by S. T. Boston
Lowering his raised hand, he realised just how close the towering hull of the liner seemed. Looking up at the passengers he could make out the colour of people’s trousers, see women in expensive looking evening wear, no doubt bought just for that very occasion. Many gripped cocktails or bottles of beer, likely sold at a price even more inflated than the coffee onboard the ferry.
Scotty watched the passing ship almost transfixed by how gracefully and easily she cut through the water, which was as still as glass. Slowly she began to fade into that haze, as if the boat were no more than the idea of a boat, then it vanished altogether.
The Esso oil refinery blotted the westerly shore. The eight-mile-long oil processing behemoth looked more like a city in the failing light of this hazy evening, it’s lit chimneys more like skyscrapers. Scotty had been to New York once with the band for a radio interview a few years back, that was during the time when Summer Sun had charted both here and the USA and some thought that their band, The Island, would be the next big thing to come out of the UK’s music industry; that was just a few months before the whole thing got shit-canned about as fast as the Unexplained UK Show. Scotty mused, and not for the first time that day about how his life had been full of almosts. Almost made it in the music industry, almost made it as one of the co-hosts of a paranormal show. Almost! But not quite. Consolation prize for you, son, a pat on the back and a well done for being one of life's many runners-up.
Back then, when the group had arrived into a bustling Newark airport full of building excitement at what the future might hold, the distant lights of the Big Apple twinkling in the failing evening light had not been a million miles away from how the lights of the refinery looked now. Soon, when night fell, the refiners and cooling towers would be hidden by darkness and the lights would be all that you could see. When that happened, it morphed even more and if you didn’t know the area you might believe that a sprawling city lay there and not one of the country’s largest oil processing plants. It seemed strange that hidden behind that vast industrial centre lay the New Forest with its miles of open tracks and free-roaming ponies. Tourists, or grockles as they were affectionately called by many Southerners, loved to stop at precarious locations on the Forest’s narrow roads to try and snap a shot of some dobbin munching the hedgerows, another unwritten rule or behaviour, just like the waving. When you thought about it, as Scotty often did contemplate such things, the area was a juxtaposition of marine, city, industry and sprawling countryside all thrown into one big melting pot.
Killing time, as well as enjoying the view – he still enjoyed taking in the sights from the ferry despite having done the crossing more times than he cared to remember. He sauntered to the starboard side of the ship and looked out to his east. Royal Victoria Country Park was now level with them, it had once been the site of a large hospital, used to treat injured troops brought back from the front lines of Europe during the war. Almost all the hospital had been demolished back in sixty-six. The site was now open parkland where families could relax, bike ride or walk various woodland trails. It being the summer they often had small rides for the kiddies or a bouncy castle sat in the middle of the green, where once a hospital ward had stood. Now, all that remained of the once famous Netley Hospital was its religious heart, a chapel that had no doubt been sanctum for those in their final hours or for those who had seen loved ones return from the horrors of war, only to have the Reaper cruelly snatch them away on home soil, claimed by death in the sprawling wards of that once magnificent, but now gone forever building. Maybe the odd soldier had sat on its pews and wept, looking for God again, having experienced things in battle that a loving creator should never let happen, things born from the greatest gift that God had supposedly given to his children, free will. Scotty wasn’t a believer in that particular dogma, he didn’t buy any religion totally. He wasn’t an atheist, more an agnostic that held the belief that there was something more to this universe than he understood, yet at the same time accepted that maybe it wasn’t his place to know it all in this life.
Musing over such unanswerable questions as he often did he took in the chapel’s cupola. It rose into that hazy evening sky that minute by minute birthed the coming night. Lights bathed the emerald coloured dome and their glow gave the top a beacon-like appearance. The building steered his thoughts to his destination. It would be undoubtedly smaller than the grand looking chapel that lay out there on the eastern shore, but had it been a place of salvation like this had? Scotty wasn't so sure. His mind ran over the earlier conversation with Mike before he'd learned of the missing kids. Well, one missing kid and one girl of eighteen, the pair seemingly having just upped and vanished as if into thin air.
After the Friday evening call, and then having spoken to Mike and Tara via Skype earlier that morning, Scotty had wanted to head down to Cornwall and get started. Whilst Tara was the location researcher, he’d done a little digging himself and had managed to hit nothing but stone, just as she had done. He felt sure that the mysterious Old Chapel, now a luxurious holiday home, had secrets, but the kind that couldn’t be learned from the comfort of your lounge. Some places required you to be on the ground and at the location before they’d allow you to learn their arcane background.
Much to Scotty’s frustration Mike had insisted that in order to keep costs down he’d not even consider heading Cornwall bound until the Harrison’s either checked out before the end of their stay, like so many purportedly had done, or made it to the end of their stay and went home happy. By three PM that had all changed.
