A Babe in Ghostland

by Lisa Cach

  Whether those refinements would make a difference was yet to be seen.

  With Eric’s help, she carefully slid her head into the helmet, trying not to dislodge any electrodes. When it was firmly in place, she lay back and covered herself with a blanket, knowing her body temperature would drop, just as it did while preparing to sleep.

  Eric clipped a blood oxygen saturation and pulse monitor to her fingertip.

  The helmet muffled sound, so it was a surprise when Case appeared beside her, looking down with concern.

  “Are you sure about this, Megan?” he asked.

  “We’re not learning anything about the house without it.”

  “That doesn’t matter compared to your safety.”

  “But you tried it yourself,” Megan pointed out. He had done so an hour earlier, holding to the promise he’d made before to see for himself that it was safe.

  “I’m not you.” Case had reported an out-of-body experience and memories of early childhood with the helmet, but when Eric had altered the electromagnetic pulses to the pattern he thought worked best for visionary or paranormal experiences, Case had experienced no result.

  “No, but I trust you to keep an eye on things. I know you’ll shut it down if I’m in distress.”

  Eric made an insulted noise.

  “As would Eric,” Megan added.

  Eric grumbled, “S’more like it.”

  “As long as you’re sure.”

  Megan nodded and reached up to flip down the visor attached to the helmet. It was lined inside to block out all light, although she could still see it coming in from the bottom of the helmet. A few moments later, that light dimmed, and she knew they had turned out most of the lights.

  “Okay, Megan,” Eric said, “you do your trance thing, and when I see your brain waves approaching the theta state, I’ll turn on the stimulator. It should be like someone turned up the brightness and volume on your experience.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll keep you in theta for half an hour unless you signal for me to stop. We won’t question you about what you’re seeing this time, until the half-hour is up. I want you to get a good, uninterrupted look around. You should have a lot more control than when you’re in a trance without the helmet.”

  “Okay.” She doubted it would work that well, but now that the helmet was on her head and they were about to begin, whatever apprehension she had left was overruled by curiosity. Just what would she see?

  She took a few deep breaths and turned her mind to her private trance induction, sinking deeper and deeper beneath the sea. She left Eric and Case behind, glad to escape her daylong dwelling on personal relationships.

  Down, down, down…

  Her feet hit sandy bottom, and she walked through the underwater cave. As she passed through it, she felt something happening; it wasn’t taking the same degree of concentration to stay in the moment. The cave walls took on a life of their own, as if unimagined by her. When she came out the other side this time, there was no charcoal void.

  An endless sky of pale blue greeted her, alive with sounds. She blinked against the light, lifting her hand to shade her eyes. The sounds became louder, a hubbub of voices and animal noises. They pounded at her, intimidating her with their pressure, making her heartbeat quicken. She struggled to gain control of the experience and, after a few moments, managed to push the sounds back slightly, giving herself space to hear herself think.

  The endless blue bleached into white. Then suddenly, the scene changed, and she was standing in the grand salon of the house, furnished as it must have been at the turn of the last century. The voices disappeared, and there was no sound but her own breathing and heartbeat.

  She blinked, stunned by the clarity. She’d never had an experience like this on her own and might have been frightened if not for the unreal silence and a vague feeling of being dissociated from her own body.

  She looked around, recognizing a few pieces of furniture from her explorations of the house, recognizing as well that their arrangement was the same as in one of the photos. She walked to the tall windows that looked out on the garden and saw close-trimmed lawns and a formal pool, the white statue of a goddess. The trees at the far end of the garden were mere saplings, but there was no view for them to block. The world turned to a wall of white mist beyond the back wall of the garden.

  She heard a noise behind her and turned around.

  The man from the portrait stood in the wide doorway, his eyes wide as he stared at her.

  Megan gaped back. Was he real or a figment of her imagination?

  He kept staring.

  A sudden thought struck Megan, and she raised her hand to her face, feeling for the helmet, thinking that was what made him goggle at her so. She felt the soft skin of her own cheek, no helmet or visor. So this was her astral self, appearing in the form she envisioned for herself.

  She smiled at the man, trying to appear unthreatening. “Hello.”

  He glanced back down the hall behind him, then took a few hurried steps into the room, stopping several feet away from her. He leaned toward her, eyes wide. “How did you get in here?”

  “I…couldn’t really say.”

  “Do you know how to get out?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, realizing that that was the case and suddenly feeling grateful that the power of the helmet could be shut off with the flip of a switch. With this degree of reality around her and no cave opening in sight, she wasn’t confident that she could simply open her eyes and be back in her own world.

  “You shouldn’t stay here, if you can help it.”

  “Friends will come get me,” she said.

  He nodded. “Outside friends. Very good. I don’t have any.”

  “Are you trying to leave?”

