I confess be a selfish asshole sometimes and really thoughtless.
I sat beside her on the floor like a smacked child trying to appease the parent, gently nudging her with my upper arm and then pathetically leaning my head on her shoulder. She didn’t move or speak.
“So sorry, hon…really sorry,” I said. “You know I don’t always think before I speak. You know I’m a doofus.”
“A double doofus, but I still love you in spite of your dumb comment.”
“I love you, too, and I love what you do. Don’t ever think otherwise, okay?”
“Okay, I won’t….now I want you to switch everything off. I mean everything.”
“Sure, if that’s what you want,” I replied slowly. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know why. It’s a feeling I have that this place was used for something very bad, and I need to find out what.”
“My guess is this case won’t be cracked in our usual 48 hours,” I replied. “More like a week?”
She stood up and brushed the dust off her jeans, “If at all. This one is very complicated and I’m not used to having so many ghosts at once. I need more history and background because I’m stumped.”
By the light of the torch, I could see my watch said it was already eleven thirty. Where the hell did the time go? I was also unsure whether we were staying the night or going back downstairs to the hot spot. But I was afraid to open my mouth and upset Ellen again, so I stayed quiet, waiting for her to decide what to do next. “He’s still here but he’s not communicating with me. He just keeps pointing at the typewriter. Maybe there’s something important connecting him to it. Go take a look.”
I walked over to the desk and. in the light of the torch I saw it was covered with a thick layer of dust, untouched for years. I was so tempted to write something in the dust but refrained. Instead, I checked out the antiquated typewriter. “God, this is old. Something from the Fifties, judging by the keys and this could bring big money on eBay.”
“Don’t joke, Monty…do you see anything else?”
I looked behind it to discover two old letters that I figured were in Flemish. Searching for a date, I found one. “This letter is dated 3rd Juli 1953. What month is that in English?”
“It must be July but the month’s not important, it’s the year.” Ellen replies as she peered over my shoulder. “Something’s not right. He died before that date, I’m sure, so why is he so insistent on pointing at the typewriter?”
“Who knows?” I said. “Unless he tells you or you pick something up, it’s anybody’s guess.”
Something must have happened, for sure, but we needed history on a building that dated back to the Fifteenth Century, and what better people to ask than Ingrid and Pieter about where to find it?
Ellen interrupted my thoughts. “I need to go back down and see what I get…back to where we were before…I… I must go.” In a dream-like state, she wandered straight past me and out the door.
“I’m right behind you.” I replied, lugging the bags, but she didn’t respond.
I stayed close on her tail as we walked back downstairs, concerned that she’d drifted off somewhere in her head. I was intent on aiming my torch downwards to be sure I didn’t fall on my ass and end up with broken bones. Ellen was three steps ahead and shining her torch upwards, yet she didn’t have a problem finding her way in the dark. I prayed that whatever was guiding her wasn’t planning to make her fall.
Then, without warning, I was confronted by a shadowy figure floating just above the steps, stopping me in my tracks. My heart pounded as my sweat levels rose.
“Ellen!” I called out. “Ellen, stop...God damn it…stop, woman!”
Alone on the stairs, I dove frantically into the bag to grab the thermal meter. The moment I switched it on, I had a reading. My eyes weren’t tricking me; there was something. But my hands are shaking as I held the meter. Ellen was already downstairs; she hadn’t heard my cries for help—or else, something blocked her from hearing them.
Was this crazy place playing tricks on me or was what I saw a real manifestation? Whatever it was, it wasn’t friendly. The temperature dropped to ice cold and I started to really shiver as thoughts raced through my mind.
I’m not going to let this sucker make me shrivel. I’ll do what I have to do to get past even if it means walking right through the son of a bitch.
“I’m taking a deep breath and going through you, so whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working,” I said, loudly and firmly. “If you think you can stop me getting to my wife then you’ve got a serious fight on your hands.”
I took one step down. It was still ahead of me, floating and unrecognisable, a mass of dark shadow. Next step down, I closed my eyes; the only thing I felt was an intense cold, and I reached the next step unscathed. I opened my eyes and knew I was alone. It was gone.
Chapter Seven
My main now concern was finding Ellen.
The moment I got down I ran through the main hall, kicking debris out of my way and aiming the torch in all directions, gasping for breath and searching wildly. I dumped the bags and noticed that although the place was cold, I was sweating like hell. “Ellen…Ellen…where are you?”
Like a mad person, I ran between the pillars, opening doors to every room and peering inside. I called her name again and again in panic.
It was a large building with many rooms—each door I opened yielded nothing.
“Give me back my wife!” I screamed at the top of my voice, standing and turning wildly around in the middle of the hall. “Give her back to me now!”
I aimed the torch towards the stack of materials, the same spot where we were before, and to my horror Ellen was standing motionless on the top rung of a ladder.
I was shocked to see where she was, hanging perilously onto an unstable piece of metal. “How the hell did you get up there, Ellen? Come down, honey; it isn’t safe!” I pleaded
She was holding on with both hands but she didn’t move or respond to my voice.
