Death Theory

by John Mimms

They paired off on the first rotation, taking up station in the upstairs bedrooms. They were on opposite sides of the house so there was little chance of hearing one another. After about a half hour in the dark, Jeff and Elvis heard a shriek down the hallway. This wasn’t a high-pitched squeal like Pac, this one was much deeper.

  “It’s the doctor,” Elvis said, rising off the bed and grabbing his digital recorder off the comforter. He quickly strode to the door.

  “Be careful!” Jeff advised. “We don’t want to make a bad situation worse.”

  Elvis cautiously opened the door, and they both slipped into the murky hallway. They were about ten feet from the other bedroom when the door flew open. Pac emerged, doubling over with laughter.

  “Chicken shit,” he guffawed, stepping out of Jeff and Elvis’s way.

  Elvis flushed at Pac’s hypocrisy, but he was more concerned about Dr. Staples. As they entered the now fully lit room, they found Dr. Staples with his hand still on the light switch. His gaunt face stared at something unseen across the room.

  “Dr. Staples, are you alright?” Jeff asked.

  No response.

  “Dr. Staples?” Jeff repeated.

  The doctor’s eyes did not blink and he did not move a muscle. He continued to stare. Elvis gently touched his shoulder. The poor man jumped as if he had received a shock.

  “The power of suggestion ... nothing more ... or perhaps pareidolia,” Dr. Staples stammered. “Yes, yes ... it’s .... pareidolia”

  “What did you see, Dr. Staples?” Jeff asked.

  At first, the doctor acted as if he hadn’t heard him. He then began to slowly blink and twitch his mustache from side to side.

  “What?” Dr. Staples asked absently.

  “Roy, what did you see?” Jeff repeated.

  Dr. Staples took a deep breath and finally dropped his hand from the light switch. Before he could speak, they heard the faint creak of the bedsprings as if someone had just sat down on the canopy bed. Dr. Staples took a step back and pointed. “That’s where they were!” he hissed.

  Elvis walked over to the bed and placed his hand into what appeared to be a small depression in the lacy comforter. He immediately jerked his hand back and pulled the Kestrel out of his pocket.

  “What was baseline in here?” he asked, waving the meter a few inches above the depression.

  Jeff sprinted down the hall to the other bedroom and retrieved his clipboard. He fumbled through the pages as he jogged back up the hall. “The average for this room was seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. What are you reading Elvis?”

  Elvis waved his right hand back and forth over the depression several times as if trying to grab something invisible out of the air. Jeff peered over his shoulder at the Kestrel clutched firmly in his left-hand, inches above the bed. It read sixty degrees.

  “What the hell?” Jeff whispered.

  Elvis slowly raised the Kestrel over the indention. With each inch of altitude, the temperature rose dramatically. When the Kestrel had been raised to about three feet over the bed, the temperature leveled off at seventy-two degrees.

  “Can you feel anything?” Jeff asked, extending his hand forward.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty cold,” Elvis replied.

  As Jeff’s fingers reached a few inches above the bedspread, he jerked his hand back as if he had been bitten. “It’s got to be colder than sixty degrees!”

  Elvis shrugged and took a couple of steps back. “It sure feels like it.”

  An instant later, the hair stood up on their arms as if charged with static electricity. They felt a cool whoosh as if a breeze suddenly gusted across the room. In an instant, everything felt normal again.

  “Incredible!” Jeff proclaimed, his heart pounding in his chest. “Please tell me we had a digital recorder running in here.”

  “Yeah,” Pac replied. “On the table on the other side of the bed.” He had walked back into the room and was watching Jeff and Elvis curiously. “You mean there was something to his scream?” he asked, cocking his thumb at Dr. Staples.

  “I wouldn’t classify it as a scream by comparison,” Elvis snapped, red faced.

  Pac rounded on him, but before the fight could ensue, Jeff stepped between them and addressed Dr. Staples. “Are you okay, Roy?”

  “Yes, yes ... I believe so,” he blinked. “Very interesting, very interesting indeed.”

  “What did you see?” Elvis asked again.

