Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails

by John G. Hartness

  “I know. It’s habit, you know?” Mike reached into the pockets of his cargo pants and grabbed a couple of chemical glow sticks. He cracked them to activate the chemicals, shook the plastic tubes, and tossed the glowing sticks into the corners of the locker room. The abandoned room was lit by the eerie green chemical light of the glow sticks and the blue-white LEDs of Mike’s headlamp and Billy’s camera light. Two walls covered in blue lockers were revealed, with benches running the length of the room in front of the lockers. One wall of the room was partially open to a large communal shower, and the other spun off a hallway to a bathroom with what looked to be at least a dozen toilet stalls.

  “There’s the scene where so many of your teenage fantasies played out, Bill. The girls’ shower.” Mike pointed his lamp over to the bathing area, and Billy laughed as he scanned the camera around the room. Suddenly Billy gasped and swung his camera back, focusing on the shower.

  “Dude, was that on a second ago?” Billy asked, pointing into the shower with his free hand.

  Mike followed his finger to a stream of water pouring from one of the showerheads. “I woulda bet anything the answer was no, but now I’m not sure. I mean, it’s on now, and nobody’s here but us, so it must have been on, right?”

  “You’re just going to forget the whole ‘ghost’ part of our job description, boss?” Billy asked.

  Mike grabbed his walkie-talkie. “Sam, are you getting anything from the locker room?” Nothing came back to him but static. He keyed the mic a couple more times, with the same result.

  “What’s up, Mike?” Billy asked.

  “My walkie shit the bed. You got your cell on you?”

  “Yeah,” Billy said, pulling his phone out of his shirt pocket. He looked at the screen, then gave Mike a lopsided grin. “Except the battery’s dead. Sorry, bro. Where’s yours?”

  Mike held up his own cell, screen black. “Mine went on the fritz almost as soon as we got in here. Sam said it had a short between the leads on the battery case, whatever that means. To me it means another damn six-hundred-dollar phone in the crapper.”

  “Maybe you oughta not carry expensive cell phones around where ghosts are supposed to be. They don’t like the tech— Whoa!” Billy jumped and swung the camera back toward the showers. “I know sure as fuck those weren’t all on!” Where seconds before only one showerhead was trickling onto the tile floor, now dozens of streams of water poured from the communal pipes.

  “Okay, that’s pretty weird. I’m gonna go in there and check it out,” Mike said.

  “Take off all your electronics. I don’t want to listen to Sam if she has to fix your shit again,” Billy cautioned.

  “Not that you’re worried about me getting electrocuted, you just don’t want to listen to Sam.”

  “Mikey, I am way more afraid of the wrath of Samantha Chima than I am afraid of you getting electrocuted by a nine-volt radio battery. Now take off your gear before you go in there.” Mike did as he was told, stripping off his walkie, headlamp, and portable EMF detector. He handed his EVP recorder over to Billy, who slid it into his fanny pack, having already hooked one into his audio mixer.

  “All right,” Mike said, facing the camera. “We’re in the locker room at Jackson High, and in just the few minutes we’ve been here, several of the showers have apparently turned themselves on. I say apparently because we certainly didn’t see anyone do it, and we didn’t do it, and as far as we know, we’re alone in here.”

  “Mike, I think we might want to revisit that idea…” Billy said, pointing to a full-length mirror in a corner of the room. One of Mike’s glow sticks was lying at the base of the mirror, illuminating the surface. As the hot water in the showers raised the humidity in the room, the mirror had fogged over almost completely.

  Except for the words “GET OUT” written in the fog by what looked like a finger.

  “What the fuck?” Mike said.

  “I don’t think we can say that on network TV, boss.”

  “I don’t think I give a fuck. Did you do that?” Mike asked, turning a sharp glare at the cameraman.

  “Dude, I’ve been right here next to you the whole time we been in here, and besides, I didn’t do that.” Billy pointed into the running showers. “So how the fuck am I gonna do that?” He pointed at the mirror.

  “Give me my meter,” Mike said, holding out his hand.

