Spider Lines

by Terry Trafton

  “I certainly would not call what happened normal in any way.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind, maybe we could talk about it later.”

  “I don’t mind,” Lacey smiled. “In fact, I think it’s all kind of exciting.” With that, she nodded and walked away toward rooms at the back of the house.

  “The upstairs rooms are not entirely furnished,” Ben informed them as they walked down the wide upstairs hallway. He was somewhat apologetic when he said, “Some remain exactly the way they’ve been for years. However, we have a couple of bedrooms prepared for you, which I hope you’ll find satisfactory.”

  “It must be an enormous job maintaining a place this size,” said Adrian. “Thank you again, Ben for inviting us to stay in such a beautiful house.”

  “Adrian’s right, it is a marvelous place, and I’m excited to see if there are other—uninvited guests,” smiled Liz.

  “These two rooms are ready for you.” He opened the door to the first, and across the hall, the door to the second room was already open. Though both rooms were sparsely furnished, new curtains had been hung, and, overall, these would be comfortable quarters for the two guests. Ben was glad to have the company.

  “This is excellent,” said Liz.

  “Each room has its own bathroom.”

  After thanking him again, Adrian suggested they get settled before continuing with “their work,” as he called it.

  About an hour later, they met in the library and spent a few minutes discussing preliminary strategies. Liz had definite ideas about how to lay it all out, and both Adrian and Ben were agreeable to the logistics she proposed. Maybe there was something to this paranormal aptitude as Ben had referred to Dr. Raymond’s expertise.

  “Let’s put cameras at the bottom of both stairways,” Liz said decidedly. “The primary corridor seems to be there,” and she nodded to the main stairway. It took nearly an hour to set up four infrareds in places that Dr. Raymond referred to as “hot zones.”

  The large landing at the top of the main staircase was backed by a stunning set of stained glass windows. Beautiful flower patterns in intricate lines and swirls, and cranes and butterflies were all caught in the morning light that washed across the molasses–colored wainscoting. Noticeably absent in these patterns was the religious iconography of early church stained glass. A walnut bench, which was an architectural feature below the three windows, was cushioned in burgundy velvet. This was one of Manning’s favorite places in the entire house. Late afternoons often found him sitting there with a book, reading in the warm streams of sunlight that lingered in the stained glass for nearly three hours.

  “It is truly stunning,” began Liz, as she regarded the stained glass closely. “I can imagine the excitement of living so many years ago in such a magnificent house. Can’t you just see the matron of the house pausing momentarily, before descending this huge stairway, and probably wearing a dress like the one you painted into your portrait, Ben? And the parties, people waiting anxiously for Mrs. Atwood to make her grand entrance. What exciting times this house must have seen.”

  Though she was speaking to both at the same time, there was a hint of nostalgia in her voice, which Ben thought exciting. It struck him a bit odd that her personification of Atwood House was so casually made, as if she honestly believed the house to be a living breathing thing.

  Chapter 8

  A few minutes before five o’clock, Jenna Newland entered the house through the front door. She was carrying wallpaper samplers, and when she saw two cameras set on tripods, she placed the books on a foyer table and went into the library to find Ben, who looked happy to see her. “Hi,” she said warmly.

  Liz, standing by the monitors, said, “Nice to see you again, Jenna.”

  “Sorry I had to rush away this morning.” Jenna shook hands first with Liz then with Dr. White. “When Ben said you were coming, I asked him if I could be a small part of this investigation.”

  “Ms. Newland,” White nodded courteously. “It might be premature to call this an investigation—more like curiosity at this point.”

  Liz put one arm on Jenna’s shoulder and said, “We’re happy to get all the help we can. There is definitely something, maybe I should say peculiar, about Atwood House, and it’s our intention to discover as much as possible about that incident on the stairway.”

  “What I saw was certainly strange—not easily forgotten.”

  “Must have been somewhat unsettling,” Liz remarked with an air of compassion.

  “It was certainly that, wasn’t it, Ben?”

  “It was all that and then some.” He laughed slightly, not wanting to attach too much seriousness to an event that might still have an explanation outside the paranormal realm.

  Computer monitors were set in a row on the library table. If there was movement in any of the designated areas, it would show on at least one of the monitors. Jenna, who was showing renewed curiosity in the current activities, detailed her account from the previous week when she was one of three witnesses who had seen the mysterious figure on the stairs. Ben and Dr. White observed the monitors while Liz listened to Jenna.

  Minutes later, Jenna pulled Ben aside. “This is fascinating, kind of like the big event in town. Do you mind if I hang around to see what happens?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Why not? It’s not every day something like this happens in Newburgh, Indiana.”

  “Like what?”

  “The ghost on the stairs.”

  “Come on, Jenna. Don’t you think that’s a bit much?”

  “Not at all. You saw it, too.”

  “I saw something. It could have been pareidolia for all I know.”

  “What?”

  “Seeing something that really isn’t there, like seeing a face on Mars when the image is nothing more than shadows and light, or seeing Abraham Lincoln’s face in a cloud formation.”

  “Yeah, I saw that face, the one on Mars. It’s spectacular,” she said.

