by Rod Redux
“Don’t worry about it,” Jane said magnanimously, rising from her seat. “Why don’t we go upstairs? If there were any spirits in here, they’ve fled. They probably raced straight into the light, trying to get away from your stinky ass.”
Hysterical laughter from the command center now, echoing up the hallway.
Grinning into the camera, Jane said, “Call a priest, Raj. Something has escaped from the bowels of hell in here.”
5
“Wow! I’m getting some really strong EMF readings!” Billy exclaimed.
Billy, Allen and Big Dan were filming another segment, this time on the third floor of the Forester House. It was 11:14 PM. They’d been investigating the home for almost four hours.
The third floor consisted of a long L-shaped hallway and half a dozen bedrooms. There were two round windows at each end of the corridor’s longest segment, facing east and west, with stained-glass depictions of summer and winter, a hoary old tree laden with leaves in the first, the same tree laden with snow in the second. At the far end of the corridor, stairs ascended to the attic.
Billy held the EMF meter toward the camera. Big Dan zoomed in on the wildly fluctuating needle. The device was clicking rapidly.
“Look at that,” Billy said, grinning at Big Dan.
“You can actually feel it,” Allen commented. “The atmosphere up here is really thick. Very oppressive. It feels like someone’s watching us.”
Lowering his EMF meter, Billy called out, “Is there someone up here with us? If there is, can you give us some sign to let us know you’re here? Knock on a wall, or give us a yell.”
They heard a low, directionless tapping. Just three ticks, like a fingernail on a wood surface.
Billy and Allen exchanged a surprised glance.
“It might have been the house settling,” Allen said, trying to stifle his excitement. “Try again.”
“That was great!” Billy called out. “Thank you! Just so we know it was you and not the house settling, can you do it again? One more time, please?”
They waited for nearly a minute. Just when they thought it would not come again, they heard it: a tapping.
Toc-toc-toc.
“Oh, shit!” Billy grinned.
“It sounded like it came from that way,” Allen said, nodding past Big Dan toward the second-floor stairs.
Big Dan pressed his back to the wood-paneled wall as Billy and Allen scooted past him. The third floor corridor was very narrow. The two investigators passed a couple closed doors, headed toward the area the knocks seemed to originate. They took up position, shoulder-to-shoulder, facing Big Dan and his camera, to continue their investigation.
“We really appreciate you knocking a second time,” Billy said with his head cocked, listening for any other inexplicable noises. “Maybe you could answer some questions for us by knocking.”
“Knock once if your answer is yes. Knock twice if your answer is no,” Allen said.
“Do you understand? Once for yes. Twice for no.”
They waited.
Toc.
Billy grinned again, looking from Allen to Big Dan. “All right,” he said enthusiastically. “We got a live one.”
“So to speak,” Allen murmured.
“Yeah. Yeah, right,” Billy nodded with a chuckle.
They made a conscious effort to calm themselves. It was so rare to get any kind of intelligent response. Billy’s heart was racing. And so, he would have bet, was Allen’s. Even after two decades skulking around graveyards and haunted houses, it happened rarely enough to surprise them both.
Taking a deep breath, Billy asked, “Do you live here? Are you a member of the Forester family?”
Toc.
“Are you John Forester? Are you the man who built this house?” Allen asked.
Toc-toc.
“Do you know him? Is he here, too?”
Toc.
“Yes!” Billy gasped, amazed.
“Where are those taps coming from?” Allen asked, scowling back and forth. “It sounds like it’s coming from this floor, but I can’t pinpoint it.”
“I think it’s coming from this wall,” Billy said, sliding his palm up the paneling next to one of the bedroom doors.
“Let’s ask it some more questions while it’s still cooperating,” Allen suggested.
“I agree.”
“Do you know that you’ve passed on?” Allen called. “Do you know that you’re dead?”
They listened, but there was no answer.
“That probably sounded rude,” Allen muttered.
“Are you trapped here?” Billy asked.
