Finding the Way Back

by Jill Bisker

  We went downstairs without discussing it further. I tried to act like nothing had happened but the truth was that I felt like my whole life had just changed. All of a sudden, I had possibilities, I had excitement, I had fun. It felt like the start of something new.

  Melanie and Judith were putting on their coats as we came into the room. Melanie looked like she’d just eaten a lemon. She didn’t even know that Emmett had just kissed me.

  “Was everything okay up there?” my mother asked pointedly.

  “It was really strange,” Emmett said. “We went into a closet to inspect a noise we heard and the door slammed and the light went out. It was the weirdest thing. Then it was like the door was locked and we couldn’t open it from the inside. Fortunately, Tess and Shelly heard us and opened the door.”

  “Fortunately,” I added, rolling my eyes.

  “There was no explanation for it. Afterward, the door opened and closed without trouble.”

  Making a face, I implored my mom and Aunt Shelly not to say anything else right now, and for once they got the message, although they couldn’t hold back their smirks and raised eyebrows.

  “We’ll just have to check it out more during our investigation tonight. Are we done with your part?” I asked Judith.

  “Yep. We got all the rooms, including the basement. I think this was a success, Laney. I don’t know why, but I feel such a positive energy right now and I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  I looked at Emmett, hoping to catch his eye, but he was busy putting batteries in his EVP recorder. “I think so too, Judith. Thank you so much for coming over.”

  “I can’t promise that we’ve solved everything here,” Judith said as she walked to the door with Melanie in tow. “It might just be the beginning of a resolution and I don’t want to get your hopes up too high, so if you have more trouble just call me. There are other things we can try if necessary.”

  “Thanks again for coming, we appreciate all the help,” I said as I ushered Judith and Melanie out of the house. I felt an immense feeling of satisfaction as I closed the door behind Melanie. You didn’t win today, Mel. Checking to see if anyone could see me, I did a little dance.

  Then, following everyone else who had gathered in the kitchen, I wondered what Emmett was thinking right now. Was he sorry he’d kissed me? Was it a spur of the moment thing that he now regretted? I glanced over at him and he was explaining something about the equipment to my mother while Aunt Shelly was putting together some roast beef sandwiches and pouring lemonade. He was so sexy. I looked at the way his hair hung over his forehead. He was being so sweet to my mom and aunt. I couldn’t picture him being as selfish and self-centered as my husband had been.

  We all sat in the kitchen, eating our informal supper of sandwiches and lemonade, and began discussing the plan for the night. Taking charge, Emmett spoke. “So we will split into groups again. I’ll go with Tess and Shelly to the basement, Dean and Connie you can start upstairs and then Glen and Laney can start in the living room. Everyone have their flashlights? This time we’re just going to turn off lights and not the master switch. We don’t want to have to run to the basement if things go wrong. That means there will be more ambient noise so you’ll have to really pay attention to everything around you.” We all nodded as Emmett continued with some additional technical details for Dean and Glen.

  When we were done eating, we all rose to go to our places. I picked up a flashlight off the table, feeling off balance and disappointed that Emmett hadn’t chosen to be with me. Was he sorry he had kissed me or was I overreacting? I was pretty sure I was overreacting.

  We all started moving to our designated spots, turning off lights as everyone got into position. Glen switched off the lamps in the living room and everything went dark. I turned on my little flashlight and moved to the window looking out at the neighbor’s house. All the lights were on and I could see Louise sitting at her kitchen table. It looked like she was reading something. I wondered how much she could see into our house when the lights were on at night. It would be interesting to talk to her again. She might know all sorts of bits about our grandfather’s life after living next door so many years.

  I could see Glen sit down on the couch so I went and settled into the recliner. He pulled out a recording device and I zoned out as he started with the same type of questions as Emmett had said several nights before.

  “Is there anyone here with us? We’d love it if you would tell us your name. Is there something you need us to do for you?” After each question Glen asked he would wait as if for the silent answer.

  I just couldn’t keep my mind focused on the task at hand. Maybe I was just really tired. I rested my head back and closed my eyes for a second and relaxed. I slowly became aware of the feeling that someone was watching me. I swiftly opened my eyes. At first I thought my eyes were having a hard time focusing but then I realized there was a shape in front of me that was blurring my vision. I thought it was a woman by the curve of her waist and hip and it was almost like I could see the movement of a dress. I sat still and listened for some telltale sign that there was really something there. Not wanting the entity to leave, I tried not to move so I wouldn’t give away that I had noticed it. After several seconds I knew it was something there, I could feel a female presence. I tried to divine how I knew but I realized I could feel her energy. The more I concentrated, the stronger the connection grew. The camera might pick her up but I doubted it since the image was black on black. It was more of a sensation than real substance.

  “You’re here in the room right now, aren’t you?” I asked, slipping quietly forward on my chair. “I can see you standing there and I can feel your energy. Are you my grandmother? I know you aren’t here to hurt us. I don’t want you to think we did the smudging to get rid of you.” I jumped up and moved swiftly to the spot in the room she had been. But I could no longer feel a presence. The room was definitely colder there but there was no other trace of anything. “She’s gone but I can feel a cold spot. I saw her right here, did you see her?”

