Parrish

by Shannen Crane Camp

  “Let’s get right down to it, then,” Jefferson said. He turned off the lights and cast us into darkness. “Jefferson, Sadie, and Deacon in Sadie’s bathroom on the Queen Mary. September fourth at 11:00 p.m.”

  We all sat there for a minute, listening to the silence and hoping some foreboding sound would suddenly materialize. Jefferson stared straight ahead, his large owl eyes focused on a spot on the wall, while Deacon grinned from ear to ear, staring at my dress in obvious amusement. I stuck my tongue out at him while Jefferson wasn’t looking.

  “Very professional,” Brighton said over our earpieces.

  Right. She could see us. Oops.

  Deacon made faces back at me, trying to get me to laugh.

  Jefferson didn’t seem to notice our goofing off. He was in his “serious paranormal investigator” mood. Of the many moods he had, this one was probably the most manageable.

  “Is there anyone here with us?” he asked.

  Silence.

  “What’s the EMF reader looking like?” Jefferson asked me, forcing me to actually do some work.

  “It’s sitting at a point two. Nothing too exciting.”

  He sighed in annoyance but wasn’t about to give up that easily.

  “Why are you following Sadie?” he asked the dark bathroom.

  “Because Sadie’s a babe,” Brighton said, making me laugh and earning a dirty look from Jefferson. Either he didn’t agree or he was tired of our goofing around. Kind of the pot calling the kettle black, if you asked me, since we probably would have made contact in the pub in Portland if he hadn’t decided to scare me and ruin everything.

  He let his brow furrow as his lips pouted a bit. Taking pity on him, I tried to rein our antics back in.

  “Were you on the Queen Mary on its maiden voyage?” I asked the dark bathroom. I paused long enough for an unheard answer that the equipment might pick up. “Do you want us out of—”

  My words died instantly as I heard a noise.

  “Did you guys hear that?” I asked.

  Deacon shook his head in confusion.

  “I did,” Jefferson said, staring intently at me. “I can’t make out what it was though.”

  “It kind of sounded like a kid whining. Or maybe . . . an animal?”

  “Because those sound the same,” Deacon said.

  I ignored him. “Play the tape back, Jefferson. Let’s see if we caught it.”

  He obediently played the sound in question once more, turning the volume up all the way on our recorder. We could hear a muffled, high-pitched sentence but, as usual, I couldn’t decipher what it was saying.

  I couldn’t quite understand why, but the voice made the hair on the back of my arms stand up. This childlike sound made me feel uneasy. Looking around the cramped bathroom, I could see I wasn’t the only one. Deacon had stopped making faces and Jefferson had his eyes closed, trying to figure out what was being said.

  “Play it again,” I said.

  The voice materialized once more as the recording was played, and though I still couldn’t fully understand the sentence, two words were undoubtedly clear to me.

  “I heard stuck,” I began.

  “And pool,” Jefferson finished.

  “It sounded like a little kid,” Deacon said sadly.

  It wasn’t exactly a happy thing, trying to communicate with the dead. But finding paranormal evidence of children always cast a bit of a shadow over our group. Death was sad. But the death of a child was a whole new level.

  “I’m turning on the K2 meter,” I said, holding the small handheld device in front of me and powering it on. “If you can hear me, I don’t want you to be afraid of us,” I spoke as if I were talking to a child. “This device I’m holding in my hand has lights on it. If you come up and touch it or make a loud noise next to it, the lights will light up and we’ll know you’re trying to talk to us.”

  “Can you touch the device?” Jefferson asked, his talking-to-children voice not as comforting as mine.

  Glancing at the two Parrish boys, I began to wonder if it really was a good idea to have all three of us in the bathroom at once. I mean, if I were a little ghost child, I wouldn’t want to hang out in a bathroom full of adults.

  “I think you both need to leave so I can do this on my own,” I said.

  “What?” they both said together. Deacon sounded confused but Jefferson sounded annoyed, as if I were trying to steal his glory.

