by Mark Lukens
“Would you just let him finish what he’s saying, please?” Warren asked Nigel.
They all waited for Shane to continue.
Nick glanced at Harold, making sure he was still filming all of this. Nick still held his own camcorder in his hand, but he hadn’t raised it up to his eye to film yet.
“I heard Mike’s voice calling me from that hole in the wall.”
“Mike?” Nigel snapped and barked out a laugh. “Why, he isn’t even dead yet.”
“Nigel, please,” Nick said.
“No, Mr. Gorman. You asked me here to be a skeptic, and that’s exactly what I’m doing … being a voice of reason. Kristen thought some old lady grabbed her and then Shane, as usual, let his imagination run away with him. We’ve all confirmed that there’s no one in here, no one hiding in the hole in the wall. And now Shane is seeing people who aren’t even dead yet … people who aren’t even a ghost.” Nigel looked right at Shane. “Mike Lachance is still alive, isn’t he, Shane?”
“As far as I know.”
“I want to hear the rest of what Shane has to say,” Warren said.
Shane felt a little foolish now in front of everyone as they argued about him. He rushed through the rest of his story. “I thought I heard Mike calling me. But when I got closer to the hole, I realized that it was an old lady pulling herself out of the wall.”
“Old Lady Cranston?” Nigel inquired.
“Yes,” Shane snapped. “It was the same woman I saw when I was twelve years old at the Cranston House.”
“And then what happened?” Nick asked.
Shane hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know. Next thing I remember the door was opening and I saw you guys.” He looked at the static camera in the corner of the room. “But that camera’s still working. It should’ve caught the whole thing.”
Billy darted over to the camera and looked through the lens. He nodded at Nick. We can check the footage from this camera on the laptop downstairs.”
“We need to check the footage from the camera on the third floor, too,” Warren said.
“What happened up there?” Nick asked.
“Remember that hardhat we found up there yesterday? The one with the word BOSS stenciled on the back of it?”
“Yes?” Nick asked.
“It’s gone now.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The base of operations was so dark now since night had finally settled in, and the thunderstorm only made everything darker. They turned on the three construction lights set up around the tables with the laptops on them and the boxes of supplies nearby. The sleeping bags were situated in a half-circle close to the tables, the farthest sleeping bags in the darkness now, out of the sphere of light that the construction lamps put out.
Shane noticed that Kristen had calmed down a little now that she was back down here with everyone else, now that she was downstairs, now that she was closer to the front doors, closer to escape. He looked at Billy who worked at the laptops on the tables in front of him. Billy said the camera Kristen dropped wasn’t going to work anymore, but he was able to download the film footage from it.
Now they huddled around the tables, all of them looking over Billy’s shoulders, watching the footage.
“You can see here,” Billy said, pointing at the footage on the laptop screen on the right, “that this is the footage from Shane and Kristen’s camera. And this footage on the other laptop is from the static camera in Room 214. All of the footage is in full spectrum.”
Shane stared at the footage on the laptop to the left—the footage from the static camera in Room 214. At the moment nothing was happening on that screen, the camera was aimed at the window and the hole in the wall was to the left of the screen, near the corner … it seemed like a blob of darkness against the gray wall.
But then Shane’s attention was drawn back to the other laptop screen. He saw himself on that screen answering questions from Kristen as she followed him slowly down the hall. Then Shane stopped like he’d heard something—and then a blur of movement, a shuffling sound as the camera spun crazily, Kristen’s scream, then a thud, and then darkness.
“That’s when she grabbed me,” Kristen said.
“But there’s nothing caught on film,” Billy told her.
“Sorry I didn’t aim the camera at the crazy old lady who was trying to drag me into the room,” Kristen said.
Billy looked wounded.
“It’s okay, Kristen,” Nick said and then he focused on the other laptop.
They were all quiet as they watched Shane enter the shot in the footage. He just stood there with his back to the camera. He had the camcorder up to his eye like he was filming with it, and he aimed his flashlight at the hole in the wall. But then he lowered the camera like it was suddenly useless, and then he bent down and set it down on the floor, never taking his eyes or flashlight beam off of the hole in the wall.
“And this is where you said you saw something?” Nigel asked.
Shane didn’t turn around or acknowledge Nigel’s question, but it felt like everyone was waiting for his response. It felt so strange watching himself on film … it seemed like a different person in that room, the memory of standing there seemed so long ago now even though only minutes had passed by. It didn’t feel like he was watching himself—that didn’t seem like him on the screen.
Mike had been there by this time, Shane thought as he watched the footage. He’d already heard Mike calling to him by then and he’d already seen Mike’s face swimming into view inside the hole. But he couldn’t see Mike’s face on the grainy, gray film.
“I’m sorry, Mike,” Shane said on the film, his voice echoing in the room, sounding tinny and far away. A flash of lightning brightened the shot to a bright green blur for a second, and then the picture came back. “I’m so sorry,” Shane said again to nobody in the room. “So sorry,” he said, his voice even lower. It sounded like he might be crying, but it was hard to tell with his back turned to the camera.
