“It must have been a bit over ten years ago now,” said Mara after a time. “The two of us moved out, in fact. We looked for a new place to live, but then... Agnes disappeared.” She appeared vaguely troubled as she recounted this, pursing her lips and toying with the edges of her shawl. “I can tell you the address of the house where we used to live, all of us, but I'm unsure it will help you. Why is it you wish to know about Agnes?” There was a glint of real curiosity in her eye.
Reggie wasn't sure how he could phrase his reply without sounding insane. “Well, I saw... I saw Agnes on a tape,” he started. “And something in that tape pointed me towards this shack out in Akeley, about three hours from here.”
Mara's eyes widened till the yellowed orbs looked like an owl's staring eyes. That she was keen to learn more about this was all too clear. “A tape?” she muttered. She repeated it a few more times, trying the word out like it didn't fit right. “A tape? A tape?” Then, settling back into her chair, she nodded. “Yes, go on. This shack. Where is it?”
Reggie pushed his tea cup aside. “I haven't got the address handy, and anyway, I don't want to get your hopes up. We didn't find anything there. But if I find something out in the future I'll be sure to let you know. If I could get the address to that house where the two of you lived with the other immigrants, that would be swell.”
Mara remained silent for a time before finally calling over to the woman working behind the counter. A short while later, the cafe employee came by with a pen and paper, and Mara hastily scrawled an address on the slip, handing it over to him. “That is the place,” she said simply. “Please let me know if you find anything. I am no longer on speaking terms with those that stay there; I'm not even sure that they still live there, in fact. If you find Agnes, please contact me.”
Reggie nodded, tucking the slip of paper away in his wallet. “Sure, no problem.”
Donning a thin smile, Mara leaned forward and held out her hand. “Would you like me to read your palm?”
Reggie chuckled uncomfortably. He was thinking of some polite way to refuse when Mara suddenly reached out and grasped his hand, baring his palm.
One of Mara's long fingers traced the lines running against his flesh. She took in a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and then began to nod. “Oh, yes,” she said, again and again. “It's just as I thought.”
Reggie, growing a bit nervous, squirmed in his seat. “What is it?”
When Mara finally let go of his hand and stood up, the motive behind her toothy grin was hard to discern. “You are destined to facilitate something great. You are on the trail to a great discovery, Mr. Cash.” With that, Mara began shuffling out of the cafe. The door closed behind her and a faint chime sounded. Reggie remained seated, watching her creep past the window and around the corner from whence they'd come. He didn't feel, just then, that he could stand up. Staring down at his palm in the sunlight he could still feel her touch on his skin. Touching the warm tea cup did nothing to banish the clamminess that now claimed him. The skin itched. Wiping his hand off on his jacket, Reggie stood up, left a couple of singles on the table and nodded at the woman working the counter.
Stepping outside, Reggie quickly walked around the corner, hoping to catch one last glimpse of the strange Mara Antall as she returned home.
She was nowhere in sight, however.
***
Reggie wrestled for some time with the idea of paying the house a visit. A house full of Hungarian immigrants who'd had a falling out with Agnes more than ten years ago: What good would it do for him to visit such a place, to speak with such folk? He doubted he'd learn anything useful, and even Mara hadn't been sure whether anyone still lived there.
Ultimately led by his curiosity however, Reggie found himself driving out to the house some hours later. The temperature outside was dropping and snow seemed a frigid certainty. Clutching at his woolen coat, Reggie parked the LeSabre along the curb of a narrow street and scanned the row of dilapidated old houses whose tenants glared out at him from behind mottled curtains. His gaze settled on the blue, two-story house at the street's corner. The lawn was overgrown and a laundry line overburdened with long-abandoned garments dipped and fluttered in the empty driveway. From inside came the scarcest impressions of light however, and Reggie started towards it. On closer inspection, a trail of smoke wormed its way out of the blackened chimney.