  “You can still watch from Brighton’s room, I just don’t think a kid is going to talk to us when there are so many people in here.”

  Jefferson didn’t say anything, but I could tell he agreed. Reluctantly, he rose to his feet and nodded to his cousin, indicating he should listen to me.

  “I’ll be on the mic, so ask any of the questions I feed you,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I refrained from smiling at Jefferson’s sudden burst of authority as the boys shut the door behind them, leaving me on my own.

  Taking a deep breath, I let myself get back into the zone and hoped we hadn’t scared the child off completely. Assuming, of course, that it was an intelligent ghost and not just a residual haunt, which simply left a trace behind, replaying the same sentence over and over like a broken record.

  “Okay, now that it’s just the two of us, can you come up and touch this device to let me know you’re here?” I asked, holding the K2 meter out in front of me and holding my breath.

  For a moment, nothing happened, and I began to lose hope. Maybe I was alone. Then suddenly, a rainbow of lights lit up across my palm, and the breath I had been holding escaped my lips in a rush, a smile creeping over my cheeks.

  “That was so good,” I said.

  “No, she’s only asked one question,” Brighton said in my ear. “Calm down, you insane Brit.”

  Deacon and Jefferson apparently had arrived at out little command central.

  Jefferson must have jogged down the hallway to get there so fast.

  Crazy Parrish.

  “I want to play a little game with you, okay?” I asked.

  Jefferson was making a racket in my earpiece as he tried to grab the microphone from Brighton, but I ignored him.

  “I’m going to ask you some questions. If the answer to those questions is yes, I want you to touch the device to make it light up, just like you did before. If the answer is no, don’t touch it at all. Do you understand?”

  The lights on my K2 reader lit up instantly, making my stomach do a flip. Some girls got butterflies from boys—I got butterflies from a paranormal question and answer session. My mom would never get grandkids from me at this rate.

  “This is amazing,” Jefferson said in my ear. “Good call getting us out of there, Sadie.”

  I wanted to answer him, maybe point out the fact that he had just complimented me, but I also didn’t want to confuse whoever I was currently making contact with, so I just smiled, hoping he’d pick up on the appreciation. After all, it wasn’t every day a Parrish was nice to you.

  “Were you a passenger on this ship?” I asked.

  Lights.

  “Great!” I said enthusiastically, encouraging this child to continue talking to me. “Are you the one who’s been trying to contact us?”

  The K2 didn’t light up instantly, but I waited for a moment, thinking my new friend was just a bit slow to respond.

  “That’s a no,” Deacon said in my earpiece, after almost half a minute had passed.

  “Okay,” I said. “Do you know the person who’s trying to contact us?”

  Lights.

  “What is the EMF looking like?” Jefferson asked.

  “It’s at a one point oh,” I answered, trying to decide which direction I should take my questioning. “Is there someone trying to contact us?”

  Lights.

  “Ask about the pool. What were they saying about the pool?” Jefferson said, making me want to rip the earpiece out. It was much too con
fusing having him shouting instructions while I tried to sound friendly and to not freak out over the fact that I was actually talking to a ghost.

  “Earlier, when those boys were in the room with me, we thought we heard you say something about the pool. Something about being stuck.” I paused, wondering if I was on the wrong path with these questions.

  I knew what I wanted to ask next, but I wasn’t sure if I should. It wasn’t exactly helping us find whatever it was we were sent to the Queen Mary to find, but I couldn’t just ignore the fact that I was actually making contact with a spirit. I had to follow the line of questioning all the way to the end.

  “Did you die in the pool?” I asked.

  I could hear Brighton mumble something to the Parrish boys, but I was too focused to make out what it was. The lights in my hand did nothing. I waited for a moment longer, just to make absolutely sure the answer was a no.

  To my relief, the lights stayed dark. At least this ghost wasn’t quite as tragic as I had originally thought.