  “I thought I saw movement when you spoke but I’m not sure,” Glen answered. He brought out a handheld thermometer and moved toward me to scan the area. “Sixty-Two degrees, definitely colder here than the rest of the room. Wait, now it’s warming up again. Sixty-four, sixty-eight. Interesting.”

  Standing still in the spot ‘she’ had occupied I closed my eyes again and relaxed, trying to feel the room with other senses rather than just my sight. Everything was still. I could feel Glen in the room, but nothing more. Whoever had been there was gone.

  After several minutes of standing in the spot, I heard footsteps coming up from the basement. My mother, aunt and Emmett entered the kitchen noisily then came into the living room where we were waiting. Dean and Connie must have heard everyone congregating so they also came back down from upstairs.

  “Everything seems pretty quiet tonight,” Emmett said. “Anyone have any experiences?”

  “I thought I saw someone standing in this room but otherwise the house seems very tranquil,” I said.

  “I also thought I saw movement but I didn’t see it as clearly as Laney. I was doing the EVP, so I hope we caught something. The temperature reading definitely showed a lower temperature.”

  “Ok, that sounds like something. Let’s switch places. How about Dean and Connie, you’re main level. Tess, Shelly and I will be upstairs. Glen and Laney you’ll be in the basement,” Emmett directed.

  “Great,” I mumbled under my breath.

  I dragged my feet on the way to the basement. Just stop thinking about it, I told myself. Just do it. We began to descend into the darkness with just our flashlights as I tried to contain my dread. At least I had Glen with me. The air was even thicker down here and I wondered if maybe we had mold. I reminded myself to try to remove the boards over the windows and open them tomorrow. Also, I should look for a dehumidifier. You’d think with all this junk, there would be one down here. I’d never liked basements
and this one was even worse than most. I didn’t know how I was ever going to find the nerve to spend the time necessary to clean out all the rubbish down here.

  Partway down the stairs, I gripped the banister tightly, shining my light directly at each step. When I reached the bottom of the stairway I could see Glen in the halo of his flashlight. He was standing near the furnace shining his light at his feet.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” he stated.

  Grateful that he had shared this with me, I replied, “Me too. I’m sure you’ve been in creepier places, though, doing this for a hobby.”

  “Yeah, one time we were invited inside an old sanitarium. That was much worse in that there was only negative energy there. Here, we’re not totally sure. Some is definitely negative, but some isn’t. It’s funny though, not every place that has ‘ghosts’ has negative energy. Sometimes we find a place with an entity and it’s quite peaceful, others are like this basement.”

  I kept as close to Glen as I could without actually being inside his clothes. My courage was in short supply and I needed his strength to stay calm. We stood quiet for a while but we didn’t hear anything other than our own breathing.

  He took out his EVP recorder and started asking the same types of questions as always. “Is there someone here with us? Is there something you’d like to let us know?”

  Letting my mind wander, I glanced around the basement. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw someone standing on the other side, but, turning my head quickly, saw that it was only a shirt hanging on the clothesline. The flashlights made weird shadows but I didn’t detect any movement or presence like in the living room.

  After about twenty minutes, Glen took a deep breath. “Nothing much going on tonight. It was noisier the last time we were here. More knocking and odd sounds like movement.”

  “We can be grateful for small favors,” I said glibly.

  “Yeah. I think we can go up now,” Glen said.

  I didn’t need to be told twice and I headed for the stairs. I wasn’t going up those steps second with just my flashlight so I wanted to be sure I was in front. Even with Glen behind me, I still felt as if someone was chasing me up the steps and was breathless when I got to the top.

  In my rush I shoved open the door quickly and almost slammed it into my mother. She put a hand out to stop the door. “We were just going to tell you to come up. Did something happen?”

  “No,” I answered sheepishly, moving to get around her. I didn’t like having my back to the basement. “I just really don’t like it down there.”

  “I never have either,” she said. “It’s always been a creepy place. Our father never wanted us to play down there. Not that he had to worry. We never chose to be down there if we didn’t have to.”

  I walked over to the sink to get a drink of water. Connie and Dean joined us as well, and we were all together again.

  “It seems really quiet tonight on the whole,” Emmett said, leaning on the back of a chair. “Laney had one experience so we’ll want to check for EVP’s during that time, but we didn’t have any strange bumps or knocks like we have before. Do we want to go on or should we call it a night?”

  “I can be done,” I replied, putting my glass down on the counter. I was exhausted. We had way too many late nights lately and I just wanted to go to bed. The rest of the group answered in agreement.

  “If it’s okay with you, Laney, we thought we would just leave all the equipment up for the night. Then if we want to do this again tomorrow night or the next we don’t have to set up again. We can move anything if it’s in your way,” Emmett finished.

  “I don’t have a problem with that. Most of the equipment looks like it’s out of the direct walking paths so it seems fine.”

