She was confused. "What are you talking about? This is some of the best evidence ever captured-"
"Evidence," I repeated, and I couldn't help being amused at the word. I grabbed the book and flipped it open to random pages as I talked. "Lens flare," I said about one photo. "Reflection," I said regarding another. "Blatant photo manipulation."
"But. .."Jordin backpedaled. "Look at this one. That's one of the best orbs ever captured on film!"
"Your orbs," I said with a tone that refused all argument, "have done more damage to the field ofparanormal investigation than all the crackpot psychics and mediums out there combined. They're nothing but bugs or dust that get too close to a lens for it to focus properly, so a light artifact is created on the final image. An amateur photographer can tell you this."
Jordin was frowning. She regrouped quickly, flipping to another page. "Look at this one, though. You can't tell me that isn't-"
I snapped the book closed and handed it back to her. "Even the best photos in here-and I'm not saying some of them aren't compelling-are unverifiable. Any one of them or all of them could be the product of Photoshop. This is the eternal problem of paranormal investigation. The only people who ever investigate it are amateurs, because no reputable scientist will touch this stuff, and no scientific journal will publish an amateur's findings. It's a catch-22. All of these photos were taken by amateurs because there are no paranormal professionals, so it can't be labeled as evidence. Amateurs can't be vouched for, and the conditions they research in can't be controlled, so their evidence has no value as scientific currency," I concluded, trying to communicate to Jordin with whatever delicacy I possessed that arguing her case on behalf of science was a hopeless cause.
Jordin was reveling in romanticized notions of what the paranormal was like, but her ideas were an insult to the reality I knew. And I wasn't finished.
"Making matters worse is the fact that a lot of the investigative groups out there don't get along with each other. My parents have done a lot to legitimize the field, and they've never done anything underhanded, but there are other investigators out there-highly reputable ones-who will swear to you on a stack of Bibles that they know my parents fake most of the evidence they find. They `know' it because they believe their own tactics are more scientific, or because they're just plain jealous of my parents' success. Every group claims to be more reliable than all the others, and it just comes down to a big shouting match of `my word against yours.' It's all a game, and there's no way to win."
As we began walking again, Jordin suddenly tossed the scrapbook she'd spent countless hours compiling into a nearby trash bin. "Fine!" she shouted. "I don't know anything about ghosts or paranormal research. That's why I need your help! Teach me! I don't care if I don't have iron-clad evidence. I just want to experience it for myself."
Again I examined her carefully. "Why?" I asked. "Why are you so eager to do this?"
She held my gaze steadily. "Why did you give it up?"
I suddenly felt like a coiled tiger ready to pounce. I knew my stance had taken on a threatening posture as I narrowed my eyes at Jordin, but I didn't care. I hated this girl for realizing that my publicly stated reasons for leaving the world of the paranormal behind were only secondary and superficial.
"We're done," I said.
I had already spun on my heels and begun walking away, flipping through a stack of envelopes I'd picked up that morning in the mail, when Jordin approached me again from behind.
"Not easy affording tuition these days, is it?" she said in her best innocent voice.
I shot her a simple glance but said nothing as I sorted through the mail and continued walking.
"You paying for it all on your own? No help from Mom and Dad?"
I stopped. If it was possible, I liked this girl even less than before. "What's it to you if I am?"
"Nothing," she replied with an innocent face. "Just surprised your parents aren't paying for your studies. I'm sure they could afford it."
My eyes slid downward to the bills again, but my defensive tone of voice never wavered. "Who says they didn't offer?"
"Of course.. ."Jordin put it together. "You insisted on doing it yourself. What better way to make a clean break and declare your independence than to put yourself through college, launch your own destiny..."
"Don't you have some frivolous shopping to do?" I asked, wanting to be elsewhere. Any elsewhere.
"I could hire you, you know,"Jordin said. "You need money. I need your expertise. I'm offering you a job that no one else is more qualified to perform. You pick the destinations, based on your knowledge of the field. Anywhere in the world. I'll cover the expenses. We go on weekends or breaks from school."
My ears were burning now. I couldn't believe this girl's audacity. This wasn't my first request to be taken on ghost hunting adventures, but it was certainly the most outrageous. "You think you can get whatever you want with money?"
"It's just a job," Jordin replied, keeping exceedingly cool. "So what if I'm willing to pay obscene amounts of money, more than the job's worth? It's my money, and I can throw it away if I want. You could pay off your entire tuition-with money you earned entirely on your own, fair and square. And we'd both get something we want...." She paused. "Maybe even something we need."
How I hated this girl. Hated, hated, hated.
I wanted nothing more than to smack Jordin Cole across the face. Instead, I clutched my multiple envelopes full of bills tighter, grimaced, and looked Jordin in the eye. "What's the catch?"
"No catch," she said, a sparkle in her eye indicating that she knew she'd hit a nerve at last. "Just one requirement. I want to see a ghost. I want to touch it and interact with it. So when you pick our destinations ... I'm not interested in going to places that might be haunted. I want to go to the places where we're guaranteed to see or experience something real. The most haunted places in the country. Or the world."
