by Alex Silver
We’d make time to deal with it later. For now, I’d ensured we had what we needed to get the word out about this supernatural menace.
I felt antsy so close to the barn as night descended. The flashing lights of the police car that arrived next lit up the barn in strobing colors. I hoped Dan was right that light would disrupt the malevolent spirit if it tried anything else.
It must have worn itself out trying to kill Ben though because the ghost stayed away while we answered questions.
After endless hours, they took the camera and left him with an admonition to stay in town. No surprise there, though Daniel seemed taken aback at the implication they suspected us of foul play.
I’d been on the phone with Annette to finish arranging her interview when the attack occurred and time stamped video to narrow down the possible window for the attack would bear out the fact I was not involved.
I had an alibi. Daniel did not. I knew he’d been inside the van, but I hadn’t actually seen him there so my word wasn’t enough to clear him.
“Would a serious accident on your set improve your ratings?” the officer asked toward the end of the interview.
Daniel frowned like the thought never occurred to him. It should have. His own injuries had proven to boost his views and likes repeatedly.
I knew Daniel well enough to be certain he would never even consider hurting a person as a publicity stunt. The police did not know that.
I hoped like hell Ben survived and could tell us what happened to him. It must be the ghost. I shuddered to think what might have happened to me last night if I’d been any slower to escape. Frank Higgs had struck again, and this time it was far worse than Leon’s broken arm.
THIRTY-NINE
Dan
I operated in a haze after what happened in the loft. One thing was clear now, Higgs’s ghost must not remain unchecked.
It would not be enough to document the haunting, this one required professional intervention. If only the police hadn’t taken my camera, I might at least review the footage. Check for any evidence of what happened to Ben.
Some sign of the ghost’s malign interest in him. Or perhaps some incriminating detail that would prove the ghost responsible for the injuries inflicted on the man.
On that note. How lucky were we to have avoided a serious accident before now? It could have been Chad the ghost harmed. Last night I hadn’t credited the true extent of the danger he had been in.
I couldn’t fault him for his nerves considering the attack or for his desire to put space between us and the ghost. I didn’t argue when Chad suggested parking Vanessa near the farmhouse. Lara and Jane were too busy to deal with us that night. That left us to our own devices.
“What now?” Chad didn’t turn to look at me. Did he blame me for the attack? I was the expert on these matters. I should have taken more precautions.
“We call in a medium to put Higgs to rest. End this, once and for all.”
“But, isn’t that what we do?”
“I’m just an investigator, I collect all the latest tech, but I’m not a medium. I can communicate and coax the willing. What I can’t do, is force an angry spirit to its rest—but I know someone who can.”
“Who?”
“Karen White.”
“Karen White? The Karen White who posts ragey social media rants about you being a clueless dilettante? You know her?”
“Sure. Why else would she bother mentioning me?”
“But isn’t she your professional rival?”
“She is, but I can respect her expertise enough to know when something is beyond my abilities. Higgs almost killed you last night. May well have killed a man today. I won’t risk anyone else.”
“Shit, I was trying not to dwell on how close… will Ben make it?”
“I’m not sure.” There had been a lot of blood staining the ground. On Chad’s hands and clothing from trying to stem the flow from the even set of puncture wounds in the man’s gut.
“Give me her number, I’ll make the call,” Chad pulled out his phone. I sighed.
“I appreciate you trying to make this easier for me, but it’ll be best if I call her myself. She’ll take it as an insult otherwise.”
“Okay.”
I took a deep breath and dialed Karen’s work number.
“Other Side Encounters, this is Tabitha, how can I help you,” Karen’s receptionist answered in a warm tone that oozed distant politesse.
“Hi, Tabitha, this is Daniel Collins, from the web series Dan’s—”
“I know who you are,” Tabitha cut me off, turning brisk and chilly. “Is this about her latest blog post?”
I suppressed a groan, I made a mental note to check out Karen’s blog later to see if she’d posted something about me again.
“No, I find myself with a professional matter that she is better suited to handle.”
Tabitha snorted, it wasn’t a stretch to assume that the staff of Other Side Encounters thought Karen was better qualified than me to resolve any and all paranormal situations. I gritted my teeth. Cleansing the haunting was more important than my professional pride. Lives were at stake.
“Karen is in a consultation, what is the problem?”
“I’ve got a haunting in Vermont where the ghost has been escalating for decades and today he stabbed a man.”
There was some commotion down the line, then after a beat of silence, Tabitha’s tone changed to concerned, “Did he survive?”
“They took him to the local hospital by ambulance. Word is that he is in surgery to repair the damage. I need to deal with this haunting before something worse happens. I’m more than willing to swallow my pride to make that happen. Can Karen help or do I need to call someone else?”
“Hold on, I’ll appraise her of the situation.”
New Agey hold music filled my ear before I could respond. I half expected Karen to let me stew on hold for ages. She didn’t though. It was maybe five minutes before I was on the phone with the woman herself.
