Nightmare

by Robin Parrish

  "That's Howell Durham," I whispered.

  Pierre answered first. "Really? What's he doing?"

  It was a fair question. Durham seemed to be pacing back and forth next to the large cage, and inexplicably, he was talking and gesturing wildly. He didn't look like the perfectly presented, wellbuilt silver fox that I had seen in the corporate press materials. His hair was a mess, his eyes were big and wild, and his cheeks were flushed. I think he was angry, and we could almost hear him shouting from so far away.

  Durham looked up, and so did we, as the room's bright white lights turned red and an alarm began to blare through the Body Chamber like a battle Klaxon.

  "I think that's for us" came Pierre's terse whisper. "Simms must have woken up!"

  Before either of us could respond, the entire building began to shake, and the low rumbling sound we'd heard before returned, growing in strength and volume. It was the worst sound I'd ever heard, nearly making my heart leap into my throat.

  Then as the room pitched and swayed, the giant cage at the far end of the room exploded open. A horrific creature came tearing out of it, huge-more than ten feet in height-and absolutely monstrous.

  Scientists and technicians abandoned their posts and fled for their lives screaming, running from the room en masse. The creature growled and roared, blew hot steam out of its snoutlike nose, and then grabbed Howell Durham around the waist. Before any of us had time to react, it squeezed Durham like a grape, and the old man popped.

  I knew two things as I watched these nightmarish events: something terrible and beyond all reason had just been unleashed, and this might be my one chance to carry out the crazy idea I'd gotten while listening to Dr. Simms talk just minutes ago.

  "What is that?" Pierre asked.

  Derek gave a slight shake of his head, not taking his eyes off the beast.

  Thinking fast, I whipped out my phone and glanced at it. "No bars," I muttered, putting on a perfect performance. "Let's see if we can get reception outside-we need to call someone!"

  Derek and Pierre both nodded and I motioned for them to lead the way.

  Once they were out of sight, I ducked around the cubicle in the opposite direction and made straight for the extractor while the building shook and crumbled and the ghastly creature roared. Its footsteps landed like lead on the cement floor, and I prayed it wasn't moving in my direction.

  The entire chamber's lights were flickering as I mashed the buttons the same way I'd seen the technicians do it, opening the central tube. Derek rounded a corner twenty feet away, but Pierre wasn't with him.

  "What are you doing?!" he shouted.

  "I'm going to find her!" I glanced at him only for a second but didn't give him a chance to stop me, knowing that this was it. Now or never.

  I hit the Activate button, ran around to the side of the tube, and slid in just as it was closing around me. The horrifying sounds of the giant creature were quickly drowned out by the whirring of the extractor, and I lay perfectly still, waiting. Derek caught up with me and started pounding on the side of the glass tube, trying to break it, but it was made of something much stronger than standard glass. He looked at me like I'd lost my mind, but I looked upward. I knew exactly what I was doing.

  The needle pierced the back of my neck, and the flashing lights illuminated the pod like a tanning booth on acid.

  Then, I fell.

  MAY 2ND

  The calm, serene town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, imbues all visitors with a sense of sadness. Though its battlefields are now reverentially quiet, the enormity of the loss of life is remembered via endless historical markers and monuments that dot the landscape across acres upon acres of land.

  Over a three-day period in 1863, more than fifty thousand men lost their lives in Gettysburg, staining miles of its fertile farm soil red. But these were not slow, painful deaths stretched out over days like those on record at other haunted locations. Many were instantaneous deaths of terrible violence that cut short the lives of young souls who had much to live for.

  Gettysburg has to be the most haunted place in America, but it's a lot more than that. It's considered by many to be the most haunted place in the world.

  After the near disaster that was Alcatraz, I'd driven back to San Jose alone so I could visit my folks again. I'd opted to not take Jordin along, needing a break from her special brand of crazy. After a couple days of sightseeing in San Francisco, she flew back to New York to begin processing her evidence.