Holding his jacket closed and shoving the slip of paper into his pocket, Reggie walked across the lawn, up the uneven concrete steps and to the front door. He reached out and knocked, unsure of who might answer his calls. There was no way for him to know who was living in the house; there was no name on the mailbox, nothing he could go by. For all he knew it was full of squatters. He hoped the immigrants still lived there, that they would be able to tell him some things about Agnes Pasztor, though the longer he waited on the stoop the more foolish he felt for coming out there to begin with.
His knocking was eventually answered by a stocky middle-aged woman. Her face was a collection of creases, and her burly frame bristled at the sight of him. Apparently, she was much averse to company. The woman lingered in the doorway, scowling, and said not a word.
It was up to Reggie to break the ice. Donning the warmest smile he could manage, he nodded. “Hello, I'm sorry to bother you. I'm looking for a group of people who used to live in this house; people, I'm told, who used to be friends of a woman by the name of Agnes Pasztor?”
The bulk of his opening spiel was unnecessary; it was only at the mention of Agnes that the woman showed any evidence of comprehension. But when she did react, appearing not a little startled by the utterance of that name, her face went a shade whiter. “Agnes?” she said, her breath failing her like she'd been punched in the doughy gut. “Who send you?” she continued, raising her eyes to meet his and almost seeming to jab at him with her stubby nose. “Who?”
Reggie hesitated. “I was... I was just wondering if Agnes lived here,” was all he could think to say. The very mention of her name had been sufficient to upset this woman; he knew he'd gain nothing by being forthright. Playing dumb and pretending like he thought Agnes still lived there was his safest bet.
“No,” spat the woman. “No, no, Agnes does not live in this house,” she began, smoothing out her grey-black hair and muttering what Reggie took to be a quiet prayer. “Agnes, a witch. She is shunned from here.”
A witch? What was that supposed to mean? Reggie cracked a smile, cocking his head to the side. “She doesn't live here anymore, then?”
The woman shook her head fervently.
“Do you know where I can find her?” Reggie was regretting this visit. Still, the woman's reaction to talk of Agnes, her claim that Agnes was a “witch”, drew his curiosity. “And what do you mean, that she's a witch?”
The woman reached out and took hold of Reggie's arm, pulling him inside. Her eyes were locked onto his, her long eyelashes quivering. Taking a quick glance out into the street, she shut the door behind them and cradled her arms. “Who send you?” she asked again.
The house was smaller on the inside than it'd appeared from the street. In the little foyer, which was connected to a dingy kitchen, the only light they had to see by issued from a number of kerosine lanterns staggered about the counters. Three of the stove's burners were burdened with large pots, each of which bubbled with liquids whose scents he couldn't place. Deeper into the abode he heard the shuffling of other feet, hushed speech, and finally glimpsed a few nervous pairs of eyes leering from around the corner.
How was he to answer the woman's question? Should he have said that Mara Antall had sent him? He hesitated to mention the name of his informant only because he feared the woman's reaction to Mara's name would be equally severe. He was here, in the house where Agnes and Mara had once lived with the other immigrants, and stood to learn a bit about their pasts. The last thing he needed was to get thrown out. “No one sent me,” he lied. “I just heard rumors that she used t
o live here, with the other Hungarians. Is that not the case?”
The woman looked up at him, muttering something under her breath. Even if Reggie had heard there would have been no deciphering it. “More than ten years,” she began, “Agnes leave this house.” Raising a crooked finger over her head, she pointed at the ceiling. “Upstairs, her room.”
“She lived upstairs?” asked Reggie.
“She still live up there,” replied the woman.
Reggie felt his chest tightening. The warm air in the space seemed to momentarily grow chill. Agnes Pasztor still lived in this house? “She's here, now?”
The woman started through the kitchen, into the living room, whose windows were covered in thick, dusty draperies, and led him to the stairwell. As they went, other figures darted out of view. The house's other tenants, no doubt. Without another word she began to climb, and Reggie followed behind her with a growing sense of dread welling in his gut. Was the woman just messing with him? Hadn't she said that Agnes had left ten years ago, been shunned for being a “witch”? So, what was this about, then? Holding onto the handrail, Reggie wondered if he was truly about to meet Agnes Pasztor in the flesh.
The very thought made him want to run.
