Nightmare

by Robin Parrish

  "Science may be the glue that holds the universe together ... but who or what caused those laws to work and gave them the power to govern the universe, to begin with? Who wrote them into being? Who made science? Science can't explain everything, and it never will, because it, too, requires a Creator."

  I was quiet. Unlike our past discussions, this one hadn't left me feeling cold or frustrated toward Derek. I didn't entirely agree with his ideas, but he'd delivered them so passionately, so fervently, that I suddenly understood why he had such a bright future ahead of him as a minister.

  I didn't feel like disturbing the silence he'd created with his impassioned speech. I thought it deserved too much respect to argue with.

  It was Derek who spoke next, but his sermon voice was gone, replaced by a sad, lonely young man.

  "Maia, how are we going to find Jordin?" he asked. "You said DHI's offices are in Copenhagen, so it stands to reason that that's where they're taking the people they abduct and doing this ... procedure ... on. They have money, resources, and mega-security. They're untouchable."

  I couldn't disagree, but decided on a logical approach. "One hurdle at a time. Let's consider what we know. Someone-probably Howell Durham and his evil little empire-is abducting lonely college students and turning them into, as crazy as it sounds, ghosts. Each of these students has gone missing after three alchemical symbols have appeared on the back of their necks, which directly follows a week full of terrifying nightmares when they sleep. I can attest to this personally."

  I swallowed, not wanting to linger on this point. I soldiered on. "It stands to reason that the symbol is more than just a symbol-it may be part of the technology that makes this whole soul-extraction-and-binding thing work. Jordin disappeared from Martha's Vineyard around the beginning ofAugust. We can safely assume that she was conducting solo paranormal investigations every night while she was there, and it's entirely possible she was abducted during one of those investigations. You and I have both seen her disembodied soul, asking us for help and warning us of this `nightmare' that's coming. Whatever that means.

  "We also know that she was keeping a detailed journal of her experiences. A journal that hasn't been seen since she disappeared, and-if it wasn't carted off with herwhen she was taken-it could provide some clues about the circumstances surrounding her abduction.

  "Then there's Ghost Town. You saw Jordin in your dorm room, but I saw her at this amusement park and I don't think that her being there was a fluke. I did some digging online and I don't believe that Jordin is the only genuine ghost to appear there. A number of tourists have reported encounters with realistic apparitions that said `the nightmare is coming' to them."

  Derek sighed. "It's a start, I guess."

  Since things were going so pleasantly between us for once, I decided it was the perfect time to make a request I'd been considering for a while now.

  "If and when we find the journal," I said slowly, "ifyou should come across it before I do ... I want you to let me read it first. Before you do."

  He glanced guardedly into my eyes. "Why?"

  "I just think ... there might be things in there that Jordin wouldn't want you to see. Inner thoughts that she never meant for anyone but herself to read. And I don't want whatever we may find ... to change your feelings for her."

  Derek offered a meager smile. I think he was genuinely touched. "I appreciate the concern, but I promise you, there's nothing Jordin could ever say or do to make me love her less."

  I was undeterred. "All the same ... You wouldn't have gotten any answers at all without my help, and I haven't asked for anything in return. Just let me have this."

  He kind of frowned, but said, "Okay, all right. You can read the journal. I'll keep my hands off."

  Satisfied, I let the matter drop.

  "Here's something I've been puzzling over," Derek said after a moment. "About Jordin. And ghosts."

  "Shoot," I said, warming up a bit to this nice, new Derek. We would never be best friends or anything, but I was finding it more tolerable being around him when he was playing so nice.

  "Most hauntings seem localized to certain buildings, right? What is it about a piece of property or a house that can confine a ghost?"

  I knew this was another devil's advocate question, along the lines of his earlier test of logic about sightings of ghosts who wear clothes. But he wasn't being antagonistic this time, so I decided to humor him.

  " `Structural possession' is the formal term," I said. "Genius Loci-the spirit of the place. Most investigators think that 'confinement' may not be the right word to describe it. I mean, there's no direct evidence to indicate that a ghost is strictly unable to leave a certain place. The more accepted explanation is that they're unwilling."

  "Right. But Jordin isn't confined right now. That seems important somehow. She's able to go wherever she wants."

  "That's true. I don't know what it means, but you're right."

  "And I've never understood it from a logical side. If a ghost could choose to leave, why stick around."

  He had me. There was no way I was going to wiggle free of this one. "No, it doesn't make logical sense. This is something I've always hoped to find a better explanation for. I've been to so many haunted locations where the owners or residents claim to know the identity of the dead person that's haunting them, and every time I would hear that, those claims made me wonder how they could possibly know for sure who the ghost was, when visible sightings are so, so rare. It seemed more likely to me that ghosts, as you said, would want to explore, to come and go as they please, wherever and whenever they want. I certainly wouldn't feel compelled to stick around a site where some terrible thing happened to me."

  Derek was reveling in his small victory when I made a slight addendum.

  "But then again, I've never died before."

  It was a five-hour drive to Martha's Vineyard, and we talked theories and debated the paranormal most of the way there. I saw the intelligence Jordin loved-and saw how much he loved and missed her. Derek and I still barely qualified as friends, but I think we had grown to respect each other.

