“Mr. Pruitt,” Snow said. “I suggest you reign in your charges. They look as if they are about to attack the investigators.”
“So what if they do?” Roy said as he turned to the side and spat once again. “Stupid breathers pokin’ their noses where they don’t belong, who’s to mind if they get a little banged up?”
“Well for one, we mind,” Snow said his voice and tone calm but firm. Cadence knew his body language better, however. He was standing straight with his hands loose at his sides. He was ready to take action if need be.
“Damn, you two are easy,” Roy said after a moment, breaking into an enormous smile. Some of the inmates snickered. “Almost ain’t worth tryin’ to get yer goat.”
One of the inmates near Liam reached over and tugged on the bottom of the ghost hunter’s coat hard enough to pull him back a step.
“Woah, did you see that?” Liam exclaimed.
The inmate looked over at Snow and Cadence. “Gotta give them a little something to talk about, right?” the man said. There was still an edge to the man’s voice and an underlying threat in the atmosphere that hadn’t eased despite Roy’s trying to pass all this off as a joke.
“See what?” It was Teeny who turned to talk to Liam.
“Something tugged the back of my coat hard enough to pull me back,” Liam said. “Damn, were you not watching?”
“I was facing that way, sorry,” she said as she gestured to the wall that held the door back out to the hall and cell blocks.
“I wasn’t looking but my camera was pointed towards you, it might have caught something,” Aiden said, moving forward from the back of the room. Both Snow and Cadence moved over to the group of the living as they huddled around the camera Aiden held as he rewound the last few minutes of footage.
“There!” Liam crowed, his voice echoing in the empty concrete room. “You can see the pull on my coat.”
Aiden rewound the footage once more, and sure enough, the fact that Liam’s coat was tugged on was clear. There was nothing visible that could have tugged on it, and nothing around Liam it could have snagged on.
Snow nodded a bit. This was exactly the kind of thing that the ghosts were allowed to do. No other evidence was there, just the unexplainable tug. He relaxed a little. Mr. Pruitt did seem to have this all well in hand after all.
“We know what we’re doin’ around here,” Roy said. “And these guys, most of ‘em that’s left here anyway, they ain’t so bad.”
“Just bored,” the inmate who tugged on Liam’s coat said as he reached up to scratch at his chin beneath his brown beard. “Messing with these guys is about the only fun we get to have anymore.” With that, he flicked Liam in the ear before stepping away and walking out the door of the cafeteria.
“Ow!” Liam jumped, his head tilting to one side as he quickly covered his ear.
“Now what?” Teeny’s voice expressed both her exasperation with her partner’s antics and excitement about the possible activity as Liam jumped and covered his ear.
“Someone pinched my ear,” he said, his tone somewhat petulant.
“Isn’t touching you exactly what you asked them to do?” Aiden couldn’t believe the guy was such a baby about such a small thing.
Cadence snickered, and Snow gave her a somewhat disapproving look, though he was fighting to hide his own smile as well.
“Yeah, I was fine with the tug on my coat, thank you,” Liam said, his voice sharp as he replied to Aiden. “Big difference between a touch and a touch that hurts.”
“Okay, so then you only want the ghosts to give you good touches, not bad touches?” Teeny said, a smile crooking the corner of one side of her mouth. “Should we teach them the “No-No Square” song?”
“Very funny,” Liam said with a huff. “Let’s just keep moving.”
“Uhm, no,” Teeny said. “This is where that riot took place in the ’70s. A bunch of people was killed. We should stay and try some communicating.”
“They’re communicating,” Liam said. “They have touched and pinched. I thought you wanted to set up your experiment.”
“I do, but we have time,” Teeny said. She sat down on the dirty, dusty floor, crossing her legs. “Right now I think we need to do a little work in here. Aiden, we usually sit back to back so that our body cameras are facing out, that way we have a better chance of recording anything that happens. So let’s all sit back to back in a kind of triangle and do some EVP.”