The upstairs was unlit, and a gloomy darkness enveloped the hallway. There were five doors, all of them closed. From one or two of the rooms could be heard muffled speech and movement. The woman's destination was apparently the room at the end of the hall, which she stopped outside of. The stocky guide paused at the door and seemed unwilling to go any further. In fact, as Reggie arrived at her side he noticed that she made a conscious effort to look away from the door. “Agnes' room,” she said, motioning weakly at the door.
Reggie wet his lips. The heavy wooden door was possessed of a thick, brassy knob. He stood before it, then glanced down at the woman at his side. “Agnes is inside?”
The woman didn't answer him outright, but turned her head slightly and frowned. “Agnes leave ten years ago,” she began, “but since she leave, no one go in room. Sometime, in the night, we hear noise inside. It is desecrate.”
The woman's English was rough, but Reggie understood well enough. He gulped, his throat seizing around a bolus of nerves. He wanted to speak, to ask more questions, but was at a loss.
The woman motioned at the door with a toss of her head. She was allowing him to go inside, to explore this space that she and her housemates apparently considered desecrated.
“Is it locked?” managed Reggie, appraising the knob.
The woman shook her head. “No need. No one go inside; everyone know not to enter.” With that, the woman started back towards the stairs. She was apparently happy to let Reggie explore on his own. The permission he'd been granted was a curious thing; under any other circumstances, he'd have been thrown out of a stranger's house. That he was left alone to search the room now was unbelievable. It was almost as if Agnes Pasztor's name was some kind of code-word, something that lent him legitimacy or made him trustworthy in the eyes of the tenants.
But then, what had been that talk of it's being an unhallowed space? Of hearing noises inside this room that no one had supposedly entered in the last decade?
The woman disappeared down the stairs and Reggie was left to his own devices at the threshold to Agnes Pasztor's former quarters. Steeling his nerves, he turned the knob and gave the door a push. As he did so, something in the back of his mind begged him away from the spot.
He felt himself on the verge of a great and terrible discovery.
EIGHTEEN
The empty energy drink cans clattered to the floor as Dylan shifted his laptop to the other side of his desk. His mouth felt like cotton; all day he'd been snacking on salty foods and drinking only highly caffeinated beverages. His bladder felt close to the breaking point but he didn't want to get up. The articles he'd stumbled upon were just too damn interesting to take a piss break now.
He scrolled, his wrist a little sore from the repetitive motions, and loosed a burp. Kenji was asleep in his bed, buried beneath a mass of covers so that only a few sprigs of black hair were visible beneath. Quietly, so as not to wake his roommate, he read the title to the article.
“Electronic Voice Phenomena: Listening to the Dead.”
His descent down the rabbit hole of paranormal phenomena had been gradual. He'd been looking for something to watch on Netflix for the better part of the day and had stumbled upon an old ghost hunting program. Watching a few episodes while sucking down Red Bull, he'd decided to dig a little deeper, figure out whether all of these recordings the ghost hunters had made were real or fake. This had led him to websites dedicated to electronic voice phenomena and white noise anomalies. For the past two hours he'd been riveted, going from site to site, article to article, learning about all kinds of different paranormal manifestations in recorded media. A lot of what he found was rather suspect, sometimes even humorous, but now and then he'd stumble upon a supposed spirit recording that carried with it something of sincerity. Hunched over his laptop with his headphones on, he'd gotten chills listening to messages captured on tape. The speakers were a mystery, more often than not, and he couldn't rule out the possibility that they were all fakes. Aside from the obvious forgeries where charlatans conversed with dead Presidents and celebrities however, the rest seemed somehow authentic to him. At the very least, he was open to the possibility that the voices of the dead could indeed be captured on tape.
His reading into EVPs and white noise led him deeper still. Photographers the world over had dabbled in spirit photography, capturing a wide range of images that were reputed to feature hints of the paranormal. Some were faked-- they simply had to be-- but others, which pictured strange blobs of light or curious shadows, appeared real to him. There were examples of spirits being caught on video cameras, too; Dylan watched more than his fair share of spirit footage.
