by Teresa Trent
“Aunt Maggie? Did you have your hair done?”
“Do you like it? I had Ruby Green fix it up down at The Best Little Hair House. No matter what happens tonight, every hair will stay in place. “
“Miss Ruby used a whole can of hairspray,” Danny added.
I would have to remember the “no open flames” policy around Aunt Maggie tonight.
“But that’s not the best part,” Maggie continued. “While I was gettin’ my hair done, some of the ladies were asking me about finding Mr. Canfield. Seems they all wanted to know about it.”
I didn’t think Danny knew all the details of his mother and me finding a body. That kind of thing might upset him, especially after he had been the one to find my uncle, his father, dead. He had nightmares about it for months afterward. “Well, once we started talking about that, the ladies started sharing some haunting experiences they had each had. It seems just about everyone in this town has a ghost story of some sort. The dead are haunting all of us, my dear.”
I thought of Barry. The living weren’t doing too bad a job, either.
“So by the time Ruby got my hair piled up and sprayed around this hat, I had three more volunteers to help us out on Halloween.”
“You did?”
“I sure did. The Pecan Bayou Paranormal Society’s newest members are Anna Harrel, that clerk from the grocery, Ruby, and Lily MacPhee, Dr. MacPhee’s wife. She said she looked forward to having some fun this weekend after all they been doin’ for their daughter’s upcomin’ wedding.”
It would be great to have some extra people to carry gear, and if luck was on my side, one of those people would be assigned the dead tunnel. I would happily stay outside in NUTV’s van drinking sweet tea out of a thermos all night. I was beginning to think my favorite way to view ghosts was on my television set at home. I could hide under a blanket when the violins started playing and the heroine was all of a sudden alone. The real-life version of this somehow wasn’t quite as much fun.
A half an hour later, after the NUTV van arrived, we were trudging through the grounds under the baking sun. “Hurry up, Betsy. We have to get all these lights set up before dusk,” said Aunt Maggie.
I hustled along behind my aunt, who was now dressed in the full regalia of a ghost hunter. She had a fifty-foot extension cord slung over the shoulder of her black knit top. She also had on her ghost buster belt, complete with an EVP device strapped on, as well as her flip camera and flashlight. She had insisted that I also wear my hat, so I put my hair into a ponytail to eliminate that “all your hair crammed into a hat” look. I chose to wear my yearly favorite, a black glow-in-the-dark jack-o-lantern shirt, along with black jeans. I actually tossed around the idea of wearing shorts for the heat, but I knew walking through the endless spider webs in this place would have my skin crawling. I was already regretting my decision as I felt the sweat on my skin in the late afternoon temperatures. Hopefully when the sun went down we would at least get a breeze.
Howard was now standing in front of the aged structure with two portable square lights shining on him as he described the history of the hospital. Today he actually looked sedate with a black T-shirt and black shorts. I thought maybe his fashion sense had bowed to necessity until I saw his black and orange argyle socks resting mid-calf on his legs. Stanley had brought over a crew of four to film the show. He crossed his arms and nodded his head as he watched the filming of Howard describing the hospital. I just hoped Howard wasn’t doing that thing where his eyes bugged out like he did at the town council. Nobody watching would get to the end of the show where the council hoped for its glorious commercial.
We had been told to steer clear of the room on the second level of the hospital where the murder of Oliver Canfield had taken place. We would mostly be concentrating on the rooms situated on the main floor, including the cafeteria, two hallways of hospital rooms and the morgue. We put the lights down and headed back to the van.
I could see many cars now parked along the road. It had to be a mixture of the Scout parents and the people attending the filming of the investigation. Less than a mile or so from this hospital was the new Pecan Bayou Hospital. Howard had mentioned that the sounds of the ambulance sirens could interfere with filming. At least if there was an accident at the campout, medical help would be close by.