  He regarded her inquisitively. “You’re playing me, aren’t you?”

  Laughing, she asked again, “So, can I stay for the ghost hunt?”

  “Stay as long as you want,” he smiled. “I’m actually glad you’re here.”

  A red light flashed, indicating one camera was activated. Liz watched the monitor intently. Although the camera in the foyer was focused on the landing, the entire staircase was visible.

  “What is it?” asked Ben.

  Without answering, Liz grabbed a forward-looking infrared radiometer called a FLIR, a thermal imaging camera, off the table and hurried out of the library toward the foyer.

  Adrian shook his head. “I’m not sure, but I think something activated one of the cameras.”

  “We’ve got a hit, a heat signature,” Dr. Raymond announced when the others arrived in the foyer.

  “It could be residual heat,” suggested White.

  Dr. Raymond slowly lowered the FLIR to her side. “The sunset, the windows face west.”

  “Yes,” Ben said.

  “Shadows,” she went on, “probably the wind blowing the branches of a nearby tree. The equipment is extremely sensitive and these false signatures have to be logged.”

  “How do you determine which signatures are authentic?” Ben began, “those that are . . . paranormal?”

  It was Adrian who said, “The computer records a determination, especially regarding the FLIR, but it’s often based on tangential evidence and observation analysis.”

  Liz Raymond shook her head as though something wasn’t adding up, and for her, loose ends were too frequently dead ends. She panned the FLIR from one side of the landing to the other, and then began moving it slowly down the staircase, stopping abruptly just a few steps below the landing. “That’s peculiar. The FLIR shows movement on the stairs. Someone’s coming this way.”

 
Ben, taking a few steps closer to the stairs, deciding closer would quickly support the FLIR image, looked at the stairway but saw nothing out of the ordinary. His arm extended, he brushed and wiped the air as though he expected to touch what he could not see.

  Suddenly there was a piercing scream. Jenna brushed one hand over the back of the other, and stepped hurriedly to the side, nearly knocking Adrian into the foyer table. “Something touched me. I swear to God, something cold and damp brushed against me.”

  Adrian, who was startled by Jenna’s disconcerting outburst, moved back and looked at Jenna, who had gone pale. “She obviously felt something. Look at her.”

  Ben guided her to a wooden chair beside the table and eased her down gently. “Take it easy, Jenna. This thing can get freaky if you let it.”

  “I don’t think she imagined it.” Liz seemed confident that Jenna had certainly experienced something unusual. “Something was there, moving deliberately down the stairs.” She looked again at the FLIR. “Whatever it was is gone.” Her grip on the plastic handle of the FLIR loosened.

  Hours passed with nothing out of the ordinary taking place. The autumn sky darkened quickly. Long claps of thunder announced the severity of an approaching storm. Already, the first drops of rain could be heard against the windows. As lightning flashed across a black sky, they sat in the library discussing how the night would lay out.

  While Adrian and Dr. Raymond considered whether to reposition one of the cameras, Ben lit the fireplace. Almost immediately the chill that had settled on the night, and especially in the room, relented. Though Jenna had pulled herself together, she had subsequent reservations about continuing her vigilance too much longer into the night.

  “How do you feel?” asked Ben after placing another log on the fire.

  “Have you ever been touched by a ghost?”

  Shaking his head slowly, he replied in a voice barely audible, “Never.”

  “Well it’s not a thing you want to experience.”

  Her fragile state of mind kept Ben from saying that what she had considered paranormal might have been nothing more than a draft blowing in from the hallway or from one of the adjoining rooms. Instead, he asked if he could get her something to drink. “As soon as the storm breaks, I’m going to make a run for it,” she announced.

  But the storm didn’t break. Its intensity raged late into the night. The curtains had not been drawn and as Ben went over to close them, spikes of lightning created surrealistic patterns in the windows. Glancing outside during one large flash of lightning, Ben caught sight of a figure standing near the stone bridge. Not wanting to alarm Jenna, who was asleep on the sofa, he kept quiet about what he’d seen and returned to his chair beside the fireplace. He thought his own imagination was responsible for the mysterious mirage in the rain.

  The night wore on without anything unusual occurring. That all changed at three o’clock, as rain continued to drum and splash the windows. It was Liz who first saw the movement on the camera positioned at the end of the hallway near the great room doors. Clearly discernible was a momentary shadow. But it was the opening and closing of the doors that gave the incident significance and veracity.

  “Look at this,” she called to Adrian, who left his chair beside the fireplace to join her. “I’d call that a serious hit.”

  Ben came over to look at the replay on the monitor and shook his head in disbelief as Dr. Raymond replayed the EMF clip a second time. “Someone’s in the great room?”

  “Yes,” proclaimed Liz.

  That the door to the great room had opened and closed was undeniable. It was not something imagined. It had happened. The proof was right there in front of them. Dr. White watched the monitor as Liz and Ben opened the two large doors.

  As Liz panned the room with the FLIR, Ben aimed the EMF at the center of the room. “Oh, sweet Lord,” she shouted suddenly. “Do you see this, Adrian?”

  But it was Manning who replied, “Remarkable, this just can’t be possible, and yet there they are, several shadows moving around the room right in front of us.”

