Chapter Six
“Okay, the first thing I want to do is go ahead with the investigation of this house,” Rachel said nearly as soon as I’d walked through the front door. “We need to find the spirit that killed Kurt while the site is still hot.”
“Rachel, come on,” Chris said. “Kurt died this morning.”
“And what is sitting around going to do? Waiting isn’t going to make him any less dead.”
“I think you’re in shock. You don’t want to make decisions you’ll regret,” Toto said.
“I won’t regret doing my job,” Rachel said. “It’s what Kurt would want. He would want the show to go on and be a success. He wouldn’t want us moping around and ruining our careers because he died.”
“Well, maybe we’re not up to it,” Chris said. “Maybe some of us need some time.”
“Some time for what?” Rachel’s question sounded like an accusation. “I think there is a spirit in this house that killed him, and I’d think you’d want to get to the bottom of it.”
“I really don’t think there is a spirit in this house that killed Kurt,” I said.
“Well, we’ll find that out one way or another,” Rachel retorted. “You did say that we could do the investigation here. Are you backing out?”
“I’m not. I just don’t think that looking for a murderous spirit is the best way to run things,” I said.
“This is my show. I appreciate your concern, but I can handle this,” she said.
“Whoa, wait just a second, Rachel. What do you mean this is your show?” Chris asked.
“Yeah, what are you talking about Rachel? This is our show,” Toto said. “Kurt dying doesn’t make it your show.”
“Well, he was the showrunner, and he and I were going to be married. So I think that means that it passes to me,” she said.
“He wasn’t a king,” Chris said. “Showrunner doesn’t pass to his heirs. It’s in our contracts what happens if one of us dies, and when Kurt died, his creative responsibilities pass to me.”
“No way,” Rachel said.
“Yes way,” Toto said in support of Chris.
“Yeah, Rachel. I know you and Kurt were close, but it’s my job to decide how the show proceeds from here,” Chris said.
“This is why I never wanted to sell out to a stupid studio,” Bobby said. “This is ridiculous.”
“Without selling out to the studio, Ghost Seekers would still be a YouTube-only show that we all had to do part-time after our crappy jobs,” Chris reminded them. “Besides, we all took a vote before we signed our contracts.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t know what was in your contract,” Rachel said to Chris. “Why weren’t the rest of us included?”
“Because the studio made these decisions as part of taking on the show, and we never really thought it would happen. Nobody thought Kurt would die,” Chris said.
“So what’s it going to be, boss man? What do we do next?” Rachel’s contempt was palpable.
“I want to talk to our hostess alone for a few minutes,” Chris said.
He cocked his eyebrow up while looking at me, and I knew he as asking my permission. “Sure,” I said. “In the kitchen?”
Both Rachel and Bobby let out exasperated huffs. Link and Toto headed for the front door.
“We’re going to head over to that coffee place and grab the strongest sludge they can make for us,” Link said. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Bobby and I are going to go over to the old cemetery across the road, but don’t worry, we won’t do any real investigating without mom around,” Rachel said sarcastically.
“What are you going to do with us?” Annika asked.
I motioned for her and Remy to follow me into the kitchen. If Chris wanted to talk to me, he could talk to all three of us.
“I’ll make more coffee,” I said as the other three sat down at the kitchen table.
“I wanted to talk to you guys alone because I think we’re going to have a problem with Rachel,” Chris said. “I don’t know any less blunt way of putting it. She’s not handling Kurt’s death well. Which is to be expected. I just thought she’d take some time to grieve instead of wanting to dive back into the show.”
“Maybe if you talk to her,” I offered.
“No. The only person who could rein her in was Kurt. There is zero chance she’ll listen to me, Link, or Toto. Bobby won’t be any help because he’ll do whatever she wants. I know it’s completely inappropriate for me to ask you to let us do the investigation, but I don’t know any other way.”
“What do you mean?” Remy asked before I had the chance.
“I mean that if you don’t let her, she’ll go live on YouTube with her theory. She’ll tell the world that a ghost possessed Kurt and forced him to commit suicide. Rachel has her own following,” Chris continued. “They’re… darker than the usual Ghost Seekers fans. She’ll rile up her followers, and tomorrow Coventry will be swimming with them.”
“And you think that if we do the investigation and it turns up nothing, she’ll back off?” I asked.
“I think it’s the only chance you’ve got right now.”
“I don’t understand this,” I said. “Why wouldn’t she want to wait until at least after the funeral? Is it just shock? I can’t understand pushing through. He just died.”
“Because she doesn’t care,” Annika observed casually. “Sorry to be so blunt, but I get the feeling she doesn’t give a crap he died. You keep saying it’s shock, but that’s not the vibe that chick is putting off.”
“There relationship did seem a little rough around the edges, but I don’t know if I want to go as far as to say she doesn’t care that he died,” Chris said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Either way, it’s fine with me if you go forward with the investigation, as long as you guys are up for it. I can tell her no if you need me to.”
