Ghost Trackers

by Grant Wilson Jason Hawes

  “He always got in the way,” Trevor said. “Do you remember that time we spent the night on the covered bridge out by the county line? The one where the phantom horseman had been reported? I had equipment set up to capture both video and audio, and Greg the genius managed to knock the camera into the river. My dad was furious, and I got grounded for two weeks.”

  She smiled. She did remember, although she knew she hadn’t before now. The more time she spent with Drew and Trevor, the more she remembered, and she knew the same thing was happening for them as well.

  “Like I said, I understood why you didn’t want him to come along that night. To make sure Greg didn’t find us, we met at Drew’s grandmother’s instead of one of our houses. We figured he wouldn’t think to look for us there. We planned everything out. We went over the research we’d gathered on the Lowry House one last time, and we designated areas to focus our investigation on based on the information we’d gathered from kids who’d gone into the house before.”

  Drew was nodding. “They’d claimed to hear noises coming from upstairs, presumably from the bedrooms where Mr. Lowry shot his family, so that’s where we planned to set up our audio recorders. We had three of them, one for each bedroom.”

  “There were stories of ghostly figures passing in front of the dining-room windows,” Trevor said, “so that’s where we were going to set up our video camera.” He looked at Drew. “Your parents’ camera this time, since mine wouldn’t even let me near the new one they bought.”

  “And I borrowed a regular camera from my folks,” Amber said. “One that would take better pictures than the disposable ones we’d used in the past. I remember you carried it, though, Trevor, since you took better pictures than me. We planned to do a room-by-room sweep of the house, so we brought a thermometer to record any temperature changes. I carried that, and Trevor carried another audio recorder so he could record our impressions of what we saw and felt as we made our way through the house.”

  “I had a flashlight, and I carried a backpack with supplies,” Drew said. “Snacks and drinks, along with plastic bags for collecting any physical evidence we found and a first-aid kit in case we fell through rotten floorboards or something.”

  “We were scared, but excited, too,” Amber said. “You guys told your parents that we were getting together at my house to watch movies, and I told mine that we were going to Drew’s. We headed for the Lowry House after sunset. Both of you kept a lookout for Greg, in case he showed up and tried to follow us, but we didn’t see any sign of him. We reached the Lowry House, stepped onto the property . . .” She trailed off. “And that’s it. Everything after that is still a blank.” She paused. “No, that’s not quite true. I can recall jumbled images and sounds. Running through a hallway, my heart pounding in terror. I remember hearing voices shouting—yours especially, Drew. I remember you calling my name. But that’s about it. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital Sunday morning with my mom by my bedside. She looked so tired, like she hadn’t slept all night, and I could tell she’d been crying. I smelled smoke, too. I guess the smell clung to the inside of my nasal passages, and my throat was so sore I could barely swallow.”

  “I remember you calling my name,” Drew said. “I was desperate to reach you.”

  He looked so upset by the memory that Amber reached out, placed her hand over his, and squeezed. She left her hand there for several seconds before removing it. He gave her a grateful smile, and she felt a warm fluttering in her stomach.

  Down, girl! she told herself. You’re not here on a date.

  “According to what my parents told me, the firefighters found us sitting on the sidewalk when they arrived, watching the house burn,” Drew said. “We were conscious but catatonic, and paramedics took us to the hospital. We all suffered from smoke inhalation and second-degree burns. The police questioned us the next day, remember? They thought we’d done something to start the fire, either on purpose or by accident, but since they weren’t able to prove anything, they let us go.”

  She did remember a police officer questioning her. The man was suspicious and did everything but accuse them of starting the fire. She had felt unfairly accused but unable to defend herself, since she had no clear memory of what had happened. For all she knew, she and her friends had started a fire. In some ways, that had been the worst part. She’d feared that they had done something bad, something that had almost gotten the three of them killed, but there was no way to know for sure.

  “There’s something else,” Drew said. “I know that we tried to keep Greg out of the Lowry House investigation, and I know he didn’t go inside with us, but I have a memory—no, more like a feeling—that he was inside there with us at one point.”