“I’ll help,” Karen’s melodic voice didn’t hold her usual scorn for me. “You did the right thing, calling me.”
“Great, when can you get here?”
“Oh, no. You mistake me, dear boy, I’m amid several sensitive consultations. I cannot get away to visit in person.”
“Then what do you have in mind?”
“I will provide remote help for you to lay the spirit to rest. If you insist on inserting yourself into my profession, it’s high time you learn to do more than excite the spirits before moving on to your next exploit.”
“I thought you only taught other mediums.”
“Yes, well. I could do worse than an apprentice with your persistence and passion for the spirit world. And for once you’ve shown you can exercise discernment. Are you refusing my offer?”
“No, not at all. I’m grateful.”
“Good. Then your first job as my long distance apprentice will be to tell me about the spirit you encountered. With none of your usual showmanship, I am a busy woman.”
I laid out the details, Karen only interrupted a handful of times to tell me to get to the point. She clucked over my reaction to Chad’s encounter last night, chiding me for not taking the threat seriously enough. Only what I deserved. I should have known better. Done better.
When I finished, she made a contemplative sound, “The spirit seems to seek revenge. Who would your Frank Higgs blame for his death?”
“Blame? Noone, he killed himself.”
“Well, I’m sure he had a reason for that, don’t you think?”
“I told you, his farm was failing.”
“Ah, who did he blame for that?”
That drew me up short. Who would Frank have blamed for his hardships?
“His sister?”
“That’s a strong possibility. From what you’ve told me, he’s attempted to harm his young nieces and nephews when the stable was still in use. He may have played a role in burning the original house with his s
ister’s family inside.”
“But how does that knowledge help us?”
“We can give the spirit the closure it needs. Find out the root of his desire and you will learn the key to convincing him to let go. You will only be able to send him to his rest once his hold on the living world is loosened.”
“So we figure out why he wanted to wipe out his sister’s family? That’s assuming he wasn’t just a sociopath?”
“Short answer? Yes. Though, it may be enough to convince the spirit we have redressed the wrongs done to him without discovering the finer details.”
“How?”
“That’s for you to figure out. If that’s all, I am busy. Call me when you are ready to attempt further communication with the spirit.”
“Thank you, Karen.”
“Uh uh, that’s Madame White to you. An apprentice medium must show the proper deference.”
I bit back a snarky reply—I needed her help here. “Thank you for your help, Madame White.”
“You are welcome. And try not to get yourself killed, if I am to mentor you, I’d prefer to do it with you still on this side of the veil.”
She clicked off the call and left me with a sinking sense that I was in way over my head. I was no medium, apprentice or otherwise. I relied on my gadgets and gear to interact with the paranormal. Karen was the real deal. I’d never felt more like the fraudster she’d always accused me of being than I did after that phone call.
FORTY
Chad
Daniel dropped his phone in his lap and rubbed at his temples. “Any idea why Higgs has it in for his sister’s family?”
“Jealousy? Elmer turned the failing business around. If he’d bothered to pitch in sooner, Frank might not have taken such drastic measures?”
“Resentment. That’s a thought. Although, if the negative feelings developed after his death, then that begs the question of why his spirit lingered. A violent death alone is enough to make a ghost. But he’s proven powerful, something is holding him here.”
“We don’t have anything new to draw on, speculation is all we have absent more information. I suspect Evie’s journals are our best lead. The good news is that I have arranged a video interview with Annette. We hammered out the details just before, well, the incident. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to talk to her and Evie.”
“Tomorrow, huh? You’re so efficient,” Daniel forced a tight smile.
“I try.”
Daniel sighed, fiddling with his phone. He looked so dejected. I wanted to make everything better. But the situation was grim. We’d put Ben in danger and the consequences of his injury remained ambiguous.
The officers who had questioned us seemed suspicious of our story. They had separated us while we answered endless inquiries about what we were doing and how Ben fit into things.
It had been a long terrible day. My natural inclination was to go straight to sleep and hope tomorrow was better. Daniel needed a distraction though, it was obvious from his distant expression. His defeated slouch.
“Come on,” I stood and patted his thigh, “We’ve got footage to edit if we want to have the videos ready in time.”
He gave me a startled glance. “We do? But the camera…”
“We do. I uploaded everything while you explained the situation to Lara. Just in case they took the camera.”
Daniel yanked me into a hug. I only just kept from overbalancing into the gap between the seats at the force of it. If not for his leg, I would have let him pull me into his lap. As it was, I patted his back then kissed his cheek.
“Come on, time’s wasting.”
I slipped out of the van’s cab and past the curtain into the living area. Daniel followed on my heels, using the kitchen counter to keep most of his weight off his broken leg with practiced ease.
We spent the next several hours poring over the footage for any sign we could have prevented today’s attack. Daniel pointed out a lens flare and strange distortions in the sound and light that I couldn’t easily explain.
