by Rick Suttle
“Oh, I almost forgot. Our cafeteria and multipurpose room are back here,” said Joyce, as we retraced our steps to the back hallway along the right wing of the building. We stepped inside.
“We use it for sporting events, PTA meetings, luncheons and other gatherings.” She paused to catch her breath and looked at her watch. “The girls’ and boys’ locker rooms are located through the far doorway.” Joyce pointed to a narrow doorway in far corner of the cafeteria. “Things have gone missing in the girl’s locker room in particular.”
“Anything going on in the multipurpose room?”
“Voices mostly.”
“Do you have a map of the school we can use?” I asked. “It would sure come in handy, since you have to leave.”
“Yes, I’ll get that for you when we’re finished here.”
“Where are you experiencing the most activity?” said Mike.
“Besides the locker rooms, the basement and hallway near the annex,” said Joyce. “I never go to the basement, so I don’t know what’s going on down there.”
“I’ve seen things in the basement,” said Phil. His eyes seemed fixed on something in the distance. He then glanced at me.
“What kind of things?” I said.
“Don’t tell me,” said Sarah. “Just take me there.”
“Five minutes, Joyce,” said Phil. He fidgeted with something on his belt, then he searched his pockets for his keys. He jingled them inside his pocket, took a deep breath and started pacing the floor.
“Okay,” said Joyce, as she extended her hand back and waved at Phil without looking. “I’m about ready.”
I don’t know what the urgency was with Phil, but I was getting annoyed by his nervousness. He must’ve been seeing something that he didn’t want to talk about. But I wasn’t about to question the big man. I wished he’d just leave, but he had to wait for Joyce and escort her to her vehicle.
“Just show us how to get to the basement and we’ll take it from there,” I said.
Back in the office, Joyce located a school map in one of the file cabinets. She handed it to me.
“Where’s your copier?” I asked.
“Back in the corner.” She pointed to a Xerox machine to the left of a bookshelf and metal credenza.
“I guess we’re good,” I said, as we walked with Phil and Joyce toward the exit. The guard had just shown me how to turn the security lights off. The fuse box was located near the front door in a small room. Phil handed me a set of keys in case we got locked out carrying the equipment in.
“Are all the other doors locked?”
“Of course,” said Phil. He furrowed his brows—a bit surprised by my question.
“Dylan.”
“Wait a minute, Mike,” I said, waving him off as Joyce asked me something. “I’m sorry, you were saying?”
“What time will you be finished with your investigation?”
“We have a lot of areas to cover, but we should be done by seven a.m. That’s about the time we end most investigations.”
“Okay, we’ll come back at seven to check on you.”
“Make it seven-thirty,” said Phil. “I have to pick something up before I come in tomorrow.”
“Okay,” said Joyce. She frowned at Phil. “Seven-thirty it is.”
“Dylan.” I ignored Mike again as Joyce and Phil walked down the steps. I stood holding the door open.
“Are the outside security lights labeled?” I shouted to Phil. He hadn’t shown me where they were, and I hadn’t thought about them until I remembered seeing a half dozen lights on outside. We needed all the lights off so the equipment could function at full capacity.
Phil turned around at the bottom of the steps. “They’re right above the ones I showed you,” he said.
“Dylan!”
“What is it?”
“Sarah’s gone.”
My heart sank as I waved at Joyce and Phil. I turned and let the door close behind me.
“Then we’ve got to find her.”
CHAPTER 6
“When did you see her last?” I ran my hand through my hair. My heart was pounding.
“When we were halfway down this hallway,” said Mike. “She was in one of her trances again. She must’ve been fifteen feet behind me. I should’ve said something.”
“No. She doesn’t like that. Besides, it can be dangerous trying to disturb her during one of her funks. But we have to find her.”
“I’ll take the left hallway, and you take the right one,” I said, as we split up, searching the halls with only the dim security lights for illumination. I went back to the office to set my folder and legal pad down on the table. My hand sweat had dampened the front page of the legal pad, smearing some of my notes. I marched into the hallway.
“Sarah,” I called, as I walked toward the door and made my way to the far hallway along the front of the school. I heard an echo in the distance, which was the only audible sound other than my thumping pulse. “Sarah, are you there?”
I made a right at the end of the hallway and started down the adjacent one. The dim lights cast eerie shadows on the tiles and walls—some of which appeared to move.
I saw a large shadow in the distance on the left side of the hallway. The black form stood near a row of lockers thirty feet away. I gazed farther down the hallway and spotted another form about Sarah’s height on the opposite side.
“Sarah. Is that you?”
I didn’t know if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but the shorter form suddenly turned into a whitish-gray mist, swept toward a nearby locker and vanished. I heard a door close in the distance. Then I heard a faint giggle. On the other side of the hallway, opposite the mist I’d just seen, the shadow was no longer there.
“Sarah. This is no time to be fooling around. We’ve got a serious investigation to get done tonight.”