  “I didn’t see nothin’ except for his chicken ass turning on the lights,” Pac said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Elvis said, keeping his eyes on Dr. Staples.

  “Perhaps I should reflect on it before I give a definitive answer,” Dr. Staples said.

  “Are you sure?” Jeff asked.

  “Yes, yes ... quite sure. Shall we continue?” Dr. Staples asked, putting his hand back on the light switch.

  “Okay, but why don’t we switch rooms now?” Jeff suggested.

  “Why ... so you two can get all the glory?” Pac huffed.

  “I agree, Jeff,” Dr. Staples said. “If you experience something it would add credibility to what I saw, of course I don’t know how to prove pareidolia. I’m certain it was in my mind.”

  “It would be helpful to know what you saw, Roy,” Jeff said. “Please tell us as soon as you are ready.”

  “I will,” Dr. Staples said.

  They split up and did an hour in the opposite rooms. Nothing happened. They then set up in the bedroom downstairs. About five minutes into it, their hearts leapt into their throats when a pounding echoed through the house. Someone was banging on the back door. They all entered the kitchen together, where Elvis flipped on the outside light. An elderly man peered through the glass at them, blinking in the bright outside light.

  “Is it time for breakfast?” the man asked hopefully, his bulbous nose pressed against the glass.

  “Wait one minute,” Jeff said.

  Remembering the owner’s instructions, he went to the pantry and retrieved a package of strawberry Pop Tarts. He returned and carefully opened the door. The man fell forward, almost tumbling to the floor before Elvis caught him around the shoulders.

  “Watch it, buddy!” the old man sneered at Elvis.

  Elvis released his grip and stepped back a few feet with his hands up.

  “Old asshole,” Pac mumbled.

  The old man’s head jerked about as if he was trying to figure out who made such a disparaging remark, but Jeff distracted him my placing the pastry in his hand.

  “Here,” Jeff said kindly. “Is this what you were looking for?”

  The old man’s eyes widened as he peered down at the rectangle shaped foil in his hands.

  “Strawberry is my favorite!” he proclaimed, tearing at the wrapper. He managed to pull one free and began to greedily nibble at the edges, spilling a cascade of crumbs onto the floor.

  “Why don’t you allow me to escort you home?” Dr. Staples said, stepping forward.

  “Yeah, why don’t you go shrink his head,” Pac suggested. “God knows he needs it.”

  The man ignored them as he nibbled at the breakfast treat.

  Dr. Staples took a couple of steps closer and touched the man’s arm. He let out a low mewling and continued to smack. He didn’t object when Dr. Staples began to lead him toward the door.

  “Would you like an escort, Roy?” Jeff asked.

  “No, I don’t believe so,” he said. “It will be fine.”

  “Here,” Elvis said, handing him a flashlight. “It doesn’t seem the street lights are very bright around here.”

  “Thank you,” Dr. Staples said, taking the light.

  A few moments later, he and the old man disappeared around the corner of the house.

  Jeff smiled when he thought, if they got lost, they could follow the trail of Pop Tart crumbs.

  “Well, when Dr. Staples gets back, I guess we should call it a night,” Jeff announced, glancing at his watch.

  “How come we always have some idiot me
ssing up our investigations?” Pac huffed.

  Neither Jeff, nor Elvis knew what he meant ... unless he was calling himself an idiot. He was the one who had screamed and then run away on an investigation.

  Pac said he was going to do another EVP session upstairs while Jeff and Elvis packed the equipment away. They were too tired and frustrated to argue that he needed to be part of the team and help with the packing, so they left him to his own devices. He traipsed up the stairs and disappeared into the bedroom where he and Dr. Staples had been a brief time earlier. He gingerly closed the door behind him as Jeff and Elvis watched from near the front door.

  “Little bastard left the light on,” Elvis remarked, noting the light still shining underneath the door.

  “Oh, well,” Jeff said. “Maybe he will get something.”

  They finished packing and had been sitting in the small den downstairs for a while when Dr. Staples finally returned.

  “Everything okay?” Jeff asked.

  “I think so ... at least for now,” Dr. Staples said. “I believe the poor fellow has Alzheimer’s ... I think he has suffered with it for a while.”

