Speed Dating with the Dead

by Nicholson, Scott

  Janey handed Cody the meter and straightened her jacket. “Well, don’t be crawling down in there without written permission. Mr. Wilson’s contract limits the hunts to the public areas.”

  Cody did the Charm School bit, dimples and all, and one eyelid fluttered in a conspiratorial wink. “I wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am.”

  She didn’t know whether to spank him or kiss him, and she tightened her lips so she didn’t appear flustered. “And don’t be summoning any demons to my hotel.”

  “You don’t have to summon demons. If they want to be here, they already are.”

  Janey left Cody to his meter and note pad, acutely aware of the subtle noises of the hotel: air sluicing through the central ductwork, the distant creaking of the old elevator, the muted music from the kitchen, the rumbling of washers and dryers. She had a sense of the hotel as an organic, living thing, with its own circulatory system, breath, and skeleton.

  And its own memories.

  Its own desires.

  And perhaps a will to live.

  She hurried to the dining room, a chill settling on her skin. She kept her eyes dead ahead.

  Chapter 12

  This was exactly what he’d wanted, the main reason he’d set up the ghost hunt. He’d even prayed for it, in such awkward fashion as he could undertake that act of humility. But maybe it wasn’t so wise to ask God for things, because He might deliver them.

  Wayne had brushed Burton off with a mumbled story about the Ouija session reminding him of his wife because they’d played the board game together in college. Burton hadn’t bought it completely but hadn’t pressed for more details.

  We played, all right. Only it wasn’t in college.

  Wayne checked the monitor system. The guests who had signed up for early hunts were already making the rounds of the most notorious rooms, led by members of the SSI team. Wayne and Burton had charted out the rotation schedule to ensure that everyone would be able to spend time in 318, 202, and 218, with the dining room optional. Little history had been gathered on the dining room, though supposedly a spirit dubbed “The Waiter” still offered service in the wee hours of night.

  Wayne turned to the group of six that had assembled for the next hunt. Two were old ladies who looked wiry and clear-eyed, knotty hands clutching meters labeled “Ghost Detector.” Such devices were usually sold on the Internet by enterprising paranormal sites, run by entrepreneurs who bought basic EMF meters at wholesale and decked them out with a few stickers and a marketing image at double the cost.

  A younger couple, who appeared more interested in each other than in Wayne’s explanation of the hunt logistics, carried no equipment besides digital cameras. A balding man in a plaid jacket projected an unhealthy eagerness, as if ghosts were the only entities that could endure his company for long. Martin Gelbaugh, the final member of the group, hovered around the edge like a wolf waiting to cull the weakest from the pack.

  “Okay, folks, here’s the drill. We have one hour in 202. First I want to give you a little history on–”

  “Excuse me,” Gelbaugh said. “Wouldn’t it be preferable to go in with a blank slate rather than a head full of suggestions?”

  “Not necessarily,” Baldy said. “If you know the stories, then you know what to look for.”

  “Exactly,” Gelbaugh said. “You find what you’re looking for.”

  Baldy wasn’t sharp enough to pick up on the sarcasm, but one of the old ladies said, “If there’s a ghost in the room, I want to know before I step foot in there.”

  Great, Wayne thought. A hunter afraid of ghosts.

  “For the record, 202 features anomalies such as tobacco smoke from nowhere, an alarm clock that turns on and off by itself, and a moving cold spot,” he said. “The EMF levels are fairly stable and consistent with the room’s wiring. Multiple reports suggest an entity lingers in the room, but I won’t go into details. You can read the Ghost Register at the front desk if you want to know the rest. Now let’s head out so we can stay on schedule.”

  One old woman, the one whose slumping posture made her resemble an undersize Quasimodo, said to the other, “Maybe the ghosts wait until after bedtime.”

  Wayne led them down the hall, where they passed a group led by The Roach. Wayne gave a casual salute, impressed by the military precision The Roach had drilled into his charges. The small MAG lights clipped on the bill of his cap gave him credence and furthered his insectile demeanor. Wayne was glad they’d selected the black jump suits as uniforms, because they conveyed organization and competence and also a slight suggestion of danger.