  As soon as I returned, she called me, ecstatic to show off her findings, which I had to admit were impressive. But I was just relieved that the spirit that had attached itself to her seemed to have lost interest when we departed Alcatraz island the next morning.

  She was ready for our final trip immediately, but when I accused her of neglecting her studies, she got angry and didn't speak to me for a few days. Which was fine by me. I was tiring of her secrets and demands and her increasingly sour attitude.

  We quickly regrouped and scheduled our last trip-which I promised Jordin would be the best of the best and the most haunted destination we'd ever visited-over a four-day weekend in early May, just before finals. I arranged for us to spend not one night but three, knowing that there was enough to investigate in Gettysburg to take more than three times that long.

  I booked our multinight stay at the Cashtown Inn, one of the most infamously haunted places in the world, and a major hot spot in Gettysburg. The bed-and-breakfast was so well-known for its paranormal activity that I planned for us to spend our entire first night in Gettysburg investigating just the inn itself.

  I was particularly psyched for this leg of the trip. I'd been to Gettysburg several times, but somehow never found time to visit the Cashtown Inn-much less stay there overnight as a guest. Jordin, true to form, had never heard of it, so I had to brief her on its history as we made our way through the old town after having driven down from school.

  "It's unknown exactly when the Cashtown inn was built," I explained, circling the car through the doughnut-shaped road in the center of Gettysburg, "but it's been here since sometime around the year 1800. It got its name because the original owner demanded cash payments for lodgings at a time when most establishments accepted bartering. Like everything else in Gettysburg, it's most famous for its role during the Civil War. The Confederate Army used it repeatedly as a respite. Confederate officers visited often, trading information, filling their canteens, and buying liquor. Even Robert E. Lee himself is believed to have spent many a night at Cashtown Inn."

  Jordin stared at the sights of Gettysburg as I spoke, and I could see her eyes dance at every location we passed that advertised itself as haunted. The Farnsworth Inn. The Jenny Wade House. Even Gettysburg College, which boasted an excess of regular ghost sightings.

  "So what kinds of ghosts do people see there?" Jordin asked without turning her attention away from her window.

  "All kinds," I replied. "Confederate soldiers are seen in guest rooms, walking through the hallways, and venturing up and down the main stairs. Several rooms are infamous for sights and sounds that are very out of place, though virtually every inch of the place has had endless activity for centuries. The Cashtown Inn just never rests."

  The inn was a bit out of the way, several miles to the northwest of Gettysburg via Highway 30. But I reassured Jordin it would be worth our time.

  When we arrived, it was much more inconspicuous than I'd imagined. I'd seen photos of it for years, of course, but it sat almost in the middle of nowhere, with no special fanfare or loud signs letting us know we'd arrived. Just a small, rectangular wooden placard hanging over the door that looked like it had been there since the place was first built.

  The Cashtown Inn was a decent-sized two-story brick house, with awraparound Cape Cod porch. Four vintage wooden rocking chairs were perched there. I took special note of the five upstairs windows, at least one of which had been photographed hosting ghostly figures staring out at passersby.

  We walked throu
gh the lovely front door with its rounded window arch above, and were welcomed by the friendly staff. They assigned us to the upstairs room that I had requested and led us to it. There were only seven guest rooms at the inn, so even though we weren't the only people staying there, the place was hardly overrun with anyone who might get in our way.

  Making our way to our room, I almost wished I was just a visitor. The rustic simplicity of the stately old residence, with its framed artwork and antique furniture, reminded me of the Myrtles, but it wasn't as busy or colorful. We passed by a gorgeous common living room that I would've loved to have settled into, with striped carpet and comfy-looking wing-back armchairs. Meanwhile, dozens of framed photos adorned the walls, highlighting the unique history of the place.

  Our room was warm and welcoming. It had an A-frame ceiling with exposed beams, hardwood floors covered with well-worn braided rugs, and a mixture of furniture comprised of antique tables and more modern accommodations like floor lamps and sofas.