  “Are you staying on the Queen Mary?” I asked.

  It seemed odd for a ghost to attach itself to an area it had visited briefly in life. Typically we saw entities attaching themselves to the place they’d died.

  But the lights illuminated. So for some reason, this child had come back to reside on the Queen Mary in the afterlife. And they were still here. Maybe they’d come back to the Queen Mary because of fond memories from their lifetime.

  I licked my dry lips, unsure of how to proceed.

  “Whatever it is we’re looking for . . . is it in the pool room with you?” I asked, before I could really think about what I was saying.

  The bathroom light suddenly clicked itself on.

  Before Brighton, Jefferson, or Deacon could say anything, I was out of my hotel room and running down the hallway.

  Chapter 10

  I pulled the ridiculous pink dress over my head and tossed it on the ground, glad that I had kept my jeans and tank top on underneath the costume.

  “Where did she go?” Deacon asked over my earpiece.

  I raced down the stairs on bare feet, tossing the wig on a chair. I had kept the K2 meter with me, but abandoned the cameras in the bathroom, leaving everyone in Brighton’s room blind.

  “Jefferson, where are you going?” Brighton called

  “We finally have some direction,” I said, walking right up to the doors to the pool. Even though it made no sense, I could hear splashing and children laughing behind the doors. I knew the doors were locked, but that didn’t stop me from pulling on them as hard as I could, desperate to get inside.

  “Sadie!” Jefferson yelled from down the hall, running toward me and looking concerned. “Sadie, stop!”

  “I can hear them in there. Jefferson, they’re in the pool area. They’re in there with whatever it is we need. We aren’t crazy for coming out here. There’s a clue in there. We have to get it,” I said, shaking the doors once more as I strained to break them open.

  Jefferson grabbed my hands, pulling them forcefully away from the doors. “You’re going to break the bloody doors and get us kicked out before we get our clue.” He looked over his shoulder before kneeling down in front of the door.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, thinking he was wasting valuable time.

  Jefferson didn’t answer me. Instead he pulled a rolled up leather container from the pocket of his suit coat. It looked like something Brighton would keep her makeup brushes in, and as he sat it on the ground, he unrolled the bundle in dramatic fashion.

  Jefferson loved to be dramatic.

  “Jefferson, what is that?” I asked, this time a bit louder so he’d stop ignoring me.

  “Just keep watch,” he instructed, pulling a small metal object from the bundle.

  “You know how to pick a lock?” I asked skeptically. “Why do you even have that on you? Why didn’t you use it before?”

  He began working on the locked door. “This is my emergency kit,” he answered, though his voice sounded distracted.

  “And you just carry it around with you?” I asked.

  “Not the emergency kit,” Deacon grumbled in my ear.

  “What?” Brighton asked.

  “Jefferson, put that thing away before you get arrested,” his cousin said, not bothering to answer us. “You know what that looks like when people see it.”

  I raised my eyebrows, looking down at the bundle with new eyes and not quite liking what I saw.

  “What exactly do you keep in your emergency kit?” I asked, raising a lip at some of the questionable things I was seeing, the most troubling being the small glass vials labeled “bleach” and “chloroform.”

  “Normal things. In case of emergency.”

  “Like?” I pressed, since he wasn’t going to willingly give this information up.

  “Zip ties. Rope. Lye. Bleach. Lock picking kit. A tiny bit of chloroform.”

  I let my mouth drop open and wondered if I should bother rebuking him or just try to stay out of his way in case he decided to use his “emergency kit” on me.

  “That sounds more like a serial killer’s kit,” Brighton said, so that that I didn’t have to.

  He had to know we were all thinking it.

  “You’d be surprised at how similar the two kits are,” he mumbled, still completely unconcerned with this new disturbing revelation. “Got the lock.” He rolled up his “emergency kit,” and placed it back in his suit pocket.

  We opened the double doors to the pool and Jefferson pulled a well-hidden flashlight off the wall and located the light switch quickly to illuminate the room.