I sat on the bumper of the van, waiting for my next set of directions from Maggie or Howard and slapping at a mosquito trying to suck blood out of my exposed arm. As the sun started its daily decline, the mosquito population put on their vampire fangs. I knew they had some mosquito repellent in the front seat of the van and made my way around. I ran smack into Aunt Maggie, whose animated face told me something was up.
“I’m being asked to say a few words on camera,” Maggie said, a slight excited quiver in her voice. “Can you take these things over to the main hallway?”
I picked up one more heavy bag and a suitcase of some sort while Maggie rushed off for her close-up. As I trudged from the van, wishing I had taken a moment to spray on some bug spray, I looked up in the towering windows of the old hospital. They seemed to be getting more elongated as the shadows stretched over their rectangular shapes. I looked to the window where I thought I had seen a ghost a few days ago. Could I have been looking at the murderer, or was it some sort of an apparition? Now that I was down to getting ready to spend the night in a haunted hospital, my feelings on whether I believed in the whole other-world thing were coming to light. Did I believe there were beings walking around, or should I say floating around, in another dimension, or was it all just a bunch of hooey someone thought up as they sat around a campfire? As I came closer to the hospital, something flickered on the second floor. Something not that much different from what I had seen with Zach. I set down my load and yelled up into the hospital.
“Hello? Is someone up there?” I was immediately shushed by the film crew. Oops. I forgot my aunt was on camera. I had been directed by my dad not to go to the second level for any reason, but quite possibly someone else had not heeded the warning and was up there tromping through a crime scene. Where was George Beckman? Maybe he had taken a dinner break and somebody was up there sightseeing.
“Hello?” I repeated a little more softly this time. When no answer came back, I picked up my bags, set them inside the door and started ascending the stairway.
“George? Are you up here?” Again, no answer.
As I came into the large open solarium, the light from the late afternoon sun shone through the window frames, leaving a long shadow. The heat was stifling. I walked to the center of the solarium and stopped, not wanting to make a sound. I listened until I heard someone coughing and footsteps walking rapidly away from me, possibly down a hallway on the other side of the room. I crossed the solarium in pursuit as I heard the footsteps going down the darker passage. “You know you can’t be up here! This area is off limits to anyone but the police … Hello?”
Whoever it was, they didn’t seem to care too much about my dire warning.
The footsteps picked up from a walk to a run, and I followed at a faster pace. We went on like this, rounding corners and running down the next hall. I felt the heat sapping my energy. The intruder was always so far ahead of me. I couldn’t see who it was. I heard a doorway open at the end of the hall leading to the stairwell. The door slammed just as I got to it. Expecting to hear the sound of feet clumping down the stairs, I was surprised. It was now quiet.
Was whoever this was standing on the other side of the door? Was whoever this was getting ready to attack me? Maybe they thought they were in a suitable hiding place. I held my breath, and I yanked open the rusty white door.
Nothing. Nobody was standing there waiting to attack. I couldn’t see anybody on the stairwell, and there was no sound at all. Where did my intruder go? Had they crept out through the stairway fire exit door to the outside?
I ran down the stairs and burst through the outside door, hitting square on the chest of a person much taller than I was. I
fell backwards and landed on my behind in the overgrown weeds on the outside of the hospital. The intruder, whose face was blocked by the sun, was coming closer and closer towards me.
The intruder leaned down. I screamed and crawled backwards on my hands.
“Stop!” a male voice yelled. As the sun went behind a cloud, I looked up into the icy blue eyes of Leo Fitzpatrick.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
“What is wrong with you?” he said, offering me his hand.
“What’s wrong with you?” I repeated back to him. “What were you doing upstairs near the crime scene? Don’t you know you’re not supposed to be anywhere near it? What were you trying to do?”
“I wasn’t trying to do anything.”
“Why did you run from me then? I know it was you. I heard you coughing. You sounded like a two-pack a day smoker up there.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t run from you.”
“Don’t give me that. You ran through the second floor and then down the stairs.”
