The Elk (A Caine & Murphy Paranormal Thriller Series Book 1)

by Dominika Waclawiak

  “Hey Sara,” he said and headed to the back of the van. Fredrick joined Sara on the sidewalk as a younger man, Jerry, dressed like a surfer and pumped on Red Bull, scrambled over the seat and jumped to the curb. He rubbed his hands in glee.

  “I can’t believe we’re finally getting to go inside this place.” Jerry jumped in glee. He grabbed her hand and pumped it up and down in greeting. “I’ve heard so much about you and it’s such a pleasure that you’re here.” He reminded her of an undisciplined puppy. “A real medium. Awesome!” He grinned at Fredrick. “So cool, Bro.”

  “We should unload. We only have another half hour before sunset,” Fredrick reminded him. Sara flashed him a grin and felt her own excitement rise. The gang tended to have that effect on her.

  “Yes, boss.” Jerry joined William at the back of the van.

  Fredrick hugged her hello. “How’re you doin, kid?”

  Sara gave him a squeeze back. “Day by day, Fred. Day by day,” she said. “Thank you for inviting me along. I’ll do my best to stay out of your way, but you know how it goes,” she said with a wink and bumped his fist with hers in solidarity. It’d been awhile since she’d seen him.

  “No way, we want you in on this. If we capture any of the famous ghosts on our tapes, we’ll be famous ourselves. Or at least get our own reality show.”

  “Who called you in?” Sara asked.

  “An old friend of my father’s,” Fredrick said. “I’m not sure I believe his story, but no way was I going to pass up the opportunity. We’ve tried to get in here before, but the manager Diane is a real hard ass. She said no the last four times we’ve asked and don’t even get me started on the sharks who run this place.” His grimace turned to wonder as he scanned the facade. “Wow, man. Can you believe we’re here? The Bockerman. You ready for this?”

  “Am I ever,” she said as they headed back to the others and the growing amount of video and sound equipment on the pavement.

  Sara wandered through the two-story lobby as the team set up their gear on a makeshift table next to the entrance to the once famous “The All-Star Theatre Cafe & Speakeasy.” She remembered it opening in the early ‘90s as a retro coffeehouse frequented by celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Sandra Bullock.

  The doors leading to the elevators and hallways matched the window arches that looked out over Ivar Avenue, and she would call the style ‘Mission’. The walls rose to a wooden beamed ceiling and, although the paintings on the beams had long ago faded, she imagined they must have been stunning. Couches lined the walls, and cheap rugs obscured the colorful Moroccan tiles under her feet. The shabbiness of its present reincarnation could not mar the old splendor of the former hotel from peeking out among the present detritus.

  She touched the nearest column and didn’t have to wait long to hear the big band music all around her, laughter, and footsteps on tile. She caught the scent of freshly picked roses and perfume. A breeze caught several strands of her hair, and she lifted her hand to brush them away when a shimmering started in the center of a beam of light streaming in from one of the large windows.

  This effect always reminded her of heat waves coming off the concrete in the middle of the summer, and she wondered yet again what the significance of ghosts appearing within light was. It never mattered whether the light was sunlight or lamplight. It just needed to be light. Johan had spoken of things coming out of the shadows, the darkness, but she had been lucky never to experience that particular phenomena. The shimmer, as she called it, made for quite a beautiful effect.

  An older, thin-faced man, wearing a shabby suit, and bow tie, smoking cigarette in hand, materialized out of the shimmer, his fierce gaze catching hers. He knew she could see him.

  “Have you seen my film?” he whispered to her. She leaned in to hear him better as her eyes scanned the lobby. The gang had finished setting up the equipment, and a small group of residents clustered around the video screens in anticipation. No one paid her much attention.

  “Which film?” She kept her voice low.

  “Have you heard of Birth of a Nation?” His raspy voice held traces of sadness.

  “You’re D.W. Griffith,” she said with a sparkle in her eye. He gave her a small bow.

  “I am he.” His eyes took in the scene in front of him. “There are many of us here.”