He claimed they showed paranormal interference with the equipment. That it meant our activities agitated Higgs’ spirit. We’d been in the barn all day, feeding Higgs our living energy, according to Daniel.
Yesterday, I might have doubted him, but considering my experiences in the past twenty-four hours, I felt a prickle of dread instead.
“We upset him?”
Daniel nodded, “It seems clear he hates trespassers. Access to so much living energy to feed on must have strengthened him. It’s up to us to stop him now.”
“We will. I’m can’t say how yet, but we will. We just have to figure out what he wants. You know, other than bloody, violent vengeance on the living.”
Daniel’s hand on my shoulder was a welcome comfort.
“I won’t let him harm you. We will figure this out.”
“But not tonight,” I yawned. A glance at the clock revealed it was well past midnight. “We should call it a night if we plan to keep our appointment with Annette and Evie.”
We got into bed together and I took comfort in Daniel’s warmth at my back and his strong arms around me. Neither of us suggested doing anything more than sleeping after the day we’d had, I was in no state of mind for sex.
We overslept in the morning. Daniel rushed to prepare for filming Annette’s interview.
She sent me a text moments before our scheduled video chat. For a moment I worried she intended to back out on us. She was our best lead to uncover the reason behind Frank Higgs’ lingering presence.
The message was just checking if we were ready for her, lucky for us. I replied that we were.
Moments later Daniel had the call pulled up on his monitor. He made it full screen and unlocked a swiveling mount to angle the screen of one editing monitor toward the camera. He hit the record button on a screen capturing program he’d explained he liked to use for remote interviews.
My job was filming our side of the interview. I had his spare camera set up on a tripod to capture him against the privacy screen he used to cover the sleeping area when filming inside Vanessa.
“Hello, can you see me all right?” Annette sat beside an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Natural light flooded the room and washed out the colors a little. Daniel would want to correct the color balance and lighting for the final cut.
Look at me picking up on filmography. If that was even a thing. I thought it might be.
“Hello, I’m so glad you and your mother could take the time to talk with us today.”
“We’re happy to help your investigation in any way we can. Mother was a young girl when her Uncle Frank died. It was a real tragedy.”
“It was. You told me your mother kept her journals from that time, correct?”
“That’s right. Her mother taught the girls their letters so they could help keep records for the farm. The journal was for Mom to practice. I thought they might interest you. A few entries from the months leading up to and following Frank’s death in particular.
“I’ve scanned the relevant entries and attached them to an email. You can refer to them later, but if you’d like I can read some to you today? Mom loves it when I read to her about her childhood. She gets confused these days, so the reminders sometimes help her.”
“I’d love to listen with her, then. And Evie, if you remember any details not written in the journal, please share them with us,” Daniel addressed the frail woman at Annette’s side.
“Oh, she doesn’t remember much these days, Dan, she’s ninety-five and suffers from dementia.”
“I see.”
“Yes, well. Let’s begin, shall we? I read through the year of my great-uncle’s death and found a few entries, that in hindsight, may shed some light on what happened. Keep in mind, this account is a young child’s perspective. Mother was only eight years old, here’s what she wrote.”
Annette opened an aged journal with several paper markers sticking out between the pages. She flipped to the first marked entry an
d read.
January 24, 1932,
I heard Uncle F arguing with mother again after church. Not sure why they yell so much. Mother says uncle worries about the farm.
Father says F is a sanctimonious “B” word. Mother says those words aren’t for children. I hope they stop fighting.
Uncle F forbid Aunt C and the girls from visiting so I can’t ask Lettie what’s going on. Lettie knows everything.
Last time I saw her, she told me her father is angry because my father was trying to get the milk without buying the cow. Whatever that means. We have so many cows, I’m not sure why Uncle F wants to buy more.
When I asked him about buying cows, father laughed. He told me that milk prices are so dreadful he had half a mind to sell his share of the farm and move west. I hope we don’t. I would miss Lettie and everything here.
April 6, 1932,
Uncle F went out of town to trade some bulls. Aunt C brought the girls to visit. Lettie says we need to change bulls sometimes so that the calves will be healthier.
I guess that’s a good thing. I like playing with the calves.
Lettie says our bull is as mean as Satan’s teeth, so I hope Uncle F will get a nicer one. That would be good. The cows would be happier. Lettie says happy cows make more milk. If the cows are happy, maybe we won’t have to move west.
Lettie says Uncle F is still angry at my father. She thinks it’s because he’s too nice to her mother. I don’t care how nice he is. I miss my cousins.
Everyone in town says we play so well together we could be sisters. Sometimes I think we even look like sisters. I miss them.
August 7, 1932,
Lettie told me in Sunday school that Uncle F hit her mother. It scared her. He was screaming something about cuckoos in his nest.
I don’t know why he was so angry about a bird. Aunt C didn’t come to church this week. I hope she is okay and she can bring Lettie to visit again soon. Mother says not to worry, it will all work out for the best. Pastor T says all things work together for good.
