by Terri Reid
“No, I haven’t,” Ian replied.
“Well, he might be less anxious to wander around the house knowing there’s a demon also in residence,” Mike suggested.
“He really is the key to this whole plan,” Ian said. “So, what do we do next?”
Contemplating her options, Mary looked at Ian. “Did Sol say that he wouldn’t be in town at all today?” she asked.
“Well, he said that he had to be in Chicago,” Ian replied. “But, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t come back to see what we’re doing. Why?”
“I think we need to check out the basement,” she said.
“Oh, you mean the basement with the door in the kitchen that has the large padlock on it?” Mike said.
Mary shrugged. “Yeah, that one,” she replied and then she glanced hopefully at Mike. “Unless you just want to pop down there and see if you can find Marty.”
Mike shook his head regretfully. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “That’s your territory. You’re the one they’re drawn to.”
Mary nodded. “Okay then,” she said. “Let’s go pick a lock.”
“I wanted to get down to that basement anyway,” Ian said, picking up a tiny camera and sticking it in his pocket. “Especially if we think that’s where he buried Marty. But first, let’s put some barricades in front of the door to slow Sol down in case he shows up.”
Moving all of the cases that contained Ian’s equipment, as well as a few ladders and chairs thrown in for good measure, they created quite an impressive barricade that stretched halfway up the door and for a foot on either side. “Good job,” Mary said, standing back and surveying their handiwork. Then she gasped in dismay.
“What?” Ian asked.
“My lock picking tools,” she said. “I think I left them in your car.”
Mike and Ian looked at the mound piled up in front of the door and looked back at Mary. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?” Ian begged.
She put her hand in her jacket pocket and pulled out the cloth container. “Oh, look, I do have it,” she teased. “But once again, I left my hankie.”
“Smart aleck,” Ian replied. “And I assume you also have some flashlights in those ever handy pockets.”
“Of course I do,” she answered pertly.
The lock was picked in no time and Mary opened the door. “Obviously, this was just in place to keep the guests from the basement,” she said. “It was a really easy lock to pick.”
Ian shook his head. “Obviously,” he agreed with a smile. “So, where’s the light switch?”
He reached inside and patted the wall, finally finding an ancient turn switch that illuminated just one single bulb dangling over the ramshackle staircase. He looked down the stairs and shook his head. “This was designed to keep sane people away from the basement,” he said, propping his hands against the walls on either side of the stairs. “I’ll go down first to make sure it can hold our weight.”
“I’ll go down next,” Mike offered. Both Mary and Ian turned to Mike and stared at him in confusion. “But you don’t weigh anything,” Mary finally said.
“Yeah, well, it seemed like a guy thing to do,” he replied.
The three slowly made their way down the ancient, wooden slats to the basement. The walls were limestone, covered with spider webs festooned with small, white balls. “What are those?” Mike asked with a shudder. “The remains of creatures caught in the web?”
Ian looked back up the stairs at him and shook his head. “No, not at all,” he said.
Mike breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.”
“Aye, those are the egg sacks of the spiders that live down here in the basement,” Ian added conversationally. “At any moment those sacks could burst open and millions of tiny spiders will be crawling over everything in reach.”
Mike froze on the stairs. “Everything?” he asked.
“Aye, even angels,” Ian replied, then he paused and stared at Mike for a moment.
“What? What?” Mike demanded.
“Something on your neck,” Ian said slowly.
Mike screamed and slapped at his neck, but his hand went through it. “Wait, they can’t get on me,” he countered. “I don’t have anything for them to get on.”
Ian shrugged and turned back the other way. “Oh, well then, I must have been mistaken,” he replied evenly.
“Funny guy,” Mike said as he continued down the stairs after Ian. “Everyone thinks they’re a comedian.”
Mary, standing behind Mike on the staircase, shook her head and bit back her laughter. “Okay,” she said, “we’re supposed to be professionals here.”
“Tell Professor Arachnoid that,” Mike grumbled.
Chapter Forty-nine
At the bottom of the steps, Ian found another turn switch, but this time it illuminated a series of old, fluorescent, work lights throughout the basement. The lighting was dim, casting eerie, yellowish shadows throughout the space. Discarded furniture and cardboard boxes created obstructions that had to be climbed over or gone around. In the center, the old furnace had large, round ducts that came extending from the base like long, thick arms disappearing into the floor joists. Small, half walls had been haphazardly thrown together, separating one small area from another. In one corner was a disorganized work area with a table filled with pieces of piping, electric wire and old, light fixtures. Another area held the water heater and softener that were hoisted up on aging pallets to protect them from the water seeping in through the cracked foundation.
“Where do we start?” Ian asked, looking around in perplexity.
“Well, if I were going to bury a body in my basement,” Mary said, slowly moving into the space, “I’d make sure of two things. One, whatever I buried him under was pretty secure, and two, I covered it up darn well.”
“So, new concrete?” Mike suggested, having the advantage because he could glide through the furniture instead of climbing on or around.
“Yes, that would work,” Mary said.
“Bingo,” Mike replied, pointing to a corner of the basement piled high with old chairs and trunks. “I think we have a winner.”
