by Isaac Thorne
Afia nodded sympathetically. “I think this is a good spot for us to end the interview. Thank you very much, Mr. Beard. It was fascinating. Can I ask you: what would you think about joining us down at the Gordon place when we go to interview the constable? Do you think you could show us where some of these things you described happened? Maybe it will trigger something you’d like to add to what you’ve already told us.”
Jeremy twisted his head toward Staff. “Is that thing still rolling?”
“Not now,” Staff replied. He paused the recording.
“I don’t think I’m ready to go back out there,” Jeremy said to Afia. “Someday, maybe. But telling you all that just now...I don’t know. It brought the whole thing back to me in a way I hadn’t really thought about until now. I can tell you, Ms. Afton, I have never touched a drop of alcohol or used any drugs beyond vitamin supplements and the occasional Tylenol. I don’t like feeling out of control of myself. That night? Alone in that house? I don’t know what I would have done if that thing’s shrieking hadn’t broken whatever spell it was I was under. What I do know is I never want to feel that way again.”
Staff stepped from behind the camera. “You said you were recording on your iPhone while all that was happening. Any chance we could use that video as part of the segment?”
Here the young man’s mouth twisted down, his eyes sorrowful. “You could, if it showed anything. I got brave when I got home and played back what I had recorded. It doesn’t show anything but the dark outside the window I was recording from.”
“What about the sounds? The shrieks?”
Jeremy shook his head, morose. “They’re not on there, either. I don’t know why. I know I heard them. All the video I shot shows is my iPhone bouncing around the window while I’m trying to look out into the darkness. You can hear me shuffling around. That’s all. Well, except for me dry heaving a few times. That audio made it on there.”
“Do you have that phone on you? Can I see it?” Staff stretched out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Jeremy produced the device, unlocked it, and handed it to him.
“It’s the first one in the roll there. I haven’t recorded anything since then.”
Staff started playback. He watched as a full five minutes of black video unfolded. He could see the reflection of the iPhone’s flashlight feature in the glass of the window through which the video was shot. He thought he could make out a little of Jeremy’s own reflection there as well. The rest of the image was shrouded in darkness. Twice, the camera bounced around as Jeremy dry heaved beside it. The video stopped just as some shuffling sounds started. Probably the moment Jeremy had decided it was safe to leave and stopped recording.
“He’s right,” Staff announced. “You can’t see anything. I won’t say there’s nothing there, but the backyard is way too dark to be able to see anything with the light from that flash bouncing off the window in front.” He handed the iPhone back to Jeremy. “You might have had better luck if you had doused the iPhone light and just shot with the natural moonlight falling on the yard.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” He stood up and shook hands with Afia. “Hope I helped.”
“Thank you so much, Jeremy!” Patsy called. “Let me know when you’re ready to start hosting some ghost tours with me. I’m expecting I’ll need some tour guide help right after Channel 6 airs this.” She smiled sweetly at him.
“Will do,” Jeremy said. He walked out the door of the bed and breakfast without looking back.
***
Forty-five minutes after Jeremy Beard left the bed and breakfast—and after Staff had finally had a chance to finish his coffee, take a shit, and take a shower—Patsy had yet to receive any acknowledgment from Constable Graham Gordon. She had texted him twice, attempted to call his cell phone three times, and called his landline once. Graham, Patsy explained to Staff and Afia, was like most residents of Lost Hollow in that he maintained a landline and still kept an up-to-date telephone directory within easy reach of it. These ancient technologies were in addition to his cell phone and internet service. “Just in case.”
“It’s not like him to not reply at all,” she said when her final attempt to reach him by cell phone rang three times and then, just like the calls that preceded it, was finally redirected to voicemail. “I hope he’s ok.”
“He probably just left the house without his cell phone,” Staff said. He tapped his own iPhone, which was clipped to the hip of the Army green cargo shorts he was wearing for their ghost hunt. “It happens to me all the time. I had to start hanging this on the doorknob with a shoestring so I’d find it when I leave in the morning.”
