Portraits of the Forsaken

by E. E. Holmes

  “I bought ‘em both at the airport!” Iggy said. “Couldn’t resist.”

  “He’s going to go broke on cheap tourist shit before we’ve even recorded a single hour of footage,” Oscar grumbled, shutting the car door behind him and stepping forward to wring my hand forcefully. “Good to see you, girlie.”

  “And you,” I told him. I gestured up grandly to the front of Pickwick’s. “What do you think, on first glance? Did I do good?”

  “Looks mighty haunted to me,” Oscar said with an approving nod. “But you’d know better than me.”

  “You’re going to have one hell of a night,” I promised him.

  Dan sidled up behind Oscar, setting a camera bag down on the street and framing the front of the shop between his hands, envisioning it on a screen. “This is going to make a great episode,” he said enthusiastically. “I mean, the setting alone—the cobblestones, the storefront, the proximity to Fleet Street.” He whistled. “The subscribers are going to eat this shit up. Nice one, Jess.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. Dan had warmed up to me in the years since our first meeting, once I had proved my chops as a sensitive and promised not to touch his precious electronics, each of which he treated with the reverence one bestows upon a firstborn child.

  “Hannah going to be joining us?” Iggy asked eagerly. His eyes lit up at the very thought, and I knew why. If I was Ghost Girl, Hannah was Super Ghost Girl. Her reputation for exciting paranormal events was legendary with the team, and so they always greeted her involvement with glee.

  “Nope, not tonight,” I told them, watching their faces fall just a little. “She got… uh… well, she’s got to work tonight.”

  It was basically true. Hannah and Milo were headed back to Fairhaven for more Council meetings that evening. Ambrose had grunted and groaned about leaving me behind, but I had promised to be a good little girl and stay locked in the museum all night. He had dropped me off in front of the place with a suspicious expression, as though he thought I might immediately make a break for it, but it was hard to argue with me about my safety once I showed him a picture of Iggy. The dude was 6’4’’ at least and looked like a good-natured ‘80s wrestler. Finally Ambrose grudgingly agreed that, as long as I stuck close to Iggy, I would probably be fine. No need to tell him that Iggy was basically a giant bearded teddy bear.

  “Come on in, you guys,” I said. “I want to introduce you to the owner, Shriya, before she takes off for the weekend. Then we can unload and set everything up.”

  The team followed me into the museum, with all the reverence normal people might have when entering a church. They gazed around with a kind of wonder, senses tensed from the first moment for any unusual sight or sound that might present itself. They weren’t always so sure of a haunting when they entered a space, but when I had vouched for the spirit activity, their confidence in the paranormal was definitely piqued.

  “Shriya?” I called upon entering the lobby area. Almost at once, Shriya hurried out from the back room, beaming with excitement. Now that the day had come, she was as eager for results as the team was.

  “Hiya,” she said, shaking hands all around. “Pleasure to meet you all. Welcome to Pickwick’s History of Photography, a hidden London treasure and, if your girl here is to be believed, a den of ghouls and ghosts.”

  “That’s a pretty catchy slogan,” Iggy said. “You ought to put that on the sign out front.”

  “I just may do that, when this whole investigation is complete,” Shriya said with a laugh. “Let me show you around.”

  “Do you mind if I record this tour?” Dan asked, pulling out a small video camera.

  Shriya reached up almost unconsciously to smooth her hair. “Eh, yeah, I reckon that’s okay. Are you going to… that is… are you going to use it in your episode?”

  “Not if you don’t want us to,” Dan said. “We’ve got releases for you to sign. You can opt out of being filmed, if you want to.”

  “Blimey,” Shriya said with a nervous laugh. “I’ve never been on camera before. Well, go on then. I don’t mind, if it gets customers through the door, in the end.”