"There are no guarantees in this," I replied, angry at myself for even continuing this conversation. "The dead don't perform. They aren't here to humor the living."
"Whatever. I just want my chances of actually finding something to be as high as possible."
Again I couldn't help wondering why she was so eager-no, desperate-to go on a paranormal investigation. I'd encountered overzealous paranormal junkies before, butJordin was different. Smart, confident. She'd quickly realized exactly which buttons of mine to push, and she pushed them like a pro. On the other hand, I still had the impression that all of this might have been nothing more than an odd whim for her, a curious indulgence. A new adventure for someone who was rich enough to have done just about everything else.
I told her I needed some time to think about it, and we parted ways. It wasn't because I did need time; I just didn't want to seem eager.
And I wasn't eager, after all. I had lived and breathed this world Jordin wanted to enter so badly for most of my life. It wasn't that I'd gotten sick of it or anything. But investigating the paranormal was always my parents' thing, and while I couldn't deny that it was a rush on those rare occasions in the field when you found something genuinely amazing ... it was still like something I was born into rather than a path I had chosen for myself. My parents were cool about it; they never pressured me to enter the family business, always willing to accept whatever choice I ultimately made.
So I had left that life behind. There was no "good riddance" or anything on my part. I just kind of... graduated. I became an adult, and my passions were now elsewhere.
I waited a few days to call Jordin and give her the answer I had known I was going to give that day she made her sales pitch. Even later, after hands were shaken and terms were agreed to, I still couldn't believe I was going through with it.
But Iget to pick the locations....
All right, then. She wants to go someplace already proven to be haunted? Someplace she's guaranteed to encounter actual ghosts?
I'd give her an adventure she would never forget. And it
might even be enough to end Jordin's weird little quest before it got out of hand.
I knew exactly where I would take her first.
And hopefully, last.
I read the introduction to my psychology textbook four times without retaining a single word. The entire tome might as well have been filled with four words, written over and over and over....
The nightmare is coming. The nightmare is coming.
What did it mean?
And what was going on with Jordin? Was that really her I saw Saturday night?
I looked around my solitary dorm room, thankful that Jill wasn't there to talk my ears off. This year I'd splurged and reserved a room at the highly sought after Hogan residence hall, where only seniors were allowed. No roommates in my private room, though I shared a common area and kitchen with a few other girls. I even had my own private bathroom, so there was rarely a time when I ventured outside of my glorious privacy. I preferred solitude as a rule, and thanks to my unusual employment the last year, I could afford the indulgence.
The nightmare is coming.
The nightmare is coming.
I glanced down at my spiral-bound notebook and saw for the first time that I'd filled an entire page with a column of that sentence.
I snapped my textbook shut, unable to focus. This wasn't like me, and it was annoying.
My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. I slid out of my desk chair feeling like a slug and wondering why I couldn't shake off my experience from Ghost Town amusement park. The first day of classes was tomorrow, and I had a lot to do.
I yawned as I opened the door. "Yeah?" I asked mechanically.
"Have you seen Jordin?"
I blinked. Standing just outside my door was Derek Hobbes, with his thin build, wavy blond hair, and impossibly piercing eyes. Those eyes were usually bright and sharp, but today they were clouded by anxiety. Dark circles and a haggard expression made him look like he hadn't slept in days. Maybe weeks.
"Derek?" I asked, a little uncertain that this was really the young man I knew as Jordin's fiance. His standard college wear of golf shirt and plaid shorts hadn't been ironed, there were traces of dark circles under those keen eyes of his, and he had a day's worth of light-colored stubble coloring his rosy face. I couldn't remember ever seeing him so disheveled.
Derek Hobbes was an undergrad student in Columbia's Religion Department, preparing to eventually seek his master of divinity degree. He was kind natured and soft spoken, possessing an utterly brilliant mind. Just like his father, he was expected to someday become one of the most influential and respected ministers in America. Everybody said so.
He wasn't my type in the slightest, but he was one of the nicest guys I'd ever met.
"She's not here," Derek said with a kind of desolate panic as he took in my small solo room. "She's not anywhere."
My mind screeched to a halt. Any processing of Derek's words seemed to be happening in slow motion.
"Jordin's missing?" I asked, feeling like a complete dullard. I turned slowly in place, reeling, and ran a hand through my black hair.
I had turned to keep Derek from seeing my reaction to this news, but he interpreted it as an invitation to step inside, so he quietly entered and closed the door. "When did you last see her?" he asked.
Jordin's missing, I thought, my mind and heart both racing.
jordin's dead.
"Maia?" Derek tried snapping me back to the present. "Have you seen Jordin?"
My hand was now covering my mouth because I feared I might vomit, so my reply was a little muffled. "Not since last semester..." I said, planting myself on the edge of my bed because my knees felt weak. "How do you know she's ... ?"