Toc-toc-toc-toc-toc-toc!
The knock was louder than before, and Billy jumped away from the wall in shock. He stroked his chest, laughing toward the camera. “That was loud! Kind of scared me!”
“I think that was a yes,” Allen said.
“Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Are you one of the brothers? Anson or Abel Forester?” Allen asked.
Toc-toc.
“No.”
“Look at this,” Billy said. He had surreptitiously brought the EMF meter toward the wall. “The needle is buried,” he murmured. The device in his hand was crackling madly.
“Do you want to leave this place?” Allen asked.
Toc.
“Why don’t you leave, if you don’t want to be here?” Billy asked.
A soft “toc?” That one couldn’t be answered with a simple yes or no.
“Is there another entity preventing you from leaving this house?”
TOCK!
They all jumped at the force of the knock, even Big Dan, who was standing several feet away. All three men felt a simultaneous chill as they contemplated being trapped in this place in the afterlife, unable to leave as the house slowly rotted. Wandering its empty corridors. Drifting through its silent, dusty rooms. But what was preventing their chatty spirit from leaving?
But their ghostly tapper was not satisfied with one sharp blow to the wall. It seemed suddenly incensed, as if their questions had reminded it of its own dreadful fate.
TOCK-TOCK-TOCK! it pounded on the wall. In desperation. Or frustration. Then even harder: BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Billy saw the wood panels vibrating from the blows, then the EMF meter was jerked roughly from his grip. As he yelled in surprise, the gadget shot down the hallway as if fired from a cannon. It struck the far wall just an inch or two below the stained-glass window.
The force of the impact shattered the device and left a triangular indentation in the wood paneling. The meter fell to the floor, pieces of its readout and plastic housing scattering around it.
The pounding on the wall had stopped.
“Did you get that?” Billy gaped at Big Dan.
Big Dan nodded, stunned into silence.
Allen opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out, the broken EMF meter hurtled toward them.
It flew like some invisible foot had kicked it. All three men ducked with a howl as it careened past. It flew up and hit the ceiling, then bounced off the wall and went clattering down the corridor and out of sight beyond the elbow in the hallway.
“Jesus jumped up fucking Christ!” Big Dan cried.
In the six years he’d been cameraman on the show, he’d never seen anything like that! Never!
Looking down the corridor where the EMF meter had vanished, Big Dan wondered if maybe it wasn’t time to go back to taping the evening news. He was getting too old for this shit.
“That was awesome!” Billy laughed.
Allen didn’t say anything, just stared toward the bend in the hallway where the EMF meter had vanished. He was suddenly very unnerved. Over the years, he’d seen doors open and shut by themselves, lamps toppled by unseen hands and pictures knocked from their tacks, but this… this was extraordinary.
He remembered Francis’s warning. The medium claimed a powerful entity had staked a claim on this wooded ridge. More specifically, the house that stood at the center of th
e forest. The little medium had even been attacked by it, or so he’d sworn, before he even arrived.
Forester House had a horrific past, a reputation for violence and madness. And now this: a frantic spirit, rattling out its despair from inside its crumbling walls.
Trapped.
Is there another entity preventing you from leaving this house? Allen had asked, and it had answered, hadn’t it? Oh, yeah, it had answered. Loud and clear!
How could anyone possible debunk this? If that EMF meter had struck one of them in the head, it probably would have put them in the hospital.
They had their proof. They had proof in spades, but that begged a follow-up question: was it wise to keep going at it?
The way that EMF meter had shot straight at them, Allen wasn’t too sure.
6
One might expect a group of paranormal investigators to be excited by such dramatic proof of the supernatural, but the video of Allen and Billy’s session on the third floor of the Forester House left the group subdued. Raj rewound the footage and played it over, not once but twice, and with each subsequent viewing, the members of the Ghost Scouts team felt increasingly vulnerable, as if they were aware, for the first time, of the great creaking house that surrounded them. Of its dense and malevolent atmosphere, and their isolation from the rest of the world, there at the pinnacle of the Sawtooth Hills, surrounded by miles and miles of dense wilderness.
