“You’re the ones who gummed the lock?” Amy asked. “We thought someone broke into the store. Basil has us doing floor sweeps. One loop around the Showroom every hour.”
“Sucks to be you,” Trinity said. “Once this breaks big, we’ll be all sorry about it to Basil, but he’d never have authorized our shoot in the first place. Not with all the filming we’re going to do.”
“Now I get it,” Ruth Anne said. “You’re like the Paranormal Investigators on A&E.”
“We are nothing like the Paranormal Investigators on A&E,” Matt said. “For starters, we are not lame.”
“But you have lots of equipment, just like the people on A&E,” Ruth Anne pointed out.
“Stop saying A&E,” Matt said. “We’re aiming higher than that. Trinity wants us to be the first ghost hunters on Bravo.”
“What happens when you find a ghost?” Ruth Anne asked.
“We get high-resolution footage,” Trinity said. “No camera tricks, no CGI. Just real evidence of spiritual phenomena.”
“And then?” Ruth Anne asked.
“If the ghost is up for a full Charlie Rose–style interview, we’ll give it a shot,” Matt said. “But I don’t see that happening.”
“You realize ghosts don’t exist,” Amy said.
“They do too exist,” Trinity said. “Lots of people have seen them.”
“Lots of people have seen Bigfoot,” Amy said.
“Cryptozoology is a totally different area of research,” Matt said. “Look, whether you believe in ghosts or not, you have to admit something strange is happening in this store. The broken Pronks, the help messages, the poop on the Brooka. Maybe it’s not ghosts, but maybe it is.” He tapped the floor with the toe of his boot. “Do you know what used to be here before they built Orsk?”
“Nothing,” Ruth Anne said. “I used to drive past this place all the time and it was always just swampland.”
“Before the swamp, there was a prison.”
“I don’t think so,” Ruth Anne said.
“A long time ago,” Trinity replied. “In the eighteenth century.”
“Nineteenth,” Matt said.
“What’s the difference?” Trinity said.
“About a hundred years,” Matt said. “It was pretty grim. A bunch of people died right where we’re standing and the jail sort of disappeared. Most people haven’t even heard of it.”
“That is spooky,” Ruth Anne said.
“It’s not spooky,” Amy said. “It’s not anything.”
“Ignore the history if you want,” Trinity said, hopping with excitement. “But all those people who died left behind psychic energy, and that’s what’s haunting the store. People used to get thrown in jail for stealing loaves of bread, so I bet their spirits are all pissed off.”
She hoisted one of the massive gear bags onto the Müskk bed, unzipped it, and removed nine putty-colored plastic eggs. She arranged them in a line across the bedspread, cracked open a Valu-Pak of batteries, and began swapping in fresh nine-volts.
“What are those?” Ruth Anne asked.
“EMF readers,” Trinity said. “I dropped in flash drives that time-stamp any spiking, so we can plot the changes over the course of the night.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” Ruth Anne said.
“Remember when everyone thought cell phones would give you brain cancer?” Trinity asked. “A bunch of cheapo electronics companies started making these so that people could see if electrical fields from their phones and power lines and stuff were floating through the air. Health nuts still use them, but mostly they’re for ghost hunters.”
“Because?” Amy asked.
“Because ghosts are energy,” Trinity said. “Duh.”
Amy turned to Matt. “You really believe this stuff?”
“It makes sense,” he shrugged. “There’s been a lot of research showing that electromagnetic fields caused by underground water or high-tension power lines induce haunting symptoms. People hear noises, they smell things, they get disoriented, they have mood swings. You can do it in a lab with a big magnet.”
Trinity shook her head. “Ghosts cause electromagnetic activity, they aren’t caused by electromagnetic activity.”
“Have you ever seen one?” Amy asked.
“God, I want to,” Trinity said. Her eyes were big. “Wouldn’t that be awesome? When I was a little kid, I used to watch horror movies when my parents weren’t home and afterward I’d turn off all the lights and walk around in the dark trying to see a ghost. Matt says he saw one once. I’m totally jealous.”
“You saw a ghost?” Ruth Anne asked Matt. “Was it scary?”
