by JL Bryan
Stacey didn't answer. She was listening to her headset, eyes on her screen, with a glazed-over look that told me she hadn't found anything interesting so far. Fortunately, she had a long way to go.
I put Vance's supernatural musings aside and focused on the data from Millie's room instead.
The Mel-Meter had recorded a temperature spike of seven degrees about thirty minutes previously. I checked the night vision camera's footage from around that time.
Something flicked across the screen.
I slowed it down and watched it again.
It passed by the hospital bed where Millie lay, moving from head to foot. The figure was shadowy, blurry, only barely human in shape. It was more like a cloud of smoke...or maybe a billow of fire.
I was confused for a minute. The data suggested it was a hot ghost, maybe the one that had chased Hyacinth in the hallway. The ghost we suspected of being Millie was a more typical cold ghost, drawing down the temperature in a room as she fed on ambient heat for energy, creating a cold spot. That was the one that had said Falcon when I asked her name.
Maybe the hot ghost was obsessed with or connected with Millie somehow. That made perfect sense if it was indeed the hippie bomber Elton Roberts, the one who'd conspired with Millie to plant the bomb in her family's building. Perhaps he was looking to Millie to help him. Or, for all I knew, maybe he was waiting for her to emerge from her body so they could dance to Grateful Dead records all night.
“Stacey, look,” I said.
“What?” She scowled as I played the footage for her. “How did you find something so fast?”
“There was a temperature spike. The hot ghost is hanging around Millie's bed at night, it looks like.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I wonder what kind of relationship they had in life,” I said. “We know they were close. Partners in crime and all that.”
“Aw, is there anything more romantic than planning an act of terrorism together?” Stacey asked. “Okay, I guess basically anything would be more romantic than that. Taking an algebra class together would be more romantic.” She shuddered. “Algebra.”
“So maybe we can use something of Millie's as bait for the hot ghost. If we trap him, he can't bother our clients anymore.”
“And what about Millie? And Old Concrete-Face down in the basement?”
“Millie is the one we were hired to deal with, but she doesn't scare me as much,” I said. “Old Concrete-Face scares me. We'll have to look for an obituary...or a man who disappeared around 1899, when this building was under construction. There might not be an obituary for him, though. Not in the Atlanta papers or anywhere else.”
“How come?” Stacey tore open a box of Fig Newmans—the late Paul Newman's organic answer to Fig Newtons, I guess—and bit into one. “He'd have to be dead by now if he was alive in 1899.”
“He could be a missing persons case,” I said. “And an adult going missing in those days wasn't necessarily something anyone would notice, unless he had family in town. Otherwise, it might just mean he hopped a train and moved away. But he definitely didn't do that. I'm guessing he was murdered and his body was hidden in the wet cement when they laid the foundation for the tower.”
“What?” Stacey acted like she'd been hit with a jolt of electricity. “Oh! That's why his mouth was full of concrete.”
“And I would guess Ernest Pennefort killed him, or had him killed,” I said. “Why else would the ghost hang around haunting the family generation after generation?”
“Maybe he's just restless,” Stacey said. “It can't be comfortable, lying around in a bed of concrete with a whole building crushing down on you.”
“Anyway, we need to figure out how to capture him or put him to rest. We have to explain to Thurmond and Amberly that he might be the real problem in this building, the cause of other hauntings, maybe even the reason that several family members have reached early, tragic ends here. And we have to figure out who he is. We don't have a name. We don't have anything.”
“Except a Scottish-or-Irish accent, so maybe he knew Siobhan from back in the old country,” Stacey said. “And he has that uniform. Do you think he worked here at the hotel, as a doorman or whatnot? Then he got murdered and buried in the basement?”
“If he's part of the original foundation, then he must have died in 1899,” I said. “But maybe there was fresh cement poured in the basement since then, and that's when he was killed. He spoke as if he knew Ernest Pennefort and his family personally, so he must have been alive at the same time. So...who wants to be in charge of looking for records of early twentieth century construction and building permits? Any volunteers?”