All of this led him to evaluate the strange case of Agnes Pasztor in a new light. Since their return from the shack more than a week ago, Dylan hadn't thought about the whole thing too much. Frankly, he couldn't bear to. Even if he wrote off the queer sights through the shack's window that night as a nightmare, to think too deeply on the matter of the tape, of Agnes' voice, was to risk a sleepless night. Now, however, that he'd done a few hours of reading on the subject of paranormal phenomena in recorded media, he fancied himself an expert on the matter. Coming at it from a more scientific angle put a fresh face on the matter and cut down on the irrational fear the ordeal had inspired in him.
Creeping out of the room and down the hall, Dylan made his way into the communal bathroom. The air was icy within as he walked past the stalls to the first urinal. When classes were in session it wasn't uncommon to find guys passed out in there, or heaving in the sinks. Now, he was completely alone. Aside from himself, Kenji and Mike, no one had been in this bathroom for quite a while. It looked rather clean; a stark contrast to its usual messiness. His steps echoed and the hair on his arms stood on end. When was the last time he'd felt this isolated and alone?
He tried not to think about it and simply loosed the night's drinks into the urinal with a sigh.
Thinking back upon his reading, he wondered whether Agnes Pasztor was not a ghost. Her appearance in the documentary, along with her presence in the song Kenji had downloaded, could conceivably be considered two distinct paranormal events. If spirits were energy, like so many paranormal researchers insisted, then it stood to reason that Agnes' energies could interfere with recording equipment and end up captured on the finished products.
It was a pretty threadbare hypothesis, but the similarities between the recordings of Agnes and the EVPs he'd been listening to were uncanny.
Zipping up, Dylan strolled out of the bathroom and continued down the hall back to his room. As he walked he was painfully aware once again of just how empty the dormitory was. Or, was it? All night he'd been reading up on the supernatural. Some people believed that the dead were present at all times, an
d that their voices could sometimes be pulled out of thin air, as it were, and recorded. A terrible shudder coursed through him at the thought and he quickened his pace. At that moment, despite the lack of any visible presence, he felt like the silent hallway was teeming with furtive life.
When he returned to the room, he found Kenji sitting up in bed, wiping at his eyes. “How long have I been out?” he asked, pawing at his phone.
“A while,” replied Dylan, shutting the door. He made his way to the desk and plopped down into his chair, stretching. “I've been doing some reading,” he said, pointing to the laptop. “About EVPs and stuff.”
“EVPs?” Kenji drew in a deep sigh and let his legs dangle over the edge of the bed. His black hair was a mess, with several cowlicks sticking out in wild directions. “You still talking about that ghost hunter crap?”
Dylan scoffed. “Look, just because you don't think it's real doesn't mean there isn't something to it. I mean, look at what we found-- that recording of Agnes?” His voice trailed off a little as he went on. “What if it were, like, the same kind of thing?”
Kenji shifted at the mention of the woman's name and looked up uncomfortably. It'd been a while since he'd thought about the trip to the shack, the mysterious recordings of Agnes Pasztor. The two of them had successfully avoided any deeper involvement in the matter and had even begun to put it out of their minds completely. This conversation was evidently dragging him back to the shack, to the unease their discoveries had dredged up. The details they'd sought to forget were highlighted now in harsh focus. “What are you talking about?” asked Kenji, shaking his head. “That's ridiculous.”
“Not really,” insisted Dylan. “Think about it. If this Agnes is, you know, a ghost, then this all makes a lot more sense. EVPs have been captured for a long time now, and I think some of them may be genuine. The dead live on as energy, and when that energy interferes with recording equipment, or...” He paused, looking for the right words. He brought a can of Red Bull to his lips but found it empty. “Let's say that a dead person-- a spirit-- wants to reach out to the living. How could a disembodied soul do that without a conduit? They'd need some kind of outlet to make themselves heard, and I think that media... sound waves, recording equipment, things like that, would work. If the souls of the dead are energy, then they should be able to interfere with our recordings. Thus, Agnes wanted to reach out, tell the world something. And she managed to do so through audio and video.” Crossing his legs, Dylan grinned widely, pleased with himself.
Transmission: A Supernatural Thriller Page 9