by Jason Hawes
A mischievous smile came over Jake’s face.
“Maybe we’ve been going about this the wrong way,” he said. “Maybe these ghosts need to be woken up….”
“I wonder how long they’ve been waiting for us,” Lyssa said. She was looking out the window as the TAPS van pulled up in front of the house. Mr. and Mrs. Burton stood next to the wooden gate. Their fifteen-year-old son, Eli, sat on the front steps. Even their dog, a big woolly mutt, was standing on the path that led to the house.
“Maybe they feel safer outside,” said Grant. “From what Mrs. Burton said on the phone, all the weird stuff is going on inside the house.”
“You didn’t mention they had a dog,” Lyssa said to Mike as they got out of the van.
“Scared?”
“No,” she said firmly. “Allergic. Plus, it could be an important detail.”
“Ah, don’t worry, Lyssa. He’s an outdoor dog.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I got a strange vibration…” Mike said. “And the doghouse over there tipped me off.”
Lyssa laughed. She never minded when the twins teased her.
Mrs. Burton greeted them and led them up the path to the house. Jason set down one of the heavy equipment bags. It hit the floor with a thump. Mrs. Burton started at the sound and Eli’s eyes widened in alarm. Even Mr. Burton looked upset. Lyssa could see that they were all a little jumpy.
Inside, Lyssa and the Burton family sat down in the living room. The rest of the team split up to set up equipment and check out the house.
Lyssa looked around. The Burtons’ living room was cozy. She could see the sunset through a picture window.
“You have a lovely home,” she said. She pointed at a brightly painted clay candlestick on the end table. “That’s so pretty.”
“Eli made it for me,” Mrs. Burton said. “At summer camp a few years ago. We never use candles, but I always keep it there so it’s the first thing I see when I enter the house.”
“Mom, please!” Eli looked as if he were about to die of embarrassment.
Lyssa took out her recorder. “There are a few questions I need to ask. The answers may help us in our investigation.”
Mr. and Mrs. Burton nodded. They both looked worried. She felt bad for them. Not too many people were like the twins, who had loved growing up in a haunted house.
Lyssa pressed the red record button and began the interview. “Okay, tell me what’s been happening. When did it start?”
“About three weeks ago,” Mrs. Burton said. “I was vacuuming Eli’s room. I felt something pulling at me—like someone was grabbing my elbow—except no one was there.”
“The next day we started hearing strange sounds in the night,” Mr. Burton said. “I grew up in an old house. So I know all the creaks and rattles that houses can make. But this house was built four years ago. We’re the only ones who’ve ever lived here. And we’ve never heard anything like those sounds before.”
“What were these sounds like?” Lyssa asked.
Mr. Burton rubbed his jaw. “Like a wheezing. Almost like the voice of an old man. I kept thinking that if I listened hard enough, I could make out his words.”
“And did you?”
Mr. Burton shook his head. “No. And this last week, I’ve heard those sounds every night.”
Lyssa said, “Do you know where they’re coming from?”
Mr. and Mrs. Burton looked at each other. Then Mr. Burton said, “The sounds seem to come from the direction of Eli’s room. Our bedroom is just down the hall.”
“Eli, do you ever hear the noise?” Lyssa asked.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Do you hear it in your room or outside it?”
Eli stared at the carpet and shrugged.
“Does it come from anywhere in particular? The closet? Under the floor? From above?”
“Just in the room.”
Eli’s answers were short, as if he wasn’t very interested. Maybe he’s just shy, she thought. Or maybe he doesn’t want anyone to know how scared he is.
“It’s more serious than noises,” Mr. Burton said. “Sometimes an appliance will turn on right after I’ve switched it off. Or water will be running for no reason. Then when I check, the faucet will be shut off.”
“And nothing like that has ever happened before? Have you had trouble with your wiring or your pipes?”
“Never,” Mr. Burton said. “Also—” He hesitated. As if he was afraid she wouldn’t believe him. “Things are being moved.”
