake up.”
Slowly, Jorden’s eyelids fluttered as she started to come around. “What in the hell just happened?” she grunted as she tried to sit up.
Tony gave her a hand but wouldn’t yet let her stand. “Did you back into the chairs?” he asked.
She shook her head but immediately stopped with a painful grimace on her face. “I was at least three feet from them. The energy coming off that damned stack was incredible. We should have had a thermal with us instead of a run of the mill camcorder,” she said then looked around at the chairs around her. “I guess whoever built it got a little pissed that you knocked it over last night and wanted to return the favor.”
Tony hadn’t thought of that simply because he didn’t want to think of it. “You think we have a vengeful ghost in here?”
“I think,” she strained to say as she stood, “that I don’t want to hang around and find out just how vengeful.”
Tony wholeheartedly agreed and grasped her still unsteady hand after retrieving the video recorder she dropped when she was struck.
“It’s too bad the others couldn’t have seen that,” she said as they passed through the door. “In spite of the fact that we got it on camera not once, but twice, that was something that really needed to be seen in person.”
Tony agreed in part, but thought that the others were the lucky ones. When he saw Jorden go down he must have lost about ten years off his life and what frightened him even more was that it could have been more serious…he knew that with the force of the chairs that flew out at them she could have damn well been killed. And so could have any one of them.
Caretakers Cottage – 10:45 am…
Matt fumed but did his best to control his temper. Of all people, Tony and Jorden should have known better then to go up to the hospital by themselves…and Jorden had been injured.
“Come off it Matt,” Isis snapped, “You would have done the same thing. And it isn’t as though either one of them went by themselves, they went as a team; no different than any of us last night.”
“And aside from a headache, I’m fine,” Jorden insisted, though none of them would let her get up off the sofa, and Matt stood over her to make sure that she didn’t go anywhere or do anything other than hold the icepack he’d made for her to the back of her head.
“We should probably take you to the mainland and have your head looked at,” Jesse said calmly, though the tight lines around his face and the stress in his shoulders said that he was anything but calm.
“I’m fine,” Jorden insisted.
Matt looked down at her and wanted to hold her, but the look on her face was nothing short of aggravated and he knew that if he even attempted to touch her at that moment she would probably kick him, so as hard as it was, he kept his hands to himself.
“We need to place a stationary camera, if not in the room then at least in the hall just outside and make certain that it is positioned in a manner where, if our construction ghost decides to rebuild, we’ll be able to see it,” Saph said.
“No one is putting a camera anywhere,” Matt said out of the blue. “We captured enough activity last night to convince me that we’re dealing with, at the very least a residual haunting, but more likely an intelligent one,” he said then paused. “I’m not putting anyone else at risk. We’ll go over the evidence we have,
and if for some reason we need something more, we’ll send someone in. For now, the only team that will head back is Tony, Jesse, Nigel and me, and we’re going to search the doctors’ offices for logs or diaries they may have kept while the hospital was open.”
Jorden forced Matt’s hovering hand away from her head and sat up next to Isis and both of them looked at Matt as though he were a criminal. “You can’t be serious,” Jorden said in an eerily calm tone. “I get hit in the head with a chair and suddenly the women folk aren’t capable enough to go back in and do what they came here to do?” she questioned with a sweet tone that carried with it the threat of bodily harm if Matt went anywhere near her.
“I’m only saying that I would like all of you here reviewing the evidence while we-”
“Oh get off your soapbox Matt,” Isis snapped. “We’re not buying it and if you want to keep us out of there you’re going to have to tie us down, lock us up and throw away the key.”
Matt could feel his temper climb but he forced himself to remain calm. “If that’s what I have to do then that’s what I’ll do,” he said calmly but with a hint of threat just like the others.
In no way was he going to risk anyone by sending them back into the hospital, especially the two most important people to him that were on this team, or the kids.
Neither Jorden nor Isis appeared amused at his counter threat and the three of them stared at each other for a moment that seemed to stretch out for an eternity.
The Haunting of Isola Forte di Lorenzo Page 24