  Shriya launched into a history of the museum and set off around the displays, with Dan, Iggy, and Oscar following her like eager tourists, posing questions as they went. I had promised the Trackers that I would appear in the episodes of the web series as little as possible, in the interest of secrecy, and so I decided to wait outside by the van until they had finished. As I made for the door, I saw Charlie waving cheerfully from outside.

  “Hey Charlie,” I said, pulling the door shut behind me and joining him on the sidewalk.

  “Hello, Jess,” Charlie said. “Have they started already?” He craned his neck, eager to get a peek at what was happening inside.

  “Not the actual investigating,” I told him. “They won’t start that until tonight, when things have quieted down. Right now they’re just getting the lay of the land from Shriya.”

  “Oh, right,” Charlie said, looking a bit embarrassed. “I don’t want to interrupt. I just wanted to stop by and give you this.” He held out a slip of paper, which I took. “It’s my cell phone number,” he told me. “Since Shriya will be several hours away, she asked me to be on call, in case you and your team ran into any issues.”

  “Oh, great!” I said, pocketing the paper. “I appreciate that, Charlie. Thanks. But you know, I could have just gotten the number from Shriya. You didn’t need to come all the way down here.”

  He grinned sheepishly. “You’ve found me out. I really just wanted a peek at all this. I must say, I’m rather intrigued about how it works. Are there Ouija boards involved? Crystal balls? Tarot cards?”

  I laughed. “I think you’d be disappointed. It’s decidedly more boring than that. Mostly we point cameras into the darkness and sit around waiting for nothing to happen. It’s about ninety-nine percent patience and one percent action. But, with a little luck and a lot of persistence, we might just catch something interesting.”

  “I see,” Charlie said. “Well, best of luck to you. Call my mobile, if you need anything.”

  “It could be the middle of the night,” I warned him.

  “Yes, Shriya told me. Let’s be honest, I’ll probably be up studying anyway. I have a little secret for you.” He leaned in and whispered, “I’m a bit of a bore.”

  I threw back my head and laughed in earnest this time. It felt good, to really laugh. “Well, if we can liven things up for you, we certainly will.”

  “Brilliant,” Charlie replied. “Well, have a good night. I look forward to seeing what you turn up in the old place.”

  “See you later,” I said, and waved him off into the gathering darkness.

  As I watched him go, the ghost of a small girl crept by me, peering warily into the museum and shaking her head.

  “It’s not what you’re looking for,” I told her. “I don’t know what it is, exactly, but it’s not what it appears to be.”

  She looked up at me, startled at being addressed by a living person. Her eyes, beneath a flowered kerchief, were wide and curious. “It’s a trick,” she whispered. “Isn’t it?”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I guess so, in a way.”

  She gave me an appraising look, startling on such a young face. “Are you a trick, too?” she asked me.

  “No,” I said. “No, I’m not a trick.”

  She nodded, as though I had confirmed what she had suspected. Then she whispered. “Please fix it. They get stuck here. They get stuck and they can’t find their way out.”

  I frowned at her. “Who gets stuck? What do you mean?”

  “The ones like me,” she replied solemnly. “They don’t know any better. There will be no rest for them, if you can’t fix it.”

  I thought of the spirits I’d seen inside, wandering back and forth, disoriented and wild with longing. “I promise I will try,” I told the girl.

  She turned her little head to the side, examining me quizzically, as thoug
h trying to decide if I was worthy of such responsibility. I never found out what she concluded, though, because she vanished on the spot as the front door opened and Shriya stepped out. She was smiling.

  “Well, that’s it I suppose. I’m handing over the keys to the kingdom,” she said, dropping a ring of old-fashioned keys into my hands. “I’ve showed your team around, and they’re already measuring and choosing positions to set up equipment. They seem like a good bunch of blokes.”

  “They are,” I told her. “We’ll take good care of the place, I promise.”

  “I’m not worried. In fact, I’m feeling hopeful for the first time since I inherited the museum,” Shriya said, turning to look affectionately at the peeling old lettering across the front of the building. Then she sighed and turned back to me. “Right, well I’ve got quite a drive ahead of me, and the auction starts early tomorrow, so I’ll be off. Here’s the information about where I’ll be staying.”