“Well, it could have been anything,” Matt admitted. “It was just out of the corner of my eye.”
“It was a ghost. A full-body apparition,” Trinity insisted. “You told me.”
“It was a long time ago,” Matt said, with a sideways glance at Amy. “The point is, something strange is happening in this store. So we’re going to shoot some footage, keep an open mind, see what we see.”
“Because you know what those jerks on Haunted Investigations, Paranormal Patrol, Strikeforce: Ghosts, and Ghost Detectives never have?” Trinity asked. “Footage. They never actually get footage of a ghost. It’s all just a bunch of fat dudes walking around dark houses going, ‘Hello? Hello? I know you’re here. I can feel your presence. Give me a sign.’ Then they pretend to hear something and whip the camera around.”
“Did you see that?” Matt imitated. “Did you hear that? Oh my God, it said, ‘Help me.’ ”
“We’re getting proof,” Trinity said. “Tonight. On camera. And I don’t mean orbs, or funnel ghosts, or swimmers, or ribbon energy. We’re getting actual footage of actual apparitions. Then we’re going to put our reel together, send it to 51 Minds or Antix or one of the other production companies, and they’re going to flip. Boy-girl ghost-hunting teams are totally camera ready. Matt’s going to bring the science and I’m going to bring the sparkle, and our reel is going to blow their minds and get us the hell out of Ohio. Ghost Bomb.”
“What bomb?” Amy asked.
“Ghost Bomb,” Trinity said. “It’s the name of our show. Because it’s about ghosts, and we’re the bomb.”
“Word,” Matt said, high-fiving her.
Amy stared at them in disbelief. “That’s the worst name I’ve ever heard.”
Trinity scowled and extended a beautifully manicured middle finger.
“I think it’s nice,” Ruth Anne said. “Ghost Bomb sounds ‘street.’ Isn’t that what they say?”
“Thank you,” Trinity said before turning to Amy. “Now, I don’t need you creeping around being all negative, because it’s going to jinx us. Tonight is really important. I finally have an opportunity to get footage of a real live ghost. I don’t need you and your negative energy chasing away the spirits.” She turned back to Ruth Anne. “Why don’t you come with me? You can help me put out the EMF meters. We’ll get evidence of ghosts and be famous and awesome.”
Trinity was not to be denied, and as soon as Ruth Anne had applied some Blistex she followed the girl back up the Bright and Shining Path, heading toward Dining Rooms. After a minute, they disappeared into the ranks of furniture, leaving Matt and Amy all alone.
“Okay,” said Matt, loading a backpack with EMF readers. “We need to put these all along the Bright and Shining Path.”
“Do you really think they’ll record anything?”
“Sure they will,” Matt said. “Look at the size of the lighting grid.”
He pointed at the ceiling. Twelve feet above their heads was a massive crisscrossed network of beams, pipes, wires, and huge HVAC ducts; everything was painted the same off-white color as the ceiling to help camouflage the infrastructure.
“Why do you want to detect the lighting grid?” Amy asked.
“I don’t,” Matt said. “But this store has six hundred eighty fill lights and another two hundred spotlights to hit accents, so it’s g
enerating most of the electromagnetic activity in the building. Which means that’s what the meters are going to pick up.”
He grabbed a meter and waved it in the air like incense.
“Two milligauss,” he said. “That’s what it’ll be reading all night long is my guess.”
“Then why bother putting out the meters?”
Matt picked up a flip camera, slung a backpack over his shoulder, and handed Amy a store map and a pencil.
“Just mark down every place I leave one,” he said. “Trinity will kill me if I lose any.”
“But if they’re not showing anything except the lighting grid,” Amy asked, “then why are you putting them out?” She followed Matt down the Bright and Shining Path deeper into Bedrooms.
“Because that’s Trinity’s plan.”
“And you’re super in love with her?” she said.
Matt didn’t answer. Amy knew the kind of effect Trinity had on male floor partners. All she had to do was act like a super-cute Japanese schoolgirl and she could recruit an entire army of ghost hunters.