  “Well, that would explain why we had that weird vision of him being covered in flames,” Amber said. “Not that he literally burned to death, just that we associate him with the fire.”

  “Who knows?” Trevor said. “Maybe he did burn to death, and the Greg we saw was a ghost. That’s how he lost all that weight: he’s on the Afterlife Diet program.”

  Amber and Drew smiled at his joke, but she didn’t think it was all that funny. The vision of Greg on fire had been way too creepy for her to laugh about it. The three of them grew quiet for a time after that, and eventually, Drew said, “You two remember anything else?”

  She racked her brain, but she couldn’t think of anything. “No,” she said.

  “Me, neither,” Trevor echoed, “but let me point out another strange thing in a long list of strange things. Does it strike either of you as odd that our memories of that night all end at the same point, when we approached the Lowry House, and that they start up again the next day in the hospital?” He looked at Drew. “You ever run into anything like that before? Missing memories synced up so precisely?”

  “No, I haven’t,” he admitted. “Different individuals experience trauma in different ways. Three people who lived through the same traumatic event might have suppressed memories of it, but for those memories to end and resume at the same basic points . . . it’s virtually impossible.” He frowned. “I wonder why I never noticed that before?”

  “Well, we’ve never sat down and compared notes until now,” Amber said. “We didn’t talk about what happened much. We didn’t really talk at all after that night.” Instead of drawing them closer, their shared experience in the Lowry House had driven them apart, and she regretted that. They’d been young and afraid, struggling to deal with a bizarre experience, and since their memories refused to come back to them, it had been easier to try to forget the whole thing, and that meant staying away from one another. Their very presences were reminders of what they’d been through together. She understood why they’d done what they’d done, but she wished things had turned out differently. If they’d remained together back then and supported one another . . . well, no matter. They were back together now, and that was what counted.

  “Here’s something else I’ve thought about over the years,” Trevor said. “I’ve done a lot of research about trauma, and I think that whatever happened in the house, it had to have been more than a fire. Sure, that’s a traumatic enough experience, but lots of people go through the same thing or stuff like it—fires, car wrecks, tornadoes, earthquakes—and they don’t always lose their memories, and even when they do, they only lose a few minutes here and there, during the most traumatic parts of the event. Especially if they suffer a head injury to boot. But we lost hours. We weren’t injured that badly, so we must’ve gotten out before the fire spread too far. And none of us received head injuries. So why did we suppress our memories at all, let alone for such a long span of time?”

  “Now, that did occur to me,” Drew said. “And I think you’re right. Whatever happened inside the Lowry House was more than a simple fire. It had to be for us to react the way we did.”

  Trevor leaned forward, and his lips stretched into a triumphant smile. “Are you ready to admit that something paranormal happened to us
inside the Lowry House?”

  Drew’s smile was more subdued and his tone thoughtful as he answered. “Let’s just say that I believe something out of the ordinary happened to us. Whether or not it was paranormal remains to be seen.” He paused, as if considering whether to continue. “Although something strange did happen to me recently that I haven’t been able to explain to my satisfaction.” He went on to tell them about an experience he had with a patient named Rick. He had barely begun the story before Trevor pulled a small pad out of his pocket and began taking notes.

  Amber listened to the story with rapt interest that became a mixture of revulsion and wonderment. When Drew had finished, she said, “It almost sounds like the poor man was possessed.”

  Trevor, still writing on his pad, said, “My thoughts exactly.”

  “Like I said, I can’t explain it.” Drew’s tone told her how frustrated he was that an explanation eluded him. He’d always been the most rational of the three of them. Trevor was more imaginative, while she was more intuitive. She supposed that was one of the reasons they were drawn to one another when they were kids. They complemented one another, each contributing an important quality the other two lacked.