None of them would have argued with the assertion they’d grown cynical over the years. They had had their brushes with the paranormal—strange visions, inexplicable voices caught on electronic recording devices, the occasional cold spot and fallen photograph—but the pounding of the spirit on the wall, and the force that was required to fling a physical object so hard, and so potentially injurious, was sobering.
“That really could have hurt somebody,” Allen said, as he leaned over Raj’s shoulder, watching the video for the third time. He nodded toward the monitor as the video replayed the two men ducking beneath the hurtling EMF meter. Big Dan had ducked, too, but not before the camera caught the device launching toward them. Dan Jakes was a little older and slower than the others, which was good because he’d reacted slow enough to catch the evidence on video. Then again, he might have been slow enough to catch that flying EMF meter right in the face, if the object’s trajectory had been a tad bit lower.
“If that had hit one of us…”
Raj nodded. “Yes. Of course, I agree with you. That is alarming…” He let his voice trail off, thinking.
None of the others spoke as he ruminated, although they shifted around uneasily, eyeing the shadows in the corners as the house settled around them, wondering if the noises were subsidence… or something else.
Each of them had experienced some sort of phenomena now. Francis had been assaulted twice—once at the highway, the second time in the ballroom. Jane had been run off the road and frightened half to death. Little Dan had nearly fallen through the rotten foyer floor, chasing a shadow, and almost took a spill down the basement steps, confused by the house’s winding corridors.
“The only real question is: at what point do we decide this is all just too dangerous?” Raj finally said.
He swiveled in his seat to face the group, spread his hands when no one volunteered to speak.
“This is a decision I don’t feel comfortable making for all of us,” he said. “I’m just a TV producer. This is just a reality TV show. We’re not crusaders. We’re not trying to prove to the world that the supernatural exists. People will make up their own minds, regardless of what we put on the air. In fact, this video is only going to make some of our detractors scream ‘fake’ even louder than before. But I know all of you. We’ve all been drawn to this profession for a reason, so I put the question up for debate. Do we stay or do we go?”
Most of the group was seated in the parlor. Everyone shifted around, hesitant to be the first to speak.
Finally, Francis spoke up. He was sitting near the hearth, in a large straight-back chair. “I’ll say it again,” he said. “I think it would be wisest if we left now, before someone gets hurt. And Mr. Forester, I’m sorry. I know this is your ancestral home, but I strongly urge you to abandon your plans to take up residence here. What we have experienced so far is nothing compared to what I’m afraid this house is capable of doing. I haven’t sensed the entity that attacked me at the road since the tremor in the dining room, but it hasn’t left. I suspect it’s simply gathering its strength… or maybe orchestrating its next gambit. It’s very persistent, and very, very clever.”
“You don’t think your… ‘dark entity’ is the creature that flung the EMF meter at us?” Billy asked. He was standing near the command center, next to Raj and Rob Forester.
The corner of Francis’s lips curled up. “Not one iota. What you encountered was one of this house’s… minor hauntings. A spirit that has been imprisoned here by the entity that attacked me at the road.”
“That’s an awful big leap to take, don’t you think?” Allen asked. “You’re coming off like you have everything figured out.”
Francis shrugged. “Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t think I am. I know I didn’t imagine that boy at the creek, or the rock he hit me in the forehead with. You all seem to have forgotten that. You almost got hit by that EMF gadget, and you’re all up in arms about it, but I did get hit, and I have the knot to prove it. But I guess, being a medium, I can’t be taken at my word. We’re all just a bunch of charlatans, us psychics. If it’s not on video, it didn’t happen, right?” He folded his arms and looked away, petulant.
“Francis, nobody is calling you a charlatan,” Jane said. “I believe you about the boy and… and the dark entity, too.”
“I do, too,” Little Dan interjected.
“Same here,” Big Dan nodded.
“We all believe you… right, guys?” Jane continued, looking around the room.
