“I couldn’t say for certain,” I said. “And, again, I really don’t want to jump to conclusions. The school has been in existence for only the past hundred years. These kids could have been on the grounds long before then.”
“How do you think they died?” Gil wondered.
I shrugged. “It could have been anything, buddy. Disease, farming accident, some sort of natural disaster, fire, hunger. I mean, take your pick.”
“Again we have more questions than answers,” Steven said.
“Welcome to ghostbusting,” I said flatly. Looking at Gil, I said, “I think your suggestion to check out the old police blotters is great. Tomorrow, let’s see when the first of these calls started coming in to the Lake Placid police.”
“Got it,” Gil said.
Turning to Steven, I said, “You and I can go down to the library and dig through some of the old papers. Maybe we can find something that will point to what might have happened to the boys. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and stumble across an article that will tell us everything we need to know about them.”
Steven frowned. “I am not feeling so lucky, M.J.,” he said.
“We gotta start somewhere, honey,” I said. “Now let’s head to bed and get an early start. I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to be a bitch of a long day.”
Little did I know—that wasn’t even the half of it.
Chapter 5
Early the next morning I went for a quick run, keeping fairly close to Karen’s place so as not to get lost. When I got back Steven was already up and making breakfast. “That smells good,” I said cheerfully while I poured myself some coffee.
“I am making waffles,” he said. “Do you like blueberry or strawberry compote?”
I gave him a good-morning kiss and whispered, “Surprise me.” Steven set down his spoon and scooped me up in his arms. “Whoa!” I said. “What are you doing?”
“Are you surprised?” he said, and kissed me passionately before I could answer.
In the background we heard a cough. “If this is a bad time I can come back,” Gil said.
Steven swiveled around, still holding me in his arms. “No, this is not a bad time. We were just saying good morning.”
Gilley smiled and opened his arms wide. “Well, in that case, Doctor, may I say good morning too?”
I rolled my eyes. Gil made no attempt to hide his major crush on Dr. Delicious. “Ahem,” I said into the uncomfortable silence that followed. “I think you’re burning the waffles.”
Steven set me down gently and turned back to the waffles. I gave Gil a pat on the head and swiveled him around to the table. “Killjoy,” he muttered.
“Himbo,” I replied with a giggle.
We gobbled down our breakfast and piled into the van to head into town, where we dropped Gil at the courthouse and cruised around until we found the library, a lovely, rather small structure with a beautiful view of Mirror Lake. Heading inside we realized that the size of the building was very deceptive. The library had four levels, the first of which, just off the street, led into the adult-fiction and circulation-desk area. Stopping at the circulation desk I asked one of the librarians where I might find older copies of the local newspapers.
“Right here,” she said pleasantly. “We have copies of the Daily Enterprise dating back to the first edition in 1894, and the Lake Placid News from its beginning in 1905, all preserved on microfilm. What years were you interested in viewing?”
“We’d like to start at the beginning for both,” I said, and Steven groaned. I ignored him and continued with, “Can we have a few years at a time?”
“Certainly,” she said, turning around to a large group of cabinets behind her. “Let’s see now,” she said, placing a set of reading glasses on her nose while bending down to open the bottom drawer.
Pulling out a long, narrow box of film containers, she handed them to us and said, “Those are for the first five years of both papers. You can view them down on the next level. You’ll see a microfilm machine next to the children’s section.”
Steven and I trooped down the stairs and found the microfilm machine. “There’s only one?” he asked as he looked skeptically at it.
“Looks like it,” I said, glancing around to be sure. “I’ll look through these first and when I get tired I’ll turn it over to you, okay?”
“Sure, sure,” he said, and I could tell he was already bored.
“Why don’t you go explore the library and I’ll sift through this stuff.”
Steven shrugged his shoulders and wandered off. I loaded the film into the machine and began skimming. What felt like eons later I took my eyes away from the print and rubbed them tiredly.
I’d learned a great deal about Lake Placid and its history, but nothing even hinting at the three boys we’d seen at the school.
The only article of interest had been regarding Northelm. The story was published in 1898 and indicated that land for the school had been purchased from the State of New York. “Which means it wasn’t held privately,” I muttered. I’d really been hoping that I’d find a link to a family name that I might be able to use with the boys, but the more I looked, the more I was convinced the boys did not live on the land prior to the school’s opening. That meant they were associated in some way with the school. The question was when.
Leaning back in the chair I was sitting in, I glanced around and found a clock on the wall. I’d been looking through film for two hours, and Steven had never once come back to check on me.
I got up grumpily and strolled through the children’s section. The good doctor wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I glanced back up the stairs we’d come down and decided he might be up in the adult wing. I passed the librarian who had given us the microfilm on the stairs, and she asked me, “Are you having any luck in your search?”
“Not as much as I was hoping for,” I said. “Listen, have you seen the gentleman I was with? I’ve lost track of him.”
“He’s upstairs in the adult wing, sitting with a group of teenagers.”
That checked me. “He is?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “I’ve had to tell them several times to keep their voices down. He seems to be entertaining them to no end.”
“This I have to see,” I said, thanking her and hurrying up the stairs.