  “I’d like to come take a look at the evidence over here later tomorrow afternoon,” Dean added. “I won’t get in your way, but it would be easier than moving everything.”

  I would have agreed to almost anything at this point, I was so tired. Mom and Aunt Shelly kept asking questions and extending the conversation way past what I would have liked. Steering them out the front door was harder than expected, and I knew the long Minnesota goodbye when I saw it. My mom and aunt promised to text us when they got home and we finally shut the door. Leaning against the front door, I reflected over the night’s events. It felt like Emmett totally ignored me after our kiss. I felt like such an idiot. What a shambles I always made of things.

  Going to bed sounded like heaven after the long day. We had no real plan for what to do next so I wondered what the next day would bring. I still had no idea how we were going to solve this problem. It didn’t seem like the smudging had done the whole job but things had been quieter.

  Connie and I decided to sleep in our own rooms since it had been pretty quiet the last several nights. We both kept our doors open so we could shout out to one another if something happened. I was so tired I was asleep almost before my head hit the pillow. “Good night, Grandma,” I whispered then drifted into a deep slumber.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The next day, Connie and I sat down on the sofa to make a plan. Connie opened her notebook and started a list.

  “I think we need to do some research on this old house,” I said. “I don’t know if the historical society would have anything relevant, but it’s a place to start. There’s also the library. Sometimes they have old property records.”

  “Maybe there are some books that were published locally that detail legends or scandals in the area—murders, crimes, that sort of thing. Not to mention quite a few online websites dedicated to historical research,” Connie said, adding it to her list.

  “Good idea, then we could go next door, too. Louise was real nice and we could meet her mother. I’d say she’s about sixty-five so her mother would have to be about eighty-five or so. If she’s lived next door all these years she should have wonderful gossip and stories.”

  “Do you think our mothers would have old papers, maybe scrapbooks or something?” Connie asked.

  “I’ve never seen anything but put it down on the list to ask,” I answered. “We really need to look over the book shelves in the study. There has to be photos and stuff somewhere.”

  “The more boxes we clear out the more likely we are to find mementos and things.”

  “Maybe we could send out our mothers to do the historical search stuff at the courthouse and library. There are just too many things to get done by ourselves. They love to be involved and that would be a good tactic to keep them busy and out of the way. I would hate to have one of them hurt their back lifting a heavy box or fall or something.”

  “Good idea,” Connie said. “You can visit next door first and I could work on cleaning things out.”

  “Oh, no you don’t. I’m not going over there by myself. If I go next door, you’re coming with me.”

  We decided that Connie would call her mom and ask if they would do the historical work while I called Louise next door to see if they would be available to see us today. A few phone calls later, everything was arranged. Our moms were excited to do the historical legwork, and Louise said we could come over after two o’clock. Anything earlier than that wouldn’t work because Ruth watched her morning shows every day and didn’t like to be interrupted to miss them.

  With nothing else to occupy us until the afternoon we thought we would work on more clearing. We decided to go back and try to finish the master bedroom. We still had boxes in front of the second closet door and more along the wall next to the windows.

  “Tonight I need to get out my computer and camera. We can take photos and start cataloging items. We should ask our mothers if they want anything, then we can put the things they don’t want in boxes to be ready to ship,” Connie said.

  “Good idea. We want to start getting rid of things so we can make more room,” I answered.

  “I set up a special Pay Pal account also, so it isn’t confused with the items I’ve sold in the past. I’m not sur
e what the tax situation will be. We’ll have to talk to an accountant.”

  I started opening another box. We had abandoned writing each item down as we opened boxes the last time we were in the room. We didn’t want to take every item out and repack. If it looked like it was mostly stuff we would sell we just put the whole box in the hall. We could sort through it after we brought it downstairs. That way we would only have to touch each item once as we took it out, recorded it and boxed it for shipping.

  Pretty soon most of the boxes from the room were in the hall ready to be taken downstairs. Moving the last one from in front of the second closet, I pulled the door all the way open.

  This closet was much smaller than the last. It was just one bar across with hanging clothes on it and a shelf above. Men’s suits, slacks, and shirts hung all according to color and item. It was obsessively neat. On the shelf were several hats, from an age when men wore fedoras regularly. Ties were hanging from a twirling rack attached to the wall. Two pairs of dress shoes, one ancient pair of tennis shoes and a pair of loafers completed the ensemble. Everything appeared to be dated from the same time period as our grandmother’s closet. Nothing newer from recent years. It was like he’d never used the closet again after his wife died.

  “What do we do with these?” I asked. “Just throw them?”

  “I would love to take that herring-bone jacket and make a bag out of it,” Connie said. “The rest we could donate to a high school drama club or local theater. They would make great costumes. That is if Mom and Aunt Tess don’t want any of it.”

  “Great idea! You have the most creative ideas. I would love to learn to do things like that. Let’s leave it all here for now until our moms look at it.”

  Earlier, Connie and I had both resisted going through the dressers that were in the room. Initially, for some reason, it had felt like an invasion of privacy, but I was getting over that now and I found my curiosity piqued.