“You okay, kiddo?” he asks from beneath me, his voice shaking slightly, either from apprehension or from the strain.
“Not really. Have you ever been in a dark vent before?”
“Several times,” he answers seamlessly. “Once you get up in there, I’ll hand you the flashlight so you don’t have to be in the dark.”
“How thoughtful of you,” I mutter and reach my hands into the vent. It’s cold and I fear it will be icky inside, but the bottom of the duct feels mercifully dry.
“On the count of three,” he says and once we count down, he pushes me up farther and I’m waist deep. I feel his hands slip away and with a groan, I pull myself forward until everything except my calves is inside the dark air duct.
I’m scared as hell. The sides of the duct make it impossible for me to turn around, and I can’t see what’s in front of me. For all I know, there could be a giant rat in front of my face, ready to gnaw it off, starting with the little tip of my nose. I’m starting to panic, and an attack in this tight of a spot would be a dangerous thing indeed.
“Uh, Perry,” I hear Dex say. His voice is comforting but the tone isn’t.
“What?” I say as quietly as I can. My words reverberate around me.
“I guess you can’t turn around and reach for the flashlight . . . can you?”
I close my eyes and let my head thud against the cold bottom of the duct. “No.”
“That’s okay, I’m just going to stick the flashlight inside your boot. That way, when you get a chance to move around a bit more, you can grab it.”
I feel him grab my leg, undo the laces on my left Doc Marten, and shove the flashlight inside.
This has to be the stupidest idea ever. Some ghost hunters we are.
I sigh and then cough loudly from all the dust.
“Perry, I’m going to try and talk you through it. Just move forward until I tell you to stop. And when I tell you to stop, see if there’s an opening off to your right. If there is, go down that way and it should place you in the laundry room. At least, I hope it’s the laundry room.”
“Okay!” I yell, hoping my voice will scare off any hideous creatures that are waiting for me up ahead.
You can do this, I tell myself. One movement at a time, like a snake. Remember if you need to escape, you just need to back up and you’ll be free.
I repeat this to myself as I slink forward, feeling more and more like Tom Cruise. Or Garth from Wayne’s World when he keeps landing on his keys.
After what feels like a lifetime of wiggling and trying to refrain from vomiting on the infrared, Dex yells for me to look for a space going off to the right. I feel for it, but even though I still touch the same cold metal walls, there’s a bit of a breeze up ahead, flowing down the right side of me.
I continue, hearing Dex’s babbling from below becoming more and more muffled, until my hand doesn’t slam against the side as normal. I found the opening.
I take it, maneuvering like a rat in a maze, and wiggle in a new direction. After a few beats, I can’t hear Dex at all anymore and that realization fills me with dread. If I need to get out, I’ll have to not only back up, but make a turn going backward as well. In the pitch-black darkness, the idea is terrifying and disorienting.
But I continue because I’m determined to see this through. And soon enough, my eyes start to pick up something ahead of me. There’s just a little difference of light up ahead, and then my hands come across cool air and a vent covering.
My fingers wrap around the metallic grate and pull it up with ease. It rattles as I push it to the side and I stick my head down below, taking in deep breaths of fresher, non-contained air through my nose. I don’t know what’s below me, all I can see are a few red lights, which I guess are the on/off buttons of machines. There is some other light, though, spilling in from under a door frame, and with hope I realize that Dex and the hallway must be on the other side of that.
I carefully slide across the opening, distributing my weight on each side until I’m just past it, then I lower myself down, my legs dangling helplessly. I have no idea what the hell is below me, but I’m just going to have to hope for the best. I take a deep breath, wiggle myself out until I’m hanging what must be a good few feet off the ground, and let go.
I land on solid ground, although the impact makes me stumble to the side and my body goes flying against a desk that makes an impression in my hip.
“Fuck!” I yell. That’s going to leave a giant bruise.
“Perry?” I hear Dex call out from the hallway. I scurry over to the door, careful not to trip over anything in my way, and feel for the doorknob. I yank at it to open, but nothing happens. It appears to be locked from both the inside and the outside.
“Are you okay?” he asks and I can hear the worry in his voice. He likes to surprise me by acting human from time to time.
“I’m fine,” I say, rubbing my hip where the desk went into me. “But I can’t open this fucking thing.”
“Are you getting any reception on your phone?”
I tuck the infrared under my arm and bring my iPhone out of my jacket pocket, while reaching down for the flashlight in my boot. It works but the bars are gone. No service.
“No, are you?”
“No,” he answers with a sigh. “Look, I’ve been trying the key she gave me and it won’t open any of the doors here. I can’t call her either. There are some stairs at the end beside the elevator. I’m just going to run up to the lobby and grab Pam.”
“Dex, don’t you dare leave me!” I yell and pound on the door for impact.
“Well, what the hell do you suppose we do then? Hang out like this until a maid shows up? What if they’re done for the night? Do you really want to spend a night locked in there?”
No. I don’t. But I don’t want him taking off and leaving me alone in this scary, dark room either.