I found Steven seated at a table surrounded by a group of kids in their late teens, many of whom were looking at him like he was the coolest thing on earth. One young girl had a rather dreamy look on her face as I caught Steven describing an invention he’d developed with some other doctors in Germany before coming to the U.S. “It’s a simple contraption, really,” he said. “The first prototype was a ladle that we carved a square hole in and pressed over the area of the heart needing to be repaired. The heart was able to continue beating while keeping that section still and allowing us to operate. Many people are now able to avoid bypass surgery with our invention.”
“That is too cool!” said the young teen.
I gave a soft, “Ahem,” as I stopped at the table.
“M.J.!” Steven said, and everyone looked up at me.
“Hey, there,” I said. “I came to recruit you for some microfilm time.”
Steven ignored the hint that he should leave his adoring fans and come with me to the machine downstairs. “Everyone, this is M. J. Holliday. She is a ghostbuster.”
Six sets of eyes swiveled with surprise to look at me. “Hi,” I said with a small wave.
“Ghostbuster? For real?” asked one young man.
“For real,” Steven said. “M.J., you might want to sit and talk with us. These young people have some interesting stories to tell.”
I smiled tightly. “Actually, Steven, we’re on a deadline here, and I really think we need to get back to our investigation.”
“So she’s the one you were telling us about? The one who can kill Hatchet Jack?” asked the same youth who had spoken before.
I scowled. What had Steven been feeding th
em? “I’m not out to kill Jack,” I said moodily.
“Oh,” three of them said in unison, and looked decidedly disappointed. “Then he’s still going to be out there?”
I gave them all a curious look. “Have you seen him?” I asked.
Four heads nodded vigorously. One of the heads belonged to the girl who had looked so dreamily at Steven, and I saw that she shivered when I asked the question. “Beth saw him up close and personal,” said one of the boys, motioning to the girl.
“It was, like, the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” she whispered.
I pulled a chair from the neighboring table and sat down next to her. “Tell me,” I said.
Beth glanced at Steven, who gave her an encouraging nod. “It was last summer, and I was like, hanging out with these guys, and Jeremy said we should all, like, go to the woods by that private school and look for Hatchet Jack.”
“How did you know about him in the first place?” I asked, curious about Jack’s reputation.
“Everyone knows about him,” said the young man to her right. “My brother used to go to the woods every summer and try to see if he’d come out. Some kids say if he gets mad enough he’ll chase you through the woods.”
“How long have there been stories about Hatchet Jack?” I asked the group.
A few of the kids shrugged and looked at one another to see who would answer. One boy with a bad case of acne and bright red hair said, “My mom told me about him when I was a little kid.”
“Your mom knew about him?”
The youth shrugged again. “Yeah, I guess. She used to tell me that Hatchet Jack was going to get me if I didn’t come home on time, and once she told me that when she was in high school she saw him in the woods up near Hole Pond.”
I glanced at Steven meaningfully. “And how old is your mom?”
This got me another shrug. “I think she’s, like, in her late thirties or something.”
Steven smirked. “It is hard to judge anyone older than twenty when you are so young,” he said.
“Hole Pond,” I said. “That’s near Northelm, isn’t it?”
Everyone nodded. “Northelm owns half the pond; the other half belongs to the park. There’s a really big oak tree on the park side,” said Beth in a breathy whisper, her face slightly pale. “And you’re supposed to go to that tree and close your eyes and say Jack’s name ten times.”
“And then what happens?” Steven asked when she didn’t continue.
I looked around the group. All eyes were on Beth, and one or two faces looked guilty. “He’s supposed to show up and chase you with his hatchet.”
“And he showed up for you?” I said, searching her haunted eyes.
Beth nodded.
“Tell me what happened,” I said, laying a soothing hand on her arm.
Beth took a big breath. “Like I said, Jeremy dared me to do it.” There was a bit of venom in her voice as she glanced at the boy across the table.
“I didn’t know anything was going to happen, Beth!” he said, and I had a feeling he’d told her as much a hundred times before.
“Well, it did!” she spat at him.
“What happened?” I asked again, gently but firmly.
Beth turned her wide eyes to me. “I heard him before I’d said his name the full ten times. I thought it was just one of the guys trying to scare me, so I didn’t scream or anything. But you’re not supposed to open your eyes until you say his name all ten times, so I said his name again, and I heard this…this…”
“What?” I asked, completely absorbed in her story.
Beth shivered. “Laughter,” she finally said. “He was laughing, but the sound was, like, right behind my ear!”
“He was behind you?” Steven asked, trying to picture it.
“That’s what was so weird!” Beth said, her voice squeaky with fear. “I had my back to that tree. He couldn’t have been right behind me. So, that’s when I opened my eyes, and at first I didn’t see anything, but then all of a sudden he, like, came at me out of the woods.”
“Where were you all?” I asked, looking at the three boys sitting around the table.
“On the other side of the clearing,” said the redheaded boy. “We didn’t see Jack until he was halfway to Beth.”
“What did you do?” Steven asked them, and I could tell he was irritated that they had put this wisp of a girl up to such a prank.