Staff pushed back from the kitchen table and stood up, dusting his hands on his cargo shorts as he did. “Well, that’s that. We can pick some other allegedly haunted place to do our story today, I think. I hate to give up on it after we spent all that time talking to the kid, though. Maybe if Mr. Gordon shows up before we’re done for the day, we can go out to his place then. I’m going to go get the equipment and start loading—”
“I think we should still go out there,” Afia interrupted him. She looked at Patsy. “I mean, Jeremy Beard did it. A lot of the kids have. You said yourself that the constable was out there just last night. Maybe he really did forget his phone and is out there working.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, he did. He called to tell me he was out there just as I was leaving the office, as a matter of fact. That was the last I’ve heard from him. He said he was out there and that we needed to send someone out to fix the security light at the end of the driveway. I suppose it would be all right for us to go out there anyway. We can always try to call him again if he’s not already there.”
“Looks like I’m outnumbered, then,” Staff said cheerily. “I’m going to go get all our stuff loaded up now so we can get moving.”
Outside, with the topper door up and the tailgate of the pickup down, Staff began to load equipment. Just as he finished securing the last piece of hardware into the back of the pickup, Afia and Patsy emerged from the front door of the bed and breakfast. Afia was already striding toward him, jingling the second set of keys to the S-10 in her right hand, while Patsy appeared to be rummaging through a large black purse in search of her own. She located them and locked the front door of the house, then jogged a few paces down the sidewalk to catch up with Afia who was smiling brightly in spite of the previous day’s disastrous effects on her mood.
“Any word on the constable?” Staff called out to them.
Patsy shook her head. “Not yet. I’ll take my car. You two can follow me out there. I know exactly where it is.”
So do we, Staff thought, although now probably wasn’t the best time to remind everyone about their encounter with the black bitch from the day before. He climbed into the shotgun seat of the S-10. “All right, then, I’m ready if y’all are.” Afia climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine, which idled smoothly in the driveway of the bed and breakfast after what sounded like a couple of rough knocks.
Patsy toddled to her own car, a silver Hyundai Sonata that had somehow maintained its showroom shine even after driving over the backwoods dusty roads and bridges of Hollow County, and climbed behind the wheel. She started it, revved the engine, and waved to the two journalists as she backed out of the driveway. She turned right, toward the square. Staff eyeballed Afia as the older woman pulled into a three car-length lead.
“We can still bail on the Gordon house if we need to, you know.”
Afia smiled at him. “I’m fine,” she said. Of course she was. Staff would have noticed it otherwise. After last night, he was quite sure of that. They rounded the comically out-of-place-for-this-small-of-a-town obelisk in the square (which Afia chose to carefully ignore) and followed Patsy’s Sonata down what would soon turn into SR-501 toward the city limits, toward Hollow Creek Road, where they had encountered the so-called black bitch. Toward the Gordon house.
***
Patsy Blankenship’s relief was palpable when th
ey pulled alongside Hollow Creek Road and parked in front of what Staff assumed was the Gordon house. He could see it in her body language even before she stepped out of her Sonata. The tension in her shoulders relaxed visibly, and she allowed one of her hands to release the steering wheel long enough to gently wipe at something along the back of her neck. She inched the car in behind a red Toyota Tacoma that was already parked at the edge of what looked like it might have once been a driveway, beside the overgrown front yard. Expertly, she left just enough room to be able to maneuver out of her chosen spot when it was time to go, a skill that Staff himself had never quite been able to master when it came to driving. Afia, on the other hand, eased the S-10 right up behind Patsy’s Sonata perfectly.