“You mean, you see things moving?”
“No. We find things in strange places. Places they shouldn’t be. Every night, before I go to sleep, I put my wedding band next to the alarm clock. A few days ago, I woke up and it wasn’t there. I searched for it everywhere. We found it on the carpet in front of Eli’s room.”
“That’s not all,” Mrs. Burton joined in. “Eli, remember your lunch money? On the counter?”
Lyssa looked at Eli. He ran a hand through his shaggy red hair. “It was nothing,” he muttered.
“What happened, Eli?” Lyssa asked.
Eli shifted on the couch. He cracked his knuckles. “It really was no big deal.”
“Eli, they need to know,” his mother said.
“Fine. I put my lunch money out on the kitchen counter. The next day it was missing.”
“Not just once, Eli,” Mrs. Burton interrupted.
“A few times, okay,” Eli said, sounding a little annoyed.
“Tell me how it happens,” Lyssa said.
“I take my money and put it on the counter, next to my key. In the morning the key is there. The money’s gone. That’s all I know.”
“That is pretty odd. When did this start?”
Eli focused back down at his feet. “I don’t remember.”
Lyssa could see Eli was growing more and more uncomfortable. “When was the last time this happened?”
“Two days ago.”
“Has anything else of yours gone missing?”
“My pen. It’s a fountain pen. A gift from my grandparents. I never use it. So I just keep it on my desk in its box. But last week it just kinda disappeared.”
Lyssa turned to Eli’s parents. “Could these strange incidents be connected to any other event? Maybe a death in the family? Or the anniversary of a death?”
Mr. Burton frowned. “Nothing I can think of.”
“Me neither,” said his wife.
Eli tapped his foot on the rug, making a soft, impatient sound.
“Eli, can you remember anything else?”
“No,” he said. He looked past her shoulder. As if he found the wall very interesting.
“I know this must be tough for you,” Lyssa said to Eli. “A lot of this activity seems to revolve around you. Is there any reason you can think of that a spirit might show up in your room? Is there an object in your room that might belong to someone who has died? Is there any reason a spirit might be attracted to the room—or to you?”
Eli stopped tapping his foot. For the first time he looked at her. “I—”
Lyssa heard a noise behind her. She turned around and saw the twins in the doorway.
“We’re setting up the equipment now,” Mike said. “Come on, Lyssa. We need your help in the kitchen.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Lyssa told them. She turned back to Eli. “What were you going to say?”
Eli looked at his watch. “Just that I told my friend I’d call him.” He fished a cell phone out of his pocket and walked out of the room.
Lyssa met up with the twins in the hall that led to Eli’s room. It was late afternoon and the TAPS team was finishing the sweep of the house. Mark was holding the EMF detector.
“Let’s check out the energy here,” Mark said. “Lyssa, why don’t you try it out?”
“Sure.”
Lyssa held the black box in her hand. Taking small steps, she made her way down the hall. As she walked, she called out the readings on the met
er. “I’ve got 2.2, now 3.4. Totally normal,” Lyssa said.
Then she got closer to Eli’s room. “I’ve got 5.7… wait… Whoa! It just jumped to 12.8!”
The twins ran over to check the meter themselves.
“That’s a big jump,” Mark said.
“There’s nothing here. No microwave or cable box that could be giving off energy,” Mike added.
Lyssa walked in the opposite direction, away from Eli’s room. She stared at the EMF detector again. The level suddenly shot down from twelve to two.
“This is weird,” she said. “The energy field shouldn’t be changing this quickly.”
Right then, Lyssa caught a noise coming from a different part of the house. It sounded like static from a radio. She followed the noise out to the hallway. She moved slowly. She placed each footstep carefully.
The sound became clearer. She could tell now it was running water. Mike and Mark stayed close behind Lyssa. She walked steadily to the hall bathroom.