  Trevor finished writing and looked up. “OK, here’s what’s happened to us so far this weekend. We shared a vision of Greg Daniels burning alive, Amber had a dream that might relate to the past history of the land on which the Lowry House was built, we saw a man die in front of us under strange circumstances, we visited the site of the Lowry House, we compared notes about what we remember and don’t remember, and we listened to Drew tell us a damn spooky story about a possibly possessed patient who made some cryptic predictions that may or may not relate to this weekend. So . . . what’s our next step?”

  Amber couldn’t help smiling. It was as if they were in their teens again, sitting around and planning an investigation over pizza. It felt good, as if she was finally doing something about the past, taking charge for once instead of letting it control her.

  “We should talk with Greg,” Drew said. “We need to find out if he was inside the house with us at some point during that night and, if so, how much he remembers.”

  “He’s helping the alumni committee,” Amber said, “so he’s probably back at the hotel working to get things ready for tonight. We should be able to track him down without too much trouble.”

  “The two of you should do that,” Trevor said. “Though I bet Greg would rather talk with Amber alone.” He looked at her and waggled his eyebrows.

  Drew scowled at that, but he didn’t say anything. Amber was pleased by Drew’s display of jealousy, mild as it was, but she kept her own expression neutral. She didn’t want him to know that she was glad he was jealous.

  Trevor went on. “I’ll drop you guys back at the hotel, then I’ll run by the police station, see if I can get anyone to talk to me about Sean and tell me if there’s any official word yet about what caused his death. I may not be a newspaper reporter, but you’d be surprised how many people will talk with a writer if you approach them the right way. After that, I’ll head over to the Historical Society and see what other information I can dig up on the Lowry House. Some of it will be a memory refresher, I’m sure, but with any luck, I’ll stumble across something new. How about we get together at the hotel bar later in the afternoon, around four?”

  “Sounds good,” Drew said, and Amber agreed. They stood up and started toward the door, Amber feeling much better than she had in a long time.

  That’s when they heard the scream.

  “. . . and so that was the end of my second marriage. I mean, there was no way I was going to stay with him after that, right?”

  Jerry nodded and made a vague noise of agreement. Maybe uh-huh or sure. He really didn’t know. He’d been making such noises for the last half-hour—they were the only contributions Patty had allowed him to make in the conversation—and he’d started to lose track of what he’d said. Not that it seemed to matter to Patty what came out of his mouth, as long as he let her keep talking. So she went on, barely pausing to draw a breath as her monologue continued.

  “Luckily, I didn’t have any kids with Carl. I mean, I already had two, and the last thing I needed was more to deal with, you know? Being a single mom is no picnic! So, after he moved out, I figured I needed to change how I went about finding men. I needed to find someone who could love me for me, right? So I signed up with one of those Internet dating services . . .”

  Jerry tuned her out, though he continued to nod. Back in high school, he’d had something of a crush on Patty, but he’d never even thought about approaching her. She was a clean-cut band kid, and he was a bully, and while he’d thought that maybe she might go for the bad-boy type, as so many girls did, he’d been afraid she’d reject him. Rather than risk that, he’d stayed away from her and admired her from afar.

  She was still as beautiful as she had been back then. Maybe a little too tall and bony for some men’s tastes, with an aquiline noise that was a touch too long, but he thought she looked sophisticated and intelligent. When he’d come into Flying Pizza for lunch and had seen her sitting by herself, he’d worked up the nerve to ask if he could join her. He’d expected her to look at him as if he were an especially disgusting species of bug that had crawled out of the woodwork, but she’d acted pleased to see him and invited him to sit down. At first, he’d been thrilled, but as the minutes passed, he became less so, until he wished he’d picked somewhere else to eat that afternoon. Jerry had never gotten to know Patty in high school, hadn’t exchanged more than a half-dozen words with her the entire four years they were there. Now, after talking with her—actually, listening to her—for the better part of an hour, he realized that the impressions he’d formed of her back then had been based on her looks and his own imagination. As it turned out, she was neither sophisticated nor intelligent. She was shallow and annoying, and he was depressed at having his most cherished high school illusion shattered. Reality could be a real bitch sometimes.