Deep down, I knew it wasn’t Sarah who’d giggled. She’d been known to fool around early during investigations, but something was different about her tonight. If anything, she was taking the job too seriously.
Five minutes later, I arrived at the far back hallway and took a right. Halfway down, I approached the dark hallway on the left that led to the annex building. I hesitated a few seconds as I gazed at the shadowed regions of the floor beyond the security light. I then started walking toward the far door.
My heart pounded as I inched closer to the door. A cool breeze wafted by, yet it was June and the air conditioning was turned off. I shivered for several seconds as if I’d just opened a refrigerator door while soaked in sweat.
Once I arrived at the door, I peeked through a glass pane, which led to another long hallway. Only a sliver of light shone through the glass, which illuminated about ten feet of the hallway. That hallway led to another door, according to Joyce, which opened up into the annex building.
I positioned the edge of my hands on the glass pane, placed my forehead against them and peaked down the hallway. I stared for about a minute, hoping my eyes would adjust enough to the darkness so I could see more of the hallway leading to the annex. I had just moved my head back, when I saw a couple balls of light appear through the glass. They flew up toward the ceiling and then disappeared.
Balls of light were known as orbs in paranormal terms, which are one of many ways ghosts revealed themselves. I was anxious to get the equipment inside to see if we could capture some of these sightings on camera—and record some voices.
I had just turned to go back toward the adjoining hallway, when someone yelled in the distance. I jumped as my pulse rate soared. The noise echoed through multiple hallways and seemed to get louder. I jumped back against the wall and braced myself about halfway to the back hallway, ducking out of sight from the unknown. I held my chest to ease my breathing.
“Dylan!”
“Mike?” He appeared at the edge of the hallway, as I pushed myself off the wall and jogged toward him.”
“What are you doing?”
“I thought Sarah might be do
wn here,” I said.
“She’s in the basement.”
“What?”
“Come quickly. Someone else is speaking through her. I’ve heard at least two children’s voices.”
“You’re kidding. That never happens.”
“I know,” said Mike. “But that’s not all. When I tried to approach her, I got pushed.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.” But the thing flung me back with a lot of force.
We ran down to the service elevator near the multipurpose room. It was the only way to get to the basement, according to Joyce. Keeping the basement off limits to kids was a safety measure—because of the boilers and other flammable equipment down there.
Mike hit the service elevator button. It pinged seconds later and opened. We jumped inside. He turned the key behind the plastic box, which Phil had opened for us. I hit the “B” and we started our descent to the basement.
“It’s almost pitch black down there, except for a few dim ceiling lights,” said Mike. “I used the flashlight on my cell when I was down here before.”
“How did Sarah find her way down here? Her cell phone died in the car.”
“She probably knew somehow, or someone guided her down here.” The elevator landed in a jolt, paused a few seconds and then the door opened.
“This way,” said Mike, flashing the bright light of his Samsung Edge+. I had a pen-sized flashlight in my pocket, which I flipped on as I trailed Mike. He was ten feet ahead.
We ran down a dank, musty cement hallway, swiping away several cobwebs. I heard water trickling somewhere but couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
I followed Mike into the boiler room. Sarah’s small silhouette appeared in the distance. She was walking alongside the far wall. She turned just as we approached.
“Sarah, you okay?” I said.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because Mike said you were speaking with different kids’ voices.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s crazy. I was just checking the basement out. Nothing’s down here.” She was lying. Her misty eyes indicated that she’d been crying.
“You were talking like a little girl,” said Mike. “Then a boy.”
“Was not.” Sarah looked at the floor.
“Whatever,” said Mike. “We should probably go back upstairs and get set up.”
“Good idea,” I said. I pushed the illumination button on my watch. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”
We placed a heavy brick at the front door to keep it open as we hauled the equipment in. The steps were playing havoc with my knees. They ached by the time I placed the last box of REM-Pods down on the hallway floor.
“Is there a dolly or flatbed anywhere that we could load this on?” said Mike.
“Check the janitor’s closet.”
Mike ran up the hallway and made a right. The janitor’s closet was opposite the restrooms in middle intersecting hallway. He returned less than a minute later shaking his head. “It’s locked.”
“Great.” I said. “Let’s just walk it all down to the office. That’s where we’ll set up base.”
It took another ten minutes to carry the equipment down to the office. I flipped on the overhead lights, which I had turned out by mistake, and found the map on the table where Joyce and I had held our initial meeting. I then walked over to the copy machine and blew the map up so it fit on an 11”x14” piece of paper.
“I’ll get some of the equipment set up,” I said. “Mike, I’ve got the locations I want to investigate on the second page of my notes. The notebook’s over on the meeting table.” I paused to catch my breath. The evening had already been quite eventful. “I don’t think we’ll have time to put tape down at this point.” We usually taped the floor ahead of an investigation to mark where we wanted cameras or other equipment placed. That would take another hour, considering the number of spots I wanted to check out. “Just mark the locations on the map with a red X.”