  Rain beat against the library windows so fiercely that it was difficult to hear Jenna who was just waking from her nap on the couch. Stretching long and lanky, she walked over to White. Eyes narrowed and shaking her head, as though trying to shake off two hours of sleep, she asked, “What’s happening?”

  “We’ve found something,” Adrian admitted.

  “Ghosts?”

  “Look,” Adrian pointed to the monitor.

  “Wow, all kinds of things are happening in there.”

  In the great room, Ben came over to where Liz was standing so he could see the images in the FLIR viewfinder. For some strange reason, he recalled an Edgar Allan Poe story, Masque of the Red Death. He had read it in grammar school, and apparently it had made a more indelible impression on him than he realized.

  Liz handed the FLIR to Ben and took from her pocket an electronic voice phenomenon, or EVP, which she held in the palm of one hand. Shaking her head and looking excitedly at Ben, she acknowledged a strong reading.

  Wherever he aimed the FLIR in the great room, he saw movement—a lot of movement. The back wall was a backdrop against which shadows twirled and whirled. Lowering the camera, and then slowly surveying the entire room, Ben admitted that he saw “nothing, no movements, nothing at all.” Except for them, the room remained empty. It was only when he used the FLIR that images appeared.

  “This is absolute textbook,” Liz shouted.

  In the center of the room, contorted shapes jerked and twisted whimsically, while others moved in more coordinated repetitious cadences. Liz had moved into the center of the room and her shape was distinguishable in the FLIR viewfinder. Standing in pure amazement, Ben tried hard to conceptualize what he was seeing, but he could not. The room was alive. Yet, he and Dr. Raymond were the only ones there.

  Finally, and most importantly, was the deliberate way the shadows gathered in one corner of the great room before disappearing. They vanished in a strange procession of silhouettes, moving easily through the wall, leaving behind a huge empty room, shining in the brilliant light of two ornate chandeliers.

  Later, with light from the fireplace casting thick heavy shadows across the library, and rain continuing to beat on the house intensely, they downloaded data into one of the computers. Four apprehensive figures crowded around the library table anxious to see the monitor. The rhythmical movements of the shadows were frequently repetitious and coordinated.

  Music, and its presence astonished each of them momentarily.

  “Dancing,” said Jenna, “the ghosts are dancing.”

  “It sure looks that way,” agreed Ben.

  “This stretches the limits of imagination,” White confessed slowly.

  “It’s no longer imagination,” Liz informed them.

  “What’s the explanation?” Ben wanted to know. “What are we seeing?”

  It was Jenna who attempted to clarify what each had seen that night in the great room of Atwood House. “Ghosts.”

  Chapter 9

  Jenna left later that morning with the intention of returning with Lacey around noon, telling Ben that despite the “ghosts” she was determined to finish cleaning the upstairs rooms. In the meantime, both Liz and Adrian were busy analyzing computations, so Ben had a chance to look again at the articles Rikki Whitmore had sent him. As he leafed through them, he became more curious about what Liz and Adrian were discussing—even when he knew that what they were considering was extremely complex.

  “Look at these.” Adrian pushed his calculations across the table for her consideration.

  “You realize what this means?” he heard Liz ask Dr. White. “If you’re correct, we’re on the verge of one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the millennium.”

  Adrian nodded his agreement. “The idea of a separate reality coexisting with the
one we know—what an opportunity.”

  “A multiverse,” Liz added. “We actually caught a glimpse of a past event. We’ll need to test these data further to eliminate any possible kinks or inaccuracies.” She looked at White as she spoke. “But I think we’ve got something extraordinary.”

  White responded, “We have preliminary evidence that magnetic portals open and close at various places in this house. Invisible, unstable, elusive as they are, these portals do exist. However, there are no markers, no known data, which indicate in what respects these magnetic fields are similar and what their commonalities are.”

  “Incredulous as it may seem, something astonishing happened here last night. Technology has enabled us to glimpse a startling phenomenon, which would not have been possible otherwise,” confessed Liz Raymond.

  “We got lucky,” Ben suggested.

  “Yes—but more than that,” continued Raymond, “we have data that confirm paranormal activity occurring simultaneously in time and space, but not without some incongruence, leaving us with a mystery not so easily solved.”

  “To put it allegorically,” began White, “we have seen the other side of the looking glass and been over the rainbow. More to the point, we have witnessed an event that happened at Atwood House possibly more than a century ago.”

  Ben, wanting to remain in the conversation, stated skeptically, “I know what we saw . . . what the technology recorded. Maybe there is an explanation that doesn’t involve the paranormal.”

  “No,” Adrian persisted, “the heat signatures corroborate the hypothesis of a gateway or portal. We observed several figures that appeared to be—” and he hesitated momentarily before suggesting, “dancing, and then disappearing at one end of the great room.”

  “If you’re right, how do we find this portal?” Ben asked.

  “We begin where it happened—in the great room.” Dr. White was emphatic about what had occurred and his recommended course of action also sounded direct and discerning. “There are several accounts of magnetic fields with divergent locations, and most recently, both the Air Force and NASA have contributed heavily to the literature.”