by Mark Lukens
But Shane didn’t like Nick’s smile at all—his smile said: I told you this place was haunted.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nigel sat motionless on the floor, his back still against the wall. He had laid out his sleeping bag on the same side of the room as Harold, like he was already taking the pragmatic and logical side of the room. He stared at the overturned bowl of black salt for a moment, and then he looked at Shane.
“Nice trick, Shane,” Nigel said as he got to his feet. “But I’ll figure it out soon. I always do.”
Shane ignored Nigel; he looked at the others. “Okay, obviously there’s some paranormal activity going on in this place.” He walked over to the overturned bowl across the room and picked it up.
Billy filmed Shane the whole time, and then he panned his camera down to the spray of black salt.
“Let’s get some narration on film now,” Nick said.
Billy turned the camera to Nick who stared at it for a moment before speaking. “We’ve barely stepped foot inside the Thornhill Manor and we’ve already experienced our first paranormal encounter. We set up a bowl on the floor and filled it with table salt. Our plan was to leave it out overnight. The theory is that if the salt turns brown overnight then a spirit haunts the place.” He walked over and stared down at the scattering of black salt. “Well, the salt turned black in a few moments and something … something unseen smacked the bowl of salt across the room.” He stared at the camera. “Have we angered something? Awakened an ancient spirit? A demon?”
Nick stared at the camera for a moment, and then he nodded. “That’s good,” he said.
Billy turned his camera towards Shane who dropped the plastic bowl down into the box with the other dishes and boxes and cans of food.
“What’s next, Shane?” Nick asked.
“Right now we need to get these cameras and the other equipment set up before it gets dark,” Shane said, glancing at the camera, and then looking at Nick. He looked at Warren. “Can you help get some of this equipment out of the cases?”
“Sure,” Warren answered and he and Shane opened the Pelican cases that housed the handheld cameras. He handed one of the cameras to Warren, and then he handed another one to Laura who had come over to help. Then he grabbed the next two.
“I’ve provided three static cameras,” Nick explained. “And I’ve brought along three handheld digital cameras. All top of the line equipment. And of course Billy Toomer will film everything we do the whole time. I’ll edit everything later, but I want to capture as much as we can on film while we’re here.”
They all nodded.
“You know how to use these handheld cameras?” Nick asked Shane.
He nodded. “Yeah, I used something similar on my TV show.” He showed Warren and Laura how to use them, giving them a quick tutorial.
Shane looked at Billy and his camera. “Okay. We’ll tour the manor and choose three locations to set up the static cameras.”
“Static cameras?” Laura asked.
“Yeah,” Shane said. “That just means that these will be stationary cameras that we’ll set up and feed the footage back to the laptops.” He looked at everyone else who had gathered into a group. Even Harold was ready to go with them, and for the first time he wasn’t lugging his backpack along. “Everyone ready to go?”
They all nodded and began walking towards the archway with camera cases in their hands.
Nigel grabbed Shane’s arm and stared at him before they followed the others. “I’m not kidding, Shane. I don’t know how you did that trick with the salt, but I’m going to expose you and Nick Gorman and this whole farce to the world.”
Shane stared right into Nigel’s dark eyes. He saw fury and anger in those eyes, but he also saw something else—fear.
He ripped his arm out of Nigel’s grasp. “It’s no trick, Nigel. You might be in over your head this time. Only this time, we can’t all just drive away when things get too scary, can we?”
The others all stopped at the archway, watching the confrontation between Shane and Nigel. Billy was filming them.
Shane looked at them. “We’ll all follow Laura from room to room.”
Laura looked a little shocked, suddenly uncomfortable with everyone staring at her and with Billy’s camera filming her.
“Wherever you get the strongest feelings,” Shane said to Laura, “that’s where we’ll set up each of these cameras and the recording equipment.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They started the tour of the manor on the third floor. They had climbed the nearest set of double stairways that curved their way up to the balcony on the second floor, and then they had walked down the hallway that led west. They passed by Room 214 and Laura stopped there for a moment, staring at the closed door.
Shane watched Laura; he saw the alarm in her eyes.
“You feel something?” he whispered to her.
She nodded.
“We’ll come back down here to this room,” he told her. “But let’s start up on the third floor.”
She nodded again, and took a deep breath. She turned and continued down the hall. Shane noticed the deep cracks along this hallway wall. There were a lot of cracks in the walls all over this manor, but these cracks seemed much deeper here, and it almost looked like the plaster was pushed out, like something had pushed the walls out from the inside. He didn’t want to think about how that had happened.
According to the maps Kristen had given them, this second floor hallway they were walking down ended in a set of steps that led up to the third floor hallway.
And there they were: a winding set of narrow stairs that hugged the wall and ascended up into the darkness, then turning sharply at a landing and disappearing around the corner. Billy had turned on the light on his camera which helped a little, but Shane shined his flashlight beam at the steps and walked up the stairs first so he could light the way for Laura who was right behind him. The stairs creaked with each step he took, and then Shane heard a rumbling through the walls, a shuddering. He froze on the stairs, his hands shooting out at the walls instinctively to hold on as the steps beneath his feet seemed to shift slightly. He could feel the tremor shaking the building, he could feel it in the walls, the vibrations running through his hands … and then, a few seconds later, it was over.