Stacey glanced around the room, as if expecting to find someone else on whom to pawn off that work. “Uh...not me?”
“Sounds like we'll be heading back to the library today, and maybe hit the city archives after that.”
“Can we also ride that huge Ferris wheel in the middle of town? What's the deal with that? Is there a fair or something?”
“I think it's just a Ferris wheel. I didn't see any cows or Tilt-A-Whirls.”
“Weird.”
“I doubt we'll have time, Stacey. You can go after we solve the case.”
“But that could take forever.” She flopped back on the big half-circle couch, which slept so much better than the actual bed over in the bedroom, even with the girl ghost waking you up in the early hours of the morning. It was one nice old couch.
“When's Jacob getting into town?” I asked.
“Late. He couldn't get off work early, so probably nine or ten.”
“That's a good time for his walk-through, anyway. The commercial tenants will be gone for the weekend and the place will be quiet.”
“Yeah, we'll have it all to ourselves. Just you, me, Jacob, and all the dead people. Like old times, right?” She sat upright, very abruptly, as if she'd just thought of something. “Maybe Jacob will ride that huge Ferris wheel with me!”
“Maybe we should focus on our work for a little while.”
“Right. Because we've barely done any of that tonight.” She shook her head and replaced her headphones, diving back into all the data we'd gathered so far.
“I'm going upstairs,” I said, lifting her headphones.
“Huh?”
“I'm just going to set up the thermal in there with Millie, since we don't want to risk putting it down in the basement, anyway,” I said. One nice thing about a seventeen-story building—a monster in the basement seems pretty distant when you're sixteen floors above it. But that didn't mean we were safe.
“Want me to come with you?” Stacey asked.
“I'll be fine. That nurse is up there.” We'd seen the night nurse come on duty and check on Millie a few times, attending to the unconscious woman's needs.
“Okey-doke.”
I grabbed my headset just in case, then rolled the maintenance cart with our thermal camera and tripod down the hall to the service elevator.
When I entered Millie's apartment, my first impression was of how cold it had become. It hit me right away, and I tensed up, placing one hand on my holstered flashlight.
“Yello?” The night nurse came out; she had long, midnight-blue hair streaked with pink, and didn't look much older than me. She blew a big purple bubble of gum that popped and slapped against her lips. “What's up?”
“I'm with the security consultants,” I said. “I just have to set up a camera.”
“Working kinda late, huh?”
“It's so we don't interfere with tenants during the day. You can check with Pauly down at the front desk.”
“Nah, they told me there could be weird stuff like this. Where you putting that?” She chomped on her gum, and the smell of artificial grape hung in the air.
“In the same room as your patient, but not close to her.”
“Huh. They worried about people breaking in? Way up here?”
“The family wants their private apartments extra secur
e.”
“Oh, sure. Rich people and stuff.”
“Doesn't it seem unusually cold in here?” I asked her as I approached the little ballroom where Millie lay in the hospital bed. The lights were out for the night.
“Yeah, my fault, sorry. It got kinda hot for a minute, so I cranked up the A/C. I can fix it now if you want.”
“Whatever you like. I'll just be a minute.” I rolled the cart into the room, picked a spot with a different angle from the night vision camera, and set up the thermal. While the room's lights were out, the large windows admitted lights from the taller buildings all around us, so I could see fine.
The nurse lost interest after a minute, looked down at her phone, snickered, and went back to the sitting room. I couldn't see her, but I could hear her long nails clattering against her phone screen as she texted someone.
I approached Millie, looking at her shadowed face, her closed eyes. She was almost corpselike in the bed. I wondered how much it was costing to keep her here for the last couple of years, under watch of private nurses, instead of at a nursing home. Amberly had certainly grumbled about it.
“Millie?” I said, while holding up my Mel-Meter, checking for changes in temperature and electromagnetic energy near the bed. “Millie, is that you? You asked me for help. Remember? That's why I'm here. You grabbed my hand and asked for help.”