  “I don’t have it.”

  “I just gave it to you,” Mike said.

  “Nah, you put it on the bench next to your light.” Billy pointed to the bench, but there was no meter there. Mike’s walkie-talkie was there, his dead cell phone was there, his flashlight and wallet were lying right where he left them, but no EMF meter.

  “Well, where the fuck is it now?” Mike demanded.

  Billy scanned the room with his camera light, finally stopping at the entrance to the showers. “It’s in there,” he said, pointing into the showers.

  “The fuck. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I’m getting my shit and we’re fucking leaving,” Mike said, sliding his dead cell phone into his pocket and stomping into the shower.

  “Oowww, motherfucker! That shit is hot, goddammit!” Mike cursed as he stomped over to the EMF detector, lying in a puddle in the center of the shower room. “That was a five hundred dollar fucking EMF detector, too. Now it’s a piece of wet junk.” He reached down and grabbed the detector, steadying himself on one of the columns that dotted the room with showerheads sticking out of them. The second he touched the EMF detector with his hand still on the shower column and his feet soaked in a puddle on the dingy tiles, a bright blue spark leapt from his hand to the puddle of water, and Mike’s back arched, his mouth open in agony. The spark flashed into life like a lightning bolt trapped indoors, momentarily blinding Billy and throwing him backward to the floor. His head slammed into the hard tiles, and his camera went sliding across the smooth floor, coming to rest in a corner of lockers and sending crazy shadows across the room with its light.

  “Mike?” Billy said from the floor. He lay there for a second, feeling his head to see if he was bleeding, then generally flexing and twisting to make sure he hadn’t injured anything seriously in the fall. After a few seconds of self-examination, he decided nothing was broken and stood up to get his camera. “Mike?” he called again. “Where you at, boss?” He picked up his camera, turned it over in his hands a few times looking it over in the dim light of the glow sticks and Mike’s headlamp, then put it back on his shoulder and pressed his eye to the viewfinder.

  Billy panned the camera around the room, the onboard light and low-light filter bringing the room into sharp relief, if with a green tint to everything. He scanned the room once, then tilted the camera down and almost dropped it as the light illuminated Mike’s still form lying in the shower. Billy set the camera down gently onto the bench, aiming the light into the shower room, then ran across the room to his friend, stopping at the edge of the puddle Mike’s prone body lay in.

  “Mike?” Billy asked, looking around for a dry spot in which to step into the room. Somewhere in the back of his mind he noted that the showers were off, the scalding water no longer pouring out of every faucet.

  Mike didn’t move, didn’t respond in any way. Billy took a deep breath and gently tapped his toe into one of the puddles, ready to jump back at the slightest spark. Nothing. He stepped completely into the shower room. Nothing. He reached down and touched Mike’s shoulder with one finger. No shock. He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder and gently rocked him back and forth. No shock, but no response, either.

  “Mike, quit fucking around and get up,” Billy said, kneeling by Mike’s side. He reached out with two fingers and pressed them against the side of Mike’s neck. Nothing. He put his head to Mike’s sopping wet chest and listened. Nothing. He shook, slapped, and finally punched Mike’s lifeless form. Nothing.

  “Fuck,” Billy gasped and sat back on the wet tile, tears spilling down his face. “You can’t be dead, dude. You’re th
e smart one, man. You don’t get to be dead. You’ve got to get us out of here. I sure as balls can’t do it, and I don’t got a whole lot of faith in Sam making it happen. I mean, she’s smart and all, but you’re the boss, boss. You get shit done. You can’t be fucking dead. Not from a fucking walkie-talkie battery.” Billy froze, looking around carefully. The walkie-talkie was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Mike’s headlamp. Billy patted his dead friend’s pockets, finding nothing. Every piece of technology on his body had vanished. In the time it took Billy to clear his head and look around, it was all gone.

  “What the fuck?” He pulled his own walkie-talkie from his belt and pressed the button. “Sam, do you hear me? Mike’s hurt, maybe dead, I think he’s dead. There was some kind of electrical thing and oh fuck…” He trailed off, dropping to one knee as sobs wracked his body. “Sam, do you read me?”