Staff guessed that the red Tacoma must be the constable’s truck. That made sense given Patsy’s description of him. The constable was just enough of a Southern man to understand that he was expected to drive a pickup, but not quite testosterone-fueled enough to go for a full-size showboat like a Tundra, or a Dodge Ram 2500, or a Ford F-350. Most of the men Staff knew who drove beasts like that weren’t even farmers or mechanics or other types that you might expect to need a heavy duty vehicle. They were mostly rednecks who were trying to impress other rednecks. Mr. Gordon had on some level understood the requirement that he drive a four wheel-capable pickup to fit in with the rest of the toxic masculinity of this small town, but didn’t entirely understand all that that requirement entailed. He chose a safe and practical pickup over a showboat. Staff wondered whether the constable was aware of the distinction he was making for himself among his regional male peers. Those peers might not be aware either. For the average white Southern male who grew up in a small town, heavy-duty pickup ownership was mostly instinct.
Patsy had already leaped out of her car before Afia and Staff were able to release their seatbelts. She motioned for them to hurry up, mouthing the words “come on” as she did. Afia slid out of the driver’s seat and walked the side of the road toward Patsy while Staff fussed with the camera that was stored in the back of the S-10. By the time he caught up to the two women, Patsy had decided to move inside and look for the constable while the Channel 6 news crew waited.
“I was thinking about it on the drive over,” she explained. “Kids are one thing, but if I was Constable Gordon I would be a little off-put if someone just waltzed onto my property with a microphone and a camera unexpected.” She started up the path to the front porch of the old Victorian Gothic house that loomed over Hollow Creek Road.
“Wow,” Afia said, looking over the place. “I can certainly see why the kids think it’s haunted.”
“You were never over here as a young’un?”
Afia gaped at him. “Are you kidding? Old man Gordon would have killed me if he’d caught me anywhere near his property line. If he didn’t, my father would have.”
“Right. Stupid question. Even so, you knew the Gordon kid a little, right? What was he like back then, aside from the obvious long-term side effects of the beatings, I mean?”
Afia shrugged. “Quiet and shy, I guess. Like I was. Maybe we would’ve gotten along if our fathers weren’t at war with each other. Most of the time, we were both just keeping our heads down, I think. He was probably trying to cope with being the drunk loser’s kid who got his ass handed to him by his old man while I was trying to deal with being the only black kid in a school full of white trash. It didn’t help that my single father worked with the majority of the other men who had kids in my same class. Every time those kids’ parents came home with a story about ‘what the nigger man said at work’ it came back to haunt me at school the next day.” She brushed a long strand of straightened black hair out of her eyes. “Let me tell you, you haven’t been bullied until you’re bullied by racist progenies for stuff your dad said or did that you had no control over and didn’t even know about.”
Staff’s automatic response to her story would have ordinarily been “I can imagine,” but he stifled it. He couldn’t imagine, so he shouldn’t pretend to. He had discovered his homosexuality early in his life and figured he had revealed it indirectly to his parents at some point because it felt to him like they always knew. He’d never even really had the unenviable chore of coming out to them. They had simply understood. As it blossomed within him at adolescence, they had coached him, warned him, to be discreet about it, even to deny it if the subject ever came up with anyone at school. Unlike some gay teens, he had been able to disguise his nature so convincingly that few of his classmates ever even teased him about the possibility that he was gay. How many girls’ hearts had he broken in those days? Occasionally, he felt some resentment toward his parents for attempting to stifle who he was in spite of their own acceptance of it. So instead of telling Afia that he could imagine what she went through, he offered a simple “I’m sorry” and left it at that.
Patsy knocked three times on the wide-open door of the Gordon place before she swept across the threshold and stepped inside. Staff could hear her calling the constable’s name as she did. “Hello? Graham? It’s Patsy. Hello?” She left the door open behind her. They could hear the thunk of her footsteps echoing in the distance as she patrolled the interior. She’d worn heels, for some reason. They were wedges, so it’s not like she was going to get them stuck between any loose floorboards, but still. The impracticality. It had to be difficult to walk in those things compared to something comfortable, like sneakers. Staff glanced at the bare dirt areas of the overgrown path that led to the house in front of them. Sure enough, the older woman had left some awkward indentations in her wake. Imprinted alongside them were the treads of a few sneakers and what were probably someone’s work boots. The constable’s, maybe. Who else would’ve been out here wearing work boots? There was also—
“Hey, Afia.” He elbowed her in the ribs. “Look at this.” He knelt at the edge of the driveway, right elbow propped on one knee, and pointed to the ground in front of them.
