Ghost Trackers

by Grant Wilson Jason Hawes

  The thrumming sounds they made began to resemble human speech, the words deep and liquidy, spoken in a lilting ribbit-ribbit cadence.

  “YOUR-turn, YOUR-turn, YOUR-turn . . .”

  Sean backed away, hands raised in a gesture that was half defensive, half pleading. He shook his head no, the frogs nodded yes, and when Sean’s back came up against the chalkboard and he had nowhere else to go, they rushed the last few feet to him, raising their scalpels . . . and ready to work.

  Drew Sat at the desk in his hotel room, laptop open in front of him, looking at a photo displayed on the screen. The picture had been taken with a cheap one-use camera, so the quality of the image wasn’t very good, although he’d tried to sharpen the detail and brighten the colors when he’d scanned the photo and converted it to a digital file several years ago.

  The picture showed teenage versions of Drew, Trevor, and Amber dressed in jeans and light jackets and standing before an old oak tree. Behind them, off to the left, sat the Lowry House. He thought it remarkable how different those three kids were from the adults they would become. It wasn’t that the physical changes were all that pronounced. After all, only a decade and a half had passed since the photo was taken—although when it had been taken and who’d been holding the camera, he couldn’t remember. The main difference lay in the attitudes of their teenage selves. All three of them were smiling, their eyes clear and bright. Amber stood in the middle, and they had their arms around one another. They’d been so full of energy and potential back then, untroubled by care or worry. Young in the truest, most wonderful sense of the word.

  Looking at the photo caused a great sadness to well up in him, and he grieved for those three children who, in a very real sense, had been lost the night the Lowry House burned down.

  Had the picture been taken that very day? It was possible, he decided. The Lowry House had burned down in April, and they were dressed for cool weather. They’d likely been documenting the events of that night. They’d always tried to approach their investigations as scientifically as possible, so they documented everything, taking photos, writing notes, making video and audio recordings. He wondered if they’d recorded any information that night, and if so, what had happened to it. Presumably, it had been left in the house and destroyed in the fire. He didn’t remember for certain. All he knew was that he had no information other than the single photo he’d found several years ago when cleaning out an old drawer full of junk.

  He leaned forward and examined the photo more closely, paying special attention to Amber. She was as lovely today as she’d been then. As he looked at her face, a whisper of memory returned to him: Amber’s voice, sounding scared.

  I had a dream last night, Drew. A real bad one. About the Lowry House. I think maybe we shouldn’t go there tonight.

  He tried to hold on to the memory, tried to drag more of it out of the depths of his subconscious, but the harder he fought to recall it, the faster it slipped away from him. And then the memory was gone.

  Drew was a rationalist, and even as a teenager, he hadn’t believed that Amber’s dreams were anything more than dreams. Amber, however, believed they were prophetic, and Trevor had a tendency to agree with her. Drew believed that so-called precognitive dreams were nothing more than the subconscious mind trying to send a message to the conscious mind, a way for two distinct aspects of the brain to communicate with each other. Nothing psychic about it at all. But now, looking at her smiling teenage face and thinking of how scared she’d sounded in the fragment of memory he recalled, he wondered if, in that instance at least, her dream had been something more than a little nighttime self-therapy.

  There was a knock on his door then. Three knocks, to be precise, so soft he wasn’t sure he heard them. He rose from the desk and walked over to the door on bare feet; he’d removed his shoes and socks when he’d first gotten back to his room but was otherwise still dressed. He opened the door, half expecting to find no one standing there at all, but he was surprised, and more than a little pleased, to see Amber.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. She opened her mouth again, as if she intended to provide further explanation for her visit, but instead of speaking, she smiled and shrugged.

  He wasn’t fooled by her smile. He saw the haunted look in her eyes and had a pretty good idea of why she’d been unable to sleep.

