Delayed Departures

by Terri Reid

  Dee handed Ian the flash drive. “It will be fun watching you take them down,” Dee said. He started to walk into the conference room but then turned back and smiled. “Oh, so you’re not surprised. I added theme music.”

  “I can’t wait,” Mary said, slipping her hand around Bradley’s arm. “Let’s go get the best seats in the house.”

  “Just one minute, I need to let my officers know it’s time,” Bradley said, picking up his phone and switching it to radio mode. “Okay, I’m going into the conference center now. I’d like you guys to come on up and cover all the doors. About halfway through the presentation, maybe at the twenty-minute mark, enter the conference center and guard the doors from the inside.”

  He disconnected and looked over at Ian. “They’re not escaping.”

  Ian nodded. “Good, because I’d really hate them to miss any of the presentation.”

  “And now, the presentation I know many of you have been waiting for,” Kathi’s voice came over the speaker system. “Even though we heard from him earlier in the conference, Professor MacDougal has some new footage that he’s eager to share.”

  Ian grinned. “That’s my cue,” he said, slipping through the door.

  “There he is,” Kathi continued. “Give it up for Professor Ian MacDougal.”

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  “Good afternoon,” Ian said as he smiled out at the audience. “Thank you so kindly for allowing me to share some more information with you.”

  He turned to the man running the audio-visual equipment. “I have a wee flash drive that has my information on it,” he said. “If I can hand it over to you?”

  The man nodded, came over and took the flash drive from Ian.

  “Thank you. I appreciate it,” Ian said.

  “He’s pouring on the Scottish kind of thick,” Bradley whispered to Mary.

  “I’m sure it’s all part of his cunning plan,” Mary replied softly with a smile.

  “I’ve been very intrigued by the presentations I’ve seen in the past two days,” he said. “And, really, one of them from yesterday fascinated me so much, I had to go out to the site and do some research on my own.”

  He clicked the remote, and a photo of the barn appeared. “Being from the wilds of Scotland,” he said, “the country has always held a place near and dear to my heart.”

  “He has an estate and a castle,” Stanley grumbled softly. “He’s talking like he raises sheep in the Highlands.”

  “Shhhh, Stanley,” Rosie whispered.

  “So, when I heard of the ghost chickens, I thought I needed to see them for myself,” he said. “Imagine my delight and surprise when I was able to catch video of them eating in the midst of the barn.”

  He clicked on the remote, and a video of Mary and the group tossing feed out and the invisible chickens scratching on the ground started to play. Suddenly the music for ‘Chicken Dance’ started to play, and the video sped up to have the scratch marks appearing in the soft soil move to the same rhythm of the familiar song.

  The audience roared with laughter and then applause. Ian smiled and then looked over to the table where Betty and Nick sat, their faces beaming, and nodded. “My thanks to the incredible research team of Betty and Nick,” he said. “Most researchers would be too embarrassed to report signs of ghost farm animals for fear of ridicule. But they went out on a roost, so to speak, for the sake of the paranormal community. Let’s have a big hand for them.”

  More applause shook the conference room, and when it died down, Ian clicked to the next slide of the inside of the farm house.

  “Now, as you know from the presentations from yesterday, there was some activity in the farmhouse,” Ian said. “I’d like you to see how the farmhouse welcomed us when we arrived.”

  He clicked on the next slide, and a video of the door opening before Bradley got to the steps played. “Obviously, someone wanted us to come in,” Ian said. “And so we did.”

  The next couple of slides showed the interior of the house. “There was a great deal of dust in the house,” he said. “And that’s not surprising considering some farmers are still harvesting their fields. And, as was pointed out, sometimes dust can appear as orbs. We got some of those same orbs. But, what we also got were some remarkable EVPs. I’d like to share them with you.”

  He hit the remote, and the speakers played, “Oh, Charles, I thought you’d never come.”

  “Would you like to hear that again?” Ian asked the astonished audience, and, in a group, they all nodded.

  “Oh, Charles, I thought you’d never come.”

  “Aye, as mentioned by one of our team members,” Ian said, “it was the sweetest and clearest electronic voice phenomena he’s ever recorded. And I agree with him.”

  Ian glanced around the audience, his eyes staying on Ollie and Lance for just a moment longer than the rest. They seemed very uncomfortable at their table and, Ian noted, were surreptitiously packing their things away.

  He turned back to the general audience. “So, you might be wondering how three different research groups could get three such different readings,” Ian remarked. “It could be because of difference in our equipment, as our good friends from Mystic Meters have shared with us in their presentations both yesterday and today. It could be the energy of the psychic phenomena was low and not discernable.”

  He kept his voice easy going and non-committal.

  “It could even be because someone was jamming the electromagnetic signals so the equipment of the other researchers would be useless.” He smiled and delivered the information in a matter-of-fact way, but his eyes met Ollie’s. He casually nodded in their direction.

  Ollie stood, his chair crashing down behind him. But before he could move away, Bradley was standing behind him, placing his chair upright and putting his hand on Ollie’s shoulder to push him gently back into the chair. Bradley leaned forward, his head next to Ollie’s ear. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” he whispered. “I’m Bradley Alden, Chief of the Freeport Police Department.”