  “It’s amazing to meet you,” Sara said.

  A delighted smile spread across his face. “You’re too kind.” A chair leg scraped across the tile and set Sara’s teeth on edge. Griffith’s smile faded.

  “There are bad things here, and you need to be careful. Death surrounds us,” he whispered. “Tired. Must. Go.” He flickered and disappeared. Sara’s ears popped with the change in pressure, and she wondered which bad things he was talking about.

  She crossed the lobby just as Jerry turned on all the computers. The screens sprang to life and showed eight views of three different hallways.

  “This is cutting edge surveillance technology,” Fredrick said and gestured to the impressive array of equipment. “With the help of our medium, Sara Caine, we will find whatever ghosts you have,” he said as he pulled her into the middle of the small crowd. “Sara, may I introduce you to Nurse Lou, Barney, Mary Ann, and Lauren. Barney was the one who called us in.” He pointed to a Hollywood blond. “This is Diane, the manager here, and Doreen.” Sara fought the urge to take a small bow and managed to nod and give them a smile.

  “Wait, so as a medium, you see ghosts?” The middle-aged nurse in scrubs named Lou asked her. Sara heard the familiar incredulity in her voice.

  “Lou,” Barney said in warning making Nurse Lou purse her lips into a thin, bloodless line. She didn’t utter another word and, instead, crossed her arms and pushed to the back of the crowd. Obviously, those two didn’t get along.

  Sara noticed everyone’s dark under-eye smudges and general fear and figured no one was sleeping much. The blond named Diane, attractive enough to be an actress and, knowing LA, most likely one, looked well rested but Sara doubted she lived on the premises. Sara noticed the other women kept close to Barney, leaving Lou, and Diane as the outsiders of the group.

  “Have any of you been physically attacked?” Sara asked.

  “If by physically attacked you mean tortured by sound, then yes, we have been. The screams, whispers and knocking have become too much to bear,” Mary Ann replied.

  “And the thumps. Someone was at my window last night and tried to get in,” Lou called out from the back. Her eyes grew wide with the memory.

  “But nothing physical?” Sara prodded.

  “What do you mean?” Sara couldn’t make out who called that out.

  “Like killing us? That physical enough?” Mary Ann said. Sara saw Barney elbow her in the ribs, and the woman clamped her mouth shut. Fredrick shot Sara a warning look and she held up her hands with an implied sorry.

  “So these are live?” Doreen asked, pointing to the monitors.

  Jerry nodded. “I don’t know how much ya’ll know about hauntings but ghosts—or how we like to call them, dead guys.” Jerry cracked a smile. “The dead guys, typically present themselves through sounds. All this equipment is trying to catch those sounds.”

  Fredrick jumped in. “I’ll be carrying what’s called a spirit box. It uses AM and FM frequencies to generate white noise. Ghosts get energy from that noise and talk within it.” Sara heard this spiel the last time she joined their hunt and took the opportunity to study the riveted audience.

  “I’ll be using this EVP.” He held up a small box. “It’s a very sensitive recording device. If there are ghosts, we’ll hear them.” He finished and checked his watch. It was time. He and William plugged in their receivers, and William switched the camera on and lifted it to his shoulders. Fredrick turned to Barney.

  “We’ll start with the tenth floor. You can all watch on the monitors. Jerry will man our station here.” Barney nodded.

  “Let’s roll,” William said.

  Lou Fairbanks hung o
ver Jerry’s shoulder and stared at the screens so intently her eyes began to water. She felt Barney, Mary Ann, and the rest of the group pressing against her back and it was comforting to know she wasn’t the only one mesmerized. On the uppermost left screen, the two main ghost hunters, Fredrick and William, walked down the hall with those things they called EVPs held out in front of them with the medium trailing some distance behind them.