The door was closed. There was no light coming from underneath. She was about to knock but hesitated. “Someone in there?” she called.
No answer.
She knocked. “Hello?”
She turned the knob. She pushed the door open a crack. She peeked in. The room was completely dark. She pushed the door fully open and turned on the lights.
Hot water streamed from the faucet. Steam billowed up like a cloud and fogged the mirror above the sink. Water poured out of the faucet so fast and hard that it splattered all over the counter.
“Someone left the faucet running?” Mark guessed.
“No.” Lyssa’s voice caught in her throat. “Mr. Burton said he turned everything off.”
“Holy cow!” Mark exclaimed.
Lyssa never had to finish her sentence. Because just then—without anyone touching the faucet—the flow of water got thinner. Until it was barely a trickle.
As if someone was turning the knob.
Single drops of water plinked against the bottom of the sink. The mirror cleared. Droplets of water rolled off its silvery surface.
“Get Jason and Grant here right away,” Lyssa said. “They should see this, now!”
At midnight the TAPS team completed their daytime sweep. Jason and Grant had examined the bathroom and found nothing wrong with the pipes or the faucets. Lyssa and Jen were in Eli’s room, getting a good look at the place before they went dark. The room looked like an average boy’s room: unmade bed. Desk with computer. Sports posters on the wall. Beanbag chair. Bookshelves jammed with comics, DVDs, and even a basketball.
But something was bothering Lyssa. It wasn’t anything she could see. It was something she could feel. It was as if the air were made of prickly things. She didn’t say anything to Jen. She just continued to wait in silence for the words that would change everything. Finally they heard the scratchy sound of the walkie-talkies.
Then Jason’s voice. “Okay, everyone, let’s go dark.”
Jen, who was standing next to Eli’s desk, turned off the desk lamp. Lyssa walked toward the wall switch. She stopped for a moment, closed her eyes, and then switched the light off. Maybe in the dark that weird feeling will go away. But the dark only made the feeling worse.
“Jen,” she said. “Are you getting a strange vibe?”
“Yeah, I am. It’s hard to describe. It’s like the feeling you get that someone is behind you even though you don’t see or hear anything.”
“That’s it exactly,” Lyssa said as she turned on her recorder. “Okay, let’s see if we can find out who’s here with us.
“My name is Lyssa Frye,” she began. “I’m here with Jennifer Shorewood. We mean you no harm. We only want to communicate with you. If there is a spirit present, please make yourself known.”
She waited ten seconds. Silence.
“Can you tell us your name?”
No reply.
“Can you give us a sign? Is there something you want?”
“Help us out,” Jen added. “Maybe we can help you.”
Each time Lyssa waited ten seconds. She wanted to give the spirit time to respond.
Then she heard it. At first it was so faint, she thought she was imagining it. It sounded again, closer this time. It was a sad, muffled cry.
Lyssa’s mouth went dry. She could hardly breathe.
“Jen,” she whispered, “are you hearing that?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Lyssa walked toward the sound. It seemed as if it was coming from Eli’s bed. No, a little beyond. But there was nothing that could have made that moan. No air vent, no pipes.
Lyssa looked for the source of the sound. Then she froze. She grabbed on to Eli’s night table, too excited and scared to move.
The chilling moan was back. It floated through the air. Louder and louder. Lyssa held her breath as the wail filled the room. Then the cry stopped. Lyssa felt her heart slow to normal. She let go of the table.
But the cry returned again. This time Lyssa peered out the window.
“Jen, you’ve got to see this.”
Jen shot up out of the chair and grabbed Lyssa’s shoulder. They looked down at the front yard.
Charley, the Burtons’ dog, was sitting in the middle of the lawn… howling at the moon.
Jen let out a big sigh. Lyssa laughed. Jen laughed too but she added: “Just don’t forget to tag the sound.”
“Right. 12:18 am, wailing sound: dog howling at the moon,” Lyssa said clearly into the recorder. Then she turned to Jen and said, “Okay, let’s go back to where we left off.”