  Spiritual storm troopers, armed and ready.

  The door to 202 was open, with wires running along the baseboard of the hall and feeding into the room. Burton had rigged surveillance cameras in each of the hunt locations, arranged to capture evidence but also help Wayne track the progress of the various groups. Any guest that wanted to drop out and conduct armchair hunting could sit in the control room and get their money’s worth, imagining shadows on the tiny monochrome screens.

  Room 202 was a honeymoon suite, with a renovated kitchenette and a spacious bathroom with a sunken tub. The windows faced east, and dusk was already settling on the rippling hills in the valley below. Night came suddenly in the mountains, especially in November with the solstice approaching. Wayne had almost forgotten the magical aura of the Blue Ridge, with its gray shroud of fogs and ancient, mute granite slabs.

  “Okay, folks,” Wayne said, instinctively lowering his voice as the group entered the room. Hunters whispered on a scene, and they assembled with all the reverence of devotees entering church. After all, this was a mystical act of faith and belief. They came to see the unseen and know the unknowing, and they were eager to eat the invisible wafer.

  “Can we take pictures yet, Mr. Wilson?”

  The woman, whose name tag read “Ann,” projected the air of a tourist. Up close, she looked a little older than her companion, Duncan, and Wayne figured her for a rich cougar who’d netted a hunk in the twilight of her hotness. Nothing was sadder than a woman fighting the losing battle with time and growing desperate and scared as her feminine vanity fought the truth.

  I never got to go through that with Beth.And she was braver than I could ever be. She would have kicked Father Time’s ass if she’d had the chance to meet him.

  “Take all the pictures you want,” Wayne said. “You never know which one will catch the evidence.”

  “You make it sound so random,” Gelbaugh said.

  Wayne ignored him and clicked on his digital voice recorder. “White Horse Inn, Room 202, November twenty-first, 6:30 p.m. Six people present. Room temperature is 72 degrees.”

  Wayne put his recorder on the coffee table in the middle of the bedroom. The two elderly women settled into arm chairs, Ann and Duncan sat on the bed, and Gelbaugh took up a post by the window. Wayne turned off the lights and closed the door, then returned to the center of the room. Gelbaugh’s silhouette was clear, but the others blended into the twilight.

  “Is anybody here?” he said, in a stage voice.

  No answer.

  “Show yourself.”

  Nothing.

  “We would like to meet you.”

  The bed squeaked a little as someone changed position.

  “Audible bed squeak,” Wayne said, wanting the comment on record to account for the stray sound.

  “Did you hear that?” Gelbaugh said.

  “Bed squeak,” Wayne said, annoyed that Gelbaugh seemed intent on ruining the hunt.

  “Not that,” Gelbaugh said. “Something else.”

  They all listened for a moment, but only their shallow breathing disturbed the silence. A flash went off near the bed, illuminating the room like a lightning strike, freezing Gelbaugh as he moved away from the window. Ann had taken a digital photo.

  Wayne resumed his summons. “Can you say ‘Hello’?”

  The huncher gasped.

  “I heard it, too,” said the other.

&nbs
p; Wayne hadn’t heard anything. He pressed the glow button on his wristwatch. “6:33 p.m.,” he said for the benefit of the recording. “Report of auditory anomaly.”

  The notation would help him review the data later and examine the sound waves to match them with the subjective reports of the people in the room. He didn’t expect the recorder had captured much of anything. Gelbaugh was along to cajole and smirk, and the two old ladies were suggestible enough to turn a whistling wind into the keening of a rabid banshee. Ann and Duncan were the anchors of the group because of their apparent open-minded skepticism.

  “Are you with us now?” Wayne said.

  Nothing.

  “If you’re here, can you move the recorder on the table?” Poltergeists were reputed to respond to challenges on occasion, though Wayne had never witnessed such behavior. He’d seen things fly across the room before, and books and knickknacks fall from shelves, but nothing to convince him the incidents weren’t due to telekinetic powers rather than mischievous spirits. In fact, if the recorder had actually moved, he would have attributed it to floor vibrations caused by the heating system.