His words came out in a practiced rush, making it easy to imagine that he'd told this story several times already. "Every summer before classes start, Jordin takes this group of friends on a back-to-school vacation thing. About six weeks ago, she left with the usual group of about ten or twelve girls, and she took them all up to Martha's Vineyard. A couple weeks after they got there, she stopped calling me and answering my emails. I figured she was just having fun, relaxing and losing track of time-she does that sometimes-but it got to be longer and longer.... And before she left, we had this big conversation where we planned this really romantic meet-up at a restaurant near campus the first day we were both back in town for school. But she never showed, and now it's been almost a month since anyone's seen her."
I looked down at the floor, absorbing Derek's story. Jordin had gone missing around four weeks ago. And no one had seen or heard from her since.
Not true. I saw her last night.
My thoughts rocketed back to the here and now as I realized Derek's deeply worried eyes had locked onto mine and were anxiously awaiting a response.
"I don't know what she told you," I said quietly, "but the last trip she and I took, it didn't-"
"Didn't end well," he said, finishing the phrase. "That's the same thing she said. But she didn't say why."
A question was implied, and it was the one question I feared more than any other. I deflated a bit as he looked at me, something akin to accusation in his eyes.
"It was ... intensely personal. For both of us." I grappled to find the words. How could I explain to jordin's fiance-the person she was close to more than any other-that I couldn't possibly tell him what I knew, when it was somethingJordin had not chosen to tell him herself.
Derek was about to mount an argument, but I spoke first, changing the subject. "Has she been reported missing to the authorities?"
"Some of the girls she went to the Vineyard with tried to report it, but they said they didn't get very far."
"Why not?"
"Does it matter?" asked Derek, growing more agitated by the second. "She's vanished without a trace, and God only knows what's happening to her right now!"
He immediately looked remorseful, even apologetic, for his outburst. But you could see the worry and frustration boiling up inside him. His anxious expression never wavered.
"You shouldn't assume she's in any kind of mortal danger, Derek," I calmly suggested. "Don't forget that your fiancee is one of the world's richest people. If she got a sudden whim to fly off to Rome on a moment's notice to get you a birthday present, she happens to be one of the few people in the world who could actually do that."
Derek seemed to turn on me, his expression dark. "Mortal danger isn't my primary concern. I'm a lot more worried about dangers to her soul than her body. The things you two were meddling in . . . "
Here wego, I thought. In the handful of times I had met Derek in the past, he'd made it more than clear-in a sweet, passiveaggressive, read-between-the-lines kind of way-that he disapproved of his fiancee's excursions into the paranormal with yours truly. And I suspected that it went even deeper than that. My past, my beliefs, my family's claim to fame. All of it railed against his rigidly held view of the world.
But he'd never come across so belligerent before, so agitated and angry. Until today, I wouldn't have thought him capable of such aggressive qualities.
Cut the guy some slack, Maia. I reminded myself that the love of his life had vanished, and he had to be feeling painfully helpless to do anything about it. That kind of thing would make the saintliest of men turn wild and desperate.
Still, I didn't take kindly to being accused of wrongdoing.
"You can't possibly have any reason to assume that the trips we took have anything to do with Jordin's disappearance," I stated flatly. And then it occurred to me the absurdity of the statement, since I had compelling evidence that there very well could be a connection. Evidence in the form of Ghost Town amusement park.
Not that I was going to tell him that. Not yet, anyway.
"It doesn't matter what I think," Derek replied, his ire shrinking to despair. "All that matters is that she's gone."
I watched him, and despite how little I had in common with Derek, I couldn't help empathizing with his pain. It surprised me a bit, bec
ause I'm not exactly known for being the sympathetic type. But something about his love for Jordin seemed so pure, so desperate. I really think they needed each other, and were less than whole when they were apart.
Acting on impulse, as my mother likes to criticize me so often for doing, I made my decision then and there.
I was going to find Jordin Cole myself.
"I'm going to find her," I said to myself, not quite realizing I'd said it out loud.
I had no idea what had happened to Jordin, and I didn't know if what I saw at the amusement park was real. But I knew what I felt ... and what I suspected about the things Jordin was up to right before she vanished.
Which would mean I was at least partly responsible for this entire situation.
"You want to help me find her?" asked Derek. "Why?"
I noticed for the first time that he'd been staring at me in shock since my little declaration. My temper flared.
"How many people are lining up to track her down for you, Derek?" I retorted. "You said the police won't do anything. Are you seriously going to question the first person who's willing to try?"
"But you're not a detective," he said, a halfhearted protest.
"Not yet," I reminded him. "I am a criminal justice major."
And an investigation ofthis nature wasn't beyond my capabilities at all. I was a senior at Columbia, studying criminal justice. I had learned more than a few things about law enforcement investigation tactics in my classes here, and after graduation, I intended to get a job as a police detective, and maybe one day the FBI.
It was time to put the skills I'd learned over the last three years to use. See if I really had a future as a detective.
Derek was starting to come around but wasn't quite there yet. "Look, I appreciate your desire to help, but there are any number of things that could have happened to Jordin, and this is very serious, so let me be blunt. Your experience in this arena is relegated to poking around in the dark, looking for things that are nothing more than a trick of the human psyche. It's fear made real by your mind. Ghosts do not exist."
Nightmare Page 3