“Ellen, if you don’t come down, I’m gonna come up and get you!”
The ladder was around 12 feet high and was perched right next to the higher one that the workman fell from. I was relieved that at least she was on the lower one, but if she fell from 12 feet onto a stone-hard floor then it would be a catastrophe.
I spotlighted her face with the torch just as she turned her head to speak to me. “Go away, you’re not welcome…I’m in control here get out!”
It was a ghost using Ellen’s body to communicate probably the same one who encouraged her to lean over the balcony, caused my fall on the steps, and pushed me over the table. It wasn’t the friendly ghost she’d encountered in the room. “I’m not going anywhere,” I told the entity in no uncertain terms. “Give me back my wife, fight Ellen, fight!”
“I warned you!” she replied angrily.
“Ellen, can you hear me? I’m here; its Monty…honey you have to fight. Push him away; use everything you’ve got and hang on to that ladder. I’m coming up.”
In the light I could see she was barefoot. There was no sign of her shoes anywhere, and as I reached the first rung of the ladder and stepped up, I figured it was best to go real slow. “I’m coming up.” I said in a deadly serious tone.
“What…what am I doing up here? Monty, oh my God!”
To my great relief she was back. Problem was she was stuck up a ladder in the dark and didn’t know how she got there. I knew that I couldn’t let her panic and slip but I was worried because of her fear of heights “I’m going to help you down. Don’t move.”
“Where are my shoes, Monty?”
“We’ll find them; don’t worry, just keep still.”
Behind me I heard shuffling. I was sure it wasn’t in my imagination. It was the sound of someone dragging their feet slowly across the floor. I tried to ignore it the best I could. I was more concerned about getting Ellen down in one piece then something was thrown at me, hitting me hard in the back. I
winced and turned around but there was nothing except the culprit—Ellen’s shoe lying at the bottom of the ladder.
“What was that noise?” she asked frantically.
“Nothing to worry about, but I think I found a shoe.”
“Only one shoe, where’s the other one?”
“Forget the shoe, just concentrate on coming down. I’m right behind you.”
As soon as she reached the last step, I grabbed her in my arms and carried her to the ground.
“Oh, Monty, don’t tell me I went into a trance. I hate when that happens. What did I say? Please don’t say you don’t know!”
“It was something about getting out, leaving…and not being welcome. I tried to talk to you but you didn’t answer. Something else was talking to me in English but it sounded like it was your second language.”
“Did it sound familiar, like when Ingrid or Pieter are speaking English?”
“No, it was harsher.”
“Maybe it was a German speaking English?” she replied.
Being in a trance meant she wasn’t conscious of what she was saying so she couldn’t be sure. I didn’t want to think this was becoming one of those giant jigsaw puzzles that you can never figure out or ever finish.
I found Ellen’s other shoe almost five feet away. She was still as shaky and confused about what had happened as I was, and I urged her to give it up for now so we could go back to the hotel.
“If you want I can get the flight changed so we leave early,” I said. “Or we can stay. The ball’s in your court—you decide.”
She pursed her lips as she was thinking, and before she spoke I knew what the answer would be.
“I’m not leaving Belgium until I’ve done my best to clear this place and move the spirits on. I know we’ve had a few failures in the past, but we always gave it our all. I want to stay if that’s alright with you.”
“Sure, but if it gets really dangerous, then we’re on the first flight out, deal?”
“Deal…do you still have the flask? I’d love a coffee.”
By the light of the torch, we found a place to sit on top of a low stack of bricks and shared a plastic cup of delicious hot coffee. The occasional unexplained noise put us on alert, but nothing big enough to spook us. Once again it appeared they were leaving us alone.
I pulled Pieter’s card out of my wallet and tapped his number into my cell. “It’s Monty and Ellen,” I said. “Please come and get us as soon as you can.”
The night air was still warm as light drops of rain fell. We were relieved to be outside in the open and calm atmosphere, but the café was closed, much to Ellen’s distress. “Oh no the flask, we must give it back tomorrow or she’ll think we’re dishonest.”
“Forever thoughtful,” I replied putting a strong comforting arm around her. “I love that you’re so caring and so strong.”
“I couldn’t do this without you. You know that don’t you?” she said. I knew.
Pieter was there in less than ten minutes and Ellen couldn’t wait to ask him the million-dollar question—did he know of anything bad that happened in the past that could connect to the building, something to do with Germans?
He was pensive as we drove off, carefully thinking through the question before he answered. “The only thing I can think of is what happened in the war. The Germans took over most of the local government buildings and used some of them for listing Jews to be rounded up and interrogated. I’m not sure about that city hall.”
Now he had our attention. Was this the link we were looking for? Could it be that during the war, heinous crimes were committed in there? Is it possible that the perpetrators and victims were trapped together, which would explain the violent ghosts and the helpful ones, and were they just a few of many yet to show themselves?
“Thank you so much, Pieter; we really appreciate it,” Ellen replied and we both knew we were on to something.
“You’re welcome,” Pieter said. “I will do what I can for you and search for more clues. Get some sleep; you both look worn out.”