  We arrived at Jordin's beach house around one in the afternoon. Derek knew exactly where to find it, having been there before, and was frustrated to find the house in shambles. The furniture was dirty; the kitchen was filled with filthy or broken dishes. And by all indications, it had been this way for a while. Either Jordin's friends had been utter slobs and left the place without cleaning up after themselves, or somebody else had been here looking for Jordin's journal. Or both.

  I started by turning over sofa cushions, looking under furniture, and searching the kitchen cabinets and drawers. Derek said not a word as he marched to the staircase and up to the second floor.

  Twenty minutes in, I'd had no luck at all when Derek returned from upstairs.

  "It's not in her bedroom," he declared.

  "You sure?"

  "I turned it inside out. And I know where she keeps things she doesn't want anyone to find. When she was growing up, she kept a diary hidden in her pillow cushion. I'm confident in saying it's not in that room. And if it was going to be anywhere in this house, I'm sure she would keep it there."

  I sighed. "All the same, let's finish searching the house. Just to be sure."

  He scowled but agreed to pitch in.

  A thought occurred to me. "I think this is actually good news. If we'd found the journal here, it would mean she was taken from here, right under the other girls' noses. It would make all of this a dead end. If the journal's not here, then chances are it's still wherever she was when she was abducted. And finding it could lead us straight to her."

  Derek said nothing, but had a little more spring in his step as we combed through the house.

  MARCH 18TH

  I had to wait a full week and a half for an appointment with my doctor, only to be greeted by a med student when I was taken into the exam room.

  The student doctor-and I'm not kidding, he was younger than Doogie-
asked me a full set of questions about the trouble I was having with my heart. He read them off of a multi-page list on a clipboard while I repeatedly said no to increasingly personal questions about my family history, my sexual history, and my use of alcohol and drugs.

  He listened to my heart with his stethoscope, which had teddy bears on the fabric cover-I'm just saying-and made some further notes on his clipboard before excusing himself and promising me that Dr. Hudson would be with me shortly.

  Which of course was doctor-speak for You mightspeak to another human being in about an hour, ifyou're lucky.

  I wasn't lucky, and it was actually an hour and a half before Dr. Hudson entered. She apologized for the delay and made some glib comments about her student's examination of me, and then informed me she was ordering a number of tests.

  A full day of tests later-including a visit to the hospital for several of them-and I sat waiting in a different exam room for Dr. Hudson to enter and give me the news. By now, I was all set to hear that the diagnosis was dreadful. It was something my pragmatist father had taught me when I was young: Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

  Only ten minutes passed between the time the nurse left me alone in the examination room and when Dr. Hudson entered.

  "Well, Maia . . ." she began, taking a seat on a round stool. Two of her students filed in behind her and closed the door, standing at attention and observing closely. "It looks like you're suffering from panic attacks."

  "What?"

  I must've misheard her. I didn't panic.

  She nodded. "This is good news, Maia. It's very treatable."

  "But ... how?" I was still struggling to understand. "What brought this on?"

  Dr. Hudson gave a little shrug. "Panic attacks can be caused by all sorts of things-reaction to another drug or withdrawal from one. Heavy drinking. Most often it's hereditary. But sometimes it can be triggered experientially, and based on what you told me, I'm inclined to think that's the case for you. Your recent ... extracurricular activities ... you told me you've been undertaking are going to have to stop. Any experience terrifying enough to cause a panic attack like this most recent one you had could, in extreme circumstances, cause an arrhythmia," she said. Then she added, "That's a heart attack."

  "I know what arrhythmia is. . . ." My head was spinning. It was like someone had just told me that I was really half Nigerian instead of half Mexican. "I still don't understand. I'm not afraid of the paranormal. I never have been."

  "It's not a matter of choice, Maia," Dr. Hudson said in her most condescendingly soothing tone. "Your body is having a very harsh stimulus-driven physical reaction that you really have no control over."

  I almost felt angry-angry at myself and my own body for betraying me. How could this be happening?

  "So how do we treat it?" I asked.

  "Well, I'm going to give you some reading material to look over, as we find that equipping yourself with knowledge is the best preparation. And I'm going to prescribe an antidepressant for you, a newer one with antianxiety properties that we've found to be very effective. It's low impact on your system otherwise, and that's the kind of treatment we like. I'm also going to give you some Valium, but I need to stress that it is only to be used during an extreme attack, to prevent a full-on arrhythmia. It's not to be used otherwise, as it's highly addictive.

  "Lastly," she said, "I have to insist-you must avoid situations that produce the kind of stimulus that could trigger a panic attack."

  It was about a week later when Jordin rang me up and asked me to come by her condo downtown. She said she had finally finished reviewing all of the photographic, video, and audio footage we'd collected in our "tour" of the South, and she wanted me to see what she'd found. She sounded excited, so I promised to stop by after my last class of the day.