  Jordin mentioned how sweaty and sticky she was when we got to the room, so I let her have first dibs on the shower. I was still unpacking when she got out, but only moments after I heard her turn the water off, the bathroom door opened and she shouted, "Maia!"

  Fearing she'd slipped and hurt herself somehow, I ran for the tiny room. But she was fine, one towel wrapped around her torso and another-which I hoped wasn't mine-circling her hair. She opened the door wide as I approached, and let me in. The hot steam filled my pores almost at once, and I couldn't immediately tell why she had called out to me.

  "Look at this!" she said, reducing her voice to something a little above a whisper. She pointed to the mirror over the sink.

  My heart hammered out of the blue. Why did it have to be a mirror?

  I could see where she'd wiped the fog off of the mirror, but left behind was a very visible handprint off to one side of the glass.

  "What'd you do that for?" I asked, feeling relieved that there wasn't a creepy figure staring back at me from inside.

  "I didn't," she replied. "Look closer."

  She unwound the towel from her head and wiped down the mirror again. It became dampened, but the handprint remained exactly as it was.

  I stepped up to the sink to get a closer look. I placed my own hand against the mirror, overtop of the lingering print, and that's when I saw it. The handprint wasn't on the mirror. At least, not on this side of it.

  "Whoa," I noted, feeling goose bumps on my arms. "Look at that! It's on the other side of the glass...."

  I ran and got my camera and took several shots of it before the falling humidity in the room caused it to disappear.

  We spent the better part of the night investigating every nook and cranny of Cashtown Inn, but that handprint in the mirror was the best evidence we captured.

  The dead, it seemed, were still reaching out to Jordin.

  Our second night was spent at a very well-known area of the battlefield known as Devil's Den. The huge outcropping of craggy rocks atop a steep hill made it a perfect sniper's position during the war, and there were tons of reports suggesting that a Civil War marksman might have never truly left.

  In addition, a famous apparition was frequently sighted there: a scraggly, war-weary frontiersman soldier believed to be from the First Texas Regiment, which had taken heavy casualties at a skirmish near Devil's Den. The soldier was usually seen barefoot, and he would sometimes appear to offer tourists directions and pointers, but then disappear into thin air.

  We wandered around the Den, climbing and descending the hill, inspecting the crevices between the rocks-which, sadly, were strewn with tourists' litter-with all of our recording equipment and the thermal imager going the whole time. We tried to record some EVPs but wouldn't know until later if we were successful.

  We made our way over to a rise called Little Round Top, which was directly across a huge clearing from Devil's Den and was the main site the sniper had trained his weapon on during the battle. One of the biggest historical monuments in all of Gettysburg stood there, and we took our time, strolling around it, calling out to any ghosts in the area and generally capturing as much footage of the area as we possibly could.

  It was a quiet night until about two.

  Jordin and I had returned to the sniper's lookout at the top of Devil's Den and were sitting inside the small natural rock alcove where the sniper often appeared. Our equipment had functioned flawlessly all night, but suddenly everything went dark. Every camera, recorder, the thermal imager, even our flashlights. We sat in the near pitch-black-the only light coming from the dim haze of the moon behind a gray cloud-and said not a word, knowing that something big had to be up.

  "Look!" whispered Jordin.

  I could barely see in the dark that she was pointing out over the plain toward Little Round Top, and in the trees off to the side of the large monument there, a series of tiny lights blinked. They were scattershot within a specific twenty-foot area of the woods, flickering to life like a group of fireflies, and then the whole forest went dark again.

  After only a second, a sound traversed the distance to reach our ears. It was the sound of muffled musket fire, and its rhythm matched perfectly the random lights we'd just seen blinking.

  "Oh man!" I whispered, my heart speeding up. "I think it's the regiment!"

  "The what?"

