Suddenly, the static became normal again, raucous and harsh as though it had never been broken. Then, as quickly as the static had come, it had died. Her screen became a functioning television again, with a CNN reporter wrapping up before the computerized cutoff ended for him.
“No word yet on whether or not the bill will pass the Senate, but the President will be ready to sign when, and if, it does.” the commentator’s perfect hair and the high definition blues and reds in the background resumed, ending the ghostly episode that held her in full grip only a moment earlier.
She breathed in and out, calming herself. She turned her head to the living room window; outside a blue van pulled up in front of the house. The team had arrived, too late.
Chapter Nine
Outside, Dylan and Brett emerged from the front of the van and walked to the back, opening the rear doors and removing what looked like video cameras and other apparatus she couldn’t identify as she peeked from the window. Leah and Sidney exited the back seats; Leah was pulling her long, blond hair into a ponytail, while her counterpart oversaw the unloading of their cargo.
Tracy opened the door, the pad still in her hand, and began waving to get their attention. If only they’d arrived five minutes earlier.
“It’s happening!” she called from the front porch, and they sprinted towards the door, hearing the desperate urgency in her cracking voice.
Each of them had backpacks. Leah was carrying a thick notebook in one hand and a small, carrying case was strapped around her opposite arm. Sidney was carrying a larger, heftier, duffel bag, while Dylan and Brett moved quickly behind them, both tech whizzes following with hands full.
“Please hurry,” she said, her voice quivering, her hands shaking as she held the screen door open.
They stepped single file into the modern, ranch style abode and looked around.
“There...the television,” she said, pointing to the set that was now announcing the latest from America’s Newsroom. A look of interest spread across Brett’s face.
“Tell us what happened from the beginning,” Dylan said. Leah began taking notes as Tracy told how she was watching TV, and then how the static interrupted and changed.
“The sound it made scared the hell out of me. At first, I thought the set was going to blow...then there was this rushing...like turbulence...and then I heard him...them...I mean...I don’t know...”
She gasped, flustered, and blurted out a frenzied flurry of random words strung together in frustration, her voice climbing in confusion.
“It’s all right,” Leah said, clasping her hands in hers. “Just take a deep breath, and tell us what happened.”
“This time, I heard a woman’s voice, and then I heard David’s. I heard the words ‘no’ and ‘can’t,’ and then he almost shouted, loud this time. He called my name again.” She told them how the voices spoke—warped, but fast.
Brett honed his ears to her every word, his eyes never straying from hers. This became his territory, and he thought on how to proceed.
“Tracy, what you heard is what we call an EVP,” he said. “It stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena, which refers to unexplained voices that are either picked up on recordings or heard through various electronics. The EVPs that are identified as spiritual or ‘ghostly’ are just as you described. They are often ‘warped,’ as some may call it, and fast.”
The room spun at this confirmation.
“Come on, sit down,” Leah said.
They sat, and Brett, now in a crouching position on the floor, continued.
“What I’m going to do is connect this audio recorder to one of the outlets on the back of your television.” He unzipped a brown leather carrying case, revealing what looked like an old fashioned, double reeled, tape recorder, only this one seemed more high tech, capable of tasks its predecessors would fail. “An external microphone will be working alongside this recorder. It will pick up any sounds that are not supposed to be there, and the sounds, voices, whatever, will be recorded onto these high-grade, metal tapes.”
He showcased everything for her like a salesperson, even the laptop that would show results from the recorder’s activity. It was just like a technician to speak in terms she couldn’t understand. She didn’t care about the particulars; she wanted this over and finished.
“We are going to keep the television and the recorder on, and we will wait for the static to return, if it does,” he said. He motioned to Dylan, who was setting up two different tripods: one that held a digital video camera and another that perched a 35 millimeter. Dylan then gave a quick glance to all assembled and took his usual lead.
“Tracy, the first thing we are going to do is look around to acquaint ourselves with the house and get a feel for it. I am going to run a scan of the house with this.” He opened a silver, metallic briefcase and retrieved an instrument that looked strangely familiar to her. The paddle-like object, connected by wire to a small, handheld meter, reminded her of the paddles used to shock Mr. Richardson’s heart back to life, a pointless endeavor.
“This,” Dylan continued, “is called an EMF detector. It is used to track and locate energy sources. It will detect fluctuations in electromagnetic fields, and if we get a higher than normal reading, it indicates the presence of spiritual activity at the location.”
“It’s a Ghost buster,” Sidney said, cutting through the tech whiz jargon that he and Leah, who chuckled in agreement, often ignored. Neither of them depended upon Science, or its definitions, to conclude what they already knew. They possessed a gift, the key of the door to the other realm, for reasons they would never understand. They relied solely upon their eyes and ears, and as a result, an invisible barrier silently divided the small group.
“Are you hearing anything, Sidney?” Dylan asked the question with a lingering, underlying hint of sarcasm.
“Not yet,” he said, “but let’s get the party started.”