  “He lives by himself?” Elvis asked.

  “It seems so,” Dr. Staples replied. “I didn’t get many answers from him ... he went straight to bed.”

  “Well, I guess it is time we got Pac and lock this place down before we leave,” Jeff said.

  “He’s already gone,” Dr. Staples said. “I saw him driving away on my way back. I think I heard him mumbling something about his mother.”

  “That’s impossible,” Elvis said. “We’ve been down here the whole time. He never came past us.”

  Jeff turned and trotted up the stairs. He opened the door to the bedroom where Pac had disappeared earlier. The light was still on, but the room was empty. He then checked out the other rooms upstairs, still no Pac.

  “I don’t understand,” Jeff said. “How could he have gotten out without jumping out a window?”

  The words had no sooner left his mouth when he noticed something odd. The curtains on the window of the room Pac had been in were pulled slightly to one side. When he investigated, he discovered the drapes did not cover a window, instead they concealed a door. Jeff pulled the curtains back and tried the latch; it was unlocked. He slowly opened the door and stepped out onto a veranda. Near the corner of the house, a set of stairs descended into the yard.

  “Odd bird,” Jeff muttered as he closed the door and locked it.

  “I don’t get it,” Elvis said when they came back downstairs. “Why would he tell us he is doing EVPs and then run off?”

  “Perhaps he had a family emergency,” Dr. Staples suggested. “I did hear him muttering something about his mother.”

  “Yeah ... poor kid,” Elvis said. “She is not very nice to him.”

  He answered their incredulous stares with a brief retelling of Pac at his grandmother’s funeral.

  “Interesting,” Dr. Staples said thoughtfully.

  As they were about to lock up and head home for the evening, Jeff called Dr. Staples to the side.

  “Have you given more thought as to what you saw up there?” he asked.

  Dr. Staples frowned and then nodded.

  “I can’t think of another explanation ... though I am sure there is one. I can’t tell you what I saw, but I can tell you what I think I saw.”

  Jeff waited patiently for a response. When it came, his skin crawled because it was familiar, too familiar, with an experience the owner had shared with him.

  “Eyes ... horrible red eyes,” Dr. Staples whispered.

  Chapter 23

  DR. STAPLES HOSTED a training session at his home the following Saturday afternoon. The doctor lived by himself in a large two-story Tudor. The house sat on a hillside about ten miles outside of Springfield, encircled by a hundred-acre plot of timber. The ten-acre yard immediately surrounding the house contained a smattering of old oaks, a large shed, and a clearing with a couple of recently planted trees. The view of the Ozarks to the south was breathtaking.

  “On a hazy day, you can see Branson, but on a clear day, you can see all the way to Arkansas,” Dr. Staples boasted.

  It was only a week until Halloween and the fall foliage blazed in all its glory. A sea of amber, gold, and auburn stretched all the way to the horizon.

  The doctor had an old John Deere backhoe parked underneath a small metal carport besides the clearing. Dr. Staples led them to the split rail fence enveloping the clearing. Inside the fence, there stood two eight-foot trees planted in a straight row. Nursery tags still dangled from their branches.

  “Trying to do my part to be green,” Dr. Staples said, pointing to the trees. “I decided to plant an apple tree in recognition of successes.”

  Debbie, Jeff, and Elvis rested their elbows on the top rail as they admired Dr. Staples’s young apple grove. Pac lumbered around the yard like a blatant voyeur.

  “What successes, Dr. Staples?” Jeff asked.

  “Please call me Roy; we are informal today.”

  “Sorry, Roy,” Jeff amended.

  Roy waved his hand at the trees like a magician performing his reveal.

  “I planted these two trees for two successes in recent weeks. One was my own, when I had a huge breakthrough with a patient of mine.” Debbie’s stomach did back flips.

  “The second belongs to you,” he continued, giving the group a reverent nod. “From what I hear, you did a fine job of helping the old woman out with her fears last week. Kudos!”

  “Pretty straight forward,” Jeff shrugged.

  “Have you given any more thought to your experience earlier this week?” Jeff asked.