  She handed me a slip of paper, which I tucked into my pocket beside Charlie’s phone number.

  “You reckon you’ll be in here all weekend?” Shriya asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Typically for a place this size, one night should do the trick. I already talked to Charlie. I’ll get the keys back over to him when we’ve finished, and I’ll call you to let you know how it goes.”

  “Right, then,” Shriya said. “Blimey, I hope you catch something interesting.”

  “Me, too,” I said, though I had a feeling that our ideas of “something interesting” were vastly different. “Once the team has reviewed the footage, they’ll sit down with you and show you all the pieces of evidence that point to spirit activity.”

  Shriya shivered. “I’m trying to decide if I even want to see it,” she said with a chuckle. “How long do you think it will be until the episode is up on the website?”

  “It usually takes them a couple of weeks to edit it all together. This place should be packed by the end of July.”

  “Excellent. Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Shriya said, giving me a little salute. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I hope there are lots of bumps in the night.”

  I laughed. “Me, too. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  I watched Shriya drive off, and then took a deep breath. Here we go again, I thought, feeling a bit nostalgic. Just like old times. I promised to enjoy myself, just a little.

  Because Pierce would have wanted me to.

  §

  The anticipation was infectious as we prepared to begin. Dan was stationed, as usual, at command central, a long folding table that served as the hub of all the monitors, equipment chargers, and recording devices. The circuits for the building were woefully inadequate for the number of devices we needed to run, and so every gadget had been stocked with fresh batteries. Cameras and highly sensitive microphones had been set up on tripods in every corner of the main room, as well as one on the staircase leading to the second floor, and another tucked into the back office.

  There was no shortage of spirit activity in the place that night, that was for sure. Whether the electronic equipment would pick it up, I couldn’t be sure, but, in my experience, a location this packed with the dead was bound to produce enough tidbits of measurable activity to keep the team and their viewers happy. It didn’t take much, bless them.

  As for me, this was my chance to solve this mystery. If I succeeded, Pickwick’s History of Photography wouldn’t be haunted much longer. I didn’t feel guilty about that fact. Just a reputation for ghosts would give Shriya the boost in attendance she needed to stay open—the overactive imaginations of the tourists would manufacture the paranormal encounters in the future. My biggest concern was locating the source of the spirits’ fascination and removing it, so that they no longer chased after a Gateway that didn’t exist. With any luck, Hannah and I would be able to Cross most of them before the weekend was over.

  “Okay, kids,” Oscar said, pulling me from my musings. “It’s time to go lights out. Are you all ready?”

  “Armed and dangerous!” Iggy replied, holding up an audio recorder in one hand and a thermal camera in the other.

  “Locked and loaded,” Dan called from the tech table.

  “Let’s rock and roll,” I said, holding up my flashlight.

  The lights went out with a pop. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, which was tempered by the dull blue glow of the monitors on Dan’s table.

  “Holy shit,” Iggy muttered. I could just make out his hulking form on the far side of the room, illuminated in multi-colored glow from his thermal camera.

  “Already?” Oscar asked eagerly. “What is it?”

  “Cold spots,” Iggy hissed. “Cold spots everywhere!”

  Oscar and I crept across the room to join him and peered around his massive forearms. The screen on the thermal camera showed changes in temperature in a spectrum of colors. All around the room, large blue, amorphous shapes were dotting the screen, some moving around, some stationary, some appearing and reappearing before our eyes.

  Iggy looked up from the screen, mystified. “There’s nothing out here to explain it,” he said, wonder in his voice. “No air conditioners, no drafts, no cold temperature appliances. They’re just… everywhere.”

  I looked up as well, the difference being, of course, that I could see about a dozen spirits flitting in and out of the space, leaving the frigid footprint of their presence lingering behind them.