  The bed squeaked again.

  “Audible bed squeak at 6:36,” he said.

  “Something touched me,”‘ Ann said.

  Wayne squinted into the darkness and made out her shape. She was sitting in a lotus position, with her legs folded under her. If the touch had startled her, it wasn’t reflected in her tone or posture.

  “Can you describe it?” Wayne asked.

  “I feel it, between us,” Duncan said, showing more excitement than Ann.

  “Is it there now?” Wayne said, keeping his voice flat. If the two old ladies started twittering, any auditory evidence would be lost.

  “It’s cold,” Ann said.

  Wayne slid a digital thermometer from his pocket, but before he could move to the bed, a red dot appeared on the blanket. “Sixty-seven degrees,” Gelbaugh said.

  Infrared temperature gun. To bother reading surface temperatures at a distance, Gelbaugh must have had a deeper interest in metaphysics than he’d implied. Or maybe he was trying to stay one step of Wayne, proving the superiority of reason over faith.

  “Invalid,” Wayne said for the benefit of the witnesses and the recording. “You have no baseline for comparison.”

  “I’ll get my baseline afterward,” Gelbaugh said.

  “It’s sitting here beside me and you two are bitch-slapping?” Ann said.

  “What is it?” said the hunchback. “A demon?”

  “There’s a ghost here,” Baldy said. “I can sense it.”

  Gelbaugh snorted in derision.

  “Shh,” Wayne said. “You’re contaminating the evidence.”

  “Never mind,” Ann said. “Whatever it is, it left.”

  “I felt the mattress sag when it sat down,” Duncan said.

  “Are you still with us?” Wayne said, hoping the rest of the hunts had a better mix of personalities. An investigation was difficult enough for a trained team of hunters to collect any useful data, but it was nearly impossible for a group of strangers.

  “Yes,” Gelbaugh said. “I am.”

  “What’s with you?” Baldy said in the dark.

  “Nothing’s with me. In fact, I am utterly alone. Despite your collective wishful thinking.”

  “Sorry, folks,” Wayne said to the others.

  “Bummer,” Duncan said.

  “What is it?” asked the hunchback.

  “A party crasher,” Baldy said.

  “They call it ‘pragmatist’ where I come from,” Gelbaugh said.

  Wayne was mentally charting his course across the dark room to the light switch when a thunking sound was followed by a brittle crash.

  “Who did that?” Ann said.

  Gelbaugh flicked on a pen light and the small, bright beam settled on a shattered lamp that had fallen from a bedside table. “Well, I’m way over here, so it wasn’t me. Which of you is playing ‘Poltergeist’?”

  Gelbaugh’s beam bounced from face to face, each of them grim, before fixing onto Wayne’s. He squinted against it, annoyed at the damage.

  “I didn’t touch it,” Ann, who was the closest, said.

  “Ladies and gentlemen and all you dead people,” Gelbaugh boomed. “Honesty is the best policy. If you broke this, just admit it and be forgiven. Don’t carry the sin with you.”

  “Stuff it, Gelbaugh,” Wayne said, flipping the light switch and exploding the room into painful brightness. After the hushed, almost sacred atmosphere of minutes before, the space now seemed desecrated and cramped. The occupants, besides Gelbaugh, began rising and stretching, the elderly ladies confused by it all.

  “Investigation ends at 6:44 due to human interference,” Wayne said into the recorder before shutting it off.

  “Come on,” Gelbaugh said. “Don’t tell me you can’t stand up to someone poking a stick at your invisible friends. That’s hardly sporting.”

  “We paid good money for ghosts,” Baldy said to Wayne. Ann and Duncan had already left the room.

  “We’ll get you on another hunt,” Wayne said, collecting the largest shards of the lamp.

  After the group exited, Baldy grumbling aloud, Wayne faced off with Gelbaugh. “You’ve made your point, now stay out of the way.”

  “You should work on your technique,” Gelbaugh replied. “Take some acting lessons.”

  “Some of us have to fake it, but you’re a natural-born asshole.”