As Mike spoke and relayed the implausible fact that the Harrison kids had somehow blinked out of a locked and secure building, he’d walked from his kitchen, where he’d been preparing a carbolishious dinner of tuna and pasta, and was behind his desk and firing his laptop to life. Before the conversation had ended, he’d booked a single crossing as he didn’t know when he’d be back. Earlier crossings had been full, it was the school holidays after all, but the later evening ones had slots available and he'd managed to book himself and his VW T4 in for the sailing leaving East Cowes at nine-thirty PM. Later than he would have liked but save for going via Portsmouth or Lymington there wasn’t a lot he could do. He needed time anyway to get the kit in order, check it, double check it and load it into his van.
There were times that Scotty hated living on an island, times when he felt cut off and remote, even though if needed he could be on the mainland inside half an hour using the Red Jet service, a fast catamaran style boat that raced foot passengers back and forth from the Island to the mainland all day, three hundred and sixty-four days a year. There were times when he'd almost upped sticks, as his mum called it, and moved to the mainland, but he could never bring himself to do it because the truth was, he loved where he lived, and it wasn’t that bad. If you had to live on one of the islands off mainland Britain there were plenty that were more that were a bitch to get to than the good old Isle of Wight, even if mainlanders did rib you about inbreeding and being married to your sister.
Being on the Island had actually worked in his favour, it was the start of the school holidays, and whilst many of its residents were keen to get off what he affectionately referred to as The Rock, more were wanting to come the other way. He had no doubt that in Southampton there would still be lines of caravan towing and roof-box toting cars queuing to get a space on the turnaround service.
Scotty lifted his phone from his pocket and checked his Youtube channel. His Moot Hall EVP clip had clocked up just over ten thousand views since the previous evening. He scanned quickly to the comments section and soon found one that read, Fake as FCUK, its poster opting to use the popular logo that had appeared on many French Connection UK t-shirts back in the early two-thousands. The comment had a hundred likes and its own thread of keyboard warriors bitching about how it was either real or so obviously a fake that you’d have to be retarded to believe it. Then you had the Jesus jumpers who swore it was demons and meddling with that kinda stuff was tantamoun
t to selling your soul to the devil himself.
In all honesty, Scotty didn't overly give a shit what they wrote, he knew it was real, he knew all too well that launching it into the snake pit of a public domain such as YouTube was bound to generate opinions from all sides of the spectrum. As long as people watched it and occasionally clicked on the inlaid ads he was happy.
Smiling at some of the comments he closed application and text Mike, Be docking at Southampton in ten, he hit send as the ferry passed what had once been Berth 44, where, in 1912 a certain ill-fated White Star liner had taken on board just over two thousand two hundred souls, fifteen hundred and three of which had signed their own death warrants by setting foot on the doomed luxury liner.
Scotty tucked his iPhone into his pocket and headed inside and down toward the vehicle deck. In a few minutes the call would go out and the free-for-all of passengers trying to get to their cars would begin.
Five minutes later he was in his T4 waiting to disembark. Whilst working for the council it had been his work van, having left for greener pastures, pastures that now weren’t looking quite so green, he'd converted the back into a camper. It was a functional conversion over a posh one. His van now boasted two single beds that became a double if the centre table was used to bridge the gap between the two seats and the backrests placed together. There was a small fridge and gas cooker. He'd even fitted a twenty-four-inch LCD TV screen into the bulkhead. The van was now designed for a life on the road. In the few months it had taken to film the one and only series of Unexplained UK he'd enjoyed many a night camped out near to the location of the investigation. The channel had booked hotels and the offer of a room was always there, but there was something about the feeling of being out there in the van, self-sufficient and on his own, a sense of freedom.
The rear sleeping area of his van was now stacked with many sturdy looking black and silver metallic flight cases purchased by Switchback TV and that now, unless they really chased them, were unlikely to go back. In one large case on wheels were two four channel DVR CCTV systems that he’d adapted to be fully portable, and their cameras. The base units could run four channels at thirty frames-per-second per channel and the footage then stored on a terabyte hard drive. The cameras operated in full HD, even producing unrivalled clarity in IR mode, as such they recorded a tremendous amount of data, hence the need for the terabyte of storage per unit. Four of those cameras had even been adapted to record in full spectrum, a pricey little adaption that had been done for the team by a specialist in the States. The eight cameras themselves were not wireless, wireless was freely available and did take a shit load less time to set up, but when using delicate equipment to measure electromagnetics the less interference you had from radio waves the better. For that reason, each camera ran off a one-hundred-meter spool of good old traditional yet top quality RG59 cable. In a matching smaller case by its side were four audio boosters with four sets of Sony over-ear headphones. If the case were opened each piece of equipment would be presented to you sat snugly and neatly in cut out foam to keep it both safe and in one place. The audio boosters resembled miniature versions of the boom mikes that TV sound men carried. When rigged to the Sony headphones they amplified the background sound and allowed the user to hear EVP real time, or that was the theory anyway. They’d yet to yield any solid results but Scotty felt confident that given time, they would. In another case of the same size were three MEL meters. MEL meters were electromagnetic field testers and temperature readers developed for the sole purpose of paranormal research. There were various models available, some with additional features. The kind that Scotty carried were one of the more original and basic models that measured temperature and EMF, electromagnetic field disturbance. He'd opted for them purposely with the belief that the fewer whistles and bells they had on them the less they were likely to go wrong. The MEL meter had been developed some years ago by a grieving father called Gary Galka, an engineer whose daughter Melissa had been killed in a car crash, hence the name MEL. Like Mike he’d been looking for the same answer, the one that no one could answer but countless tried, nonetheless. Accompanying the MEL meters were four of the more traditional K2 meters that fundamentally did the same thing but only measured electromagnetic fluctuations on a series of lights, as opposed to the more accurate digital display of the MEL. K2 meters were popular with TV investigators as the light show was more noticeable to cameras recording in low light than the digits on the MEL. Sadly, whilst more visually appealing they were more prone to interference.
