The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run

by Matthew S. Cox

  “My mom still makes them at least twice a month, and my grandfather on my dad’s side has them every Saturday morning without fail.”

  “Traditions are nice.” She teased the fork around in the syrup. “Do you think I was too harsh with the pastor?”

  “Something new happen or are you referring to the last time you ripped his head off?”

  “He came back the other day. Maybe I let him have it a bit too hard. I just don’t get why he’d insist we have to go to his church in order to be protected or saved. Wouldn’t God—if it existed—just protect people because it’s the right thing to do? It seems so contradictory and convenient that he only looks after the people who show up on Sunday.”

  Adam slid his final pancake onto the stack and shut off the stove. “I don’t claim to know the mind of God… or the workings of the universe enough to say what’s out there. I do, however, know the inner workings of Mrs. Butterworth.”

  Mia whistled. “That sounded far dirtier than you probably intended.”

  “Did it, now?” Adam wagged his eyebrows.

  “It did. Besides, that mix is store brand.”

  “We’re cheating on Mrs. Butterworth?” Adam fake gasped. “Grandpa would have the vapors.”

  Mia nearly choked on her next mouthful when she tried to laugh.

  “See?” Adam leaned in and kissed her before sitting catty-corner at the table. “Pancakes make everyone feel better.”

  11

  The Man

  Tuesday, August 28, 2012

  Three cups of coffee got Mia through a fairly boring day at work.

  She finished the cleaning and spent the remainder of the day patching small tears or holes in the canvas, remounting it on a new frame, and painting over faded or patched spots to look as close to original as possible. The whole time she touched up the oil paints, she spoke to the young woman in the portrait like a dental hygienist chatting with her patient. That the patient, in this case, didn’t reply reassured her that some normality remained in the world.

  At 5:30 p.m. on the dot, Mia left the museum. She arrived home roughly twenty minutes later with a big, stupid grin at her wonderful commute. I hope this never feels old… having such a short ride. She’d never gotten used to the dreadful two-hour-each-way slog. While she somewhat missed the familiar surroundings of Albany, having no time whatsoever to enjoy said familiar surroundings made it a moot point. A random craving to visit an old restaurant or something could always be satisfied on a weekend.

  Adam sent her a text suggesting she just relax and he’ll cook dinner since she did so last night. She smiled, replying ‘don’t worry about it,’ and ‘I’m already here. Besides, you wanna ghost hunt tonight.’

  ‘You are the best wife.’

  She grinned and headed upstairs to change. A moment or two later, she had one foot in her sweat pants when a heavy thud rocked the floor from somewhere down the hall.

  “Gah!” she jumped, tripped over the sweat pants, and landed in an ungainly heap with her face on the rug and her rear end in the air. “Ouch.” Not bothering to stand, she rolled over onto her back and pulled the sweat pants the rest of the way on, then sat up and wriggled into a T-shirt. “What the hell was that?”

  She didn’t expect an answer, and nothing surprised her with one.

  Grumbling, Mia climbed back to her feet and crept out into the hallway. A lingering note of anger in the air raised the hairs on the backs of her arms. Other than that it happened upstairs, she couldn’t tell exactly which room the bang came from. Whatever caused it had been heavy enough to feel as a tremor in the floor. Perhaps one of the boxes of books had fallen over? Neither she nor Adam had yet been inclined to deal with lugging those around and unpacking them. They still hadn’t settled on where they’d put the bookshelves permanently. Maybe downstairs in the living room or maybe upstairs in one of the unused bedrooms, making a library out of it.

  Door by door, Mia advanced down the hall toward the stairs, peeking in each one. The second room on the left—the same door that had opened itself the other day—held most of their still-packed stuff. Like the other bedrooms, it had been devoid of furniture, the walls painted a cream color. The rug in here seemed newer than everywhere else.

  Mia tried not to think about the implications of that and contented herself at not seeing anything knocked over or broken. The remaining rooms plus the atrium at the left corner offered no clues as to what had hit the floor.

  “I either imagined it, or something ghostly fell over.”