“Okay.”
“Sarah, you’re going to stay with me after we set up the cameras and REM-Pods. I don’t want you wandering off because we need to track your sightings and conversations.”
“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes.
“Mike, after you finish marking the spots, help me set up,” I said. “I’ll spread the equipment out on a table.”
I pulled an oblong table from the far end of the office, after removing a fax machine and some folders from it. I placed it in the center of the room and set my laptops on it. The computers would keep track of the various cameras we placed throughout the building—like a security surveillance system. We could also enhance any EVPs we got from our voice recorders, or focus in on any ghostly images.
After I finished plugging in my laptops, Mike and I grabbed a dozen cameras and tripods and carried them to the sites we planned to investigate. I also grabbed one REM-Pod. I toted the cameras and REM-Pod in a carrying case, and Mike lugged the tripods in a cardboard box.
Mike and I placed two main static night vision cameras in the main hallway—one at the rear of the school facing the door, and one near the front door in the opposite direction. We then set two along the far hallway on the left side of the building, one near the door leading to the annex, one in the far right hallway and one in the intersecting hallway in the middle of the school. That left one for the cafeteria, another for both locker rooms and one final camera for the basement.
We could always move one of the cameras if we needed it for the basement or another prime location.
The static night vision cameras would record everything within sight all night long.
“Wait a minute,” I said, as I adjusted the basement camera, pointing it in the direction where Mike had found Sarah earlier.
“What’s wrong?”
“The battery just died.”
“That’s weird,” said Mike.
“I know it is.” I flicked the switch on the camera. It didn’t come on.
Just then, Mike’s cell phone flickered and went out. We stood in the dark.
CHAPTER 7
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my pen light, flashing it at Mike’s phone.
“What the heck,” said Mike, as he tapped the back of his cell. “It’s dead.” He made a fist with his left hand and pounded the back of his cell against his knuckles. “Come on, stupid phone.”
“Did you try turning it off and then back on?”
“Yeah . . . duh,” he said, as he glared at me through the dim illumination.
“Can you see to take it apart and remove the battery?” I said. “That should boot it back up.”
“I think so. It’s a new cell. I don’t want to lose any parts.”
“I know. But try it. Here.” I moved closer and shone the light on the back of Mike’s cell phone case. He was fidgeting around with it.
“I forgot to remove the cover,” he said, as he peeled the plastic piece off and tucked it under his arm. Mike stuck a couple fingernails on the sides of his phone and popped the back piece off. He removed the battery and snapped it back in. He then connected the back piece to the phone, placed the cell in its plastic case and turned it on.
The cell phone flicked on, chiming a few notes from Sprint.
“There you go.”
“We all set?” said Mike.
“Wait a minute.”
I noticed the camera had lit up, and it wasn’t in the same position I had left it moments earlier. I must’ve bumped it to help Mike fix his cell. Mike shone his cell light on the camera as I studied the display screen and angled it toward the far wall.
“It’s weird that it just clicked on like that?”
“Yeah,” said Mike. “Let’s get this done and get back upstairs.”
Just then, I noticed a small niche in the far wall. “Is that a fireplace?”
“No, I saw that earlier,” said Mike. “It’s an old dumb waiter. Sarah was standing near it when I first heard her speaking in strange voices.”
“I’m going to take a closer look.” I flipped on my pen light and walked over to the dumb waiter. I then stooped down and shone my light on the inside, spearing it around the perimeters.
“The rope’s still here but the compartment’s missing.” I crawled inside the small space and flashed my light above. “It looks blocked off above. The elevator compartment is stuck between floors.”
I ducked out of the dumb waiter and made my way back over to Mike. “We’ll have to check it out later. Something may have been on the thing when it got stuck.”
“They probably used it for transporting equipment up and down, rather than food.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Unless they sent food down here for some reason.”
Mike was looking at the small LED screen on the camera which showed the exact angle of the shot. “Do you have the right positioning for the camera now?” he said, “because I want to get out of here. This place is really creeping me out.”
Being a researcher, Mike didn’t investigate haunted locations as much as Sarah and I did. He stayed at what we called our base camp with the computers. He could get a bit freaked out at times.
“What’s wrong?” I said. I saw Mike bend over and place his hands on his knees.
“I’m suddenly feeling sick to my stomach.”
It wasn’t unusual to experience sickness around spirits, even the way someone felt when they died. It happened to Sarah all the time.
“I’ll check the camera one last time and we’ll head up.”
I studied the digital screen of the camera. The angle still wasn’t right. I moved it to the right a hair, and then down. It was weird that it was out of place because the angle had been perfect when I walked over to the dumb waiter. And Mike said he hadn’t touched it. Something or someone had moved it, but it wasn’t us. I didn’t give it any further thought.
“Okay. I think that’s got it,” I said. “Let me place this one REM-Pod in the hallway, then we can head back and get the rest of them.”