Matt placed the first unit on a Sylbian bedside table. “Jason Hawes,” he said. “My favorite Roto-Rooter employee.”
Amy looked at him.
“I like to name the readers after TV ghost hunters,” he explained. “Write them on the map, okay?”
They walked along the Bright and Shining Path, leaving Bedrooms and weaving through Bathrooms and Wardrobes. Matt stopped every seventy-five feet to place another meter atop a Finnimbrun chest of drawers, inside a Liripip ultranarrow single-door wardrobe, on top of a membership kiosk outside Children’s. He named each one of them. “Lorraine Warren, chicken farmer … Ryan Buell, drama queen … Josh Gates, adventure whore.”
“What have you got against these people?” Amy asked.
“They jump to conclusions. They use the word energy without actually knowing what it means. They pretend to understand physics when they clearly don’t even know how their own equipment works. They call themselves scientists but beat up the scientific method and drag it through the mud. And worst of all, they’re terrible at being on TV.”
“Whereas you guys would be awesome?”
“Obviously,” Matt said. “Trinity has camera presence to burn. She’s funny, she’s got a great look, she’s comfortable around tools, and she can solder a circuit, which is totally hot. Even if we don’t get any apparitions on tape, we’re still going to knock this out of the park. We’ll chart the EMF spikes and drops, shoot in a bunch of different formats, like night-vision and infrared, record some suggestive electrovoice phenomena, use remote temperature probes to check cold spots, deploy motion detectors, and try to record any ultrasound we can find. When we’re done, we’ll have a buttload of awesome footage of the spookiest place on earth, which is this store, after hours, right now. Then I edit the hell out of it, and, ghost footage or no ghost footage, we’re going to have a kickass reel.”
It suddenly dawned on Amy.
“You don’t believe in ghosts,” she said. “At all.”
Matt powered up his camera. “I believe a ghost is a subjective experience. It doesn’t have an objective reality. It exists solely in the perceptions of the people who see it.”
“Meaning, ghosts aren’t real?”
“That’s not what I said. Come on, let’s roll tape. It’s like outtakes from Child’s Play in here.”
They had arrived in Children’s, and Amy watched as Matt directed the camera at stuffed animals stacked in big impulse bins like dead bodies, shelves of vacant-eyed dolls staring idiotically off into the distance, circus animal sheets stretched across never-used beds, kids’ bedrooms abandoned in a haunted city. Matt wasn’t dumb. After watching every season of every ghost-hunting show ever created, he knew exactly how to give an audience what it wanted: creepy dolls, spooky rooms, and the eerie framing of ambiguous shadows.
“You told Trinity you witnessed a ghost firsthand. A full-body apparition. That’s what she said.”
“I saw something my brain perceived to be a ghost,” Matt said. “But the mind is a complicated place. Temporal-lobe seizures, sleep paralysis, pareidolia; it could have been anything.”
“Except the soul of a dead person searching for the light.”
“Exactly.”
They took the shortcut over to Storage Solutions, Matt stopping to lie on the floor and frame a Runcate looming over him, crawling up on top of a Qualtagh and getting an overhead shot of the silent ranks of furniture. He panned along a Plexiglas display case; inside, a mechanical arm dumbly opened and closed the door of a Yclept media cabinet over and over to demonstrate the strength and durability of Orsk hinges.
“Trinity thinks ghosts are real,” Amy said. “But your whole ghost thing is just a ploy to get into her pants.”
“Why do you care whether Trinity and I are hooking up?” Matt asked. “Do you see me grilling you about your sex life?”
“Because it’s further proof that guys are dogs,” Amy said. “This obviously means a lot to Trinity, and you’re pretending you believe in it to trick her into sleeping with you. That’s some deep craziness. Did you make up the story about the prison, too?”
“The Cuyahoga Panopticon was a real place,” Matt said. “You’ve never heard of it?”
“I don’t have a strong grasp of Ohio’s extraordinary history.”