Tracy led the three investigators on a quick tour of the house, while Brett stayed behind, attending to the television. They walked through the kitchen, the dining room, the hallway, and then downstairs to the basement.
Leah’s eyes searched around her, waiting for the slightest revelation of someone or something that shouldn’t have been there. Then, Sidney spoke.
“You can speak to me if you’re here,” he called out to the emptiness. “Anyone, if you choose to speak, I can hear you.”
Tracy could hear the faint whistling sound of the EMF meter in Dylan’s hand and wondered what it meant.
“Right now, it’s not picking up anything out of the ordinary,” Dylan said, as they walked up from the basement stairs. “But sometimes immediately following some sort of activity, the source may lie dormant for a little while.”
“I started writing as fast I could when it happened,” Tracy said. She handed him the notebook when they were back in the living room where Brett stayed busy and silent.
“Good,” Dylan said. “I’d like to sit and go over this, and maybe have more group discussion while we’re waiting.” It was an odd turn of a phrase, Tracy thought, but there it was. She agreed.
“I feel a draft,” Leah said, her voice sounding an alert. “Do you have a naturally occurring draft in this house?”
“No,” Tracy said. “I always keep the furnace on seventy-five degrees this time of year.”
Dylan walked over to the thermostat which showed a 72 in neon green digits.
“A decrease of temperature in a room often indicates activity, Tracy,” he said. “But I want you to just stay calm, and go on as though everything is normal. Understood?”
She nodded. They sat down and talked...and waited.
* * * *
A red, Ford Taurus was parked a few yards away from Tracy Kimball’s house on Maple Street, and its driver watched in silence as the team unloaded the van. Dr. Susan Logan sat safely away from view, watching through the windshield as the young investigators assembled for their mission.
She knew that Trac
y Kimball was avoiding her so she dragged the truth from Marcia Ross. Susan hated to play dirty, but it usually got her what she wanted. She got the whole story from Marcia, and now her interest peaked. Tracy had called the paranormal research group from the university, and now Susan felt the thrill of two birds in the palm of her hand, the excitement of a daily double.
Two young men were busy at the back of the van, while a young beauty, looking oddly familiar, pulled her long, blond mane into a ponytail. Then, she saw him. He was older now, a decade had passed through his life, and the chubby little boy was now a hefty young man still immersed and captivated by the dark talent that consumed him. She had searched years for Sidney Pratt, and she’d heard he’d been part of this research group, but she had no way of contacting him without being obvious.
The team moved fast into the house...why? Susan waited. They had been inside for thirty minutes. She waited a little longer. Forty-five minutes. Her nerves jittered at the thought of knocking on the door. She drew a deep breath and opened the car door; she was going inside.
* * * *
Tracy’s dining room table was far more suitable to seat everyone, so they sat and conversed as they had done at the university.
They discussed the notes she’d scribbled earlier when the static interrupted, and Tracy repeated everything in the finest of detail. Dylan wished he’d told her to keep a tape recorder running. Again, he reassured her.
“We are going to be monitoring everything, Tracy. We may even have to stay here with you until we get to the bottom of this, if that’s not a problem for you.”
She hadn’t even entertained this possibility until now. Her ranch-style abode was a three bedroom: one was hers, one for guests the other was just an empty room she used as storage space. She supposed she could accommodate four other people. Dylan assured her that it might not come to that.
“Tracy,” Sidney said, “I want to talk more about something we didn’t get much of a chance to delve into last night. That would be the night your patient, Mr. Richardson, had died, and he called you ‘princess’ shortly before that.”
“It was David’s nick name for me. No one, except Marcia, would have known that.” She stressed this point even further.
“Pet names, or nick names, are usually how they communicate with us,” he said. “These names, when used, often serve as signs, or verification of the spirit’s existence. Like I told you about the shrink my parents brought me to years ago, I called her by the name her dead fiancée had called her. That is what he called her. He wanted her to know that it was real, that he was real, and that I was no freak. My parents knew what had happened, and they realized that the shrink became obsessed with what I had said. That’s why they kept me away from her.”
“But, Mr. Richardson?”
“You have to understand,” he said, “we are not bodies with souls, Tracy. We are souls with bodies.” He spoke the last three words as though together, they formed some miraculous and mystifying revelation.
“A soul is the energy that leaves our body at the time of death,” Brett joined in, clarifying. “Where it goes is anyone’s guess, but it’s free to roam, or it can go to a final resting place, wherever that may be.”
This reminded her of the conversation she’d had with Marcia.
“Where do you think the soul is, Tracy?” Sidney asked. “Why do you think ancient texts always refer to ‘heart and soul’? We know where the heart is, but where is the soul? I have a theory that the soul is actually the mind. Now, I don’t mean the brain, but the mind, where the knowledge, and the memories, and the experience are—the mind is the soul. That energy becomes a spirit after death. It leaves our bodies when they cease to exist, but it forever remains a constant. It is all that the human knew in its lifetime, and everything it will encompass on a higher plateau.”
Sidney’s theory remained undoubted, as the interlude of silence fell hard upon the room. He leaned forward to Tracy and explained his next theory.
