Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
Nigel jumped at the unexpected sound, heart in his throat. “What the hell?”
“It came from over there.” Chris, who had remained out in the hall, pointed further down. “From that metal door-thing in the wall.”
Nigel and Oscar emerged and looked where they were pointing. A plain metal square was set into the wall, its surface bent from some long-ago impact.
“It’s a laundry chute,” Nigel said. He crossed the hall and tugged on the handle. “Locked. The sound could have been from the metal expanding from the heat of the day.”
Not that there was much in the way of heat within the thick stone walls. They seemed to hold in the chill, and little in the way of sunlight reached through the overgrowth to find the windows. Still, old buildings made noises all the time.
Oscar approached, frowning. “I’m not sure if I’m sensing anything? Or if there was something, and it’s gone now?”
Nigel took out the EMF reader and waved it around the hatch. It blipped up to yellow, then dropped back to zero, too fast for him to count it as evidence of anything. “Do we want to set up a camera here?”
Oscar thought a moment, then nodded. “Chris, if you can angle it to catch most of the hall while still keeping the laundry chute in view, that would be fantastic.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
While Chris set up the tripod and one of the night vision cameras, Nigel stepped closer to Oscar. “How are you holding up?” he asked in a low voice.
Oscar mulled over the question for a moment. “I’m not sure,” he said at last. “It’s strange, being here. And I’m not sure if I’m sensing anything real, or if the building and its history is just making me sad.”
“That’s why it’s best to go into an investigation cold.” Nigel leaned against him. “Not that it was an option in this case.”
“Or with this building,” Oscar added wryly.
“The big gate with Lunatic Asylum on it does give it away.”
Once Chris was finished, they walked to the end of the hall. About halfway down, the rooms gave way to an open area with enormous windows over dented radiators. Couches and chairs rotted atop an ancient carpet, and a cluster of wheelchairs had been abandoned to one side. “This would have been the day room, where the patients could gather to socialize and receive visitors,” Nigel said.
Chris snapped a photo looking out the windows. There once would have been a lovely view of the wide lawns, but now honeysuckle and wild grape vines obscured most of it, and young trees blocked the rest.
Across from the day room, a steel door stood open, revealing a utilitarian staircase surrounded by a steel cage. “Let’s go to the end of the wing before we head up,” Oscar said.
The ward ended in another pair of large doors, accompanied by a caged-off area where a nurse or orderly would have sat guard. On the other side was another ward, just as long as the first. Beyond that was a third section.
What the original purpose of the final section had been wasn’t clear; now it was simply a single huge room turned into storage. Implements from every era of the asylum crowded the space, covered with dust and cobwebs. Wheelchairs, filing cabinets, and metal-framed beds made up the bulk of the junk, but Nigel spotted some older tools among them.
“A Utica crib,” he said, pushing aside a wheelchair to reveal what was essentially a box on wheels. Like a baby crib, the wood walls were made from slats; unlike one, it was only a few inches high and had a lid.
Chris knelt to get a good shot of it. “I’m afraid to ask how it was used.”
“It was a way to restrain patients. Lock someone in there, and there’s not enough space to lift an arm or turn over.” Nigel suppressed a shudder. “It was supposed to be more humane than chaining people up, but of course patients ended up being left in them for extended periods of time.”
“Jesus,” Chris muttered.
Near the crib was a restraining chair, a heavy wooden chair with straps for the arms, legs, and torso, and a sort of vise-like apparatus for holding the head in place. A table held a jumble of antique instruments, surgical and otherwise. Scalpels, forceps, and other things Nigel didn’t know the function of. A bone saw teetered on the edge of the table.
Chris snapped a picture of the tools, then pointed to one shaped like a metal pick. “Was that for lobotomies?”
“Unfortunately.” Nigel reached to adjust his glasses, but his sleeve caught on the handle of the bone saw and sent it clanging to the concrete floor. “Damn it.”
He crouched to pick the saw up. The accident must have dislodged accumulated dust, because his nose suddenly stung, and he let out a violent sneeze as he touched the instrument. There was little warmth in the gloomy room, so the metal felt like ice against his fingers as he placed it back on the table, well away from the edge.
“Gesundheit,” Oscar said. “Let’s come back here later. Those filing cabinets might have records in them. But for now, we’re losing daylight, and there’s a lot of asylum left to cover.”
Oscar led the way back to the wards and the stairs leading up. “Too bad the elevator doesn’t work,” Chris puffed as they climbed. “You’d think Montague would have the money to get a couple of big generators delivered and power up this place.”
“She’s not the one who has to take the stairs,” Oscar said. At least they were concrete, so he didn’t have to worry about them collapsing beneath his weight.
Nigel took the opportunity to lecture between panting breaths. “Also, generators would be disruptive to the investigation. Ghosts are, or at least use, electromagnetic energy. Light disrupts them, and any electricity would throw off our EMF readers.”
Oscar rolled his eyes fondly. “We know, hon.”
“Sorry. The intro class I taught last semester took over my brain for a moment.”
The second floor turned out to be the children’s’ ward. Someone had gone to the effort of painting a string of cheerful animals marching along one wall: lion, elephant, zebra, tiger, ostrich, and monkey. They were mostly intact, but flaking paint had left gaps in the zebra’s flank and one of the monkey’s eyes was gone. The day room might have been used as a classroom, unless the mobile chalk board had simply been shoved here to get it out of the way while the asylum was shutting down. A few dusty toys lay scattered around the child-sized chairs, and crayon scribbles marred the bottom third of the walls.