  He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and gestured for her to enter. She did so, and he closed the door behind her, unable to keep from thinking that this scenario, two friends of the opposite gender seeing each other in a hotel room after fifteen years apart, was the stuff that sexual fantasies were made of. He knew it was important to make sure he didn’t give her the wrong impression. He didn’t have such a high opinion of himself as to assume that she might be attracted to him, but they were old friends, and she was likely feeling vulnerable right now. The three of them being together again had been stressful, rousing long-dormant memories and the difficult emotions that came with them. In a situation like this, it would only be natural for one person to reach out to another in search of comfort and reassurance. He’d have to watch for any overtures on Amber’s part and make sure he didn’t do anything to encourage them.

  And he’d have to watch himself as well. After all, he was only human and prone to the same emotional stresses—and needs—as anyone else.

  His room had only a single king-size bed, and Amber stopped at the foot of it, as if trying to decide whether or not to sit down. In the end, she chose to sit in the reading chair tucked into the corner. She passed the desk on the way there, saw his open laptop and the picture displayed on the screen, and paused to look at it.

  “I don’t remember that being taken,” she said. “It’s a good picture. We look happy.” She leaned forward to examine it. “I wonder who took it. Greg, maybe?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even remember how I came by that photo. I just found it one day.”

  She nodded her understanding and closed the laptop, as if she didn’t want the image of their teenage selves to intrude on their conversation.

  Those are the real ghosts, he thought. Specters of What Was and Can Never Be Again. As frightening as anything that might lurk within the shadowed corridors of a haunted house and in many ways more so.

  Amber sat in the reading chair, so he sat on the edge of the bed facing her.

  “Bad dreams?” he asked.

  She looked at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said once her laughter subsided. “It’s just that this situation—both of us sitting down, you asking if I’ve been having bad dreams, the attitude of caring attentiveness you’re projecting—it all seems like a therapy session. I ought to know; I’ve been through enough of them.” Her merriment died away, and she became serious. “I didn’t come here in search of free therapy, Drew. I imagine that happens to psychologists a lot—friends and acquaintances coming to you with their problems, hoping to get some expert advice.”

  “It is an occupational hazard,” he admitted.

  “Like I said, that’s not why I’m here. I just . . . need someone to talk to, you know? Someone who understands.”

  “I get it. You want me to call Trevor and ask him to join us? He’s probably feeling the same way right now.”

  “No. I mean, Trevor’s a good guy, but he’s pushy, you know? At least when it comes to the subject of the Lowry House. He’s determined to make money off that damned place, and he won’t rest until we help him do it.”

  Drew shook his head. “That’s Trevor’s way of coping. By treating the Lowry House like just another story, he can keep it at a distance, get a measure of control over it, and make it manageable. In the end, he wants the same thing we do: to learn what happened to him, to the three of us, that night.”

  “Speak for yourself,” she said. “I don’t care what really happened. I just want to be free, you know? Free of the fragmented memories and the panic that comes along with them. Free of the cripp
ling depression that keeps me from having a normal life.

  “But above all, I want to be free of the nightmares. Most people fantasize about winning the lottery or becoming famous. You know what I fantasize about? Dreamless sleep.”

  They were both silent for a time after that. Finally, he said, “At the risk of sounding like a psychologist instead of a friend, do you want to tell me about it? The dream, I mean. I assume that’s why you had trouble sleeping tonight.”

  “Yeah, it is. This one was weird, even for me. I suppose it was prompted by this bizarre . . . I don’t know what to call it. It wasn’t a memory, exactly.

  More like a hallucination, I guess, though it didn’t last very long. It happened earlier, when we were talking with Greg in the bar.”

  A chill rippled down the length of Drew’s spine. Once more, he saw Greg wreathed in flame, smelled the stench of burning wood and flesh, heard his accusing voice.

  You did this to me. The three of you. It’s your fault. All your fault . . .

  “You saw Greg burning,” he said. “And it seemed so real, like you weren’t remembering but seeing it. As if it was happening right in front of your eyes but just for a moment. Then it was gone.”