“Look,” he continues, “I’ll be right back. And I mean, right back. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
That’s kind of hard to do when you aren’t here, I think, but I know I have no choice. Either he goes or I’m locked in here all night. That thought is too terrifying to fathom.
“Okay,” I say hesitantly.
He taps the door lightly. “I’ll be right back.”
I hear his feet scurry off and a door at the end of the hall open. And then silence again.
I put my back against the door and face the darkness of the unfamiliar room. I flick the flashlight on and slowly graze it across the blackness.
In a creepy, fleeting light it illuminates a few laundry bins, laundry machines, and a makeshift office consisting of a whiteboard, a file cabinet, and the desk I ran into.
And a dead man hanging from the ceiling.
I scream bloody murder, dropping the flashlight and camera in the process.
They fall to my feet in an outburst as loud as my wail, and as I quickly fumble for them, the light in the room goes on.
I raise my hand to my eyes to shield them from the light and try to get a glimpse of what’s going on. The image of that dead, bloated man hanging by his neck is seared into my brain.
The laundry hampers, machines, and office are all still here.
The hanging man is gone.
There is an African-American woman who stands to my far left, her hand on a light switch, giving me a quizzical stare. She’s young and thin with large eyes, and is wearing a plain gray dress with a white ruffled apron across it. A very classic-looking maid.
“Good heavens, child,” she exclaims in a thick Southern accent. “What on earth are you doing in here?”
I blink hard, trying to make sense of the situation. The maid looks at my hands and what I’m holding.
“Are you filming me? Who are you? What is this?” she demands, her voice growing higher with each question.
“I . . . I’m Perry Palomino,” I stammer, my voice squeaking.
“Am I supposed to know who you are?” she asks and puts her h
ands on her hips.
“Uh, no,” I say and give her an awkward smile. “I’m here with my partner, Dex. Dex Foray. We are, uh, we doing a project here. We have permission of the night manager. Pam . . . something. She said we could come down here and film.”
“Just what are you filming. Charlie Chaplin?”
Hmm. How to explain the next part without seeming batshit crazy.
“Well . . .” I begin.
She cocks her brow at me and folds her arms. She’s in no hurry.
I let out a burst of air through my nose and say, “We’re ghost hunters.”
She smiles, her teeth blindingly white. She doesn’t sound as amused as she looks. “You’re pulling my chain.”
“No, no, sadly I’m not. We have a show, Experiment in Terror. It’s on the Internet.”
“The Internet?”
“I know, it sounds lame but we’ve been doing quite well. I mean, we have advertisers and people actually tune in to watch us. Well, watch me. Since I’m the host. Just not a very good one. Actually, I think people tune in to laugh at me, but whatever gets me a paycheck.” I’m rambling now.
“This is a radio show?” she asks.
“No, just on the Web.”
She frowns and walks toward me, eyeing my hands. “What kind of camera is that?”
Though there is nothing menacing at all in her voice, I flinch a little and back up into the door. She pauses and gives me another disbelieving look.
“You never seen a black woman before?”
“Huh?”
“I know we aren’t too common out west, but you best be getting used to us.”
Now it’s my turn to frown. I study her more closely. She’s at least in her early thirties; her pretty face is unlined but she has this authoritative air about her. Everything sounds like an accusation, but one that’s filled with a hint of doubt. Though she’s trying hard to hide it, I can see she’s as afraid of me as I am afraid of her.
I raise the infrared to her, slowly, as if she’s a skittish cat, and show her the screen, flicking it on.
She looks at it and shakes her head, not getting it.
“It’s infrared,” I explain. “It picks up heat energy.”
“Well, my oh my,” she says. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You trying to make a motion picture?”
“No, ma’am,” I can’t help but say. “Much less than that.”
“And you what? You hunt ghosts?”
“It sounds ridiculous when you put it that way,” I admit.
She snorts and turns around, heading back to the machines. “It sounds ridiculous any way you put it, child.”
“We’ve just been told the ghost of Parker Hayden is known to haunt this room.”
She stops in mid-stride. Her whole body is tensed up. It makes me tense up, too. I must have hit a nerve.
“Have you seen him?” I whisper, making sure the camera is running but not pointing it in her direction just yet. I don’t want to scare her, and just getting our dialogue recorded would be more than enough for the show.
“Seen who?” she repeats slowly. She still doesn’t turn around.
“Parker Hayden. The ship millionaire. He lost all of his money during the strike and then killed himself—”
“Don’t you dare speak ill of him,” she threatens in a low voice so raspy and ragged that it almost sounds demonic. “He would never kill himself.”
I bite my lip, unsure of how to proceed. I have no idea what’s going on, but those hairs are standing up on the back of my neck again.
“Do you know who he was?” I ask carefully.
Finally, she turns around and looks at me with tear-filled eyes.
“He was . . . my friend.”
I don’t know what to make of that. “Pardon me?”
“He was . . . my lover. I haven’t seen him for days, not since they threw him out.”
Oh. Dear. God.
“He wouldn’t have killed himself, though,” she continues, her voice quavering with emotion. A tear spills down her cheek, leaving a dark trail. “He has troubles but he wouldn’t have done that. Not Parker. Not my Parker.”