  At the tightening of Ollie’s muscles underneath his hand, Bradley nodded. “I think you need to stay and watch the rest of the presentation, Ian and Dee have worked so hard on it.”

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  When the doors of the asylum slammed closed on the video, the members of the audience jumped.

  “Aye, that’s how we felt,” Ian said. “And we hoped they were going to be so kind as to let us out when we were done for the night.”

  He quickly showed them slides of anomalies, recordings of other EVPs and charts of some of the EMF readings they received while they toured the asylum.

  “Now, I want you to realize that what these researchers do is not a game,” he said, his voice solemn. “These men and women are exploring the unknown. They don’t know what awaits them in the buildings they enter, generally in the dark of night, all to prove a theory that there is life after death.”

  He slowly looked around the room. “They are adventurers, explorers and scientists, and we should show them the utmost respect, never trying to take advantage of them or mock the work they do,” he continued. “Now, for the last part of the presentation, I’m going to show you two videos. You get to decide which one is scarier.”

  He clicked on the remote, and the final incident from the lobby started playing for them, the glowing light come closer to the group. As a collective, the audience held their breath as it got closer, calling out Mary’s name while the team stood their ground. Then thunderous applause broke out when the doors flew open, and relieved laughter was added when they heard Mary thank the entity.

  “Believe me. We felt the same way,” Ian said. “And now, the second example.”

  The next slide showed the video of a phone van pulling up on the road across from the asylum. Ollie and Lance glanced around and slunk into their seats when uniformed officers walked over to their tables and stood directly behind their chairs.

  Ian nodded in their direction. “Aye
, I thought you might be interested in this strange phenomena,” he said to Ollie. Then he turned back to the audience. “I’d like to give you a little information about how an EMF works, but I promise I won’t go into full lecture mode.”

  “If I’m standing in front of a placid, still lake and I throw a pebble into it, I can see the ripples,” he said. “Does that make sense?”

  The audience nodded in response.

  “Brilliant,” he said. “And that’s how an EMF meter works. There is always electromagnetic energy around us, but we feel the disturbance when a paranormal entity comes near. It’s like the pebble causing ripples. The meter reads the ripples. It reads the variance.”

  He clicked on the screen, and a picture of a quiet pond with ripples appeared.

  He glanced over at Dee and nodded. “Dee, who is a brilliant researcher, didn’t pick up any EMF readings when he went into the asylum, and we thought that was odd,” Ian continued. “There should have been some variance, something. We couldn’t figure out how that could happen to all of the groups except one.”

  He clicked on the remote, and a photo of a turbulent ocean appeared with high, crashing waves.

  “Now,” he said. “If you take that same pebble and throw it into waters like this, what happens?” He smiled. “You lose the pebble, right? We don’t notice it because of all of the other interference from all of the waves. But how does that relate to an EMF meter?”

  He clicked on the remote, and the same video appeared of the van with the satellite dish on the top pulling up across from the asylum. “If you had enough electromagnetic energy to cause thunderous waves in an area, the EMF reader would not pick up anything because it is looking for ripples,” Ian said.

  He turned as the video continued and showed someone running toward the camera. The video continued until the person was several yards away, and then it zoomed in on the face of the runner. Lance.

  “You all are probably familiar with our good friend Lance,” Ian said. “He’s the promoter for Mystic Meters, and isn’t it odd that he moonlights as a phone technician? And isn’t it odder that we have additional video of him climbing up a tower and triangulating the angles for the satellite dish when all of the phone lines in that part of the state are underground? Could it be that he was doing something nefarious?”

  Ian looked over at Ollie and Lance. “Could it be that they were deliberately jamming the EMF and EVP signals for the teams researching the asylum so that Mystic Meters could say their equipment was superior?”

  Ian shrugged. “I suppose that’s for you and the courts to decide,” he said. “I thank you for your time.”

  The clapping started small and then grew. Audience members, vendors and presenters all rose to their feet and gave Ian a standing ovation. Ian walked back over to the podium. “I’m so grateful for your applause, but I have to give credit where credit is due,” he said. “Dee, of the former Ghost Discoverers, is the person who filmed the footage and put together this entire presentation. He is the one who deserves all of our thanks.”

  The audience applauded again and didn’t stop until Dee took the stage. He walked over to the podium. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much. I’m proud to be a member of this community. Proud of my friendships with you. And I’m proud of the work we do together. And mostly, I’m proud to be my mom’s son.”

  Mary turned when she heard sniffling behind her to find Gwen crying openly. “That was beautiful, wasn’t it?” Gwen asked.

  “Yes, it was perfect,” Mary replied.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Bradley hurried over to Mary’s side as the audience started to swarm the stage. “I’ve got to go be Chief of Police,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, this was a good one,” she replied. “Book ‘em, Alden.”

  He grinned at her. “Oh, yeah, I intend to.”

  Mary started to make her way around the table when she noticed a man in a suit approaching Dee. Gwen appeared next to her. “Who’s that?” Gwen asked.

  “I have no idea,” Mary answered softly. “But there seems to be a very intense conversation going on between them.”