  “They won’t let me go!” he burst out, then glanced anxiously around and lowered his voice. “They have me locked up here like a monkey in a cage. But then I caught a glimpse of a man up in the attic. And I’ve seen him in the halls a few times, just for a moment. I saw you, too. You’re easier to see. When the man arrived, I knew there must be a way in and out.”

  “You want to leave.”

  He closed his eyes as if gathering internal strength, then slowly opened them and met her gaze square on. “I would gladly give my soul to the devil were he to take me from this place. Even hell must offer more peace than this house.”

  “Who’s keeping you here?” Megan asked, her voice as low as his.

  “They are.”

  “Who are they?”

  He shook his head. “They’ll hear us if we say their names.”

  “Then may I ask yours?”

  He looked at her in surprise, then a sunny smile broke over his face. “Forgive me, my manners have atrophied from lack of use. I am Zachariah Armstrong, originally of Cincinnati, Ohio.” He gave a small bow.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Zachariah. Er, Mr. Armstrong, I mean.”

  “And whom do I have the very great pleasure of addressing?”

  Megan smiled, enjoying the courtliness. “Megan Barrows. Of Seattle.”

  “Ah, a native daughter of this fledgling city.”

  “How long have you been here, Mr. Armstrong?”

  He blinked at her. “This is terribly embarrassing, but I’m afraid I have no clear notion of the date. The last I remember, it was July 10, 1898. Have I been here half as long as I think?”

  “I don’t know. How long do you think you’ve been here?”

  “Ten years, perhaps?” He bit his lower lip, looking at her with apprehension. “Could it be as many as twenty?”

  Megan grimaced.

  “Oh, dear. Thirty?”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s been well over a hundred.”

  His eyelids fluttered, and he staggered backward. “A hundred years.”

  “Mr. Armstrong, this may seem a rude and forward sort of question, but…are you…er…” Megan chewed her lip. It really was a harsh question to as
k someone. “Did you know that you, ah…”

  “Yes?”

  “Er. You’re dead, right?”

  A hurt look came into his eyes. “My dear, it is hardly a topic on which I need reminding.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I don’t show it, do I?” He looked down at his nattily dressed self with worry. “There aren’t signs of decay, are there?”

  “Oh, no, you look stunningly lifelike,” Megan rushed to reassure him. Time to change the subject! “How did you come to be trapped here, Mr. Armstrong?”

  He brushed lint off his sleeve and blinked at her, visibly gathering his thoughts back together. “I tried to show you.”

  “You did? When?”

  He gave her a charmingly apologetic smile. “I’m not very good with details of time, I’m afraid. But I do know that you were trying to sleep, and I asked you to come with me.”

  “That was you!”

  He bowed again.

  “You almost sent me headlong down the stairs!”

  A look of horror came over his features. “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “My dear lady, I am so sorry! I never meant for such a thing to happen!”

  She brushed away the apology. “It’s all right. I thought maybe it had been a mistake on your part.”

  “Do forgive me! Say you forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “I was trying to show you—”

  A piercing screech cut through the room, the vibration of it causing the very fabric of the scene to tear. The screeching came again, from more than one direction, the room shredding under the force of the sounds. Zachariah’s image bent sideways and stretched, as if being sucked away.

  “Don’t let them catch you!” Zachariah cried, his voice distorted.

  “Who are they?” Megan shouted over the screeching that sounded like a flock of harpies. “Tell me who they are!”

  The last remnants of the grand salon vanished, and with it the ear-piercing screeches. Megan was back in the endless sky blue, surrounded by silence, hovering in pale nothingness. Moments passed, and then she felt rather than saw the approach of a presence.

  “Please don’t listen to him,” a soft, feminine voice lilted close to her ear. “He has the charms and guile of a snake, and he will bring you to ruin as he has brought others.”

  A chill ran up Megan’s arms, making the hairs stand on end. She could barely see a white face near her shoulder, hiding in the corner of her vision. She was afraid to turn and see the woman full-on. “Who are you?” Megan asked quietly.

  The woman ignored her question and continued to speak in her strangely gentle tone. “Please, do not listen to his lies. Do not let him tempt you and lead you astray. You would not want the end that you would bring upon yourself.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “He has trapped us here with his lies and deceits. He has stolen our very lives.”

  “Can you tell me who you are?” Megan asked.

  The white face pulled back, beyond the edge of Megan’s vision. Megan slowly turned her head.

  There was no one there.

  The silence around her gave way to the hubbub she had heard before.

  A shiver ran up Megan’s spine. That white face had been so close to her, she would have felt the woman’s breath if she had been alive. Megan shuddered.

  There seemed to be nothing left to see, so Megan coaxed herself up a notch of consciousness and hovered there.

  She heard Eric speak. “She’s coming out of it.” Then louder: “Megan, are you finished?”

  “Yes,” she said aloud.

  “Did you learn anything?” Case asked.

  “I learned a lot, but I have no idea what’s true.”

  Sixteen

  Megan pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to coax away the headache that was forming. Squinting at the screen of a microfiche machine for two hours was doing neither her back nor her eyes any favors.

