“Step right this way,” Kendra said, motioning him to the table.
“I paid in advance,” he said. “Martin Gelbaugh.”
As Kendra checked his information and gave him his badge and packet, Wayne lifted the lid on the ancient piano in the corner. He poked the lowest C, and as the note reverberated against the room’s wooden surfaces, he tapped a note higher up the register. The two harmonics clashed, horribly out of tune even to Wayne’s untrained ear.
“The upper C is about eleven vibrations per second flat,” the man said.
Wayne looked at Gelbaugh, studying the hands that appended the badge to his suit jacket. The fingers were gaunt but graceful, like those of a musician or fine craftsman. “Perfect pitch, huh?”
“I’m not convinced that ‘perfect’ exists,” he said, smiling at Kendra. “Unless perhaps it’s the angelic demeanor of this lovely young lady.”
The gallant attempt at flattery would only enrage his daughter. She was convinced that every man over the age of 20 was a hopeless perv, and Wayne endorsed that sentiment. But she disguised her grimace so that it could be mistaken for a shy smile.
The customer is always right, even when he’s an asshole. I’ve taught her well. The Digger’s daughter.
She’s your daughter, too, Beth, but I hope your lessons have ended. Everything we knew might have been wrong.
“She could be the only angel here, Mr. Gelbaugh,” Wayne said, falling into a dinner-theater role to match that of the guest’s. “I’m Wayne Wilson, your host.”
“I’ve read a lot about you.”
“Half of it is true, but nobody knows which half, not even me,” Wayne said. Kendra shot him a look that said Don’t pile it on too thick. Or maybe Lame-o-rama. He wasn’t so good at teen translation these days.
“Is it the half that says you’re a huckster who doesn’t even believe in the afterlife and is only in it for a fast buck?”
Wayne felt his face shift into a cold mask. He studied Gelbaugh’s eyes, looking for a twinkle of mischief, but all he saw was an inquisitive challenge. The tension was heightened by Kendra’s expectation of a response. Maybe he could surprise them both.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe, or what you believe, or what anyone believes,” Wayne said. “All experience is subjective, and no one’s yet to offer irrefutable proof of life, much less the afterlife.”
Gelbaugh touched his forehead in a mock salute. “So you’ve been reading about me, too.”
“Sure. I subscribe to Fate Magazine and hit the paranormal blogs like everybody else. Unless a dozen people are out there pretending to be Martin Gelbaugh, you get around.”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t come to crash the party. I’m just an innocent bystander.”
“Nobody’s innocent,” Wayne said.
A group of four came to the table, drawing Kendra’s attention. Wayne moved closer to Gelbaugh, not sure whether he welcomed the man’s presence. Gelbaugh was a famous critic of the paranormal, but instead of debunking its science, he challenged the foundation of consciousness. The Gospel According To Gelbaugh went something like, “You can’t prove one plus one is two, because you can’t even prove what ‘one’ is. And if you show me a mathematical formula, all you are showing me is a piece of paper with strange markings on it, and I have no way of knowing not only whether the markings are actually there, but whether the piece of paper exists.”
Wayne had to admit, as radical theories went, Gelbaugh’s was pretty unassailable. The man had published a book called “God Equals Absolute Zero,” and it created a brief buzz before its convoluted logic bored even the fickle pop-psychology crowd.
Gelbaugh’s reputation had decayed from metaphysical whiz kid to cranky nay-sayer in the space of a decade. Now he was trading on the last of his reputation, hanging around the fringes, finding new purpose in the paranormal fad. And he’d paid his registration in cash, too far down the ladder to request free admission in exchange for a panel appearance.
“Come now, Mr. Wilson, if we’re going to debate guilt and innocence, you should at least join me at the hotel bar,” Gelbaugh said.
Wayne licked his lips, the bittersweet bite of whiskey aroused from its slumbering tomb in his memory. Sure, he could have one drink. Just one. This time, he could manage it.