  What was the medium’s name again, Lou thought, and ran through a list of names until her memory spit out the correct one. Sara, Sara Caine. She’d heard of psychics on the daytime talk shows and wondered if mediums were the same thing. She’d even thought, in her darkest of moments, to contact that Sylvia Browne woman who frequented the Sally Jessy Raphael show, but came to her senses before she picked up the phone. That was a long time ago and, over the years, lots of stories came out claiming her a fraud, which cemented Lou’s belief that none of that stuff was real. But, here she was now, excited to see what they would find.

  The crackling of white noise penetrated her thoughts and brought her back to the hallway. On the monitor, Fredrick dialed a knob on the EVP until he found a constant white noise that was free from any static.

  A flash of movement caught her eye at the edge of the screen. “Did you see that?” She pointed at the general location, and Jerry flipped the monitor to the same camera, searching around for any sign of movement.

  “I’m not seeing anything. Could you describe it? Where was it exactly?” Jerry asked her as William and Fredrick appeared on both screens. Jerry flipped one of them back to the other angle for a better view.

  “Did you hear that?” William’s voice blared out of the computer speakers making Mary Ann gasp and push past Lou to get a better look. Lauren and Barney were not far behind her. They watched Fredrick hold up his monitor to William.

  A gentle sobbing came through the static of the receiver.

  “That’s the woman. That’s what I keep hearing every night,” Lou said and nudged Jerry in the ribs. “Can you turn it up? Or clean it up?”

  “Who are you?” Fredrick’s voice crackled through the speakers and made everyone jump. Jerry turned the sound down a notch as the two men turned round and round. The medium frowned.

  The sobbing grew louder as Fredrick and William ran down the corridor, the medium trailing after them. Lou cocked her head at another sound and got closer to the monitor.

  “Help, help,” came through so faintly that at first Lou thought she was imagining it.

  “Do you hear that?” she asked Jerry and he nodded, playing with the sound knobs to isolate it better. Lou paled as the voice became clearer. That wasn’t a woman’s voice, that was Dads’ voice.

  She pushed past the others and sprinted through the lobby. She’d given him several Ambien earlier to keep him asleep, but he must have woken up and found himself alone with the apartment empty. What if...she stopped the thought from forming. She had to get to him first.

  Lou came to a halt in front of the elevator, hyperventilating, the familiar panic welling up inside. She glanced over to the stairs and vetoed the idea immediately. She couldn’t risk passing out. Her secret would be out.

  She steeled herself and punched the up button. The elevator doors opened to her relief, and she rushed inside before anyone else could join her. She didn’t need an audience for her insanity and jabbed the button for the tenth floor.

  She closed her eyes as the floors dinged by, her heart in her throat and her mind fixated on Dads. She stayed that way until she heard the familiar ding and ran out of the elevator the moment the doors slid open. She didn’t have far to go to get to her door and as she slid the key into the lock, the ghost hunters appeared to her left, flushed with excitement over the new voice.

  “Is it in there? That’s where the voice is coming from,” Fredrick said never taking his eyes off the EVP.

  “It’s my father, not a ghost,” she yelled at them as she opened the door and revealed Dads sitting on the edge of his bed, staring out to the Hollywood sign and cradling his arm.

  His bleeding arm.

  She rushed to his side. “Dads, you’re bleeding. Let me see,” she said and gently extricated his right arm from his side and straightened it out. She stared down in horror at what she was seeing. How could anyone do this to an old man, she thought.

  Someone, or something, had carved HELP ME in crude letters into his forearm. The cuts weren’t deep, but the wound bled plenty, staining both his pajama pants and the carpet underneath him. She hurried to the bathroom and grabbed the first aid kit, relieved the cuts hadn’t hit any major arteries and weren’t too severe. But, the intent to harm was evident, she thought as she came out of the bathroom and noticed the ghost hunters crammed into the doorway.

  “Dads, who did this to you? Was it the crying woman? Did you see her?” she whispered and kneeled down in front of him. He never broke his gaze from the window. She opened up the kit and tore open one of the alcohol towelette packs.

  “Are you getting this?” She heard someone exclaim and shifted her body to shield Dads’ arm from them.