The unconscious woman didn't respond, which wasn't exactly surprising. I reached out toward her hand, curled and limp by her hip. I remembered how it had felt when the cold, shadowy hand had emerged from the wall to grip mine. Help...she'd said on the recording. And she'd given her name as...
“Falcon?” I felt ridiculous saying it out loud. My fingers slipped under her unresponsive hand, gripping her gently, not squeezing hard enough to crunch bone like she'd done to me. Unlike her ghost hand, her actual flesh and blood hand felt frail and brittle, like it was made of bird bones or dry twigs. “Pink Falcon? I'm here to help you.”
She didn't respond, but my Mel-Meter emitted a small beep as it detected an energy spike.
“Can you hear me?” I squeezed just a little now. “I'm here to help you. I promise I won't—”
Something hot and solid-feeling shoved against my breastbone, enough to make me stumble back.
The temperature reading on my Mel-Meter shot up five degrees.
“Falcon?” I asked. “Or...Elton? Elton Roberts, the bomber? Is that you?”
It hit me again, much harder this time, and I could feel the shape of a hand and fingers on my chest, very hot. I staggered back toward the wall.
The heat radiated from somewhere in front of me. I stood my ground, resisting the urge to flee, but I put my free hand at my hip, close to my flashlight and iPod.
“Show yourself, spirit,” I said, in my most commanding Vincent Price-y tone. “Give me your name.”
Nothing else happened...at first. But as I continued staring at the hotspot, it shimmered a little in the darkness, like heat waves above a car hood on a hot August day.
“Stay back, Elton,” I said, hoping I had his name right. Knowing a ghost's name can give you some power over it, or at least help you get its attention.
The shimmering became more solid at the edges, with a dull red color like iron just beginning to heat, or maybe a coil of waste metal cooling in a dying fire. I could discern a shoulder and an arm, and the edge of a head; the figure was about a foot taller than me, and I got the impression it was male.
“Do you understand what's happened to you?” I said. “Do you understand you're dead? That the bomb went off while you were planting it? Are you trapped here, too, Elton? I can help you. You don't have to fight me.”
My Mel-Meter beeped as the temperature and electromagnetic energy both soared. The shimmering became thicker and denser.
I reached for my iPod, going straight for the holy music, but it turned out I didn't need it.
The partly-visible figure vanished in another ripple, and the increased temperature and energy readings vanished from my meter. The ghost was gone, or at least hiding himself away.
I walked around the room, taking readings, but I didn't find anything...until I reached one of the windows. Old high-backed chairs were arranged along the wall there, maybe to offer people seating when they grew tired of dancing on the parquet floor.
The electromagnetic readings spiked up again...but the temperature dropped noticeably this time. A cold spot formed around me, making me shiver. It was a very different feeling from the hot entity I'd encountered by the bed.
“Who's there?” I asked, not sure where to look because there was nothing to see. “Millie? Pink Falcon?”
She was barely there, barely a shadow...but I could see her, just a little. As her outline began to fill in, the air around me froze so fast I could almost hear it crack.
Then heat touched me from behind.
I turned back to see the shimmering haze had returned, standing by the bed, as though guarding Millie's body. For some reason, probably inappropriately, I thought of the angel in the Book of Genesis, the one posted outside Eden with a flaming sword, just in case any humans got any ideas about trying to stroll back into the paradise they'd lost.
“Ellie?” Stacey's voice crackled over my headset. “Everything okay? The thermal readings have gone totally crazytown. Hotspot by the bed, cold spot by the wall...it's like you're in the middle of that battle between the frost dragons and the fire giants in Magicia IV: Kings of Magicia, Part II.”
“Stand by,” I whispered, unsure how things were going to go. There was a chance I was about to observe something critical about the case, and I didn't want another live person walking into the room and possibly sending both ghosts into hiding.