More shrugging from the boys, who looked at the tabletop before Jeremy finally mumbled, “We ran.”
“You ran?” I gasped. “And left Beth at the tree?”
Beth was staring at the boys as if she’d like to punch their lights out. “That’s right,” she snapped. “They ran and left me there.”
Steven was shaking his head reproachfully. “In my country, boys are more respectful to girls.”
I put my attention back on Beth. “So you opened your eyes and saw him coming at you. How do you know for certain it was Hatchet Jack?”
“He was carrying a hatchet,” she said. “And he had these crazy eyes, and he was running right at me with this hatchet over his head. I screamed and screamed and then I guess I closed my eyes again, ’cause the next thing I remember was this loud noise right next to my head.”
“What kind of a loud noise?” I asked.
Beth took a moment to consider. Finally she said, “It was exactly like the sound of an ax hitting a tree. I must have opened my eyes then, and I know I was still screaming, but the weird thing was, Jack was gone. The only thing I remember as I took off was that this hatchet was sticking out of the tree right next to my head.”
“And you didn’t see any other sign of Jack?” I said, wanting to be sure that after he cut into the tree he had disappeared.
“Well, no,” she said. “But I was pretty freaked out. I mean, I was screaming and running, and I don’t remember a lot more after that.”
I gave Steven a meaningful look and mouthed the word portal at him. He gave me a nod of understanding and said to the boys, “Take us to this tree.”
All three boys snapped their heads up and looked at him, their faces completely pale. “No way, man,” said Jeremy. “There’s no freaking way I’m ever going near that place again.”
Steven gave him a level look. “You will be perfectly safe,” he said. “M.J. has much experience dealing with these types of things.”
“No way,” said the redheaded boy. “Nuh-uh.”
I scowled at them. “Fine, then draw us a map.”
Twenty minutes later, crude map in hand and microfilm returned to the front desk, Steven and I were driving to the county clerk’s office to check on Gilley and let him know what we were up to. “So, you believe that the tree is this Hatchet Jack’s portal?” Steven asked me as I navigated the traffic.
“Hope so,” I said. “That may be why there’s so much activity around the tree. He comes and goes through that portal.”
“And what will you do if you find this portal, again?”
“Seal it up,” I said. “If I drive some magnetic stakes into the heart of it, he won’t be able to go back and forth between our plane and his lower plane.”
“Why do they like to go back and forth?” Steven asked me.
“It’s a little easier for them on the lower plane,” I said.
“They don’t get as tired, and they can learn things from other nasty energies that exist down there.”
“Learn things?”
I nodded solemnly. “Yep, they can learn how to scare people more effectively. Sometimes they can even grow more powerful, and that’s when things can get dicey. You know how Jack stacked those desks up really quickly?”
Steven nodded. “That was creepy,” he said.
“Well, that type of thing takes a tremendous amount of energy. He was showing off. Most nasty ghosts like him can only manage to move a few chairs around awkwardly. He stacked an entire classroom of desks in a very precise manner. He’s one powerful SOB, I tell you.”
“Do y
ou think he is dangerous?” Steven asked.
“I do,” I said. “Remember what he did to Gil out by the van? He’s incredibly strong, and he might be growing stronger. We’ve got to shore him up as soon as possible.”
“And once you find his portal, all we have to do is drive a few stakes into the tree and be done with it?”
I sighed tiredly. “Unfortunately not,” I admitted. “I’ll need to locate him out here first, then drive him through the portal. It does me no good to lock up his portal if he’s out and about on this side. He may not be able to gain any more strength if he’s locked out of that lower plane, but he’s still powerful enough to scare the hell out of kids in the area. And he seems to like to attack them, as Beth can attest.”
“What do you make of the fact that she says she saw a hatchet sticking out of the tree?”
“It’s not unheard of,” I said. “I remember a friend of mine, Eli Stinnet, one of the best ghostbusters in the South, telling me this amazing story of an investigation on Kolb’s Farm in Georgia, which was the site of a Civil War battle in 1864. While Eli was out taking his baseline, a soldier in full Union garb and smelling like someone who hadn’t bathed in a month walked right up to him and extended his hand out, like he wanted to give Eli something. Eli assumed it was some kind of prank, so he opened his hand, playing along, and the soldier dropped two bullets into his palm. He told Eli that he was almost out of ammo, and that was all he could spare. And then he vanished right in front of Eli’s eyes.”
“Whoa,” said Steven.
“Whoa is right,” I agreed. “Eli showed me the bullets. They’ve been authenticated by three experts as dating from the Civil War.”
“How can ghosts carry real objects?”
I smiled ruefully. “We haven’t figured that one out yet,” I said. “Which, again, is why this Hatchet Jack character might be so dangerous. If he can wield an actual hatchet, and local kids are putting one another up to provoking him, then we owe it to this community to seal him up good.”
By now we had pulled up in front of the county clerk’s office, and we parked and went in to track down Gil. We found him without a lot of trouble in one of the small reading rooms available for people researching records. “Hey,” he said when he saw us. “I was wondering how you guys were making out.”
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