Francis peeked at them over his shoulder. He was mollified by the nods he saw from all corners.
“I had my own experience,” Jane reminded the group. She looked at Raj, eyes wide behind her coke bottle glasses. “Out there in the woods last night…” She shivered. “You guys teased me, but it was real, whatever it was, and it scared the crap out of me. But what I think Raj is saying is that we all need to weigh the dangers against the possible benefits, and we need to do it for each of us personally. Speaking just for myself… I’m not ready to leave yet. I’m a little scared, yes, but I want to stay. I want to dig deeper. We’ve so much more to explore here. So much more to learn, and the potential for gathering more evidence… Oh my gosh, I don’t care who believes it and who doesn’t! I became a paranormal investigator to satisfy my own curiosity! In the end, that’s all that matters to me.”
“I’m with Jane,” Billy said. “I want to stay, too. I think we’ll be fine if we’re careful.” He glanced at Robert Forester, however, and added, “But I do agree with Francis on one account. I don’t think you should move in here after we leave, Rob. I just don’t think it would be wise for anyone to stay here by themselves. Not after the things I’ve seen. Everything our team has experienced in the past twenty-four hours has been decidedly… unwelcoming.”
The house’s owner nodded reluctantly. “I’m really, really starting to second guess that decision,” he admitted unhappily.
“Allen?” Billy said.
Allen crossed his arms. He chewed it over for a moment, his head cocked to one side, then puffed out his cheeks and said, “Stay. Raj?”
“Personally, I want to stay,” Raj answered. “But with the caveat that we are all extremely cautious for the remainder of the night. What do you think, Tish?”
“Go,” Tish said, then looked embarrassed. “Sorry. It’s just a TV show, guys.”
“No, don’t be sorry. That’s your decision. Big Dan?”
“I agree with Tish. I think we have plenty of evidence already, but if you guys all stay, I’ll stay, too.”
“Stay!” Little Dan s
aid without prompting. He grinned, “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!”
“I guess that settles that,” Raj said with satisfaction. “Francis, Tish, you guys can take Francis’s car back to town. I’m sure there are rooms available at the hotel. We’ll regroup in the morning.”
“I’m not abandoning you guys here,” Francis said adamantly.
Tish glanced at Francis, then said unhappily, “I guess I’ll stay, too.”
“Are you sure? Nobody has to stay if they don’t want to, Tish.”
Tish straightened her back and said more firmly, “No, I want to stay. I’m not being the only one who chickens out.” She laughed, trying to make light of her unease, but it wasn’t very convincing.
They heard muffled music then, and everyone glanced around, uncertain where the sound was coming from. The music was comically upbeat, and Allen jumped, slapping his palm to the bulge in his pants leg. He shoved his hand in his pocket and dug out his cellphone. The Scooby Doo theme song blared for a moment longer—“You know we got a mystery to solve, so Scooby Doo be ready for your act…”—before falling silent.
“I’ll be damned. A call got through,” he said. He consulted the device’s LCD screen, which said MISSED CALL SHARON. Allen frowned. It was almost 1:00 AM.
“It’s Sharon,” he said to the others. “She’s never up this late.”
“I hope everything’s okay,” Jane said.
Allen tried to call his wife back, but the solitary signal strength bar winked out as soon as he pressed the send button.
“Damn it, no bars again,” Allen muttered. “I’ll be right back, gang. I’m going to see if I can get a signal outside.”
“I’ll go with you, if you don’t mind,” Raj said, rising from his seat.
As the two headed out of the room, Raj glanced back at the crew. “Stay together, gang. No wandering off alone, all right?”
“What if I gotta use the potty, boss?” Little Dan called.
“Take someone with you,” Raj smirked.
“Will you let me hold your hand while I pinch off a loaf, big boy?” Little Dan asked Big Dan.
“I’ll let you hold my pecker while you pinch one off,” Big Dan replied, and everyone cried “Eww!” and burst out laughing.