“Betsy, you don’t look good.” His voice was gentle, and the blue eyes that looked so cold a minute ago softened. “When was the last time you had any water? It has to be over a hundred degrees on that second floor.”
I felt my cheeks with my hands. “What?”
“You just came bounding out of that door as if you were being chased by a bear. You ran smack into me and then acted like I was going to attack you or something.”
“You weren’t?” I said feeling dumb now.
“Sorry. Hate to disappoint you, but I was over here looking for firewood for the campsite.” He seemed sincere, and yet there was something about this man I just didn’t trust. Once again, he had shown up at just the right time.
“Looking for wood?”
He pulled a water bottle out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Here, this is a little warm now, but let’s just sit down on the step and you can tell me all about it.” I followed him back up the steps, plopped down and took a swig from his lukewarm water.
“That wasn’t you?”
“No ma’am,” he answered, shaking his head.
“If it wasn’t you, then who was it?” I turned to face the door, now closed. “Did you see anybody else come out of this door?”
“No, again.”
“If it wasn’t you, then did who I chase through the hospital?” I took another drink as the sound of the cicadas rose in the woods.
“Well, when it comes to me, you can be assured you are safe.” He said it, but I wasn’t all that sure I believed it.
“Tell me about your investor for the hospital, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Tell me why you were at the fire,” I said. Who was this man sitting here sharing his water with me? I had to know.
“What’s to tell?” He gestured with both hands up. “It’s just an investor.”
“I don’t think there’s any kind of investor privacy law anywhere, so isn’t there anything else you can tell me?”
He shifted slightly on the step. “I have to think of the privacy of this person. It’s only common decency.”
“Oh.” He had an answer for everything, which always seemed to turn out to be nothing. I felt my frustration rising. I put the cap back on the water bottled and shoved it at him.
“And you just happened to, at this time of all times, be here at a torn-down hospital nobody’s given a hoot about for decades on the same day that Oliver Canfield was here. Yeah, right.”
Fitzpatrick looked down at this watch.
“I have to get back,” he said, standing up.
“So you can gather wood to start a fire?” I asked, wondering if this would be the first or the second fire he was starting this week. After all someone had to start the fire at the bank, so why not him? What had he been trying to destroy in that office? Was he a part of whatever Canfield had been doing?
Fitzpatrick sniffed as the late afternoon breeze covered us in another layer of humidity.
“Lots to do.” With that, he started walking back towards the woods. He turned around for one last word.
“You be careful in that old hospital. Bad things seem to happen to people in there.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I walked around the front of the building where the film crew continued working. I knew when I was getting the brush-off from Leo Fitzpatrick. Who was this investor? Why was he on Canfield’s appointment calendar? There was no denying Fitzpatrick’s charm, but he also had an element of danger to him. If I couldn’t get him to crack, then maybe I could Tyler.
“So we will take two investigators and a camera and sound on each run tonight,” Howard said. “We want to keep it as simple as possible and limit the possibility of human interference in our investigations.”
I wondered if they would actually get anything on tape tonight. I had seen countless videos of floating forms playing on Aunt Maggie’s computer and television. Would Howard and Stanley be able to get some kind of footage like that? We would have every kook in the country out here if that happened. Oliver Canfield’s dream was coming true – we would be rich with investors. Too bad he wouldn’t be here to see it all. Then again, maybe he was.
I headed to a cooler Stan had placed in the back of the van.
As Maggie and Danny were coming towards me, I picked up three water bottles from the icy confines of the cooler. “Water break, Aunt Maggie. Be right back.”
“Okay, dear. You do look a little red in the face.”
“Very important to drink water in the heat,” said Danny.
*****
I trudged through the woods over to the campsite to see Tyler. He and Zach were struggling to pound in tent stakes. They were surrounded by other little boys in various states of campsite readiness. The tents were set about ten feet apart between the trees towering above them.