  Billy released the talk button on the side of the walkie, but only silence came back to him. He looked down at the radio, then realized the red light on top wasn’t illuminated anymore. “Goddammit!” he screamed, hurling the useless chunk of plastic across the empty locker room. It clattered across the tile, the battery cover breaking open and bouncing along its merry way.

  Billy picked up his camera and headed back toward the door, using the camera light to guide his way. He was almost even with the exit when he heard a strange rumble behind him. The cameraman turned and saw a big laundry hamper rolling toward him, with nothing pushing.

  “Holy shit!” he muttered, and clambered to raise the camera to his shoulder even as he backed away from the approaching cart. The hamper hit him across the middle of his upper thighs, forcing him backward. Billy tried to dodge from side to side, but the possessed hamper kept tracking him, slamming into his legs and forcing him back and back. After ten or fifteen feet, Billy felt his back press up against and opening and realized that he was against the wall of lockers, with his body half into an open one.

  “Now what, motherfucker? Gonna shove me into a locker? I don’t think so! I’m not some gym-class nerd, you son of a bitch! I’m a grown-ass man.” Billy gesticulated wildly out in front of his body until the locker door swung sharply shut, cracking him a painful blow on one wrist.

  “Ow! That hurt, asshole!” Billy shouted, pushing at the laundry cart. It didn’t budge. He was stuck fast, half in and half out of a locker. The door swung shut again, and this time Billy didn’t get his arm up. The locker door caught him across the cheekbone, laying his skin open almost to the bone. He shook his head, trying to clear the stars from his vision, and his camera fell into the laundry hamper. Billy struggled against the hamper pinning him in place while the locker door crashed again and again into his face and forehead. Billy’s vision clouded with blood and little explosions of light as the metal edge laid his face open and pulverized his cheekbones. Finally he heaved the laundry hamper away from his midsection, but it was too little, too late. One last blow from the locker door slamming on his face crushed his eye socket and sent the cameraman slipping into darkness.

  “Billy, do you read me? Mike, what’s going on? Do either of you hear me? Where are you guys? You’re out of my camera range—all I have in the locker room is thermals, and the readings I’m getting are really weird. Mike? Mike!” Sam shrieked into the radio, then slammed it down onto the desk.

  “Nothing,” she said, turning to Jessica.

  “Yeah, I gathered.” Jessica stood on the other side of the desk, rubbing her arms as if cold. “What do we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “Part of me wants to go after them, and wring Billy’s damn neck if this is another one of his pranks, but a big part of me wants to just find an open door or window and get the fuck out of here.”

  “I’m with the part of you that’s looking for a window,” Jess said. “If this is some kind of prank, I’ll kill Mike later, but for now, I really want to be somewhere else.”

  “I hear you, girl. I just can’t…never mind.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the thermal imaging sensors I set up in the locker rooms. They went batshit for a little while, then back to normal, like something made the whole room into a sauna, or turned on all the hot water, then it all went back to normal, but I didn’t get any normal body heat readings off the guys. I mean, look at this.” She pointed to her screen and clicked her mouse a few times. “This is when the guys go into the room, right? See the two red outlines?”

  “Yeah, looks normal.”

  “Right. But then…” Sam clicked her mouse a few more times, and the screen exploded in red and yellow. “Then it gets super-hot in there, across the whole room, and I lose the guys in the flare because it’s so hot in there I can’t distinguish forms.”

  “Okay, that makes sense, I guess,” Jess said.

  “Then it calms down and goes back to normal, except for a few things holding residual heat, like metal or something. But I still can’t find the guys.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t find them?” Jessica asked.

  “There aren’t any bodies on the readout warm enough to be people. Everything is cooling at the same rate, like the room is getting colder and they aren’t making their own heat.”

  “And people only stop making body heat…” Jess didn’t finish her sentence.

  “Yeah,” Sam agreed.

  “So they went into the locker room, it got hot enough so that our sensors were useless, and now there are no sources of body heat left in the room.”