  Iggy turned to me and grinned broadly. “You weren’t kidding! This joint is jumping!”

  “Told ya,” I whispered, winking. “Jackpot.”

  Iggy gave a whoop of glee and began circling the room, jotting down the locations of the stationary cold spots and marking them with “X’s” made out of painter’s tape on the floors and walls, so that they could be more closely investigated later. Oscar followed him with the camera, narrating in a whisper as he went.

  “I’m going to try to get a feel for who’s here,” I called after them. Oscar waved a hand over his shoulder in response.

  I pulled an audio recorder out of my pocket, flicked it on, and held it out in front of me. If I had been your average ghost hunter off the street, I would have asked questions aloud and hoped to capture intelligible answers on the recorders when I played them back, a practice called “electronic voice phenomena.” But, since I would be able to hear the spirits clearly on my own, the device acted as a handy cover. I could carry on conversations, but still look to the others like I was simply using standard investigating practices.

  I started in the opposite direction of Iggy and Oscar, so that I could speak more freely. The first spirit I approached was walking out through the back wall, and then in again, over and over. Each time she did it, she looked around her, as though expecting to find herself in a new place. Her expression was dazed, her eyes out of focus.

  I watched her reappear three times before I spoke to her. She had a long white nightgown on, and her hair was wet and streaming down her back, as though she’d just stepped out of a bathtub.

  “Hello,” I said to her. “What are you doing?”

  She jumped back from me, startled, as though she hadn’t noticed me standing there until I had spoken. “What am I…?”

  “What are you doing?” I repeated, more slowly.

  “I…” The woman pointed to the wall behind her. “I’m trying to get through.”

  I frowned. “Through the wall?”

  She shook her head, and if she had been more than a specter, I would have been spattered with water. “No, no, not through the wall. Just… just through.”

  I watched her again, disappear and reappear though the wall.

  “Is… is this it?” she asked me, breathlessly. “Have I arrived? It… it doesn’t feel different. I thought it would feel different, somehow.”

  Her eyes were wild and brimming with emotion. I didn’t even know what to say to her.

  “You’ve got to get out of here,” I told her. “This place�
�it’s not what you think it is. You’re just torturing yourself.”

  “No, I… I can feel it. I know it’s here. I’ve just got to get through it,” she whispered, more to herself than to me. In fact, she seemed already to have forgotten that I was there, standing right beside her. I sighed resignedly and moved on.

  “Jess, check this out! This cold spot on the wall looks just like a handprint! This is wild, man!” Iggy was saying from near the cash register. Then he gave a yelp as a curtain near his elbow fluttered and jerked, as though the invisible hand had tried to pull it back.

  And so it went, for hours and hours; the team thoroughly delighted at every turn by some paranormal tidbit or another, and me, thoroughly frustrated by the spirits’ lack of ability to overcome their own confusion to communicate effectively.

  This was such a waste of time. I was never going to get any answers like this. The ghosts had no more idea of what was happening than I did. Right around one o’clock in the morning, I plopped down in a folding chair next to Dan and heaved a sigh of frustration.

  “You tired, Jess?” he asked, looking at me through his black-framed glasses. “Want a Red Bull or something?”

  “Dear God, no,” I said, making a face. “Do you actually drink that shit?”

  He shrugged. “Got to stay awake somehow.”

  “No, I’m not tired. I’m frustrated,” I admitted.

  “What? Why? This place is a hotbed of activity! This is going to be one of our best episodes yet!” Dan said.

  “It’s just… the spirit energy is so confusing,” I said. “It’s great that we’re recording the activity for posterity, but I was kind of hoping to figure out exactly what it was about this place that was attracting so many ghosts.”

  “And you can’t figure it out?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been trying to make contact over and over again, but they’re all really confused—lost, almost. I can’t get a straight answer.”

  “Do you think it’s important to find out why they’re here?” Dan asked, in a tone that suggested he hadn’t even considered the idea.