  Gelbaugh laughed. “Will the last one leaving please turn out the lights?”

  The room went dark.

  “Nice trick,” Gelbaugh said. “Too bad your audience is gone.”

  Wayne, ten feet from the light switch, said nothing. He stood there with the yellow orb of light burning its blurred images behind his eyelids—along with a face, yawning black mouth and vacant eyes riding behind the glow like a red scream.

  It was a face he’d kissed and loved and married once, long ago.

  It wasn’t so pretty these days.

  Chapter 13

  The Roach was down on demons.

  Raised a Catholic, he’d first sensed evil at the hands of a priest, who had touched him in ways that made him sick and tingly all at the same time. Nothing too overt, nothing that would have merited a civil suit in the “Pope Versus Lawyers” landscape of the 1990’s, but enough to instill an unsettling view of sacred rituals.

  During puberty, he’d felt the shadow latch on him as he’d explored the natural wonders of masturbation. Figuring it for a textbook case of guilt, he’d offered his Hail Marys and continued indulging. But the shadow deepened, insinuating into his heart like an autumn whisper, and one night the shadow appeared at the foot of his bed and said, “We’re ready to play.”

  He’d passed that night with the light on, flipping through his Bible without seeing the words, mumbling catechisms and the Lord’s Prayer. He’d tried to speak to his priest about the incident, but the modern church was more interested in pop psychology and public relations than battling ancient evil, and so little Rodney was left on his own. Fortunately, the Internet and a New Age bookstore had provided an armchair education, and soon he was secreting away holy water in preparation of the coming Armageddon, when the Fallen would have their day.

  The Roach had become an informal demonologist, working outside the church, moving in a world that bordered between low-budget horror movies and La-La Land. He’d taken up ghost hunting almost as a cover, since the equipment reassured many of the clients who consulted him. The Roach never charged for his work, believing it a calling from God, and he’d joined Spirit Seekers International because the group would provide more opportunities for service.

  Only problem was, these days, he wasn’t so sure which side he served.

  God promised eternal peace and joy, but it was a delayed gratification. Lucifer and his gang gave you everything you wanted, and right now.

  But Lucifer played a game of bait-and-switch, with the catch being you only
thought you wanted something, and when you got it, you realized it wasn’t so good for you. And when you wanted another person, and consumed her against her will, then it wasn’t so good for her, either.

  Eat her like a cracker. Bread of life, bread of death, it all comes down to crumbs floating in the chalice.

  “You picking up anything, Roach?”

  Cody gave his sparkling gaze, and The Roach was nearly disgusted by the innocence and light that swam in The Future of Horror’s eyes. Angels weren’t born, they were made, and they pissed him off royally.

  There but for the grace of God go I. Maybe you’re taking my dance card on the head of a pin.

  “There are five here,” The Roach said. “Two of them are the bad-ass variety. The rest are impressions that don’t even know they’re dead.”

  “We’ll slap the MAC Attack on them and pin them down.” Cody was rigging motion detectors in the large dining hall to work in sync with the cameras, all linked to a couple of eight-gig hard drives that could store two days’ worth of data. Audio, thermal image, spot temperature, electromagnetic activity, all measurements were recorded and correlated with the exact time so that anomalies could be cross-referenced. Cody’s MAC Attack did everything but give the ghosts an anal probe, and The Roach was sure that feature would be added once he patented his system and marketed it to the UFO crowd.

  “You were right about the crawl space,” Roach said. “That entity’s so old it doesn’t even have a name.”

  “I’m just afraid of what’s going to happen once all these paranormal tourists start stirring things up.”

  “Come on, Cody. You’re not afraid of anything.”

  Cody flashed his smile, and heavenly light practically sparkled off his teeth. No wonder Kendra was sweet on him. If Wayne didn’t watch it, he’d be raising an extra generation, and it wouldn’t be a virgin birth, either.

  “Nothing sticks to you that you don’t invite, right?” Cody said.

  True dat, little friend. “But you can be tricked.”

  Cody perched a tripod in the corner of the dining hall. “Other people can be tricked. Not me.”