  “DON’T tape this. Can’t you see he’s hurt! Leave us alone,” she yelled behind her. Fucking vultures they were, she thought. Her hands trembled, and she found it hard to clean up the scratches properly. She took a deep breath and tried again.

  “Sorry, I know this stings,” she said but got nothing out of Dads. He didn’t flinch nor pull his arm away and when she looked into his eyes, they stayed empty. Lou heard the click of the camera and couldn’t believe they were still there.

  “I asked for you not to tape this. Get out!” She barreled at them, her arms reaching for their camera lenses. “Can’t you see he’s hurt? What’s wrong with you people?”

  “We’ll call 911,” Fredrick said before Sara Caine pulled him away from the door. Lou took a deep breath to calm herself and looked back at Dads.

  “No police,” she said too sharply and saw Fredrick send Sara Caine a surprised look.

  Lou cleared her throat and got herself under control. “Thank you though. These aren’t deep, and he appears fine. What would the police think about a ghost hurting him? We’d all look like a bunch of loons,” she said reminding everyone of the craziness they were partaking in. Lou saw, with some satisfaction, that it did the trick. Fredrick flushed while William nodded in agreement.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but I lost it when I saw him. I’m better now that I know they are very shallow,” she explained to them.

  “That’s understandable,” Sara Caine cut in as the men took cover behind her.

  “Thank you for that,” Lou said and returned to Dads side.

  “We’ll get Diane for you, if you’d like,” Sara said and went to close the door.

  “Find out who did this to him. If it’s a ghost, find it. Get rid of it. That’s what you can do,” Lou urged her, surprising even herself. Sara nodded and closed the door, leaving Lou alone with Dads.

  “Did Irene really do this to you, Dads? The woman who sobs every night?” Lou asked him as she perched back on his bed. He didn’t give any indication that he heard her. She checked his bandage one last time.

  “This should be good enough for the night. Can I tuck you in?” she asked and gently helped him lie back down. “Can you get under the covers?” He did as she requested without saying a word.

  She pulled them up to his chin, and he finally turned to look at her. They stared at each other for a moment before she looked away, the guilt of what she had done to him eating her up inside.

  Sara Caine took her arm off Fredrick as soon as Lou’s door closed. Something about that woman didn’t sit well with her. Fredrick nodded at William and they both turned off the EVP’s and made their way to the elevator.

  “How did you know?”

  “Know what?” Sara said.

  “Someone would get attacked?” Fredrick’s eyes bore into her as the elevator doors opened.

  “I didn’t know, Fredrick. It’s a standar
d question I ask. Also, I didn’t pick up any ghosts in that room or on this floor,” Sara said and held him back, letting the elevator doors close in front of them.

  “Why did you rig this floor?” Sara asked. “This floor is devoid of activity unlike some of the other floors. The lobby had more ghost activity then here.” She shot him a knowing look. “What are you not telling me?”

  “Let it go, Sara.” Before he could say anything else, a furious Diane Lawrence stormed out of the elevator and stopped right in front of them.

  “I think it’s time you all packed up and left,” Diane said, and stomped down the hall to Lou’s door.

  “What about the Cafe?” William called after her. Diane shot him a nasty look and opened up Lou’s door without saying a word. Sara watched the angry woman disappear inside.

  “Damn it. Can we sneak in another way?” William whispered to Fredrick.

  “Not gonna happen,” Fredrick said and shook his head in disgust.

  Sara felt bad that the hunt was cut short and let down one of her walls to make sure nothing was there and was hit with the stench of sweat. She dragged her wall back up into place, but she was too late. Her mind spun in circles, and dizziness slammed into her making her grab onto Fredrick for support.

  “You OK?” Fredrick asked. All she could do was nod as she fought to get back her equilibrium.

  “Sara?” he asked again. His voice came to her as if through a fog. Death was all around them, and it was fresh and filled with fear. This feeling wasn’t coming from the old Hollywood ghosts. She took several gulps of air and made sure all her walls were back up. When she was sure she was safe, she opened her eyes to see Fredrick and William staring at her, concern all over their faces.