  “Not much,” Dr. Staples admitted. “I’m sure I will come up with a rational explanation if I consider it long enough. Perhaps, I should have someone shrink my own head,” he chuckled.

  Debbie overheard. She didn’t find the remark humorous at all. “I think Pac has some interesting evidence,” she interrupted.

  “Yep,” Jeff said. “We will get to listen to it in a little while.”

  “I believe we should all help the planet,” the doctor said, turning back to his trees. “Everyone should go green to stop global warming.”

  Pac walked up at that moment and rolled his eyes.

  “You disagree, Pac?” Dr. Staples asked.

  Everyone tensed as Pac prepared a rebuttal. Would he threaten to break the old man’s arm like he did the waitress last week?

  “Everyone knows global warming is a crock of shit,” Pac huffed.

  “I don’t know about everybody,” the doctor replied, pleasantly. “Former Vice President Gore made some pretty good points on the subject in his documentary.”

  “An Inconvenient Truth?” Pac spat, and then laughed. “He made most of it up...it’s a proven fact! It’s more like An Incompetent Goof!”

  Jeff intervened before the Rush Limbaugh – Bill Maher smack down could get started. “What is that house?” he asked pointing to a small, one-story cottage behind the main house.

  “Well, it was my guest house, but nobody has used it in years. It’s now our official lab and headquarters!” Dr. Staples said.

  “Mind if we check it out?” Elvis asked.

  “By all means!” the doctor said. “It’s where the equipment is stored anyway.”

  He led them to the front door of the guesthouse. Upon closer inspection, it was not a house at all, but more like a Tudor style shed. The only openings were a double door large enough to drive a small car through. Two small windows flanked the door about seven feet off the ground. Dr. Staples took out a set of keys. He opened a padlock holding a chain wrapped around the door handles.

  When he pulled the doors open, they couldn’t see anything at first. He fumbled for a moment beside the door until he found the switch. The florescent valences flared to life, revealing an odd scene.

  The “guest house” was a one-room studio. There might be two rooms, a door in the far-right corner led to either a c
loset or tiny bathroom. The building was around twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep. A small kitchen occupied the far-left corner. Nothing more than a small refrigerator, electric stove, and sink filled its plain interior. The only cabinet sat under the sole section of countertop, which was no larger than a serving plate. The kitchen was a recent, economic improvement to the quarters.

  The rest of the guesthouse was absent of any furniture, except a couple of folding tables. They sat end to end along the right-hand wall. A haphazard arrangement of assorted brown and white boxes rested underneath. On top of the tables sat four durable black equipment cases with the name SMS PAST stenciled on the sides.

  When they entered, a faint musty scent met their nose. Dr. Staples had managed to keep the place somewhat clean despite its lack of use. Jeff and Elvis’s gaze immediately fell on the equipment cases. Their eyes lit up like a child’s on Christmas morning.

  “Is this it?” Jeff asked. It was a stupid question considering he already read the group’s name stenciled on the side.

  “Yes, of course!” the doctor beamed, removing a small set of keys from his pocket. He held up a key ring with three small keys. “These are the keys...I’m not sure which goes to which so you’ll have to figure it out.”

  Jeff took the keys and practically skipped to the table. Everyone formed a semi- circle behind him. It took two tries to find the right key for the first case but Jeff soon had it opened. He slowly pulled out a FLIR thermal camera. Jeff told the team to be careful and he would pass it around.

  “It’s a very expensive piece of equipment,” Jeff told them.

  “I agree,” Dr. Staples said.

  Elvis revered it like a holy relic while Debbie acted as if she was holding something radioactive. When Pac’s turn came, he surprised everyone with his knowledge. He started the camera up, adjusted the color palette, emissivity, and focus. He then began to walk around the room, examining walls and the ceiling.

  “Have you used one of those before, Pac?” Debbie asked, incredulously.

  He adjusted the focus and said, “Nah, I’ve seen them on TV so much...it’s not hard to figure out.”

  What he saw on the screen disappointed him. There is an urban legend claiming a thermal camera can see through clothing. He found this was not the case, unless Debbie wore lead underwear.