He was right. We dragged ourselves to the reception desk. Hungry for a snack, we discovered the only food item on offer was sandwiches. We ordered ham and cheese for the room.
The first thing I did when we were up there was to nervously switch on the laptop. I watched carefully as it loaded, imagining it was slower than usual. Eventually it fired up, much to my relief, and it was nothing short of a miracle that everything else was in one piece. Ellen would call it divine intervention from above. Maybe she was right.
“Some things are unexplainable,” she told me. “I’m not surprised that ghosts linger in there if what Pieter says is true. I’ve read that Normandy is a variable hot spot, especially the beaches, and paranormal investigators never go through the gates of Auschwitz out of respect to the victims. A medium in France said on his Web site that if he ever went in there he would never report what he found.”
“Are you saying we should leave this alone out of respect?” I replied.
“No, this is different. I would never go to a concentration camp because it would upset me too much. Could you do it? Walk through the gates of Auschwitz?” she asked in a serious tone.
“No way, after all the movies and photographic evidence, I couldn’t handle it.”
“Did you know that people who go there feel their hand being held and hear voices urging them to leave as soon as possible. Imagine the strength of the paranormal activity in a place like that?”
I shuddered at the thought of what it must be like. “I guess we’ll never know for sure, as we’re not going there, right?”
“Never ever!” She squeezed my knee in the spot that always made me jump.
“Ouch…don’t do that!”
My cell rang, interrupting our thoughts. It was Marcus. “Hi there Marcus how ya doing?” I replied in the friendliest voice I could muster, acting as normal as possible, even though I’d long forgotten what “normal” was.
“Any updates? Have you cracked it yet?” he asked.
I decide to put the expert on the phone; Ellen could explain our predicament to a sceptic far better than I could, as she was stoic in her beliefs. I listened in as she painstakingly told of bumps and bruises and being stranded up a ladder without knowing she was there. She also told him that Chris had done a vanishing act and that we were solo. Finally, she reassured him that even though it was going slower than we anticipated, we weren’t giving up.
“He says he’ll roast Chris and if we have to extend our ticket, make sure we call the airline 24 hours before,” she explained to me.
“So we’re okay to stay longer if we need to.”
“Yes, but he said that he hoped we’d sort out the glitch, as he’s found a contractor in Holland who wants to do the renovation. Apparently, it’s just across the border.”
“What is?”
“Holland!” She looked at me as if I were dumb.
“I mean the glitch, is that what he sees it as? What an ass hole.”
Ellen shrugged. “Try to understand, Monty, not everyone gets what we do, you know that. He’s a businessman who only sees dollar signs. Right now his only concern is getting builders to stay long enough to finish the job.”
I noticed three missed calls and one voice mail on my cell and they were all from Marcus while we were in the building. I distinctly remembered checking the phone when I called Pieter and there was nothing showing up; now there was.
Either it was a delay in roaming or the signal was affected by more sinister means. I was more inclined to go with the latter, as nothing surprised me in this business. Ghosts loved to tamper with equipment, and cell phones were no exception.
“We really need to work on this case,” I replied. “Tomorrow, we’ll go in earlier and make some headway.”
“Can I get some new shoes first? I don’t want to wear these again. I feel like throwing them away.”
Under normal circumstances, I would seriously question why she would want yet
another pair of shoes—our closets were bulging with shoes, most of them never worn. This time I understood and happily agreed. After a long wait flicking through numerous boring TV channels with our stomachs rumbling, the sandwiches finally arrived. Expecting the usual two slices of limp bread stuffed with dry ham and cheese, we were stoked to see half a crusty French stick filled with salad as well plus a large salad with dressing and mayonnaise on the side.
“Well, this is amazing; it’s like a meal. Have you ever seen anything like this?” I remarked with the excitement of a small child.
“No, but then we’re in Europe, and Belgium has a gastronomic reputation. Let’s enjoy, get some sleep, and face tomorrow.”
“Sleep, are you sure about that?” I teased.
“Sleep, Monty…I’ve too much on my mind, plus it’s, you know…time of the month.”
The kind, understanding husband was more than happy to accept his wife’s refusal. I wasn’t exactly pain-free either, with aches and sprains. Ellen had a point; it really was time to kick ass.
Chapter Eight
Morning brought renewed vigour and optimism and the reality that maybe we’d been too hard on ourselves.
The first day we were jet-lagged so we needed to cancel out the first twenty four hours. Chris was a bad cog in the wheel that affected our focus, and we had to adjust to unfamiliar surroundings. I stressed far too much about whether the equipment would work, and Ellen had worried too much about my bruises and crabbiness. We needed to start afresh and I couldn’t wait to tell her that as I gave her a slap on the butt. “Wake up, girl, it’s time to roll!”
“Don’t hit me!” she snapped back angrily. It was that time of the month.
A nice long shower later, and we were downstairs having breakfast. Who should walk in with eye-catching Lucy on his arm? Chris.
“Morning, guys, how ya doing?” he chirped.
“Hey guys, alive and kicking then?” I commented sarcastically.
Ghost Hall (The Ghost Files Book 4) Page 5