Aiden nodded and took a seat on the floor next to her, turned slightly. Liam joined them, and they sat on the cold floor, feeling the iciness of the winter weather seep up into their flesh from the concrete. They were shoulder-to-shoulder, their body cameras and handheld cameras catching most of the room.
“For all their snipping with each other and prissiness, they’re smart on their coverage,” Cadence said.
“Yes, but most of the spirits have left the cafeteria at this point. Which is probably good since Liam there has proven he is easy to unsettle,” Snow said.
“No kidding. Hell, I half want to go mess with Liam just to see his reaction,” Cadence said with a mischievous grin.
“Cadence,” Snow said, his tone one of warning.
“Oh, calm down, Ozzy, I’m not going to do it. But the temptation is strong, just to piss him off.” She grinned again, and despite Snow’s shaking his head, she knew he was amused at the very least. “You have to admit it’s funny. He acts all tough, calling out the ghosts, insulting them, but then when something happens to him, he gets all upset and pouty about it.”
“We want to contact the spirits of those killed in the prison riot forty years ago,” Teeny said, holding out her voice recorder. “Are you here with us?”
Roy wandered back over to Snow and Cadence after the last inmate left the cafeteria. “They’ve gone back to their cells. Night ain’t a good time to be wanderin’ around this place.” He turned and looked over at the three breathers sitting on the floor and shook his head. “Dumb as the dirt they’re sittin’ on ain’t they?”
“Why do you say that, Mr. Pruitt?” Snow’s clipped British accent made every utterance sound prim and proper, even if what he said was just conversational.
“Well,” Roy said, “number one they’re sitting on a bare concrete floor in what is now pretty much an open to the outdoors room since the glass’s been broken out of the windows, and it’s winter. They’re gonna catch their death if they stay there too long. And B, cause they’re here at night. I’m tellin’ ya, this ain’t a place to mess with at night.”
Cadence decided to ignore the mixed bullet point references. “You keep saying that, and I know you and Whitfield were talking about some kind of thing made from bits of souls killed here, but what makes it so dangerous? Does it kill breathers? Ghosts? Hurt people?”
“It just is,” Roy said with a shrug. “You see the broken glass over there, that window?” He pointed out the broken window closest to the archway that led back into the kitchen.
“Yeah,” Cadence said.
“About five years ago it chased a couple of teenagers that had snuck in here one summer night. Guess they thought this would be a good place to canoodle or something. It picked the boy up and threw the kid into the window. That’s what busted it out. The little Romeo was all cut up. Ended their sexy time pretty quick.”
“I thought those things didn’t leave the rooms they were in. The rec room and the gallows building outside,” Cadence said.
“Where were our predecessors, then?” Snow asked. “Surely if breathers were present, they needed to be as well.”
“Your predecessors didn’t come round this way too often. I’d call, and they’d say they were in the middle of something more important. Dunno if that was the truth or if they just didn’t feel like coming out,” Roy said with a shrug. “As for the thing,” he said as he turned to address Cadence’s question, “it was the one from the rec room. We’d started tryin’ to barricade that place, but the couple, I guess, thought that the rec
room would be a good place to try first. They went in there, but the lil’ chickadee got spooked. So they came in here. It followed ‘em. That’s when we started workin’ to make the barricade a lil’ more difficult for the breathers to get by.”
“Is there anything you can do about this creature?” Cadence asked.
“While I appreciate your faith in my abilities, missy, I ain’t no match for that thing. Ain’t seen it kill none of us, but I know it can hurt us. Given you’re already hurt, you might wanna keep well out of its way,” Roy said. He gestured to her legs, indicating he had seen her limping earlier.
“I’m fine,” Cadence reassured him.
“Fine or not, I think in this instance it is best to follow Mr. Pruitt’s advice,” Snow said.
“Leroy Pruitt,” Aiden called out, and all three ghosts in the room turned their attention towards him. “I know you were a guard here at the prison and that you were killed during the riot forty years ago. If you are here with us now, if you can hear me, give us a sign. We just want to talk to you.”