Lyssa walked around the edges of the room. She spoke to the spirit again. “Has someone in this house done something to make you unhappy? What are you trying to tell us? Why did you take Eli’s money?”
Again, there was no answer to any of her questions. She wasn’t sure what else to ask. Then, out of the corner of her eye, Lyssa noticed a small movement. She stopped cold. An electric shiver ran all over her body. Slowly she turned her head.
At first there was nothing. Just the door leading to the hallway. And Jen, sitting in the desk chair, facing Lyssa.
Lyssa kept her eyes on the door. It was moving.
Inch by inch, it was shutting.
“Jen, turn around…”
Jen spun around. “The door,” she whispered.
Slam! The door closed like someone on the other side yanked it shut.
“Jen, what was that?”
But Jen wasn’t paying attention to Lyssa. She was already aiming the video camera at the door.
“I don’t know what that was,” Jen said. “It couldn’t have been the wind, because the windows are closed.”
Lyssa switched on her flashlight and examined the door hinges. They weren’t loose or broken. She looked around the door frame for something that might have caused the door to close. Maybe an air-conditioning duct? Or a spring connected to the door? No. She didn’t find anything like that.
“This feels awful,” Lyssa told Jen. “Like there’s something here. And no matter what we do or say, it won’t leave.”
“Let’s just double-check,” Jen said.
She opened the door as wide as it was before and waited to see if it would slam shut on its own. Jen got down on the floor and put her flashlight on as well. “There’s no way that door could have shut on its own,” she said. “The bottom of the door presses into the carpet. The carpet keeps it in place. It would be impossible for the door to just close on its own.”
Jen closed the door. Lyssa could see it took some effort.
Lyssa shuddered. If the door couldn’t move on its own, then someone or something must have pushed it.
Jen flicked off her flashlight. She and Lyssa got up. Jen went back to the desk. She adjusted the setting on the IR camera.
Lyssa tried to piece together what was happening. Maybe the spirit wasn’t speaking. But she felt as if something was letting them know it was there. She had seen its energy spike in the hall. It turned a faucet on—and off. And now i
t had slammed Eli’s door.
Lyssa’s throat went dry. She wasn’t looking at any meter. But she could feel something on the other side of Eli’s door. She was sure of it.
This time she didn’t ask if Jen felt it too. She just gathered all her courage—and yanked open the door.
Eli stood in front of her in the hallway.
“Did you guys find anything?” he asked.
Lyssa and Jen looked at each other.
“Eli, does your door ever close on its own?” Lyssa asked.
“Why?”
“We just saw it slam itself shut. Does that usually happen?”
“Well… not exactly. I mean, I… I’ve never seen that happen before.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“No, I’m sure. I’ve never seen it happen.”
Lyssa’s walkie-talkie crackled. She heard Grant’s voice coming through.
“Let’s pack it in, everybody. I think we’ve got all we can for tonight.”
The crew met back at Central Command. They began packing up the equipment.
“This is the part that drives me crazy,” Lyssa said to Jen as they walked out to the vans.
“You mean, leaving the site?” Jen asked.
“No, I mean having to wait until we can see what the instruments recorded.”
Jen shrugged. “Well, you know how it goes. If we can’t find proof of paranormal activity—”
“I know,” Lyssa said. “I would never want to tell the Burtons that their house was haunted if there was really nothing there. But Jen, there was a spirit in that house with us. I could feel it.”
As soon as the TAPS team drove off, Eli went back to his room. It was late. He slipped under the covers. It was a hot summer night, but the sheets felt cold and clammy.
Eli closed his eyes. He took deep breaths. He even counted sheep. But nothing worked. He couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the same image. The one from that night of the broken gravestone. The pieces shattered and thrown on the ground.
Then his mind went to the figure he had seen in the graveyard. The man pacing back and forth in the darkness. Then Eli thought about the sound he’d heard.