In the footage, Shane took a step closer towards the hole in the wall. But Mike still couldn’t be seen in the dark blob in the wall.
“Who were you talking to, Shane?” Nigel asked. Shane could hear the accusation in Nigel’s voice.
“Why don’t you let up on him?” Kristen snapped at Nigel.
He turned to her. “Because he told us that he saw someone in that room and now we have physical evidence that there’s no one there.”
“I saw that old woman, too,” Kristen said, standing face to face with Nigel now. “She grabbed my arm. Are you calling me a liar, too?”
Nigel raised his hands in a placating gesture and took a step back from Kristen with that lopsided, sarcastic slash of a smile on his face. “I’m not accusing anybody of anything. I’m just pointing out what’s quite obvious on the footage.”
“Maybe the camera isn’t picking up the old woman or Mike,” Warren suggested. “Maybe they’re in a different realm … or a different dimension … sort of here, but not here. We can see it with our own eyes, but our equipment can’t pick it up.”
“It’s usually the other way around,” Billy said. “Usually ghost hunters can’t see something with their own eyes, but they’re able to pick it up with their equipment.”
“Well, maybe they’re all wrong,” Warren said.
“Or they’re faking evidence,” Nigel grumbled.
Warren ignored Nigel’s comment. “Maybe we’ve actually got proof here.”
Nick looked at Laura who stayed in the background, staying out of the conversation. “What do you think, Laura?”
“I think all of this is very real,” she said. “I think both of them saw someone up there in that room.”
“Of course she’s going to say that,” Nigel said. “She’s your token psychic. I think this is just a case of imaginations getting carried away. I’m not making fun of them or accusing anyone of anything, I’m just saying that in a setting like this, the possibility of thinking you’ve seen something paranor
mal is much higher.”
Shane let their debate fade into background noise as he watched the scene on the laptop. He watched himself on the screen move closer to the hole in the wall. This would be about the time he’d seen Old Lady Cranston trying to climb out of the hole in the wall. He couldn’t really remember what had happened after that and now this was his chance to find out.
“What the hell?” Billy said, sitting up straighter.
The footage turned to static.
“What happened to it?” Nick asked, pushing his way in closer to the laptops.
“I don’t know,” Billy said. He rewound the footage, but it turned to static again. He forwarded it a few minutes and then the film came back, showing Billy at the hole in the wall, searching the inside of it with his flashlight. “Camera still works. There I am at the hole in the wall a few minutes later after we were all inside the room.”
Missing time, Shane thought. And those few minutes were missing in his memory too.
“Can you get it back?” Nick asked, but the hopeless tone in his voice revealed that he already knew the answer to his own question.
“These cameras are brand new,” Billy mumbled. “They shouldn’t be acting like this.”
“Can you clean up the footage somehow?” Nick asked him.
Billy shook his head no. “Maybe when we get back I could try, but I can’t do anything here with this equipment.”
Nick looked at Shane. “What happened after the cameras turned to static? Is that when you saw the old woman?”
Shane shook his head. “No, I saw her right before that, but it’s … it’s not on the film.”
“But what happened?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember. The next thing I remember is the door opening and seeing you guys there.”
“What about the third floor camera?” Warren asked Billy. “Maybe you could look at that one. The hardhat we found yesterday isn’t there anymore. Maybe we’ll see something there.”
Billy switched the feed on the laptop to the cameras on the third floor without a word, rewinding the footage back and then running the film. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“I don’t know,” Warren said. “Somebody had to have taken the hardhat.”
Shane looked at Kristen who stood near one of the construction lights. She had backed away from the group a little like Laura had. She looked miserable. Her arms were crossed, her body tense.
Billy watched the footage, but the camera in the sunroom was just aimed at the windows across the room. He forwarded the footage some, speeding up the film. He shook his head. “I don’t see anything on it.”
“We can’t see the area of the floor where the hardhat and clipboard were from this angle,” Warren said, sounding a little disappointed. “Somebody could’ve ducked down and grabbed the clipboard and hardhat without ever being seen on camera.”
Billy just nodded. “Looks that way.”
A rumbling sounded throughout the manor, the ceiling creaking above them, a shifting sound like the building was groaning in pain.
Everyone looked up at the ceiling.
“That doesn’t sound … safe,” Nigel whispered and took a small sip from his metal flask of liquor.
The rumbling died down, the trembling gone, the chandelier tinkling slightly in the darkness above them.
Nick looked back down at the laptops on the table, nodding at them, then looking right at Shane with an I-told-you-so grin on his face. “You saw something up there in that room, and Kristen saw it, too. Looks like we’ve just had our next episode of paranormal activity.”
Shane didn’t answer Nick, but he had to admit that he was right. Nick had promised that they would find paranormal activity here on this island, and he had delivered. Shane had never been in such a supernaturally active place since the Cranston House when he was twelve years old.
The construction lights flickered.
“Aw shit,” Billy said jumping up to his feet.
“What is it?” Kristen practically squealed.