Then, in a flash of prescience that could have convinced him of psychic ability if he were so inclined, he saw himself sitting on a bar stool, elbows riding the oak railing, head tilted into the gray fog of cigarette smoke. Glass tinkling, murmurs of conversation spiked with occasional cracked laughter, the TV set tuned to championship poker or semipro boxing, the drinks coming faster and faster until it was morning and he would awaken against the toilet, vomit and apologies burning his throat, Kendra forced into playing the grown-up of the family once again.
You want to talk about horror...
“Maybe later,” Wayne said. “I’ve got to check on the control room and the hunt schedule.”
Gelbaugh gave a knowing nod, and Wayne wondered if his drinking habits had been part of Gelbaugh’s homework. “Sure. How about after tomorrow’s panel? ‘The Nature of Spirits.’ One could take a number of meanings from that title.”
“It’s supposed to be open-ended,” Wayne said.
“Naturally,” Gelbaugh said. “What better way to kick off a paranormal conference than to turn on the metaphorical fog machine and cloud the collective consciousness?”
“My panelists have credentials that–”
The walkie talkie on Wayne’s belt squawked, and he retrieved it, glad he didn’t have to defend the reputations of people he’d drafted because they were willing to jabber for free.
“Excuse me.” He pressed a button and said into the mouthpiece, “Wayne here.”
“We got a problem, Boss.”
Burton had a flair for understatement. His “problem” was another man’s “life-and-death crisis.” At best, he’d run into a wiring problem. At worst, the whole telecomm system had melted down.
“On my way,” he answered, brushing past Gelbaugh and heading for the stairs. “What you got?”
“In the medium room.” Burton responded. “They were playing around with automatic writing, and a woman fainted.”
“Christ,” Wayne said. His first thought was not of the woman’s well-being, but of his liability insurance. He almost wished he believed in God so he could pray the victim was diabetic or had some other chronic ailment instead of suffering emotional trauma.
All conference attendees were required to sign waiver forms acknowledging the physical and psychological risks of ghost hunting, but his attorney had said the papers were little more than good publicity. A lawsuit was a lawsuit, and in a courtroom, everybody lost but the lawyers.
There was one more possibility, one he wasn’t yet prepared to face. But she would wait for an intimate moment to make her appearance.
You and me, just like the old days. Just like we never have before.
He was leaping up the winding stairs three at a time when Kendra called after him from below. “Something wrong?”
Wayne peered over the railing. “An Elvis sighting.”
“Dad,” she groaned, but he was already thundering to Room 218 and whatever unpleasant surprise awaited.
Chapter 10
Amelia appeared to be breathing normally, but her fluttering eyes gazed past Burton’s shoulder to a point on the ceiling.
“She’s up there,” Amelia said.
Burton, checking her pulse, put his head to her chest, but her heartbeat was lost in the pillowy softness of her breasts and he wasn’t willing to burrow in for better audio. If she were having a heart attack, she was having the most blissful cardiac arrest ever recorded, because her smile stretched across her rounded face.
“Dearheart,” said the thin man Burton took to be her husband. He was excited but his voice projected no life-or-death anxiety. “Are you stepping through?”
The other three people in the room were frozen aroun
d the glass coffee table that held an Ouija board. All three wore white badges that featured their names and the cute little ghost logo Wayne used for his Haunted Computer Productions trademark. They were paying customers, which made the situation more controllable. Paranormalists were used to drama queens and catatonia, and sometimes a gathering of like-minded seekers led to a game of one-upmanship that had the clairvoyants and sensitives quivering in the throes of unseen forces. Their performances could make an orgasm-faking porn actress proud.
But Amelia had dropped like a sack of flour, with a limp-boned surrender that would have been difficult to fake. The human body had a number of involuntary defenses, including the instinct to brace for a fall. Burton, watching the session on one of the control-room monitors, had taken her flop for the real thing. Overweight people were more prone to health problems, and in stressful environments the pressure on bodily systems naturally increased.