Of course, there was also a chance I was about to get attacked from two sides, if Millie and Elton were still pals after death and decided I was going to be their target.
I stood as still and quiet as I could manage, not sure which of the two entities posed the larger threat. I waited, every muscle in my body tense, for either of them to move, or materialize more clearly, or maybe even speak.
Invisible, ice-cold fingers gripped my wrist. I thought of the voice on the recording: “...help...”
Then the heat hit me from the other side, like a solid wall of compressed, scorching air, as if a bomb had just gone off in the room. I stumbled, feeling dizzy and sick. The hot ghost was inside me, or passing through me.
For a moment, I heard heavy, fast breathing, like someone was panting or going into a panic attack. I smelled a pungent male body odor, like someone who hasn't bathed in a few days, or possibly months. Or possibly ever.
Then I was somewhere else...a dark place, looking out through a slit to a crowded room. My hands shook with fear and nervous energy. They held something heavy. Sticks of dynamite. A small clock was attached, and wires coiled around the whole assembly.
I slid a wire into place, feeling the huge weight of my intent—to connect and start the timer. To start the clock ticking. I could smell the sweat on my damp, shaking hands.
And then...fire, pain, blood, screaming...and finally darkness and silence.
A voice gasped in my ear, soft and feminine, like a girl had been punched in the gut.
I was back in the present, back in Millie's apartment, the smell of hospital-strength disinfectant in my nose.
The icy fingers and the high-pressure wall of heat both went away, and I stood there alone, swaying on my feet.
“Hey, are you done in here or what?” The nurse clicked on a lamp as she entered. She chewed her grape gum and raised an eyebrow at me. “I have to check on my patient.”
“Okay,” I said to her, trying to keep my voice calm and basically sane-sounding. “I think I'm done here.”
As I staggered past her, I was still struggling to keep my balance and push away a feeling of dizziness and disgust after being invaded by the red ghost. I felt pretty certain he was Elton Roberts now, but I'd had to suffer getting my feelings and sensations
tangled with his in order to confirm it. I wondered what he'd learned about me.
Before leaving the apartment, I told the nurse: “You should know there are a couple ghosts in there. A hot one and a cold one. They pushed me around a little. I think they were fighting each other.”
“Huh. Sounds like that ice dragon fighting that lava giant from that movie.”
“Exactly. So...just wanted to warn you.”
“They aren't bugging me,” she said, her attention already getting sucked back into her phone, my presence already being forgotten. Maybe she didn't believe me, or maybe she just genuinely didn't care. Occasionally I'll meet someone who grew up in a house haunted by relatively benign spirits, and they can shrug off the presence of a ghost, not even finding it particularly interesting. It's not a viewpoint I could ever fully understand, given my own terrifying, life-destroying experience with the ghost in my childhood home.
Anyway, I'd warned her. It was true the ghosts hadn't really been bothering her, or the nurses in general, beyond leading her to turn down the thermostat.
I made it up the hall to the passenger elevator, then slumped against the wall, sweaty and clammy, while I waited for the bells to announce the car's arrival.
Chapter Twenty-One
After all that, I was definitely ready to hole up in the relative safety of our borrowed apartment. I gave Stacey a full rundown of what had happened, mostly to try and sort out the meaning of it. Stacey was able to bring up images and video from the thermal camera showing the cold spot and hot spot, with me in the middle.
I shivered as I watched the cold spot cling to me. Then the hot spot rushed over—right through me, just like I'd felt while glimpsing the hippie bomber's memories. The cold spot dropped away through the floor, down to level sixteen, where our clients lived. The red spot chased after it, leaving me alone in the room, until the nurse showed up.
“So, what's it all about?” Stacey said.
“I think they're engaged in some kind of conflict,” I said. “He's hanging around her body, waiting for a chance to chase and attack her ghost...maybe he's the reason Millie's in a coma in the first place. Maybe he's somehow prevented her from returning to her body. If so, he's been doing it for a more than a year now.”