“It’s also a fact that spirits can manipulate energy to their advantages in many ways. One way is that they can enter the shell of a living body just before its death, although, its time is limited. I think that David’s spirit may have entered Mr. Richardson’s body only minutes before he died, to speak to you, Tracy. He uttered that one word that you would automatically connect with him—princess.”
Tracy heaved, and tears welled in her eyes. She never dreamed that she would ever have to think about David in this way, in the context of someone who no longer was. Six months ago, they were planning their wedding, and now she about to show four ghost hunters where his spirit had lingered not twenty-four hours ago.
Her world had become a bittersweet nightmare in a matter of only three days, and her crying eyes pleaded in distress to the four faces that tried to comfort her. The most disturbing thoughts invaded her mind like an angry army crashing the walls of a fortress.
What if David didn’t know he was dead? What if he was afraid and alone? The worst of paranoia squeezed a tightened grip around her: what if he couldn’t rest because some malevolent entity that still lingered in this world was tormenting him? Was that the other voice she’d heard? Was he crying out for help?
She dried her eyes with two open palms that fell down her face in a wiping motion. She took another deep breath, rose from the table, and walked toward the kitchen.
“Here,” she said, as the four followed. “This is where he stood, right there.” She pointed to the open archway that divided the kitchen from the living room. She stood in the same spot behind the kitchen chair where he stood, a faded existence unacknowledged by the light of the world.
It took minutes to recreate the events that led her to flee the house the night before, and then her cell phone rang. She reached for the phone she’d left on the table.
“Wait, Tracy,” Dylan stopped her, pointing to the cell. “Did those strange calls come from this phone?”
She shook her head and pointed, indicating the land line as the culprit. She looked at the window on her cell: it was Marcia. She flipped up the top of the phone.
“Marcia, can I call you back--”
Marcia’s voice, urgent and angered, interrupted.
“She knows, Tracy. She made me tell her everything.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“Susan Logan, the sneaky bitch, that’s who!”
Tracy started to speak, and again, Marcia cut her off.
“She called me aside at the hospital today. She said she heard reports that you’ve been drinking, and that you’ve been distracted and absent minded while on duty. She made me tell her everything that is going on, or she was going straight to Kemp with what she heard. She knows.”
“She has no right—”
“She said that she could still consider you a patient, since you never actually finished the sessions,” Marcia said. “I’m sorry, Tracy, I didn’t know what else to do. I asked her not to tell anyone—”
“It’s all right, Marcia. It’s not your fault.”
“Tracy, I think she may be on her way over.”
“Great,” she said, her sarcasm undisguised as she looked at four anxious faces.
“Uh oh, you mean, everyone is there, right now?”
“Yep.”
“Damn,” Marcia said, in her famous tone that said the shit was about to hit the fan. Tracy promised to call her back then flipped the cell phone shut.
“We may be expecting company,” she said. The words barely left her lips when the doorbell rang.
* * * *
She wasted no time opening the door and greeting Susan Logan with a sneer of contempt. Susan stood in the doorway, tilting her head in a sympathetic gesture used mostly between old friends.
“Tracy, please let me in. I’m very concerned about you,” she said. “We all have been.” A brief and silent pause passed while Tracy held the door open, allowing the brisk October air to sweep through the house.
The team all stared at
each other, except Sidney, who at the sound of that familiar voice, rose from the chair in curiosity. He couldn’t see her; Tracy was blocking the view between himself and the newly arrived guest.
“You’ve been so concerned about me that you decided to coerce Marcia into telling you what? That I’m a drunk, or that I’m a lousy nurse lately, or that I’m holed up here, crazed and consulting ghost hunters? What? What is it that you want with me?”
“It’s not you she wants, Tracy,” Sidney said, breaking the mounting tension of a cauldron about to boil. “It’s me.”
He had recognized her voice after all, and as Tracy stepped away in surprise, he could see that he was right.
Dr. Susan Logan entered and stood before him, face to face, for the first time since the last time he sat in her office. She looked no different in the years that had passed. She had the same rich, blond hair, and the same girlish charm still oozed from her.
“Hello, Sidney,” she said. “It’s been a long time.” Her voice sounded cautious and uneven.
“Suzy Q,” he said, now munching a Snickers he’d stored in his backpack. “So, you finally found me. Congratulations.”
A look of confusion spread across all faces.
“You know her?” Tracy said.
“This is the shrink I was telling you about,” he said. “This is who my parents kept me from because of that embarrassing moment many years ago when the adults finally realized that little Sidney was in fact, ‘the speaker for the dead’.”
Susan gave a nervous laugh; she could see that the odd sense of humor in the boy had flourished in the man. Tracy remained confused, and the others shot questioning glances at Sidney.
“So, you haven’t been concerned about me,” she said. “You just needed me to lead you to Sidney?”
“No, Tracy. That’s not true. My concern began with you. When I spoke to Marcia, I realized that what was going on with you was so much more complex than anyone understood.”
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