After calling Wayne on the walkie-talkie, he’d raced to 218 and arrived less than a minute after her collapse. Amelia’s husband Donald didn’t even ask Burton to call an ambulance. Apparently he was used to her spells, or what he had called “stepping through.”
“Angel in the clouds,” Amelia said.
Burton lifted his head from her breasts and studied the swirled gypsum patterns in the ceiling. With a little imagination, or the appropriate hallucinogenic drugs favored by visionaries around the world, then the random patterns could be fitted into whatever shapes the viewer desired. Might as well be angels as anything.
“What’s her name?” Donald asked, edging closer.
Amelia lifted a trembling arm and pointed to the table. “Ask the board.”
A yellow legal pad was on the table beside the Ouija board. Now that Amelia had stabilized, Burton turned his attention to the words written there.
“Nancy. 1922. In the stone garden.”
It was like a supernatural game of “Clue,” only instead of the butler in the study with a candlestick, it was Nancy in the garden, from an era long enough ago that she was almost certainly deceased. However, Amelia hadn’t addressed the angel as “Nancy,” so her dream image must have been someone else.
“Help me lift her,” Donald said, and Burton took one shoulder and arm while Donald lifted her head. They were struggling to get her into a sitting position when Wayne came panting through the door.
“How is she?” Wayne asked.
“We had an episode,” Donald said, full of pride.
Wayne visibly relaxed. He glanced at the three guests, who kneeled around the coffee table like adolescents who’d been caught playing Spin the Bottle.
“Your medium room is above average,” Amelia said, and the bad pun broke the tension. Burton had heard it before but laughed anyway.
“The planchette,” Donald said.
Amelia reached forward, her hands still shaking, and cupped the wheeled triangular device. The three guests knelt at the coffee table, penitents before a shrine, though they must have sensed that Amelia would be flying solo on this particular ascension to the Great Beyond. Burton found himself kneeling as well, though he’d never ascribed much mystical power to a concoction of cardboard, glue, and ink manufactured by Parker Brothers.
Still, intention was a powerful thing.
Wayne approached the table, eyes shining as if infected with the contagious enthusiasm that filled the room. Burton knew Wayne also put little stock in the Ouija board, but his boss believed in giving the people what they wanted. If they paid good money to sit in a room and consult a trademarked oracle, then more power and Godspeed to them.
“Are you here, Nancy?” Amelia said.
The surrounding observers were silent as the planchette gave a squeaky roll toward the “No” corner of the board. Burton’s take on the divination tool was that the operator unconsciously manipulated the wheeled mechanism. It was difficult to tell fakery, but if you believed all of it was fake, then you didn’t have to waste time detecting sleight of hand.
“If you aren’t Nancy, then who are you?”
Burton met Wayne’s glance. No doubt Amelia had researched the hotel’s history and knew all about the legend of Margaret Percival, the suicidal Frederick Weinstein, and the honeymoon heart-attacker Erwin Henderson. Since Margaret was the most notorious of the cases, Burton expected the planchette to slide toward “M.” Donald squatted beside his wife, pen poised over the note pad to record the letters.
Amelia closed her eyes and allowed the planchette a visible tremor. Then it slid toward the “O,” hesitated a moment, and settled on the “N.” “N,” Donald called out, scribbling it down
“Nancy,” whispered one of the bystanders, a pinch-faced man with an oily strand of hair plastered across his bald spot.
The planchette rolled again, locking on the “O.”
“N-O,” Donald said. “ ‘No’ the slow way.”
“Not Nancy,” whispered Baldy.
Amelia’s face was calm but her eyelashes fluttered as she concentrated. Burton noted her breathing was deep and steady again. Whatever spell she had suffered, she appeared fine now.
The planchette eased back and settled on the “O” again. Donald called out the letter as he wrote it.
The bystanders gathered closer around the table, straining forward to see which letter the planchette would select next. The metallic tang of tension hung in the air, mixing with the air freshener that the maid had used to cover the room’s must.
The plastic squeak of the planchette was brittle in the room’s silence.