“Pull it tight, shrimp,” Tyler yelled to Zach from one side of the collapsed tent. Tyler had on a pirate costume, complete with eye patch and wobbling bird on his shoulder. His plastic sword hung from his belt as he tried to hammer a stake into the ground.
“Hey you guys, how about some water?”
“Thanks, mom,” Zach said, his little cheeks rosy pink and his hair plastered to his forehead.
“Thanks,” said Tyler. We all sat down in front of the tent on a couple of logs the boys had laid out in a sort of bark-toned living room. “So Tyler, can I ask you a question?”
Tyler tipped the water bottle back to gulp, but his eyes turned to me. “Okay,” he said, filtering out a burp in the process.
“How long have you been living with your dad?”
“My dad? … Oh, my dad. I’ve just been with him for a little bit, since my mom …”
I could tell he was getting uncomfortable talking about his home situation. I softened my approach. “Do you miss your mom?”
He looked down into the bottle as if the answer was waiting for him there. “Yes.” His voice was barely audible.
There was quiet between us. This was a side of Tyler we hadn’t seen, and it all came about when I mentioned his mom. Maybe the tough-guy thing was all about being homesick.
I was even more surprised when Zach, the victim of Tyler’s taunts for the last week, chose to put his arm around him. “Gee, Tyler, you should have told me. Sometimes I miss my dad too. Even though I never really knew him and all,” he added quickly.
“Yeah, well, I knew my mom,” Tyler bit back.
Then, even more to my surprise, I saw a little tear bounce off his hand.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said.
“Leo says it’s okay to cry about it sometimes, just not in front of other people. I feel stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s … it’s … okay,” Zachary said softly. I had so hoped the two boys would get along, but I never stopped to think about the fact that they shared a common loss of a parent.
“When was the last time you talked to her on the phone?” I asked. Tyler looked bewildered.
Maybe he was so upset he didn’t quite understand me.
“Tyler? Your dad does let you call her on the phone, right?” I began to wonder if this was an amicable arrangement or not. Maybe she wasn’t answering his calls because she was so wound up in her new life. Some people just threw kids away, it seemed.
“Uh, you can’t reach her by phone right now.” That said it all. She was avoiding him. No wonder the kid was angry all the time. I made up my mind right then and there to be a new person to this boy.
“I see,” I said. “I tell you what, Tyler. Anytime you feel like you need someone to talk to, you can call me, okay?”
“And me,” said Zach, my partner in crime.
“Really?” Tyler looked up from the ground at me, his chubby hands holding the water bottle quietly in his lap.
“Really,” I repeated.
“I have to ask Uncle Leo.”
I thought about what Fitzpatrick had said about Tyler not being used to calling him dad. It was kind of sad because they were thrown together now. He had missed so many important things in Tyler’s life. They hadn’t had the time that Zach and I had to build our reliance and trust on one another. Once again, I had holes in Fitzpatrick’s story, but at least I knew his kid wouldn’t be beating up my kid all night long.
*****
I kept thinking about Tyler’s reaction to the mention of his mom during what remained of the afternoon. He had seemed like a tough kid at the Scout meeting, but one mention of his mother and he turned to jelly. So often the kid who is picking on yours has already been kicked around by someone bigger than himself.
“Okay, Betsy, in our segment we are going to be walking around the rooms in the ‘C’ corridor, down this hall,” Aunt Maggie said. In the fading light of the afternoon, it just looked like another torn-down hallway, too sorry-looking to produce a sizable ghost. At the end of the hallway was the bottom of the stairway that I had just chased my invisible intruder down. Many of the doors were off the hinges, but a few still hung on by sheer rust alone. Above me, some of the cratered ceiling tiles of the 60s lay along their metal frameworks in a scattered fashion. Maggie continued to chatter about things she would be pointing out to me when we were on camera later. As I listened to her voice, I heard the undeniable sound of footsteps again, above our heads. This time, even though I expected it, there was no cough.