  She hadn’t even known that microfiche was still around and still in use. She’d never used it in college; any research she’d had to do for projects was done with databases. She ordered the articles she wanted, and voila! Done.

  But here at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry, the microfiche machine was the only way she could see copies of the Seattle Times from 1898.

  The name Zachariah Armstrong was unusual enough that she’d thought it would be easy to find any mention of him in the paper. Alas, she had forgotten that punching his name into a search function was not an option. She had to scan each paper line by line, and so far, she hadn’t found a single mention of him.

  Instead, she saw talk of the Klondike gold rush, city development, local and national politics, and reports of fires and accidents. The classified ads offered the same questionable assortment she was used to: rooms for rent, jobs sought, men seeking women for romance and more. There were ads for quack medicines and ads for psychics. It was similar to modern newspapers, except for the old-fashioned layout with narrow columns and headlines only marginally larger than the text of the stories themselves.

  People clearly stayed the same over the centuries.

  She’d started with July 10, assuming that to be the date of Zachariah’s death. But neither that day, nor any other day for a week afterward had offered mention of his death. There were no anonymous murder victims, no suggestive death notices, no mention of the Smithson family.

  Megan leaned back and stretched. If she was going to suffer through this tedious search, she preferred to suffer somewhere more comfortable. She found the librarian, handed over the money Case had given her for making copies and buying any pertinent books, and requested June, July, and August 1898 printed out.

  It was late afternoon by the time she returned to Case’s house with her thick stack of printouts. As she drove under the iron arch, she glanced up at the crest and motto.

  I get what I deserve.

  It had an eerie ring of similarity to the white-faced woman’s warnings during the séance. “You would not want the end that you would bring upon yourself.”

  Megan shivered. There was something unspeakably creepy about it all.

  As she drove slowly down the driveway, she saw that both Case’s and Eric’s pickups were gone. Lovely. She was alone at the haunted house. She parked the van and sat motionless in the driver’s seat.

  Had the ghostly woman been a member of the Smithson family? It seemed likely, since her words were like the motto. But if so, which Smithson was she? Mother, Daughter One, or Daughter Two?

  Whichever she was, Megan wasn’t eager to see her again. She was too unnerving. At least Zachariah had been charming. Amusing.

  The better to tempt her to a terrible fate?

  He had almost sent her headlong down the stairs, after all.

  She didn’t know what to believe.

  With a sigh, she got out of the car and headed for the house. She stood for a long moment just inside the door, letting her senses reach out into the house around her. As before, she had a sense of being watched. The house knew she was there.

  Her footsteps were loud on the bare floor as she made her way to the kitchen. Two notes lay on the table.

  Had some work to do, and have to pick up lumber and misc. for the house. You have my cell #—call if you need anything. Back by 6:00.—C

  Got called into work today. Don’t let the boogey men get you!—E.

  Everyone was off working as usual, and here she was in spook land. She felt a sudden pang of longing for the familiar comfort of her shop and her daily routine there.

  With a sigh, she plopped down the stack of printouts and started water boiling for a cup of tea. She could hardly sneer at the promise of twenty pieces of furniture, but even that prize had somehow lost its allure.

  “Maybe that’s why you shouldn’t do things purely for the money,” Megan scolded herself out loud. It could never compare to doing something purely because it gave her joy.

  S
he sat down and settled in with her tea, intent on getting herself up to date on current events, circa1898.

  She was midway through June 6 when the thumping began. Her gaze froze on the newspaper, her ears pricking and the hair rising on the back of her neck.

  The noise wasn’t as loud as when she had eaten there with Case. It was far off, somewhere above her. If the house hadn’t been otherwise silent, she doubted she would have heard it at all.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Maybe an animal had gotten into the house?

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Megan scrunched down in her chair, realizing the kitchen had grown shadowy with the lateness of the afternoon.

  She glanced at her watch. Five-twenty. Another forty minutes until Case would be back.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Megan tried to concentrate on the paper in front of her. Nothing had happened to her and Case when they’d ignored the sounds before. Surely it would be the best course to follow now.

  Thump. THUMP! THUMP!

  Megan jumped at the sudden increase in sound, then looked up at the ceiling, as if she could see through the floors to wherever the sound was coming from. It didn’t seem to want to be ignored.

  THUMP!

  Goose bumps shivered over her skin.

  It could be Zachariah up there. It could be the white woman. It could be the nameless they.

  She didn’t want to see any of them, alone.

  Megan pushed back from the table and hurried from the room toward the door to the outside. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

  She stopped, then took a few steps back until she could see the staircase. In the movies, it was always a mistake to go investigate the creepy noise on one’s own. A gory death awaited every bimbo who tried it.

  Megan put her hand on the banister, feeling a sick kinship with the horror-film characters. What could it do to her, anyway, as long as she didn’t panic? It was just a noise. A harmless thumping noise.