God, what a depressing place. Some of the kids had been born here, effectively institutionalized from the day they came out of the womb. Maybe they didn’t have family to take them in; maybe the state thought it better to keep them close to their mothers, though he didn’t know how often they would be allowed any sort of contact after the birth.
“There’s supposed to be a ghost girl here,” Nigel said. “Do you sense anything, Oscar?”
“Not yet.” He shook his head. “My own feelings might be getting in the way. It’s hard to center knowing what sorts of things happened here.”
Adrienne and Zeek probably weren’t having any trouble. Neither was a medium, but they both knew how to put on a show. What would Ms. Montague think when comparing their flash to him just standing around like an idiot?
Worse, he’d come here wanting to help the spirits still trapped in this place. But it was so much sooner than he’d wanted. This was his only chance; what if he failed? How many long years would they be stuck here, suffering, because of him?
Nigel knew him well by this time, because he said, “Don’t beat yourself up. We don’t know all these accounts are authentic—we may end up disproving some or all of them.”
Instead of answering, Oscar put down his backpack and unzipped it. Inside, amongst his other equipment, nestled their newest toy. Literally—it was shaped like an old-fashioned doll, complete with ruffled white dress and golden curls.
“Let’s shoot this next bit,” he said to Chris.
“I hate this thing,” Chris muttered, even as they trained their camera on the doll. “It’s going to come to life and kill us all.”
Nigel rolled his eyes as he stepped back. “Very few dolls are haunted in real life. This one is right off the assembly line; it’s never been handled by anyone but us since it went into the package.”
Chris remained skeptical. “Haven’t you ever heard of Chucky, doc?”
Oscar ignored them and displayed the doll for the camera. “This is the PolterPal, our newest piece of equipment,” he said, trying to inject some excitement into his voice for the future audience. “Once I turn her on, she’ll react to EMF fields, physical touch, and change in temperature.”
He knelt and put the doll on the ground. “I’m going to turn it on now.”
The doll let out a high-pitched giggle when he pressed the button on the back of her neck. Chris was right; this thing was creepy. “I’m going to touch her again,” he said, and lightly tapped one of her hands.
“Come play with me!” the doll exclaimed in a high voice that somehow didn’t sound quite childlike enough.
“So you see, she’s pretty sensitive to touch.” He tapped her other hand and got the same reaction from the doll. “She says different things to let us know whether she’s picked up on a drop in temperature or being touched. Of course, ghosts frequently drain batteries to take their energy, so we might not get much out of her.”
Should he have said that last bit out loud? Telling the audience up front that nothing might happen was probably against Zeek’s philosophy.
He’d worry about it in edits. “Okay, let’s set the thermal cam up here, on her.”
“And hope she doesn’t follow us around the asylum holding a knife,” Chris said, lowering their shoulder cam.
“The doll isn’t haunted!” Nigel exclaimed in exasperation.
“If you say so.” Chris gave it a distrustful look. “But I’m sleeping in the van with the doors locked.”
They set up the final two night vision cameras, one in a third-floor bathroom and one in the hallway just off the fourth floor landing where the most violent patients were kept. It was nearing sunset when they finished, so they went down and back out to the tents.
Ms. Montague was nowhere to be seen, but Ethan lurked in a corner of the command center, quietly reading a book. Tina hunched over her keyboard, the feed from all four static cams on her monitor.
Nigel sat down in one of the spare chairs, legs aching. The immense size of the building meant a lot of walking, which he admittedly wasn’t used to. Maybe he should look at a gym membership. He’d buy one when they got home, go a couple of times, then get busy with work and Oscar, and never go back while the gym deducted a fee from his bank account every month for the next five years.
Maybe not.
Zeek burst into the tent, waving something around, while Adrienne followed more sedately. “Guys, look at what I found!”
“We can’t see it if you don’t hold it still,” Oscar pointed out as he took the seat beside Nigel. He stretched out his legs with a groan; Nigel wasn’t the only one feeling the endless halls and flights of stairs, it seemed.
“Right, right.” Zeek displayed his find, which turned out to be a dusty camera. “It was laying off to one side on the fourth-floor hall. The lens is cracked, but no way is this thing from before the asylum closed. It’s digital. Someone else has been here before us!”
Nigel sat up straighter. Could this camera have belonged to the other ghost hunting team Dr. Lawson mentioned before they were cut off? But why would they have just left an expensive piece of equipment behind?
Chris glowered, but couldn’t resist the draw of their favorite topic. “That’s a Nikon D40 from the mid-oughts. Somewhere around 2006.”
“Pretty cool, huh?” Zeek turned it over and over in his hands. “The battery is deadsville, but…” He popped out the memory card, turned around, and held it toward Adrienne.
“We can’t read anything that old,” Adrienne said without taking it. “It’s massive. We’ll have to take a look after we get home.”
Tina cleared her throat. “I think I can access it. I’ve got a ton of cables in the van—you never know when you might need something, and I like to be prepared.”
“Prepared, a tech hoarder, same difference,” Chris said. Tina stuck out her tongue at them.
Adrienne’s face soured, but before she could object, Zeek said, “Hell yeah, way to be ready for anything!” He held out his hand for a high-five, which Tina bemusedly gave. “It would be dope if you could read it for us.”
Was that a faint blush on her cheeks? Nigel must be seeing things. “I’ll rummage through my stash after dinner and naps,” she said, taking the card from him.
“Speaking of which,” Adrienne cut in, “we need to finish unloading.”
“Ooh, are we bringing out the ‘special’ box?”
“Not yet.” She glanced at the rest of them, as if she didn’t want to say more.
“Special box?” Nigel asked.
“Yep,” Zeek said, pointing finger guns at him, “we’re going to catch ourselves a ghost.”