  "The phantom regiment. It's one of the most famous ghost sightings in Gettysburg. It's a regiment of Civil War soldiers, dressed in dirty period-perfect uniforms, marching in formation through the fields. They disappear almost as soon as they're spotted. It's a residual apparition, but one of the most impressive, because there are like a dozen of these soldiers and they're always seen marching together. I've heard a few stories that sometimes they break formation and engage in a battle out on the fields, but I never thought it was true!"

  Jordin was grinning. I couldn't see it, but I could hear it. "And what do you think now?"

  ' "I-'

  I stopped when we heard a loud clamor. Small bits of metal brushing up against metal, and it was getting closer.

  We stood and looked down into the valley below, certain the sound was coming from there. How I wished our equipment's batteries hadn't drained!

  As we watched and listened, we never saw a thing, but we heard plenty. The heavy, perfectly timed clomping of boots marching in step. The clanging sound we'd heard earlier, which we figured could be equipment dangling from soldiers' belts. We even felt the stirring of a freezing-cold wind as the regiment-if that's what it was-marched past us, right down the middle of the valley below.

  From the sounds of it, I had to guess that there were more than a dozen of them. It sounded like an entire battalion was parading right past us, and I could almost see them in my mind, mud-stained uniforms, rifles set against their shoulders, grim faces thinking of some battle to come. I smelled gunpowder wafting through the air.

  There were never any voices, no orders called out into the night by an unseen commander. They just marched.

  The almost total darkness and the chill of the air made it too dangerous for us to climb down the hill to chase after them, but I was sorely tempted to try it anyway. Even though the night kept us from seeing them, we slowly followed their approximate location as they moved, rounding the valley and following a trailwhich was now a paved road-off to our right.

  As the sounds of the disturbance were fading from our ears, I thought I caught a quick glimpse of the rear of the group, their dark backpacks shifting back and forth as they trudged.

  I could barely see the enormous whites of Jordin's eyes as she turned slowly to face me, unblinking, but even in the dark it was easy to guess the look of anticipation and excitement on her face.

  Our third and final night was spent out among the battlefields. I took Jordin to the little-known Triangular Field, which is very active with paranormal activity but hard to find, because it's rarely on any maps. We smelled rotting flesh there, and thought we saw a campfire a few hundred yards
away, but when we went to investigate it, it'd vanished.

  I'd decided by this point that it was true Jordin really was a magnet for paranormal activity. There was no other explanation. I'd never seen so much activity on a single trip as I had this week.

  Around one a.m. we were wandering to the southwest of the main battlefield, and we made our way to the famous Sachs Bridge, a very historic and very haunted covered bridge that's open to foot traffic only.

  As we walked, Jordin spotted something and ran without warning toward the small pond beneath the bridge.

  "What?!" I shouted, running after her.

  "I saw something! In the water!" she shouted back, not slowing down.

  When she reached the pond, I was shocked to see her ditch all of her equipment on the shore and dive straight in.

  `Jordin!" I screamed.

  I arrived at the edge of the pond and shined my flashlight into its dark, murky waters. There was no sign of her.

  A full minute went by without so much as a ripple in the water, and then suddenly her head popped up out of the water for a fraction of a second. Just long enough for her to take a gasping breath and scream, "Help me!" Then she dunked back down and vanished again. I couldn't reach her-she was at least ten feet out beyond the edge of the water.

  Knowing what I had to do, I quickly shed my electronic equipment, muttered something horrible under my breath aboutJor- din's gene pool, and crossed myself. Then I dove.

  The chilly waters of the pond were fierce and unwelcome, but I pushed the sensations aside.

  I found her quickly-the pond wasn't all that big-and yet she was pulling away from me, deeper, like something was dragging her. She stretched out her arms in my direction, but I couldn't reach her. I kicked with all my might against the water, giving chase as she slid away from me, and finally I got close enough to grab her hand. I pulled toward the surface but found that she was surprisingly heavy. I wondered if her leg had gotten caught on a branch or something.

  We'd drifted closer to the bridge while underwater, and when we crawled out of the pond, we were at the mouth of the old wooden landmark.