Shane turned around and shined his light back down at Laura and then past her at the others gathered on the steps behind her. “Did you guys feel that?”
“Hell yeah,” Billy said. “This whole building was shaking.”
“Is this place safe?” Warren asked.
“I got all the reports from Templeton’s construction company and the structure was deemed perfectly safe,” Nick said. “There’s nothing to worry about. It’s just the building settling.”
“Settling into a sinkhole,” Nigel commented under his breath.
Shane couldn’t help agreeing with Nigel on this one. That was more than just the settling of a building. It felt like the whole building had shook for a split second. Like a small earthquake had just happened. He knew an earthquake could happen anywhere on Earth, but they were more prevalent in the Caribbean than a lot of other areas. That thought didn’t sit well with him, but he turned back around and continued up the steps.
On the third floor, Laura and Shane led the rest of the team down the wide and murky hallway. It was dark up here with most of the doors closed. Shane could imagine how dark it was going to be on this island when night came; it would be pitch-black in some of these rooms that didn’t have windows.
Shane let Laura walk a few steps in front of him, and he shined the flashlight ahead of her. He followed her and then waited as she stopped at the doorway to each room for a moment. She opened each door and Billy brushed by them to film the inside of the room. In some of the rooms he went in first so he could film Laura entering the room. Most of the rooms were empty, but a few of them had an old bedframe or an antique piece of furniture sitting alone among scattered pieces of plaster, wood,
and other debris.
Laura didn’t linger too long in any of the rooms. She seemed like she had a destination in mind … some area that was drawing her. She walked to the end of the hall, ignoring the last few doorways to rooms, and stood in front of the door that led to the sunroom. She opened the door and stepped inside. Shane followed her, and the rest of them entered the room right after him.
The sunroom was a huge room and virtually empty. It was the least-damaged room they’d seen up here on the third floor. There were only a few cracks in the plaster walls and there wasn’t too much loose plaster or shreds of wallpaper scattered along the floor. The two exterior walls were banks of large windows that looked out over the tops of the tropical trees dotting the hillside that dropped down sharply to the water below over a mile away. The water of the Caribbean stretched out to the horizon where it met with the lighter blue sky.
“Hey, look at this,” Warren said.
They all hurried over to the far corner of the room where Warren stood, looking down at the floor. Billy filmed as Nick bent down and picked up the two objects on the floor: one of them was a metal clipboard and the other one was a white hardhat. Nick turned the hardhat over in his hands and they all saw the large black letters on the back spelling out the word: BOSS.
“These must be from the construction crew,” Nick said.
“Can I have a look at that?” Warren asked, holding out his hand for the metal clipboard.
Nick shrugged and gave the clipboard to Warren. The clipboard was like a thin rectangular box that opened up. He lifted the lid and found papers inside. He leafed through them then looked at Nick, then at the others.
“There are maps in here,” Warren said, pulling out the papers that were stapled together. “And this looks like some kind of log. Name at the top says John Langston.”
“These are the same maps we have,” Shane said, handing the stapled papers to Kristen.
“The maps were sent to me from Templeton,” Nick explained. “This clipboard and hardhat must be from the guys that Templeton sent down here a week ago to see why the construction crews were leaving. I believe they were supposed to assess any damage and report back to Templeton on the state of the project.”
Nick set the hardhat back down on the floor.
“Looks like they left in a hurry, too,” Shane said as he watched Nick. “Just like the construction crews.”
Nick didn’t respond.
Warren set the metal clipboard down on the floor next to the hardhat.
Laura moved away from the group, drawn towards the line of windows. She stood in front of one of the windows and stared out at the treetops and the ocean in the distance.
Shane watched her for a moment and then walked across the room to stand beside her. “Do you feel anything in this room, Laura?”
Laura kept staring out the windows for a moment longer, and then she turned to Shane and nodded.
“Okay,” Shane said. He turned away from Laura and walked back to the group. “We’ll get one of those cameras set up in here.”
Billy held his camera out to Kristen. “Do you mind holding on to this while I help set up the camera?”
“Sure,” she said and took the camera.
Shane watched as Billy held on to the camera for a moment longer as Kristen tried to take it, locking eyes with her, smiling at her. She gave Billy a slight, cheerless smile and seemed ready to give up on the camera, but then Billy let it go. She turned away.
There was something between those two, Shane thought. Some kind of past that Kristen didn’t seem to want to engage in. Even though it wasn’t any of his business, Shane couldn’t help wondering about it. He was attracted to Kristen; he’d been attracted to her from pretty much the first moment he’d met her on his houseboat. But he doubted she felt the same way about him, so he just needed to forget it and concentrate on his job—getting this camera set up.