  I would have bothered asking how he knew where to find the flashlight and light switch, but he’d probably just answer me by saying it was better if I didn’t know.

  “Hello?” I called in the empty echoing room. “Is anyone here?”

  “Sadie, you know there’s no one here,” Jefferson whispered. “At least not anyone who’s going to come right out and answer you.”

  As crazy as it sounded, I could have sworn I saw a shadow move in the doorway of the changing room. And from the experiences we’d been having on this ship, I couldn’t ignore that as a coincidence.

  “Hello?” I called, ignoring Jefferson and running into the changing room attached to the pool area.

  Despite the lights being on and having Jefferson in the vicinity, I suddenly felt an eerie dread spread through me, stopping me in my tracks.

  “Sadie, it’s only a matter of time before someone figures out that we’ve broken into the pool. I’m sure they have security cameras,” Jefferson said, joining me in the changing room.

  “He’s right, Sade,” Brighton said over my earpiece, scaring me. I had totally forgotten they were listening in.

  “Jefferson, there’s something in here. I can feel it.”

  Jefferson didn’t say anything but walked in front of me protectively, looking around at the empty stalls of the long changing room.

  “Hello?” he whispered.

  I couldn’t tell if he was as nervous as me or if he was excited by the strong feeling of dread that seemed to permeate this room.

  “Sadie.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “What?” Jefferson said back to me, looking utterly confused.

  “Why did you say my name?”

  “I didn’t,” he said, giving me a you-might-be-unstable look.

  “Is she losing it?” Deacon asked.

  I pushed past Jefferson, walking through the long changing room and coming to a stop in front of the stall the sound seemed to come from—one with a small crack in the tile that didn’t match the rest of the tiles around it.

  “Probably,” Jefferson said back, coming into the stall with me. “Stand by.”

  “That tile doesn’t match the rest. I need a bobby pin or something,” I said to Jefferson. “I’d bet you anything there’s something hidden in here.”

  “I�
�ve got a knife,” Jefferson answered, pulling a pocket knife from his slacks.

  “I would ask why you have a knife, but given the ‘emergency kit’ I just saw, the knife is the least of my worries,” I said, worrying—not for the first time—that Jefferson might one day lose it and chop us all into tiny pieces for no reason at all.

  Putting aside my worries for the moment, I took the knife from him and lodged it into the gap in the tile, managing with no small effort, to pop the tile itself out.

  “At least we’ve managed to rack ‘destruction of public property’ up on our quickly growing list of crimes tonight,” Jefferson said.

  “As if you care.”

  “I don’t,” he agreed. “I’m just glad my fake wife loves minor crimes as much as I do.”

  I ignored him. I usually did. And instead, I dug my fingers into the small space behind the tile, making contact with a small folded up piece of paper.

  It took a few tries to dislodge it, but when I finally pulled the paper from its long-time hiding spot, I felt a rush of pride.

  I’d done this.

  I’d used whatever meager ghost hunting skills I had and had actually found us a physical clue.

  “How did you find that?” Jefferson asked, his cheek practically pressed against mine as he tried to get a closer look at the paper.

  “This is it. This must be what we were sent here to find.” I handed the knife back to Jefferson. “This is why the kid led me to the pool area. Why they called me over to this stall.”

  “What is it?” Brighton and Deacon both said in my ear.

  “Stand by,” Jefferson said again, his already abnormally large eyes even bigger in his state of excitement. “Is it a note? The paper doesn’t look all that old.”

  I turned to face him with my back against the wall, trying to ignore how close we were all of a sudden. I wasn’t quite sure why I picked that exact moment to look down at his lips, or why I suddenly found myself so distracted, but a man’s voice calling out in the darkness made me jump so violently that I almost dropped the paper I was holding.

  “Hello?” the voice called again.

  My first thought was that a ghost had followed us in here, but my paranormal brain quickly gave in to my logical brain that told me we were in big trouble.