  Amber’s mouth fell open in shock. “Yes. But how—”

  The rest of her question was cut off by a high-pitched shriek. It was followed by a second and then a third, each one louder and higher than the last. Then silence.

  “What the hell was that?” she said.

  The shrieks sounded as if they’d come from right outside Drew’s door. He wasn’t a medical doctor, but he was used to dealing with emergencies, given the patient population he worked with. He jumped off the bed and ran to the door, dimly aware that Amber followed. He unlocked the door, flung it open, and saw a man lying on the hallway floor. He rested on his back, legs drawn up so that his knees pointed to the ceiling. His arms were folded so that his hands lay palm-up on his chest, giving the impression that he’d been trying to ward off an attacker, although aside from him, the hallway was deserted. His eyes were wide and staring, and his mouth was open as if he were still shrieking, but no sound emerged. The utter stillness of the body, coupled with those unblinking eyes, told Drew that the man was dead. Still, he had to be sure. He knelt next to the man, checked to see if he was breathing, then pressed two fingers against his neck to feel for a pulse. There was a harsh smell in the air, an acrid chemical tang that made Drew’s stomach turn. He breathed through his mouth so he wouldn’t have to smell it.

  Behind Drew, Amber said, “Is he . . . ?”

  “Run back in the room and call the front desk and tell them to get an ambulance here as fast as possible!” He started performing CPR. Even though he hadn’t been able to detect either breathing or a pulse, he knew better than to assume that there was no hope of reviving the man.

  As Amber rushed back inside, doors to nearby rooms began opening, and people emerged, frightened and curious. Among them was Trevor. He hurried over to Drew and stood next to him, gazing down at the man lying on the floor.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Drew continued performing CPR on the man as he spoke. “I don’t know. I heard the man scream, and when I came out to check on him, I found him like this. I think he might have had a heart attack or a stroke. Amber’s inside calling the front desk about it.”

  Trevor gave him a look. “She was in your room when it happened?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Drew said.

  Trevor looked as if he wanted to press the issue, but he said no more about it. People were beginning to gather around to check out the body and talk among themselves in hushed voices.

  “I recognize him,” Trevor said. “He’s here for the reunion. I saw him wandering around the bar when we were down there earlier. His name is Sean . . . something. I can’t remember his last name.”

  Amber came back out into the hall and joined them.

  “The clerk at the front desk said he’ll call nine-one-one. Hopefully the paramedics will be here in a few minutes.”

  Drew doubted there was anything paramedics could do for Sean at this point, but he continued CPR. Even though he knew his actions were most likely futile, he couldn’t give up until medical help arrived to take over.

  Amber wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”

  Trevor crouched down next to Drew, reached out, and touched a finger to one of Sean’s palms.

  Drew hadn’t noticed it before, but the man’s hands were coated with a thin sheen of slime. Trevor raised his finger to his nose, sniffed, and made a face.

  “This is going to sound weird, but it smells like formaldehyde.”

  EIGHT

  Trevor focused his camera on the chrome letters above the entrance that spelled out “Lowry Recreation Center” and zoomed in for a closer shot. He took a couple of pictures, one with the flash, one without. When he checked them on the camera’s display, he wasn’t satisfied with either one. They both looked so ordinary. No, worse than that. Drab was the word he was looking for. Drab and dull and boring as hell. He imagined a bookstore browser paging through his book on the Lowry House, seeing one of these pictures, thinking, Seriously? That’s not creepy at all, and putting it back on the shelf. Still, he didn’t delete the photos. They were better than nothing.

  “Disappointed?” Drew asked.

  “A little,” Trevor admitted, but he was understating the case. “They cleared away the remains of the Lowry House not long after we graduated from high school, so even if the rec center wasn’t here, there’d be nothing to look at but an empty field. But I still expected the place to feel . . . different, you know?”