“It was a big deal back in the nineteenth century. The warden—Josiah Worth—was a total maniac. He believed that nonstop surveillance would ‘cure’ criminals. The prison was round, with a guardhouse in the center, so that the prisoners—he called them penitents—never knew if they were being watched. Zero privacy. It was called a panopticon. Underneath the cells were three sub-basements where the penitents worked. Giant labyrinths full of mindless tasks designed to rewire their brains.” He shrugged. “Just like Orsk.”
“Don’t let Basil hear you say that.”
“But it’s true,” Matt protested. “Orsk is all about scripted disorientation. The store wants you to surrender to a programmed shopping experience. The Cuyahoga Panopticon was the same thing. The warden believed he could cure a criminal brain using forced labor, mindless repetition, and total surveillance. This was back when people believed that architecture could be designed to generate a psychological effect.”
Matt led Amy past a row of gleaming white Helvetesniks, and they took the shortcut to Wardrobes.
They emerged to find themselves standing in front of a Plexiglas display case. Inside, a mechanical arm dumbly opened and closed the door of a Yclept media cabinet over and over to demonstrate the strength and durability of Orsk hinges.
Somehow they’d traveled in a circle.
“Weren’t you paying attention to where we were going?” Amy asked.
“I was monologuing,” Matt said. “But this basically proves my point. If you lose your focus in this store for even a moment, you’re lost. Get distracted and the next thing you know, you’re dropping eight hundred bucks on a fiberboard Runcate.”
They returned to the Bright and Shining Path and followed the arrows that would lead them back to Kitchens, Dining Rooms, and, ultimately, Bedrooms.
“You’d think I’d have this place figured out by now,” Matt said.
“Sure,” Amy said dryly. “Sounds like you’ve got your whole life figured out.”
“Not my life,” Matt said. “Just my Escape from Ohio plan. Ghost Bomb is going to be huge, me and Trinity will live happily ever, and the next time you’re channel-surfing on Bravo, you’ll—dammit!”
Both Matt and Amy stopped. They had arrived in a sea of birch, black, and white tabletops, desks, and rolling swivel chairs. Somehow they’d walked backward into Home Office.
“See what I mean?” Matt said. “Our great lord and master, Tom Larsen, built his stores to induce the Gruen Transfer: a sense of confusion and geographic despair that keeps you completely disoriented. Like Ikea or Crate and Barrel. Heck, I got lost in a Sam’s Club last week.”
“I get it,” Amy said. “You’ve made your point.”
Matt’s cell phone rang and he checked the display. “Trinity,” he said. He answered the phone, agreed to meet her back at the Müskk, and hung up. “They’re waiting for us.”
Amy thought only a few minutes had passed, but when she checked her watch she realized nearly half an hour had gone by. Basil would be wondering what had happened.
They reversed course on the Bright and Shining Path, for a third time heading back toward Kitchens and Dining Rooms. “I need to get Ruth Anne and head back to the break area,” Amy said. “What do you want me to tell Basil?”
“What do you mean?”
“When he hears you guys sneaked into the store, he’s going to be pissed.”
Matt didn’t answer. He was staring through his camera viewfinder, bewildered. They rounded the corner into what should have been Kitchens and found themselves once again facing Home Office.
“Wait, what just happened?” Amy asked.
Matt shook his head. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“You walked in another circle.”
“Look at the camera.”
Amy looked as Matt pointed the lens down the Bright and Shining Path into Home Office.
The screen was showing Kitchens.
“That’s the footage from earlier,” Amy said.
“No,” Matt said, panning the camera. Every time he moved, the view of Kitchens moved with him. He zoomed forward until the screen was filled with a Gradgrind cabinet system. He got so close that Amy could read the SKU and sale price.
But in front of the lens, there in reality, was only empty air.
“It’s a problem with the memory card,” Amy said.
Matt ejected the card and held it between his fingers, like a magician revealing the one you picked. “It’s not a problem with the card.”
“I refuse to accept this,” Amy said.
“Accept it or not,” Matt said, “we are both experiencing it, so we have three choices. Either what’s in front of us really is Kitchens, but we think it’s Home Office, and the camera is right. Or what’s in front of us is Home Office, but for some reason the camera is showing us Kitchens, so the camera is wrong.”
Horrorstor: A Novel Page 5