“The generator’s running out of gas.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Billy ran down the hall off of the foyer that led out to the side patio where they had set up the generator. Shane and Kristen were right behind him, then Laura and Nick. Harold still had his camcorder with him and Nigel walked quickly behind him.
The last person to leave their base of operations was Warren. He was almost to the archway that led to the foyer, trying to turn his flashlight on in the pitch-black darkness when he heard a noise from the far end of the dining hall, near the door that led to the kitchen.
“Daddy …”
Warren stopped in his tracks, his heart freezing for a moment, his mind buzzing with fear and hope.
He knew that voice.
“Daddy … help me.”
Warren clicked his flashlight on with trembling fingers and aimed the beam in front of him. The foyer was empty—the others had already raced down the hallway to the patio outside. He panned his flashlight beam across the piles of construction equipment, tools, and materials. Nobody in the foyer. The front doors were closed; the two tall windows on each side of the doors were black with the night pressing against them. They had leaned a piece of plywood up against the window on the left earlier to cover the hole in the shattered window.
“Help me, Daddy.”
Erin’s voice was coming from the other direction. Warren turned around and stepped back into the dining hall, moving deeper into the darkness towards the center of the room where their tables and computers were set up, where their sleeping bags were laid out. His flashlight beam only shined so far into the darkness, the light getting weaker as it tried to reach across the vast room. But even in that weak light, he saw someone standing by the door that led into the kitchen.
He could wait here for a few moments. The others would have the generator started soon and the lights would be back on.
But then he might lose her … he might lose his daughter again.
“Erin,” Warren said. He realized there were tears in his eyes now, blurring his vision.
“Daddy, it’s got me and it won’t let me go.”
He took a few more steps across the room, his desire to see his daughter stronger than his fear. He needed to see Erin; he needed to protect her, to help her.
A flash of lightning lit up the dining hall for a moment and he saw his teenaged daughter standing right beside the door to the kitchen. She looked just like he remembered her. She was dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants, sneakers, and a white long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her hair was pulled back and her skin seemed lighter in the lightning flash, paler. Her eyes seemed sunken with fear, her face shining with tears. She was scared … he had to help her.
“Baby,” Warren called out as he moved faster across the wood floor, moving around the sleeping bags without looking down at them, maybe even stepping on some of them, but he didn’t care. “You just hold on, baby. I’m coming to get you.”
But Erin didn’t wait. She stepped into the kitchen.
“Erin!”
Warren took off after her.
• • • • •
Shane was the second one out on the patio with Kristen right behind him. Billy was already at the generator, pulling the piece of plywood away and leaning it against one of the wood posts that held up the patio ceiling. He unscrewed the cap as he shined his light down at it.
Shane shined his flashlight beam down at the generator to provide Billy with more light.
“Thanks,” Billy said.
The others rushed out onto the patio.
“Is it out of gas?” Kristen asked from right behind Shane.
“Yeah,” Billy said, his long hair hanging down in his bruised face now, strands of it coming loose from his ponytail. “Just need to get some more gas in there and we’ll be back on track.” He gave Kristen a smile and Shane felt a pang of jealousy from that smile. He wondered idly how close th
ey had once been.
A bolt of lightning streaked across the cloudy night sky and illuminated everything like daylight for a moment. A waterfall of rain poured down from the edge of the porch roof and that downpour had seemed frozen in motion for a moment in the lightning flash.
Billy reached for the closest plastic can of gas. He lifted it easily off the patio stones, almost falling back like he hadn’t expected it to be so light. He shook it. Empty. He looked a little confused, and a little concerned—the gas can shouldn’t be empty. He set that one down and picked up the next one, and then the next one.
“What’s wrong?” Nick asked.
Shane didn’t need Billy to explain; he could already tell what was wrong—all the gas cans were empty.
• • • • •
Warren hurried through the kitchen, his flashlight beam lighting the way with the occasional flash of lightning helping. The storm was so ferocious that lightning seemed to strike every few minutes now.
He passed by the ancient brick oven which was now just a dark monolith in the darkness off to his left. He ran past the huge metal sinks that were speckled with rust and the jumble of crumbling pipes underneath them. The cracked tiled floor stretched out in front of him into the darkness, littered with decades of debris.
Warren stopped in his tracks when he saw his daughter. She stood in front of the door to the basement. The door was open beyond her, just a mouth of darkness that seemed impenetrable. She looked so frightened as she stood there, so alone and helpless.
“Daddy … you have to help me.”
Warren nodded as he bit back tears of regret and shame. He should’ve helped Erin that day she overdosed on pain pills. He should’ve known something was wrong with her; he should’ve felt it. But he didn’t. He’d been so consumed in his work that day, so consumed in work that he didn’t even care about anymore now—cold, hard science that had taken the spotlight away from his daughter who had been his life and he hadn’t even known it. And now those pursuits seemed pointless and frivolous while he’d let the truly lovely things in his life slip away, the blessings he’d been given. Oh God, why hadn’t he seen that Erin had a problem with drugs? Why hadn’t he listened to his wife? Why hadn’t he helped Erin?