“No, it’s fine,” Chris said. “We’ll do this now. It hasn’t really hit me yet that he’s gone, but I know it will. I guess it would be better to get the season wrapped up before it does. I’ll need to call Kurt’s parents, but I believe it would be better for everyone if we got the finale finished before we need to go home for his funeral. That will give us a couple of days.”
When Toto and Link got back from their coffee run, Chris briefed them on our decision. They reluctantly agreed to participate. I could tell that Toto was taking it much harder than Link, and I wondered if Grateful Dead was in shock like Chris. Toto had red rings around his eyes. He’d been crying while they were gone.
“I’ll go over and get them,” Chris said.
“Toto and I will get the equipment from the basement and set up around the rest of the house,” Link said.
Rachel looked around after everything was set up. I could tell by her pinched expression that she wasn’t pleased.
“Let’s wait until tonight,” she said. “There’s no atmosphere with all this light.”
Chris groaned. “Seriously?”
“We can do the courthouse during the day. That was supposed to be on our schedule, and we have to do it during the day. So let’s do it now. Is that still okay?” she’d directed the question at me and Remy.
“Sure,” Remy said.
“Hey, do you guys have this for now?” Annika asked. “I need to go open my shop.”
“Yeah, we’ve got it,” I said.
“Cool, I’ll be back after I close. Wouldn’t miss tonight for the world.”
After that, the remaining Ghost Seekers loaded up in their van, and Remy drove us to the courthouse. “Do you have to go to work?” I asked as we pulled into our parking space.
“I think the archives can survive without me for a day,” he said. “I would hope the council would appreciate that I am helping you protect the town.”
Once we were all gathered around the courthouse lobby, I addressed the Ghost Seekers. The town council had decided they could do a ghost hunt at the courthouse, but there were rules.
“Okay, guys. So courthouse investigation is a courtesy. There are rules we have to follow. If we don’t, then the council has no problem getting security to throw us out. The first rule is that the archives are Remy’s, so you can go down there, but it’s his show. The top floor is the council’s offices. We can go up there as long as we aren’t too loud, but we have to stay out of the council members’ offices. So that’s pretty much the hallway and the conference rooms that aren’t in use. The middle floors are courtrooms and more conference rooms. We can go in any of those that aren’t in use. And finally, you have to stay with me at all times while you’re investigating here. So we all have to stay together.”
“Sounds like a blast,” Rachel said and rolled her eyes.
I wanted to say something to her about how her attitude wasn’t helping her friends, but I hoped she was just struggling with her boyfriend’s death. I didn’t want to be a jerk to someone who had just suffered such a huge loss, so I let it go.
What I didn’t let go was the suspicion that had begun to niggle at my brain. Rachel had taken off to find Bobby the night before, I didn’t know where she’d been with Kurt died. I assumed she’d have come back to my house and slept, but I didn’t know that for sure. It also struck me as strange that, if she had come to my home and slept, how did she not know that Kurt left the house that morning? Perhaps it was because they didn’t sleep in the same room. I could understand that, but I needed to know for sure.
“Why don’t we start in the basement?” Chris suggested. “I’d like to send Toto and Link downstairs with the camera and the boom mike and get shots of me coming off the elevator.”
“What about us?” Bobby asked.
“Well, while I’m talking about some of the history of the courthouse, you and Rachel can record audio. We’ll take several opportunities to cut to Rachel doing EVP. Bobby, we’ll have you with the EMF reader. You can look for electrical anomalies and jump in if anyone sees, hears, or feels anything unusual.”
On the elevator down, Remy turned to me with a serious look on his face. “I’ve got to tell you something. There’s… uh… something about the archives I never told you.”
I looked over quickly at Link and Toto. They just gave me a shrug, but it looked like they already knew. So it wasn’t something Remy couldn’t share with them, but it was something I didn’t know. Awesome.
“What is it?” I asked cautiously, but I was sure I didn’t really want to know.
“So, uh, back when the courthouse was built, the basement wasn’t used as an archive,” he said.
“Okay.”
“So, back then, a building this large served more than one purpose. The upstairs floors were still courtrooms, and the basement served as holding cells,” he said.
“You mean the jail?” I felt relieved.
“Okay, so yeah,” Remy said and ran his hand through his hair. “That, but there’s a reason I called it holding cells instead of the jail. They didn’t just use them for criminals. Back then there was nowhere to put the severely mentally ill.” He waited for my reaction.
“Tell her the rest,” Toto said softly as the doors opened.
“Yeah, tell me the rest,” I said as we stepped off the elevator.
“So that’s what one-half of the basement was used for. The other half was a morgue.”
“A morgue? In the courthouse?” For a moment, I thought he was messing with me, but the look on his face was completely serious.
“Yeah, so this wasn’t just a courthouse and a jail. Back then, there wasn’t a hospital anywhere around here. If they had a disease outbreak or something where there were a lot of hurt or sick people, they also used this building for that. Even when they weren’t using any of the courthouse as a hospital, they still needed a cold, dark place to store people who died. That was the basement.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?” I asked. “You work down here all alone.”
“Old buildings have their quirks,” he said with a shrug.
“Where does Chris want to start?” I asked.