“Umm,” is all I can say to that. I slowly raise the infrared camera and aim it at her.
“You’re filming me now?”
Yes, I sure am, I think, and look at the screen. My breath freezes in my throat. Through the infrared, I can see my own hand in front of me burning a deep red. The shape of the maid, though, is coming out a steely blue, like the blue I saw in the hotel room.
I look back at her. And I realize I’m talking to a ghost.
“I said, are you filming me? Answer me, child,” she says, her voice angry. She wipes away a tear with a rough swipe of her hand.
“No,” I say quickly and lower the camera. “Sorry, I . . . what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. It’s May,” she answers. “I’d say I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Perry Palomino, but I’m afraid I’m a victim of some terrible joke.”
There’s one thing I’ve learned about the dead: they don’t like to learn they are dead. Things kind of go crazy when they do, like their entire existence is shattered and they go along with it. I mean, imagine you think you’re alive and someone tells you you’re dead. Then you start putting together all the pieces and BLAM! Your entire world is ripped apart. The very realization can make most ghosts simply disappear. The acceptance pushes them on into the afterlife, or whatever the next step is.
But for selfish reasons, I don’t want to lose May. I don’t want her to realize she’s dead. Because while I’ve got her here, in this room, I can use her. I can use her to get to Parker.
“When was the last time you saw Parker?” I ask her innocently enough. I still keep the camera aimed at the floor.
“Five days ago,” she says. “He said he’d come by the next day. I was here waiting. He never did. I reckoned . . . I don’t know. I feared the worst. The very worst.”
“Which was?”
“That he was dead, Miss Palomino. But not by his own hand. No, he that was murdered.”
“By who?”
“The sharks. Who else?”
My face must have contorted into a look of pure confusion because she continues, her voice and demeanor more impassioned by the second.
“The sharks are the fellas who he owed money to. You just don’t lose a boat without losing a few friends. These fellas meant business, and I seen them threaten him more than a few times. Parker went and told the police, but they do nothing. They don’t have no control. Parker would tell me he was scared. So scared. He’s a man who don’t get scared, you hear that. So if he’s scared, I reckon there’s a reason for it. They are after his life.”
The idea of Parker being murdered by men he owed money to is just as believable as suicide. I don’t know what to believe, but I choose to give the ghost the benefit of the doubt.
“Did Parker leave any proof, any records, that these men were after him?”
She closes her eyes for a second and it’s then that I notice a strange transparency about her.
“There was his diary,” she tells me. Her eyes open slowly. “It’s his checkbook. But he would keep a log on the back of the checks he couldn’t write anymore. Most of it doesn’t make much sense to me . . . If I could talk to him, hear from him, he could tell you himself. I just need to talk to him. Can you find him for me? You said you knew the manager?”
“Yes . . . but I don’t think it will make much difference.”
“Why is that?”
“Do you know where he would have kept the checkbook?”
“On his person. Where else? What aren’t you telling me? What are you really doing here?”
I look down at the screen and aim it at her. She glows a translucent blue. It’s beautiful, for once, and not scary.
“What happened to Parker?” she goes on, her voice cracking over his name. I don’t say anything but I meet her eye and I know, in one look, that she kno
ws the truth. Maybe not that she’s dead. But that he is.
Her face crumples. She puts her hand to her head and stumbles backward.
Out of instinct, I go after her, my arms outstretched, hoping to reach her in time before she goes over.
I almost reach her when she smashes against the floor with a sickening thud. The world goes black. The lights go off and I find myself on my knees, my leggings ripping open on the cold hard floor.
“May?” I cry out and raise the camera, hoping to see her blue form through the darkness. I only read my own heat and no one else’s.
I slowly get to my feet and try to flick on the flashlight with my own hand.
Cold fingers reach over my elbow in a stealthy grasp. I can feel the ice through my jacket.
I’m yanked harshly to the side until I crash into a wheeled laundry bin, and another hand grabs me by the face and pulls me over the side and into it.
All I can think about is the painful cold that comes from the grasp, as if permafrost is entering my veins and creating a sheet of ice on my face. And then I find myself face-first in a laundry bin, smothered by a million towels, and pulled deeper and deeper into them until I can’t breathe and I can’t scream and I can’t move. I can only drown here.
The blackness behind my eyes grows darker somehow, as if the dark has a million different shades and nuances and I was only scratching the surface. It’s a different kind of obsidian, one that signals the end, finality. I don’t want to succumb to it, but all I can see is this blackness, and all I can feel are these hands that won’t stop pulling me deeper, that won’t let go, and my thoughts become less . . . and less . . . and less . . .
“Perry!”
I think I hear my name, but it sounds too far away to be real. I think of May and wonder where she came from.
“Perry!”
My name again. It sounds familiar.
There is a rush of noise and light and commotion, and I feel more hands grabbing me. Only these are warm, and though they are strong, I can feel the care seeping through them.
I think of Dex. And remember where I am.
Moments In Time: A Collection of Short Fiction Page 15