Roy spat and shook his head. “Damned breathers,” he muttered. “These so-called investigators come in here and rile things up, think they have the answers, act all high and mighty. You know what they want, though?”
“Evidence of life after death,” Cadence said matter-of-factly.
“No. They want a fuckin’ dog doin’ tricks. Pardon my language, missy,” he said as an afterthought. “They come traipsing through here with their cameras and all these other high tech doodads. All it ever boils down to though is them askin’ us to do tricks for them like we’re puppies they’re training. Speak up, bang on something, touch ‘em, whistle, throw something. I musta missed the part in dyin’ when I signed up to perform in some crazy ass three-ring circus.” Roy shook his head in disgust and walked out of the cafeteria.
“Well, I guess we figured out what’s bothering him,” Cadence said to Snow as they both turned and looked back over at the three ghost hunters who were trying to get a recording of a ghostly voice on tape. They were unaware only two ghosts were left in the room, and neither one was going to give them any audio to use.
Chapter 19
Derrick was situated at the end of the kitchen table, his laptop plugged into the wall behind him. Cords were running from upstairs to his computer, and he went back and forth between the video feed from Ava’s bedroom and the tabs in his web browser that he was using for research. Lauren had settled in beside him and was meditating, trying to center herself. Sam was by her side, helping her reinforce the protections she had placed around her.
Robin and Doug were still upstairs, putting Ava to bed. The little girl was restless and upset by the evening’s events, which was understandable given all that had gone on. They sat on either side of her canopy bed, holding her hands. Each parent had a Dr. Seuss book in hand. Doug was reading to her as Robin waited. The nonsensical words seemed so innocent to Derrick, who remembered the story. He felt terrible for the family having to face this angry spirit.
It took about half an hour for the parents to get their daughter settled in her bed enough for them to go. The night light was left on, and the door was left open a crack so that the light from the hall could illuminate the room a little. Robin and Doug finally made their way back to the kitchen.
“Does anyone want some coffee? I have a feeling it might be a long night,” Robin said as she moved to the coffee maker on the counter.
“I’ll take you up on that,” Derrick said, and her husband echoed the sentiment.
Lauren took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “Is she settled?” she asked Doug.
“Yeah. Not sure if she will stay in bed,” he added. “But she is all tucked in for now.”
“How is the research going, Derrick?” Lauren turned her gaze to her compatriot.
“Okay,” he said. “Being in college gives you the advantage of access to thousands of online archives and libraries you might not otherwise have access to. It seems someone did a whole paper on this tragedy for a class.”
“History class?” Lauren was surprised as she couldn’t imagine a history class accepting an assignment on local history. College classes tended to have a broader spectrum. At least in her day they did.
“No…” Derrick trailed off as he scrolled back up. “Uhm, Abnormal Psych actually.”
Lauren’s eyebrows shot up at that. “Really? That’s weird.”
“How exactly does the history of the land fall into the category of abnormal psychology?” Doug shifted a bit in his chair as the smell of coffee began wafting through the kitchen.
“Okay, bear with me because this is going to be a story,” Derrick said. “Also I preface this with the fact that this is someone else’s report, not mine and not my own research. Give me more time, and I can probably corroborate or debunk it, but since we were under the gun, I ran with what I pulled in the search.
“We all know the Barton’s had a lot of lands, almost the whole county was theirs. Some had been developed into a plantation, slave quarters, empty fields so they could rotate where they grew crops each season and some land left alone. Barton had five kids, but only one of them, the eldest, was a son. When the son got married, old-man Barton carved out a good sized chunk of land for him and his wife to have as their own.
“Time went on, and a couple of years into the marriage, after a miscarriage, the young Barton couple had a child, a daughter. This would be Emma. This was back in the 1850s, slavery was a hotly contested issue, but we’re below the Mason-Dixon Line, so you know how far that went before the war. So the young Barton family had slaves just the same as the older Barton had at the main estate a couple of miles from here.