  “Right.”

  “So they either got out of there and just aren’t answering their radios, they got out of there and their radios are jacked up, or…”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “And I put new batteries in all the radios and checked them today, plus charged everyone’s cell phones. There’s no good reason they shouldn’t be able to contact us.”

  “And I’d rather concentrate on getting out of here than spend time thinking about the bad reasons. So let’s go look for that open window.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Sam picked up her backpack and slung it over her shoulders. “What about our gear?”

  “Leave it. Somebody or something out there is going to a lot of effort to get us out of here, and they can have all the equipment if it means getting home safe,” Jess replied.

  “Okay, but I’m taking my hard drives.” Sam disconnected her USB drives, tossed them in her bag, and settled it across her shoulders once more. “Let’s go.”

  Jessica picked up a Mossberg shotgun they kept loaded with rock salt shells for dispersing evil energies, levered a shell into the chamber, and flicked on the flashlight slung under the barrel. They walked out of the library and turned left, instinctively heading in the opposite direction from the gym and the locker rooms. The women walked the halls of the school for long minutes, rattling locked doors and looking for a path to the outdoors. Every door they tried was locked. Even the doors leading into classrooms wouldn’t budge.

  They made a circle, turning left at every dead end and eventually ending up back at the library entrance. “Now what?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know. Go back in here and barricade ourselves in?” Jessica said.

  “Worth a shot.” Sam turned and pulled the handle, but the door didn’t open. The free-swinging double doors were locked solid. “What the fuck?” Sam said, pulling harder.

  “What’s going on?” Jess asked.

  “It’s locked,” Sam said, pulling the door harder.

  “You sure it’s not just sticking?”

  Sam stepped back and ran at the door, kicking it with all the force her hundred-sixty pounds could muster. The door rattled in its hinges but didn’t open. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s not just sticking.”

  “Well, fuck, what now?”

  “We can’t get out, and we can’t get back into the library,” Sam said. “That leaves one place we can go.” She raised an eyebrow at Jessica.

  “Oh hell no! I am not setting foot in that fucking gym.”

  “I don’t
think we have much of a choice.”

  “Sammy-girl, you don’t know what that was like for me.”

  “I can imagine…”

  “I don’t think you can.” Jessica shook her head. “I was supposed to be on that stage. I watched my best friends get blown to bits, knowing that I was supposed to die right beside them. And now you want me to go back there?”

  “I don’t, but something sure does. Because it’s not going to let us out of this building until we go to the gym.”

  “I hate it when you’re right,” Jess said.

  “Everybody does. You Anglo-heteros can’t handle the fact that the Latino-Asian lesbian is the smart one.”

  “That’s not it,” Jess protested. “We just hate the fact that she’s the pretty one, too.” They both laughed, then looked around almost guiltily. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Let’s do it,” Sam agreed, then turned and started down the hall. Jessica took a long breath, then squared her shoulders and followed.

  It took just a few minutes to get from the library to the gym with Jessica navigating by memory. Her flashlight cut a narrow beam through the enveloping darkness, with Sam’s portable LED lantern providing a larger, more diffuse pool of light immediately around the two women. Jess got to the gym doors, then stopped.

  “You okay?” Sam asked.

  “Not really, but I’ll get there enough to fake it,” Jess said. She took another deep breath and yanked hard on the door, almost flying back into Sam when it opened with no resistance.

  “Of course the one door in the place that doesn’t stick,” Jess muttered under her breath. She and Samantha stepped into the gym, the smell of twenty-year-old dust lying heavy in their nostrils. Sam held her lantern high, but the soft light petered out after a few feet.

  “You’re gonna have to be our eyes, chica,” Sam said. “My light is like pissing in the ocean here.”

  “I got this,” Jess replied. She pressed a button on the back of her flashlight and the beam doubled in intensity, slicing through the darkened gym with ease. “The manufacturer calls this ‘hyper mode.’ It triples the output for a fifteen-minute burst, but it’s a bitch on the battery.”