  She collected herself and went downstairs to start on spaghetti.

  A little after seven that night, Mia perched on the living room sofa with a plate of spaghetti in her lap on a tray. Adam had arrived home before the noodles finished, accompanied by a young man with platinum blond hair he introduced as Paul, his teacher’s assistant who he’d talked into helping out with the ghost hunt.

  Fortunately, Mia had made plenty of spaghetti.

  Adam and Paul and got straight to setting up a night vision video recorder, two digital audio recorders, three hockey-puck-sized devices they called EM detectors, and a box that supposedly allowed spirits to somehow pick words out of an electronic database. Mia couldn’t even begin to guess how such a thing could possibly work, so she left him to it.

  The men joined her with trays in the dark living room where they ate in near-total silence, listening for signs of activity. She couldn’t take it after about ten minutes and proceeded to chat in whispers about her day—her rather boring day—at work. Adam didn’t seem to mind and shared somewhat more interesting notes about some of his classes. Paul occasionally smiled, nodded, or hmmed at the conversation, most of his attention on a laptop connected to the equipment.

  When everyone finished eating, Mia collected the dishes.

  “I’ll get it. You cooked,” whispered Adam.

  “It’s fine. You guys are busy and I’m bored. Tomorrow, you can cook and do dishes.” She winked, then headed to the kitchen, careful not to step on any wires or bump anything.

  For the duration of loading the dish washer, she had a light on over the sink. It didn’t take anywhere near as long as she’d hoped, and soon, she found herself back on the sofa beside a pair of guys acting like overgrown boys having a sleepover where they stayed up late looking for monsters—only with a few thousand dollars’ worth of electronics involved.

  She made a valiant effort to be interested, though watching her darkened house didn’t rank anywhere in the top 1,000 ways to spend a fun night. Only the off chance that they might see, hear, or record something that could help the spirit of a child kept her from insisting they wasted time.

  Adam and Paul took turns walking into the kitchen area and asking random questions of thin air. Whoever remained with the laptop monitored an audio level indicator that, theoretically, would graphically show EVP responses in real time.

  A little after 10 p.m., Mia yawned. “Is looking for ghosts always this exciting?”

  “This is fairly typical,” said Paul. “Ghost hunting is usually dozens of hours of boredom for thirty seconds of OMG did you see that.”

  She offered a sleepy smile and closed her eyes. At least they had a comfy couch.

  Mia awoke to a loud crash and a series of heavy thuds, squinting at Adam kneeling on the floor by the couch, gawking at the laptop screen, his face lit bluish from the glare.

  “Whoa,” he whispered.

  She looked around, noting Paul’s absence. “Your friend leave?”

  “I just heard that, without the mic. Like actually heard that.” Adam grinned at her. “And yeah, Paul left over an hour ago.”

  “What time is it?”

  “1:03 a.m.”

  “Ugh,” moaned Mia. “I’m going up to bed.”

  “Hang on a sec, please? Something just tromped across the kitchen. Can you try taking a psychic look again?”

  She stretched, sat up, and yawned. “Sure, but I’m giving this ten minutes tops before I go up to bed.” />
  “Deal. Something is active right now… the EM detectors are wigging out.”

  Mia turned to face over the back of the couch and stared through the dining room at the doorway to the kitchen. Small lights flickered in the dark wherever one of Adam’s various electronic gadgets had been placed. After a brief moment of trying to ‘clear her mind,’ she thought about wanting to pick up on whatever energy the little blinking dots reacted to.

  A moment later, heavy footfalls—not quite the smashing thuds she’d heard in the kitchen—rushed closer, wobbling the moonlight glinting from the windows of the china cabinet doors. Mia gripped the back of the sofa, resisting the urge to hide. It sounded too much like the way her father would pound across the house on his way to her or Timothy’s room whenever he thought they’d done something bad. Of course, Dad regarded all children as little sinners, so any denial of wrongdoing was a lie. All it took was the mere belief they’d done something wrong and their butts would face the belt.