“This is a full spectrum zoom digital camcorder,” Shane told everyone as he mounted it on the tripod that Billy had set up. “This camera will work with all unseen lights: ultraviolet, infrared, white light. It has a 360 degree EVP recorder and a built-in motion detector.”
“What about night vision?” Warren asked.
“There’s no need for night vision with full spectrum cameras.”
“That’s amazing,” Warren said.
Nick walked up to them. “I told you, I got the best equipment money can buy.”
Shane looked over at Laura. She hadn’t moved away from the windows the whole time. He walked back across the room, his footsteps sounding heavy on the wood floors. He stood beside her again for a moment. He looked out the bank of windows with her. “You ready to go yet?”
“It looks calm out there now,” Laura whispered. “But there’s a bad storm coming soon.”
Her words hit Shane like a wrecking ball. “That’s the same thing the boat captain said to me.”
Laura and Shane locked eyes for a moment.
Billy walked up behind them with his camcorder, shooting film again. He reminded Shane of one of those annoying sand fleas down by the shoreline, constantly buzzing around.
“You okay?” Shane asked Laura.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“What do you feel here?” Nick asked Laura as he walked up to her. “Can you describe for the camera what you feel?”
For a long moment Laura didn’t say anything. Then she shook her head and finally answered. “It’s not like a … spirit or a ghost.” She glanced at the camera, and then looked at Nick. “It’s not like anything I’ve ever felt before.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It feels bad.”
That wasn’t what Shane wanted to hear. He could feel that icy feeling of fear skating over his skin, his stomach clenching into a knot. He could feel the evil in this place, too.
It’s only two nights, Shane told himself. But a lot could happen in forty-eight hours. He had experienced what could happen in only a few hours inside a haunted house before—in the Cranston House. He turned back to the others, trying to push the thoughts of the Cranston House out of his mind. “Let’s get down to the next floor now,” Shane told them. “Set the next camera up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
When they were back down on the second floor, Laura was drawn to Room 214 again. She stood in front of the door but she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to enter.
“What do you feel?” Shane asked her.
“Something bad,” she whispered. “There’s something bad in this room.”
Billy filmed as Shane and Laura stood together in front of the door to the room. The others waited a few steps away at the other side of the hallway.
Nigel rolled his eyes. He pulled out his handheld tape recorder and whispered into it. “We’ve stopped now because Laura feels something.”
Shane ignored Nigel and watched Laura, but she still didn’t seem like she wanted to enter the room yet. He needed to give her time, so he walked over to the wall beyond the door, the cracks and damage to the plaster walls grabbing his attention again. He touched the cracks gingerly and felt the wall bulging out a little. “These cracks,” he said as he turned back to the others. “It looks like something was pushed out from inside the wall.”
Kristen moved closer to Shane. She touched the cracks just as lightly as Shane had, almost like she was afraid to rest her fingers on them for too long. “What could cause that?”
“And look at that dark stain,” Warren said, pointing at a small hole among a circle of cracks a little farther down the wall. A black line went from the hole among the cracks down to the floor. “What do you think that is? You think it’s blood?”
Nobody had an answer.
Shane looked at Nigel. “You’re the expert on everything in the world. What would cause damage like that to these walls?”
Nigel didn’t react to Shane’s sarcasm and he didn’t seem to be nervous with everyone staring at him. “I’m sure it was an evil spirit and had nothing to do with the earth settlin
g under a hundred and fifty year old building.”
“Those aren’t settlement cracks,” Harold spoke up, surprising everyone. It was the first time any of them had heard him speak.
Billy panned his camera to Harold who stood the farthest away from the group … he always seemed to stay at the outskirts of their group. He just stared at them, offering no further explanation.
“How do you know?” Warren asked.
Harold glanced at Nick like he was seeking permission to divulge a secret.
“Harold is a geologist,” Nick explained
“What do you think the cracks in the walls are from if they’re not from the building settling?” Shane asked Harold.
Harold glanced at Nick again like he wasn’t sure if he should answer the question, but then he seemed to make the decision on his own and looked at Shane. “There could be some seismic activity here.”
“Seismic activity?” Warren asked. “You mean like earthquakes?”
“Like what we just felt in the stairwell earlier,” Shane said. “That tremor.”
Harold nodded. “There may have been some minor earthquakes here in the past, maybe not enough to do major damage, but enough to crack the walls in some places.”
“Is this building safe?” Warren asked.
“I already told you,” Nick butted in, “the tests from Templeton on this place all came back okay. Just because there may have been seismic activity here before doesn’t mean it will happen again. It’s just like Los Angeles—there have been earthquakes there before but it could be a hundred years before a major one hits again. Maybe even a thousand years.” He looked to Harold as if to confirm what he’d just said.
They all looked at Harold.
Harold nodded slowly. “He’s right. There could be another tremor here tomorrow, or the next tremor might not happen for another hundred years. There’s no predicting when the next one could strike.”
“And, like Harold just said, obviously the earthquakes in the past haven’t been that severe,” Nick said, gesturing at the cracks in the walls. “Just some cracks in the walls. That’s all.”