  I'd been taking my new antianxiety medication for almost a week now, and felt like I was starting to benefit from its effects. I hadn't had a single panic attack since we'd returned to New York, which was pretty encouraging, though I was nonplussed to realize that I only experienced these attacks when Jordin and I were investigating. It was possible that the one thing in all the world that triggered a panic attack in me was the one thing that shouldn't bother me in the slightest: the paranormal.

  On the other hand, if the paranormal was my trigger, then that was good news for my career plans. Cops and detectives deal with crimes committed by the living, which apparently posed no medical issues for me.

  I had never been to Jordin's condo before, or even her dorm room for that matter. I found it surprisingly spartan. It was huge, don't get me wrong, the kind of open space only someone as wealthy as Jordin could enjoy. It had modern furniture and a few art pieces-but very little personality. Cold, unwelcoming, even sterile, it made me think of a mausoleum.

  This place wasn't really hers. It couldn't have been. She had to have bought it furnished, sight unseen. That must've been it.

  I wondered if she and Derek planned to live here after they were married. She'd introduced me to him briefly after we got back from our week-long trip, and I couldn't picture him in these surroundings at all.

  Jordin welcomed me in very excitedly, and ushered me quickly to a large desk she'd placed in an otherwise unused room. It had been thoroughly outfitted with the most modern computer equipment money could buy and three huge side-by-side monitors, along with all of Jordin's recorders and other investigative tools.

  She sat down behind the desk and started by playing some EVPs for me. The first few were garbled and indecipherable. She pouted when I said as much, trying to convince me that she could understand what was being said. But I didn't hear anything resembling a human voice.

  Thankfully, she was just getting warmed up.

  "Remember the gazebo at the Myrtles?" she said, cuing up a new audio file on her computer. "You said a soldier was seen there sometimes."

  "Of course."

  She clicked Play, and out of the computer's speakers came the loud hissing sound of static, followed byjordin's own voice shouting, "Grab your gun and fall in!" In the silence after that, a faint male voice could be heard saying, "Leave me alone."

  "Not bad," I said.

  She played several more for me, including one particularly chilling recording from St. Louis Cemetery of a voice whispering that we should "lay down and sleep." I rubbed the goose bumps away from my arms after hearing it. Whatever had said it, it wasn't a friendly voice, and neither of us believed that it was all that concerned with us getting rest. And of course there was the unsettling one she'd caught at the Myrtles in the room with the painting, where a male voice had declared its preference for the blond one. Based on the face she made when she replayed it, it hadn't gotten any easier for her to listen to.

  Next Jordin turned to her only still photo. She had the clear outline of a male figure from somewhere far belowdecks within the battleship North Carolina. It was impossible to forget the dark apparition she'd chased down there alone for over an hour while I tried to crawl up to the main deck, fearing that I was having heart failure.

  It was an impressive photograph, I couldn't deny it. It was rather dark, but the distinct shape of a human-type form was visible standing in the middle of a corridor. You could almost make out its apparel, but the image was just too dark to perceive that level of detail. I knew and she knew that this was a picture of a genuine haunting, but a skeptic would easily dismiss it as a staged photograph using a very much alive stand-in.

  We moved on to video, and this was where she had found the best stuff. First she replayed the video from the Myrtles for me, proving that there was a slight variation in the expression on the face of the painting in that room. Again, a cynic would say it was a trick of the light or something, because the change was subtle. But I knew what I saw.

  Jordin had also managed to catch some video of the shadow person moving through St. Louis Cemetery, but it was a fleeting shot, and hardly conclusive. She showed me again the video of the face she'd seen
peeking at us at the cemetery, and I have to admit, it still creeped me out. Whatever it was, it wasn't human-not even a deceased human. We also reviewed the thermal imager's recordings from the cemetery, which caught the shadow person a few times, but it was nothing a skeptic would accept as ironclad. She had a few other bits: some strange sounds caught on video, a door that closed itself, a picture frame on a tabletop that seemed to be pushed over facedown. As paranormal investigative evidence goes, it was exceptional stuff.

  But her last find was the most striking. It was from a stationary video we'd set up in a main corridor of the North Carolina. I watched in astonishment as a partially closed door some twenty feet down the hall from the camera suddenly came to life, shifted off of its hinges, and seemed to walk sideways out of the frame. One second it was part of a hatch, the next it had tilted to one side and for all the world moved like something that took a step.

  "That's unreal," I commented.

  Jordin nodded.

  "That's one of the best pieces of evidence I've ever seen, Jordin. Seriously, even my parents would be jealous over that one. You've done a fantastic job, with all of this."

  I expected her to be thrilled-I wasn't exactly known for offering praise, after all-but she had an odd look on her face.

  "How does it feel to have captured real evidence of the paranormal?" I asked, trying to boost her enthusiasm.

  Jordin turned in her seat to face me and smiled, but there was a hesitation about her reaction. "Good. Really good."

  I knew what was wrong, though I didn't know what it meant. "Even with all this ... you're no closer to contacting your parents."

  She looked over my shoulder at nothing, registering a sad, distant expression. "I've proven that the paranormal is real, to my satisfaction. I don't expect any of this would hold up in court, but after all I've seen and done ... I know it's real. But that's all I know. I have no idea how to reach out to my parents, or even if I can."