  She finally paused to inhale, and he jumped in. “Would you excuse me a minute? I need to use the restroom.”

  Without waiting for her to answer, he stood up and headed for the back of the restaurant. If there’d been a back door, he’d have been tempted to skip the restroom and make a break for it, but the short hallway ended in a wall where numerous flyers for local businesses, bands, and special events had been posted. No escape there.

  He went into the men’s room. Like most kids who’d grown up in Ash Creek, he’d spent lots of time at Flying Pizza, and the sour-stale tang of its bathroom was a familiar smell to him and, in its own disgusting way, nostalgic. The restroom was empty, so he had his pick of two urinals or the stall. He chose a urinal, walked up to it, assumed the position, and took care of business. Graffiti was scribbled on the wall at eye level. Some was straightforward, such as “BJ’s Saturday 4–6 p.m.” or limericks that began with phrases like “Some people come here to sit and think . . .” Other messages were more enigmatic, such as “Bozwell 79 Sux” or “Campground Ladies Sing No Songs.” He wondered if the latter type of messages meant anything or if they were random phrases someone wrote in order to give idiots like him something to ponder while they pissed.

  So far, this weekend wasn’t turning out as he’d expected, but in his case, that wasn’t altogether a bad thing. When he’d first received the notice about the reunion in the mail, he’d tossed it into the trash. Who’d want him to show up? He hadn’t been the nicest guy in high school, and he doubted anyone would miss him. He hadn’t gone to the five-year reunion or the ten-year for that reason, and he wasn’t about to change his mind for the fifteen. He’d been babysitting his ten-year-old niece, and she’d fished the reunion notice out of the trash and colored on the back of it. When his sister stopped by his apartment to pick up his niece, she saw the reunion notice and told Jerry he should go.

  He told her she was crazy, that no one would want to see him after all these years. She said that was p
robably true but that he shouldn’t go for them; he should go for himself. If nothing else, it would be good therapy.

  They’d grown up together in the same abusive household, had endured their father’s rages, both verbal and physical, and neither of them had been popular in high school. He had become a bully, passing along the abuse he received at home to kids weaker than him, and his sister had become a party girl, drinking, drugging, and having sex with just about anyone who wanted her. After high school, they continued down their self-destructive paths. He got into bar fights on a regular basis, and his sister went from one abusive relationship to another. Once her daughter was born, his sister decided to turn her life around. She stopped dating assholes, starting getting some therapy, and began urging her brother to get help, too. He’d resisted for a while, but he was getting tired of being an asshole himself. Plus, having a little niece who loved her uncle and looked up to him made Jerry want to be a better person.

  He started seeing his sister’s therapist, learned some anger-management techniques, and began to get his proverbial shit together. He stopped fighting, got a better job, moved out of the roach hotel of an apartment where he’d been living and into a decent condo, and got himself a bona fide life. He hadn’t found Mrs. Right yet, but he dated regularly enough and remained hopeful. And he owed it all to his sis.

  So, when she told him that it would be a good idea to attend the reunion, he reconsidered. It could be a chance to make peace with the past, say a final farewell to the screwed-up teenager he’d been, and maybe even make some amends in the process. Closure with a side order of redemption. Knowing that there was a better-than-average chance that he’d end up receiving a lot of hate vibes from his fellow classmates, he had decided to attend.

  And all in all, it hadn’t been that bad so far. Yeah, seeing Patty had turned into a disappointment, and he’d received more than a few scowls from people, but so far, no one had said anything negative to him. He’d been reluctant, but he’d forced himself to initiate conversations with people, and he’d been surprised by how open they’d been to talking with him. Maybe they didn’t see him as the big bad bogeyman he imagined they did, or maybe folks were more willing to forgive than he’d expected. Or maybe so much time had passed that they’d forgotten how much of a jackass he’d been. Whichever the case, people had been treating him as if he was just one more person attending the reunion, and he was grateful.