  “Do you think I should go over there and poke him?” Gwen asked.

  Chuckling, Mary shook her head. “I think you’ve done enough poking for the day,” she said. “Maybe we just need to sit back and let Dee handle this one on his own.”

  They watched for a few more minutes, and finally Dee and the gentleman shook hands. Then the gentleman turned and walked across the room and out the door. Dee waited, his face blank, until the door had closed behind the gentleman, and then he turned to Mary, his face wreathed in a smile. “Guess what?” he exclaimed, running over to her.

  “What?”

  “That’s the studio executive,” Dee said, “the one who was here looking for a replacement for Ghost Discoverers. Well, you’re looking at the new replacement.”

  “You are your own replacement?” Mary asked.

  Dee smiled and stood tall. “He’s thinking about calling it Dee’s World,” he said. “The world through the camera lens of Dee Westin.”

  “I think that sounds like a hit,” Mary said.

  “Will you be my first interview?” he asked. “You, Bradley and Ian?”

  “Hey, you know she’s got herself a team,” Stanley said, interrupting. “Wouldn’t be much of a story without me and Rosie in it.”

  Dee grinned at Mary and nodded. “You’re right, Stanley,” he said. “Pizza okay?”

  Stanley smiled. “Yeah, now you’re talking my language.”

  “You better go greet your people, Dee,” Mary suggested, watching the crowd that kept glancing in their direction. “That’s all part of being a celebrity.”

  “Yeah, I’m going,” he said. Then he lowered his voice. “Is my mom still here?”

  “Yes, she is,” Mary said, glancing over at Gwen. “And she’s really proud of you.”

  “Tell her not to go yet,” he said urgently, “not until I can talk with her.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Gwen said.

  “She’ll hang around for a while,” Mary assured Dee.

  After Dee walked to the stage, Kathi hurried over to see Mary. “What a presentation! What an afternoon. I had no idea Mystic Meters was doing that,” she said.

  “Well, we didn’t either until we decided to investigate the dead chickens,” Mary said. “It was just so rude of them to single out Betty and Nick that we felt like we had to do something.”

  “Thank you,” Kathi replied. “Betty and Nick are the sweetest people, and they do this research for all the right reasons. I’m glad you stood up for them.”

  “Well, she was right,” Mary said. “Who would have thought ghost chickens?”

  Kathi put her hand on Mary’s arm. “I have to tell you I’m a little concerned about you,” she said.

  “Why?” Mary asked.

  “Those EVPs, even before you arrived at the asylum,” Kathi said. “Someone or something was looking for you. It worries me.”

  “Thank you,” Mary said, touched by her friend’s concern. “I admit that I’m a little concerned myself, and I’m not quite sure how I want to handle it.”

  “Well, if you ever need an army of paranormal researchers, just let me know,” she said. “I think you’ve made yourself a bunch of friends for life.”

  “That’s really one of the nicest offers anyone has ever made me,” Mary said. “And you know, I might take you up on that offer.”

  She leaned over and gave Kathi a hug. “Thank you.”

  “It was really my pleasure,” Kathi replied. “And you have an open invitation to the conference.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Mary said.

  Kathi started to turn away. Then she turned back and smiled. “Oh, and you can bring Ian back anytime.”

  Mary laughed. “I’ll remember that, too,” she promised.

  Chapter Sixty

  “Well, that was fun,” Ian said, lifting
his feet and propping them on the coffee table. “But you guys exhaust me.”

  Mary, sitting farther down the couch in the exact position, chuckled. “Tell me about it,” she said. “I feel like I just ran a marathon.”

  “Well, iffen you ask me, we oughta get ourselves one of those television contracts,” Stanley said. “The stuff you investigate is lots more interesting than what they do.”

  Mary reached over to the plate between her and Ian and picked up a Christmas cookie. Katie had sent a plate of cookie decorating fails to their house because she couldn’t use them in the cookie swap. This one was a reindeer with no head. Mary bit off one of the legs and then waved it toward Stanley.

  “The problem we’d have,” Mary said, “is that I’m the only one who could see the ghosts.” She turned to Ian. “Present company excepted of course.”

  Ian nodded.

  “And it would get really tiring if I had to repeat everything the ghost said to our viewing audience,” she finished, biting off another leg. “And no one would believe me.”

  “I’d believe you,” Bradley said, reaching over across Mary for another cookie. He selected an elf with a hunchback. “And we could have Dee do all of our filming. He seemed to really enjoy working with us.”

  Mary laughed. “I think he was astonished to see what was really around him,” she said. “You know, they want to believe. They have the equipment, but when it slaps them across the face, it’s a whole other story.”

  “Speaking of slapping things,” Ian said, looking over Mary to Bradley. “How’s our friend, Sven?”

  Bradley took a satisfying bite of his cookie and smiled. “Well, he’s spending a couple of nights in jail while Dee decides if he wants to press charges. I told Dee to take his time, sitting in a cell will do Sven some good.”

  “And speaking of Dee,” Ian asked. “Where is he?”

  “Oh, he’s at the hotel packing up,” she said. “He’s leaving tomorrow morning. He’s got to get back and start working on the new season of Dee’s World.”