  The moment the footsteps reached the arch between the dining and living room, a large-framed man appeared for an instant as though he’d walked into a spotlight in an otherwise dark room. Disheveled black hair hung to the shoulders of a dark blue jumpsuit. He marched toward the stairs in a forward-leaning gait, dead brown eyes staring fixedly forward with not a trace of humanity left in them. His stare chilled her to the core. A glint of metal, something in his hand, flashed by too fast to recognize.

  Mia turned her head to follow the source of the noise, which passed a few feet from her. The stairs creaked one after the next. When the disturbance reached the upstairs hallway, it ceased once again to silence.

  A mixture of motor oil, grease, beer, and body odor settled in Mia’s sinuses. She gagged on it, coughing, her eyes watering.

  Adam put a hand on her back. “You saw something.”

  “That wasn’t a question.”

  “It wasn’t. You don’t usually turn pale for nothing.”

  Mia let the air out of her lungs. “Yeah… I saw a man. Big… dirty. Black hair. Some kind of mechanic or janitor. He had on a jumpsuit with a name tag. I’m smelling grease or oil… body odor, beer. Guy seriously needs a shower.”

  “I think he’s a little past that point.”

  She smirked.

  “Where did you see him?” asked Adam.

  “Right by the arch.”

  He got up and walked over to the point the living room became dining room. “How tall is he compared to me?”

  “Umm… go to your left like two feet and come closer one step.”

  He did.

  “The top of your head is about where his nose would be, and he’s wider than you by at least the size of your arms on each side.”

  “Whoa.”

  Mia crawled over the sofa back and hurried into a hug. “He had such a horrible look in his eyes. I… don’t want to think about what he did.”

  “Yeah, let’s not.” Adam cradled the back of her head and held her. “I’d rather not think about it either.”

  Mia absorbed the love and protectiveness radiating from him while catching her breath. “I’m okay. Just needed a moment. Did you hear him go up the stairs?”

  “No. Only the heavy pounding in the kitchen and the crash.”

  “What about the stomping through the dining room to the stairs?”

  “Nope. You heard that?”

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Congrats. You’re a medium.”

  Mia twirled her finger in mock cheer and headed for the stairs. “Yay. This medium is well done. I’m going to bed.”

  “Wanna check the video?”

  Mia didn’t slow down. “I’ll watch it tomorrow night when we try again.”

  “You’re up for another go?”

  “I’m too tired for that, but if you’re talking about ghost hunting tomorrow, yeah I guess I can give it another shot.”

  Adam smiled, watching Mia go upstairs.

  With the giddiness of a schoolboy, he attacked the laptop, stopping the recording from the night vision camera. He restarted it to a new video file, intending to let it go all night in case it caught something else. In another window, he pulled up the last file and dragged the slider near the end. He soon found the timestamp of 1:00 a.m., and let it play.

  At 1:03 a.m. in the video, the heavy stomping echoed from the kitchen along with a giant metal crash like a dropped toolbox. At 1:04:21, a fist-sized ball of faint light floated out of the kitchen and glided toward the camera across the dining room before zipping off to the right in the direction of the stairs.

  “Awesome.” Adam backed up and re-watched it a dozen times.

  Light anomalies, as people called such finds, happened all the time. Sadly, no one but the ‘paranormal community’ accepted them as proof of anything. However, if they could find something more substantial, a catch like this would only help back it up.

  He yawned. “Might as well crash for the night.”

  Adam got up and went to the kitchen, taking a glass from the cabinet and running it full of water. Faint motion flickered in the corner of his eye. He froze, gradually turning his head.

  A tall humanoid figure made entirely of wispy shadow hovered beside the door to the basement. Abnormally narrow, the body warped and bent in an inhuman posture, more like a great gnarled root of a tar-black tree. Two pale eye spots in the head locked on him. Its stare caused a sensation similar to icicles piercing his chest.

  For two seconds, Adam stood there unable to move, the water overflowing the glass into the sink.

  The shadow figure leaned as if to rush toward him.