It took Mary and Ian a few minutes to finally make it over to where Mike stood, but when they arrived, they agreed with the angel. The small section of concrete had been recently poured and smoothed over. It lapped over the limestone where it met the wall and was only about ten by ten feet square. Ian scanned the room. “Yes,” he agreed. “Of all the spots to add new concrete, especially with a leaking, cracked floor near your water heater, why here?”
“So, what do we do next?” Mike asked.
“Marty,” Mary called. “Marty, we really need you to appear.”
“But I don’t want you to get hurt,” came the disembodied response.
“Marty, if I can’t solve this crime, I stand a greater chance of getting hurt,” she called back. “If Sol did this to you, why do you think he wouldn’t do it to me?”
An indignant Marty appeared in front of her immediately. “Did he threaten you?” he demanded. “Did he say anything like that?”
“No. No, he hasn’t,” Mary replied gently. “And thank you for your concern. But, if he was willing to kill you, why wouldn’t he be willing to do it again?”
Sighing loudly, Marty nodded. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “I have a hard time believing he actually did this to me.” Suddenly, he looked around and realized where they were. “Why are we down here? This place is like a death trap.”
The irony was not lost on the small group. “Marty, we believe that we are standing next to your grave,” Mary said.
“He buried me in the freaking basement?” he shouted. “He knew I hated this place. All those spider eggs ready to burst open!”
“Tell me about it,” Mike agreed.
Marty turned to Mary. “Okay, I’m in,” he said with determination. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”
After the conversation with Marty, Ian took a moment to plant the camera he’d put
in his pocket in one of the floor joists aimed at Marty’s resting place. “I’m good,” he said. “Now we should—”
They all froze as they heard a key rattling in the door upstairs. “Crap,” Mary whispered. “It looks like we have company.”
“I’ll go upstairs and let you know when he gets through the door,” Mike volunteered, disappearing immediately.
“Hurry!” Marty yelled. “You don’t want him to catch you down here.”
Moving faster than she thought possible, Mary and Ian quickly moved back through the obstacle course and up the back stairs. They were about to close the door when Ian glanced back down. “Oh no, the lights. I forgot to—.” But suddenly the lights went off.
Mike appeared next to them. “I’ve got your back,” he said.
“Thanks. Thanks much,” Ian replied.
Closing the door, Mary latched it and slipped the padlock back in place. Then they hurried to the front parlor just as Sol was finally pushing away the barricade. “What the hell is this?” he shouted.
“It’s our equipment cases!” Ian yelled back. “Custom cases, and plenty expensive. So, if you don’t mind, back off and we’ll let you in.”
“Don’t know why a man is barricaded out of his own house,” Sol grumbled.
“Well, if a man told us that he was coming, we wouldn’t have piled the cases so close to the door,” Ian countered.
They moved the cases out of the way and Sol marched into the room. Glancing around, he took in all the equipment, wires and cameras. “So is this going to catch my ghost?” he asked.
“If you have a ghost, this will catch it,” Ian said, moving behind the control panel. “Now, are you planning on staying here overnight or can I set the timer?”
“If I’m here your stuff won’t work?” Sol asked skeptically.
“If you want this to be considered professionally done and without fabrication or manipulation, we really can’t have people in the same area, can we?” Ian replied haughtily. “However, if you would rather risk academia throwing this study out, we can still run with it. At this point, I don’t really care.”
Sol nodded slowly, acknowledging Ian’s point. “Yeah, sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be here. I wasn’t gonna stay here anyway, but, you know, this is my property and it is the eighth most haunted house in Illinois, so I needed to protect my interests.”
“We understand,” Mary replied, amused at the ever-changing ranking of the house. “If we get anything on tape that is at all like what you’ve been suggesting, this will be the paranormal find of the year, perhaps even the decade.”
Sol grinned. “Yeah. Yeah it will be,” he said and then he turned to Ian. “And won’t you be grateful for the day I let you investigate my house?”
Ian sighed audibly. “I’ll thank you when I see what the cameras pick up,” he replied, pressing a button on the control panel. “Okay, it’s on a timer, so we have fifteen minutes to pack up and get out of this house.”
“Okay, okay,” Sol said. “Don’t rush me, ‘cause I’m the guy who’s going to make you famous.”
Chapter Fifty
“It’s movie time,” Ian said as he and Mary came downstairs. Ian was carrying his laptop and plugged an HDMI cable from it into the television in the living room. Mary walked across the room and sat on the couch. “Ian did a great job,” she said. “I can’t wait to see what you think.”
“Okay, but before the fun and frivolities begin, I have an announcement,” Bradley said, carrying an oversized bowl of buttered popcorn into the room and setting it, along with a pile of napkins, on the coffee table. “A certain, local Mother Superior is spending her first night in the county jail for not only destroying records but also resisting arrest.”
“Resisting arrest?” Mary asked.
“Yeah, I guess the deputy that went to investigate the crime was a former student at the school, and Mother Superior thought she could still bully her way out of a situation,” he replied. “They also found the empty boxes Ian had originally found behind the incinerator, and some of her employees are more than willing to testify against her.”