The next case, a smaller one that looked more like the kind of thing a beautician would carry, housed three Sony digital voice recorders and three specially adapted full spectrum portable video cameras. Two GoPro Hero 5’s were fitted snugly into the foam in the corner of the case for good measure. They were about as much use as a chocolate teapot in low light but for daytime walk arounds they were the go-to bit of kit. None of the cases carried any of the fringe science equipment seen on a few of the more well-known American shows. Scotty wasn’t a believer in things such as the Frank’s Box, a device that in essence was no more than a detuned radio that scanned the commercial frequencies constantly. Occasionally in the static, you'd hear the disjointed voices of far-off broadcasts. Once in a while, they seemed to articulate meaningful answers to a question, but not often enough for Scotty to believe it was anything more than coincidence. To Scotty, Mike, and Tara the device was far too dependent on the influence of things from the world of the living to ever be a meaningful and reliable way of speaking with the dead. The most valuable pieces of his kit sat by him, in the footwell of his T4, wedged where there was no chance they could move. The two FLIR thermal imaging cameras belonged, like the cases and the full spectrum cameras, to Switchback. Valued at just shy of two-thousand pounds each they were worth just about as much combined as the rest of the kit put together. Scotty was in no doubt that over the next week someone from the channel would be chasing their return and when they did he’d send them Mike’s way.
Finally, the roll-on-roll-off ramp dropped and the first of the vehicles began to file slowly off the ferry. Scotty was relatively near the front and he was soon creeping forward. The ramp offered a familiar sounding CLUNK-CLUNK as he rolled onto solid ground.
Ten minutes later he was on the outskirts of Southampton, where the urban started to give way to the open land of the New Forest. His phone rang and cut off the radio, he’d not really been listening to it and suddenly realised that he didn’t even know what had been playing. Leaning forward he pinched a button to answer the call.
“Scotty, it’s Mike,” came the voice through the VWs sound system. The base box he’d built in below one of the seats gave Mike’s voice a deep guttural sound.
“This is the call where you tell me they’ve turned up and to head home, am I right?” Scotty asked hoping the kids had turned up and yet not wanting to head home.
“Wrong,” Mike said gravely. “I’ve just taken a call from Sue Reed, she just took a call from Carol, the mother. It looks like the place has been completely shut down and cordoned off. Only plod and their CSI teams in and out. The Harrisons are being put up in a hotel in Liskeard. The Premier Inn I believe."
“Have they found something?” Scotty asked, feeling his pulse rise a few beats per minute.
“Nothing, not a damn thing. That’s the problem, the local police don’t know what they’ve got. Lost kids? Abduction by a stranger? Abduction by a family member? As in the daughter, or,” he paused as if not wanting to say it.
“Something worse?” Scotty filled in.
"Right," Mike said as if glad he'd not had to go there himself. "So, they go on damage limitation, worst case scenario. For now, and the foreseeable that place will be treated as a crime scene. It means we won't get a look in for a good few days or more, but it's ours when they hand it back."
“No change to the original plan then?”
“One, I've cancelled the reservation at the Saltash Travel Lodge and booke
d us into the same hotel as the Harrisons."
"Can you send me the new postcode, I will be stopping for food and fuel this side of Bournemouth, I’ll change the destination.”
“Good, we are going to be there maybe an hour ahead of you. When you arrive if you just wanna get your head down then no problem, it’ll be late. We can convene in the morning.”
“And tomorrow?”
“As in am I going to talk to the Harrisons?”
“Yeah.”
“I – don’t – know,” Mike said slowly. “I think we have to play this one by ear. I want to get a feel for the situation and the only way we can do that is by being there. I have a feeling the place is going to be a media circus if those kids aren’t found overnight, this is apt to be the biggest news story of the summer. The last thing that family needs is the media getting a sniff that a team of ghost hunters is checking the place out."