  Adam screamed; lost to blind panic, he ran. The next thing he knew, he lay flat on his back outside, gazing up at the night sky. The toes of his left foot throbbed in time with his racing heartbeat. He couldn’t remember how he got from the kitchen to being on the grass in front of the house. The stone walkpath that connected the driveway to the porch lay a short distance behind him. Blood—and a cracked nail on his big toe—told him he’d tripped over the path.

  He peered back at the still-open front door. No trace of the shadow figure remained.

  “Holy, shit… there’s something serious in there. Ow…” He cradled his foot, wincing at the sight of his big toenail separated from the bed, lifted up like a tiny car hood. “That’s going to hurt as soon as the adrenaline wears off.”

  Adam got up and limped back into the house. The living room once again felt normal, no trace of paranormal strangeness. Hmm. Damn thing is messing with me. Caught me off guard. He brushed grass from his leg, then went up to the bathroom in search of a Band-Aid for his toe. Wincing, he raised his foot to rest on the closed toilet lid, blood bubbling out from under the nail. He held a wad of toilet paper down on it until the bleeding mostly stopped, then used the Band-Aid to essentially tape the nail back down.

  It’s going to take more than a little parlor fear trick to run me off.

  12

  Stone Tape Theory

  Wednesday, August 29, 2012

  Impressionist meadow blurred into a disorienting smear of vibrant yellows, oranges, and greens.

  Mia swayed on her feet, stooped over the giant worktable at the museum. Three cups of coffee offered little help, or maybe they did as she hadn’t yet collapsed asleep. Usually, restoring an old painting—tedious as it could be—paradoxically excited her. Today, scrubbing at the canvas with a Q-tip felt like mowing a mansion’s lawn with scissors.

  Despite being the only person in the large studio room, she kept glancing around under the weight of eyes on her back. Almost a year ago, a high school class came by on a tour and watched her work for about ten minutes. The mood in the air reminded her of that, minus the constant chatter. Only a shelf of as-yet-to-be-restored paintings stood behind her. Her museum contracted out her services to other museums in the area as well as private collectors who had pieces in need of help. She didn’t mind working on artwork that wouldn’t be shown here as it offered job security.
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  Several days in a row of fitful sleep plus staying up too late last night made her susceptible to the mindlessness of her task. She moved the stark white Q-tip in little circles over and over again, etching a creeping line of clean across a canvas as big as two refrigerators. Every eight circles, she’d pause to dab the painting with a soft cloth… over and over again she repeated the cycle until the cotton tip blurred as much as an impressionist work up close.

  “Ugh.” She pushed up from the table, leaning over backward to stretch, then yawned. “I need air.”

  After walking around the parking lot twice, she swung by the cafeteria for an iced tea, then returned to her studio. Her boss, Janet Newman, popped in around four to ask how her move went, talk about the new house, and complain about the director of finance. Mia liked Janet, and got along with her more like another co-worker than her manager. Not wanting to be thought of as nuts, she omitted any mention of ghosts, though admitted to having some difficulty sleeping. That, she blamed on the major change of moving and expected to adjust soon.

  The last hour in the day shot by fast enough that Mia briefly questioned if she’d fallen asleep standing up. She cleaned up her area, covered the canvas she’d been working on, and trudged out to the Tahoe. If she still lived outside Albany, she’d have been sorely tempted to spend the night in a motel close by rather than attempt such a long drive in her current state of fatigue. However, with a roughly twenty-minute trip between her and home, she figured she could make it.

  Loud music and the air conditioning on high helped her stay awake. For the few minutes it took her to drive through downtown Spring Falls, the odd looks she caught from pedestrians or other drivers kept her on edge.

  Upon arriving home, she found a paper stuck in the front door—a flyer inviting her to Sunday worship at Pastor Weston Parker’s Christian Fellowship church. Mia shook her head, crumpled it up, and went inside. Everything appeared as it should, nothing out of place except for Adam’s ghost sniffing stuff, which he’d left set up. She groaned in her head at her offer to stay up with him again tonight.