“Well, that’s great news,” Ian said as he turned on the television. “And another reason to celebrate.”
“Just what are we going to see?” Bradley asked.
“I’ve downloaded the video from Sol’s place and reviewed it, but don’t want to spoil the surprise,” Ian said. “And I want to see if you can figure it out yourself.”
Bradley sat down next to Mary and put his arm around her. “Is this an intelligence test?” he asked.
Mary grinned. “No, we want to be sure that it’s as obvious to other people as it is to us,” she explained. “Even though you’re probably more observant than the average person. If you can catch it, then when we point it out to Sol it won’t be suspicious.”
Mike appeared next to Ian. “Clarissa is sound asleep,” he said. “So, we’re good to go.”
He looked down at the coffee table. “Man, I miss popcorn,” he said with a smile.
“You’re welcome to as much as you want,” Mary offered.
He grinned. “Yeah, well, believe me, I’ve tried. But I put it in my mouth and it ends up on the floor,” he replied. “It’s a waste.”
Ian walked past him, grabbed a handful and popped several pieces into his mouth. “Oh, this is delicious,” he said as he munched. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Cute. Very cute,” Mike replied. “So, do you want to wipe your buttery fingers now and get down to work?”
Chuckling, Ian nodded. “Yes, sir.”
After wiping his fingers, he grabbed hold of the mouse and clicked on the button to start the video. The large frame opened and showed a screen divided into four sectors, each a different area of Sol’s house being videotaped.
“Okay, these are the different areas where we put the cameras,” Ian explained. “And we are seeing them in slow motion, in order to pick up any anomalies or movements on the screen.”
They watched the videos move forward slowly. The shadows changed slightly because of the time of day, but nothing else in the picture seemed unusual.
“So, this is exciting,” Mike remarked.
“Yeah, well, it’s coming,” Ian promised.
Bradley moved forward to grab a handful of popcorn, his eyes still on the screen, when he froze. “Whoa,” he said, his eyes widening. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Mike asked, moving closer to the screen.
“Okay, let me back it up a bit,” Ian said. “And then you can point out what you saw, Bradley.”
Ian reversed the tape and then played it forward again.
“There!” Bradley exclaimed, pointing to a blurred figure. “In the window.”
Ian paused the video and turned to Bradley. “What do you see?” he asked.
Standing, Bradley walked over to the television set and pointed to a slightly blurry object in the window, outside the house. “Here,” he said. “But it’s not inside the house, it’s in the yard.”
“I see it, too,” Mike said. Then he looked at the other quadrants. “And it’s duplicate in all of the other areas at the same time. This isn’t just one camera. It came up on all of them.”
Ian looked over his shoulder and winked at Mary. “So,” he said to Bradley and Mike. “I’m going to start the video at an even slower setting and I want you to watch the window and tell me what you see.”
The video started and the blurred figure slowly moved from one end of the window to the other on all of the screens.
“It was moving,” Bradley said. “Like it was walking across the scene.”
“Yeah, it was definitely someone moving outside the house,” Mike agreed, and then he turned to Mary and Ian. “So, did we pass?”
Ian laughed. “Aye, you did,” he said. “And so did Marty. I think the footage will be enough to convince Sol that his house…well, at least his grounds, are haunted.”
Bradley
walked back to the couch and sat down next to Mary. “Then what?” he asked.
“Well, let’s hope that Sol takes the bait and tries to convince Marty to haunt inside the house,” she said, “so Ian can record him confessing to the murder.”
Chapter Fifty-one
“Are you sure about Sol meeting us here today?” Ian asked. “I don’t like the idea of him being in your office when we deliver the bad news.”
Mary fiddled with the projector settings as Ian set up the screen. “He’s been here before,” she reasoned. “And it’s what I would do if he were any other client, so I don’t want to do anything that would make him suspicious.”
“Okay,” Ian said, clicking the screen in place and looking out the window to see Sol’s car pull up in the parking space in front of Mary’s office. “Then I guess it’s showtime.”
“What did you find?” Sol asked immediately when he walked into the office. “I ain’t got time for no long presentation; you can save that for your academic types.”
Ian walked across the room and put his hand on a chair that was facing the projection screen. “Why don’t you sit down then?” he suggested. “And we will cut to the chase.”
“Why don’t you just tell me?” Sol demanded.
“It’s not that easy,” Mary said. “And we would like you to verify our findings. It will only take a few minutes.”
“Fine,” Sol grumbled, sitting down in the chair. “Let’s get going.”
Mary sat on a chair next to her desk and Ian walked over to the card table that held his laptop and the projector. “I’ll start a few moments before we see what we think might be an entity,” Ian said, starting the video. “It will show all four cameras we set up in the house simultaneously. And, if you see something we don’t, because you are more familiar with the house, please stop us and point it out.”
The video from the night before ran on the screen and Sol leaned forward in his chair, eagerly watching it. When the ghost strolled past the window, he missed it entirely and Ian let the video continue without pointing it out. A few minutes later the video ended.