“When Emma was seven years old there was a fire at her home that killed her, her parents, their newborn son, and a couple of house slaves. I think we’re safe to assume one of those house slaves killed was Sarah. Here is where we start to stray from history and into the story. Accounts from family members and the family members of former slaves, things like that.”
Derrick paused and took a sip of the coffee that Robin had placed before him, and he grimaced as he realized too late that he hadn’t added any cream or sugar to the drink. He corrected that as Robin had put both of those things on the table and took another sip. He then continued on with what he had found out.
“Okay, according to reports, Emma was kind of an odd duck. When she was four, one of her aunts found her in the yard at the home estate during a family event torturing a cat. The given excuse was that it scratched her, so she was punishing it, but whatever it was she did to the cat was extreme enough to make the aunt ill on the spot and rumor has it that Emma wasn’t allowed to be by herself much after that without a chaperone.
“That might be when Sarah entered the picture. It’s said that Mrs. Barton’s cook had a daughter around the same age as Emma and that the girls were friends. For that day and age, I think “friend” was a way of putting it in polite terms.
“Anyway, there are stories that despite Sarah’s presence with her, Emma still took delight in torturing animals. For years the family tried to pass it off as a phase and even blamed Sarah for letting Emma get away with doing those kinds of things. Then Emma, at 6 according to reports, took her delight in others pain to a new level.
“There was a slave who had taken ill. Some say it was a relative of Sarah’s, other stories say it was just a different slave on the estate. Either way, both accounts agree that Emma somehow lost Sarah that day and went to where the slave was. She killed him, but that was after she hurt him. He was too old and weak from illness to really fight her off, and given she was white, he probably wouldn’t have anyway.”
“Jesus,” Doug murmured.
“Yeah, this kid was psycho in life. Another story has it that one night the family was awakened in the night by this terrible screaming coming from the stable. Emma was found there skinning the animal strip by strip while it was still alive. The stories say that was when old man Barton to
ld his son and daughter-in-law that enough was enough.
“They planned to send Emma to a boarding school in the hopes that it might have a better effect on the child. The couple argued about it, as Mrs. Barton didn’t want to send her only child away. That changed when Mrs. Barton discovered she was pregnant. No one in the family wanted to have a defenseless infant around Emma, so the decision was made for a European boarding school. Emma was less than thrilled with the decision.
“She got up in the middle of the night and managed to barricade her parents in their room after starting a fire in their bed. The season had been dry, so the house went up like tinder in a box. The fire spread so fast that no one in the house made it out. Somehow Emma’s own sociopathy led to her own death. Old man Barton was heartbroken over the loss of his only son and the lost continuation of his family line through his grandson. He had the remains of the homestead torn down, absorbed the livestock and slaves back into his own estate, and swore to never build there again. In fact, when he gave parcels of land to his daughters upon their marriages, they were all on the opposite side of the estate. This neighborhood development is the first thing that this land has been used for since.”
“Dear God,” Robin said softly before moving her hands to cover her mouth.
“That’s awful,” Doug said, slipping an arm around his wife.
“What does she want with our Ava?” Robin’s haunted eyes turned to Lauren for answers as she asked the question.
Derrick clicked his mouse on the screen went from the wall of text that had been the research paper to the video feed of Ava’s room. The girl seemed to be asleep and was curled up on her side.
“From what I’ve seen,” Lauren said, her words thoughtful, “I think she began here genuinely looking for a friend. Sarah is a possession to her, she doesn’t think of the child as a friend or even as a person. At least that’s how it seems. But as you make rules and Ava follows them, especially ones that Emma for whatever reason doesn’t like, she seems to be getting angrier and angrier. Today that ended up with the attack on you. What we need to try to do is convince both Emma and Sarah to move on. I doubt Sarah will take much convincing, she seems reluctant to be here anyway except to try to take the brunt of Emma’s anger. Emma is going to be more difficult.”
The Dead Show Page 12