Donald announced the next stop: “N.”
Burton smiled. Amelia had read the same books he and everyone else in the field had read. She was serving up the identity of “No one.” It was the perfect riddle, used by Ulysses to trick the Cyclops in “Odysseus” and used in a variation by Captain Kirk in “Star Trek” to outsmart an evil computer. Of course, in the paranormal world, “no one” could be anyone, even the Prince of Lies himself, or Prince Albert.
“Noon?” Baldy said.
“Shh,” said a red-haired woman. “She’s not finished.”
Wayne’s expression had shifted from curious mirth to one of concern, his brow furrowed. Burton figured he was putting on a show.
Amelia pushed the planchette to the “I.”
“I,” Donald asked. “Are you sure?”
Amelia, whose eyes were closed, gave a slight nod. A pendant on her bosom caught the faint golden glow of the lamplight.
Wayne’s face was nearly white, a shade of pallor that Burton didn’t think could be faked.
The planchette moved again, skidding across the slick cardboard.
“E,” Wayne said, flatly.
As if obeying his command, the planchette rested on the letter. Amelia took her hands from the device and opened her eyes.
“Noonie?” Donald said.
“Wayne?” Burton asked. His boss looked as if he had swallowed a live snake.
“Is that all?” Baldy said. “What does ‘Noonie’ mean?”
“I don’t know.” Amelia said. “I saw an angel.”
Several of the bystanders nodded as if that was a perfectly obvious explanation.
“Let’s keep going,” Donald said. “Maybe we can flush it out. Might be a poltergeist at play.”
“You sure you want to mess with a poltergeist?” Baldy said.
“That’s why we’re here,” Burton said, checking his EMF meter. The baseline reading hadn’t changed, suggesting no spirit had visited the room and nobody’s cell phone was close to the meter.
Wayne turned away, and Burton saw his face in the mirror. Wayne was pale, as if he was going to throw up, and he staggered to the door. The group of necromancers didn’t notice, too intent on Amelia’s wielding of the planchette. Burton clicked off his EMF meter and left the room.
Wayne was slumped against the wall, eyes staring straight ahead.
“Did you feel something, Digger?” Burton asked, annoyed because his FLIR thermal imaging system might
have recorded any temperature fluctuations in the room if Wayne had actually spoken while the trail was still warm. Or cold, in this case.
“Noonie,” he whispered.
“Yeah, keep them guessing, right?”
“No guess. It’s her.”
Burton tried to square the nonsense word with the known historical hauntings but came up empty. “Which ‘her’? Margaret?”
“My wife.”
Burton inhaled sharply. It always came to this. Most people became interested in the paranormal to deal with a personal loss. Maybe the Digger was human, after all.
“She’s dead, Wayne.”
“She promised.”
“I don’t—”
“She promised to meet me here.”
Chapter 11
Janey Mays walked through the kitchen, past pots and pans dangling from hooks, a wooden rack of overpriced wine, stainless-steel tables covered with cabbages and yellow squash, a cart loaded with dirty cookware, and a large sink where Irish potatoes were soaking. The music from the bar was piped into the kitchen, and at the moment a growly hard-rock tune was blaring loudly enough to shake the utensils by the grill.
One of the legends Janey had concocted was that a cook had died of a heart attack in the kitchen and, since that fateful day, cutlery rattled whenever his spirit returned. No one had ever challenged her for a name in order to check the story’s historical accuracy, but after the rumor had taken root, it spread throughout the staff. In five years, seven reports of rattling cutlery and the specter of a funny little man in a chef’s hat had been written down in the ghost register, one by Janey herself but the rest by people who were unwitting accomplices in her deception.
Now, with the place on the verge of closing, the effort seemed silly. It was already a museum despite the activity. Soon enough, it would be rubble fit only for the landfill. So much for forty years of dedication and faith.
A sullen teen, whose name she hadn’t bothered to learn, was chopping barbecue, wielding a heavy cleaver and sending bits of baked pig flesh flying in the air.
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