“Once we get the film of him getting off the elevator, he wants to start in the old morgue section. If that’s okay with you?” Link asked Remy.
“Sure, the room is in the back. It’s not very big. Nothing like you’d find in a modern hospital or anything like that,” he said. “It was full of boxes when I took over the archives, but I moved them all out. It seemed disrespectful.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but despite an unsettled feeling in the air, the morgue wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. There were two large metal tables, and I couldn’t be sure if they were used for bodies at some point or if they were just old metal tables. The whole room was dingy white tile.
The only thing that was slightly alarming was an old metal cabinet with four huge drawers. It looked like a small version of the drawers you see in the horror movies where there’s a morgue.
“You all right?” Remy asked.
“Yeah. I just wasn’t expecting that,” I said and pointed at it.
“It’s empty,” he said with a chuckle.
“I figured that,” I said and smacked him on the arm playfully. “I just didn’t realize this place was used as a morgue recently enough that there would be a… body refrigerator.”
“It’s pretty old. If that makes you feel any better,” he said. “Forty or fifty years maybe.”
“Let’s get some footage of the room,” Chris said. “I know you guys can’t leave us, but could you wait in the doorway? Unless you’d like to be on the show? We could still arrange that.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said as Remy and I retreated to the doorway.
We stood and watched as the Ghost Seekers conducted their investigation. First Chris talked about the history of the courthouse and relayed all of the stuff Remy had told me in the elevator to the camera. Except his version included a great deal more detail.
When he was done with his segment, they went to Rachel doing her EVP. She must have had a list of questions she normally asked, and I watched with great attention as Rachel recited them.
Is there anyone here with us?
Does anyone wish to communicate?
Is there anything you want to say?
I shivered after she asked the third question. “Did you turn the air conditioning up in here?” I whispered to Remy.
The Ghost Seekers all swiveled around to look at me. “It’s okay, we’ll edit it out,” Link said. “Not a problem.”
“But she’s right,” Rachel said. “It’s really cold in here all of a sudden. Bobby, what are you getting on the EMF?”
“It’s elevated a little,” he said.
Just then, a breeze blew through the door and then rattled on of the drawers that wasn’t closed all the way. “Did you hear that?” Bobby asked.
“Hear it? Did you feel that?” Rachel asked. “Go over by the drawer,” she said to Bobby. “Get a reading over there.”
“It was probably just a gust of wind from the elevator shaft. Someone probably came through the front doors and wind came down from there.”
“Oh, man,” Bobby said. “The EMF is going nuts.”
“It’s probably just something with the electricity,” Remy said. “It’s older in this part of the building.”
“Get in a drawer,” Rachel said.
“What?” Chris asked.
“I meant Bobby,” she said. “Bobby needs to get in one of the drawers. Maybe one of the spirits will communicate with him. I’ll lie on one of the tables.”
“You guys, no,” I said.
“It’s cool. We’ve done this before. We did it at that old abandoned hospital in Alabama,” she said. “The ratings on that episode were through the roof. Get in the drawer, Bobby.”
“Chris?” I hoped he’d talk some sense into them.
“It’s okay. We have done this before. We won’t close the drawer all the way.”
The idea seemed completely crazy to me, but if Chris thought it was ok
ay, I decided to just let it go. Even if a spirit attacked, and I doubted one would, Remy and I could protect the crew without being too obvious.
“Does someone else want to get in the drawer this time?” Bobby asked.
It was dark in the room, but I could tell he looked a little pale. He’d been so angry and audacious before that I hadn’t expected him to look so frightened.
“I’ll do it,” Chris said. “Bobby, you keep taking EMF readings. Toto, make sure you get the footage of me going into the drawer and Rachel doing EVP questions while she’s on the table. We’ll film for fifteen minutes and hopefully get something that’s at least a little exciting for when we edit it down.”
I watched as Rachel climbed up onto one of the tables and Chris pulled out one of the drawers. He lay down in it and gave a thumbs-up before telling the camera he hoped that one of the spirits inhabiting the courthouse would reach out to him. He said he wanted them to make him understand what it was like for them.
Rachel began asking the same questions she’d asked before. She asked new questions too about whether the spirit was alone, how many there were, and why they were lingering in the old morgue.
I couldn’t sense any ghosts, and none were manifesting. I was glad of that. I knew the black-eyed specter I’d seen on the top floor would have been ten times as scary down in that basement, but the fifteen minutes passed without much happening. The EMF reader read a little higher when Chris climbed in the drawer, but that could be explained away.
They did the same thing in the jail cells and then again when we went upstairs to the courtrooms. “Surely someone was sentenced to hang in one of these courtrooms,” Rachel said. “That’s what they did, right?”
No one answered her, but when the others had wandered off a little way, I tried to slip a question in without seeming too obvious. “Were things all right between you and Kurt?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” she said.
“I guess it’s not, but I was just curious. You two didn’t seem very close. I was just wondering if that’s because you hadn’t been together very long or because you were having problems.”
“We’d been together for three years,” she said. “That’s probably why we didn’t seem lovey-dovey enough for you.”
Wicked Witches of Coventry- The Collection Page 42