  Amber nodded. “Me, too. But it’s just a building, isn’t it?”

  The three friends stood on the lawn in front of the rec center. It was a little before ten A.M., the air was still cool, and the slight breeze blowing made it feel even cooler. Although it was the first week of September, it was still summer, and Trevor figured the day would warm up before long. Still, he wished he’d brought a jacket. Drew had on a blue windbreaker and Amber a cream-colored sweater, but he was wearing a yellow polo shirt, and it wasn’t doing a whole lot to cut the breeze.

  He smiled, amused at himself. Here he was, a professional paranormal investigator, having returned to the site of the haunting where he and his friends had been traumatized, lost large chunks of their memories, and perhaps nearly died, and what was uppermost in his mind? That he was chilly. A man of real emotional depth, that was him.

  “The location has changed so much that there’s nothing recognizable to trigger our memories,” Drew said.

  “Yeah, but I expected to feel something,” Trevor persisted.

  “Like what?” Amber asked. It was a bit cloudy this morning, but she wore sunglasses.

  He figured she hadn’t been able to sleep and her eyes were red and puffy. After what had happened last night, he’d had a hard time getting to sleep himself, and he’d barely managed to wake up in time to meet Drew and Amber for breakfast in the hotel restaurant.

  They’d talked as they ate, and he’d learned that they’d both had the same weird vision he’d had the night before in the hotel bar, that of Greg burning alive. Drew admitted that it was, to say the least, uncommon for three people to experience a shared hallucination, but despite Trevor’s best attempts, he hadn’t been able to get his friend to acknowledge that the vision might be of paranormal origin. After they’d finished eating, the three of them had decided to take a trip to visit the site of the Lowry House, and Trevor had driven them in his Prius, excited to return to the place where the most important event in their lives had occurred. But now that they were there, he found himself more than a little disappointed.

  “I don’t know what,” he admitted, and before Drew could say anything, he added, “And I’m not necessarily talking about feeling some kind of psychic residue.” In truth, though, he had been hoping to experience something exactly like that, a profound sense of unnameable dr
ead emanating from the site where the Lowry House, a Bad Place if ever there was one, had once stood. He turned to look at the rec center. “I guess I hoped that coming here with the two of you would be like having the right key to unlock a door, that once we were here, all our memories would come flooding back, and we’d have all the answers.”

  Drew stepped closer and laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve seen too many movies and TV shows. Recovery from trauma is a long and difficult road. It’s a series of small steps taken over time, not a miraculous epiphany that occurs in an instant.”

  He sighed. “I know.” He turned to Drew and smiled. “But it sure would be convenient if it was.”

  Drew returned his smile. “True, but if it worked like that, I’d be out of a job.”

  Amber pointed at an oak tree less than a dozen yards away. “That’s the tree from the picture, isn’t it? The one you had on your computer, Drew.”

  “Picture?” Trevor asked. He liked the sound of that. Maybe it was something he’d be able to use for his book—assuming he’d ever get to write the damn thing, that is.

  “It’s an old photo I found of the three of us standing in front of an oak tree with the Lowry House in the background,” Drew explained. He looked at the oak for a moment. “Yeah, I think that’s the same one.” He started toward the tree, and Amber and Trevor followed.

  “You two stand over here,” Drew said, and directed Trevor and Amber to stand on the side of the tree facing the street. They did so, and he stepped back to look at them. “It’s definitely the same tree,” he pronounced. “And if I’m looking at it from the right angle, then the rec center is sitting exactly where the Lowry House used to be.”

  Trevor racked his brain, searching for a memory of once having stood in this very spot when he was a teenager and having his picture taken. He thought there might be something there, some thin will-o’-the-wisp of recollection, more sensed than recalled, but he wasn’t certain. Still, the thought that they were standing in the same place was exciting. Small steps, Drew had said, right? Well, they were definitely taking some steps just by being there.