“What? The footprints? I saw that. They’re Patsy’s. The bigger ones are probably Constable Gordon’s.”
“Not those,” Staff said. He leaned closer to the earth and indicated a much smaller set of prints that overlapped the sneakers and work boots in places. They were dark semi-circular blobs capped by four slightly less deep bean-shaped indentations. Each bean was also capped by a point, making the group of them look like two-part snowmen standing on top of a hill. Some of the beans pointed toward the old Victorian Gothic house. Others pointed away from it as if whatever left them there had come and gone.
“Pawprints,” Afia said, kneeling down beside her cameraman.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lee Gordon lay flat on his back on the cellar floor of his old house, grinning. He could feel the skin on his son Graham’s face move and spread at his command. It didn’t feel exactly like he remembered grinning as having felt, but it was close enough. Not that he had smiled that much when he was alive. He could not remember ever having much to smile about. Graham’s lips and tongue felt strange to him, too. Sore, kind of. Throbbing. The kid must have busted them good when he hit the floor.
You know I did, came a small, barely perceptible reply from somewhere inside his head. You know damn well I did. Did you push me, Dad? Did you hit me on the head and push me down here?
He forced air from his son’s diaphragm through his throat, attempting an out-loud chuckle. It came out more like a cough. YOU KNOW I DID, SON. JUST REMEMBER THAT I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO YOU THAT YOU HADN’T ALREADY DONE TO ME THE NIGHT THEY FOUND MY BODY DOWN HERE, NOW DID I?
There was no further comment on the subject from the wimpy little faggot inside his consciousness. Lee went back to probing the sensations he felt from within his son’s shell. He reached out with tendrils from his mind, vine-like wisps of energy searching for nerve pathways from the boy’s brain throughout the rest of his body. After a few minutes of searching, he found Graham’s right hand and all five digits thereon. He flexed them, made them claw at the cellar earth beneath. Once h
e’d made the connection, it became rapidly familiar, and hopefully permanent. He could forget about the connection he’d just made and concentrate on reaching other limbs and organs. This process felt much easier than when he had tried to jump into the little dark-haired twerp that he’d caught trespassing a few nights ago. That was like trying to thread a sewing needle with a gigantic log of string cheese. The small piece of him that had been able to get through to the brat wasn’t enough to take and keep control. The rest of his consciousness had just enveloped the boy’s outer body and hovered there until the near-puking started. That was what had finally kicked him out.
Graham’s body was blood kin. He was able to glide into that body like a hand into a glove. As a test, he ignored the digits on the hand he had just taken, focusing on his son’s eyelids instead. He blinked three times and then focused again on the right hand. Yes. He was still able to move the fingers without any concentration or effort.
He sought the left limb next, finding the correct pathway after only a few seconds. Once he sent the signal, sensation flooded the entire arm immediately, but it was a minute before he could make it move. When he could move the fingers on the left hand, he tested his motor coordination. He raised both arms to the ceiling simultaneously, index fingers pointing upward. In turn, he touched his nose with first the index finger of his right hand and then the index finger of his left. It was a task he’d had to perform more than once for the local smokey bears when they’d caught him driving erratically down various and sundry Hollow County roads. A field sobriety test, they called it. Most of the time they gave him a pass, especially if he put in a call to his old compadre Abe Wickham. Abe had gone into law enforcement after high school, but they had remained friends. After time stole his youth and energy, Abe was kind enough to drop a six-pack by the house now and then. Lee had passed this self-imposed sobriety test, although he certainly wouldn’t mind having a drink in this new body. It had been far too long.