Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
When Chris returned with the van about an hour before dark, Oscar walked out to meet them. “Did you get any good pictures?”
“Sure did.” Chris hopped out and shut the door. “I found this really cool old library. The place was gorgeous when it was new—still is, just in a sad way. The county just left everything there when it closed—the books on the shelves, newspaper archives, all of it. And guess what—the electricity is still on.”
“Nice.” Most of the places they explored didn’t have electricity hooked up, but it happened more often than Oscar had expected when they first started out. People or companies left, maybe assumed someone else had taken care of having the power cut off, or figured the electrical company would do it automatically. Things fell through the cracks, lines got left on, and no one ever looked at it again.
It might be useful in this case, if they needed to do some research into the asylum. He’d have to tell Nigel later.
They all went to the dining tent. As usual, Ms. Montague kept to herself, and Ethan attended her. Dr. Lawson looked put out—Tina had mentioned she’d overheard the two older women arguing again earlier in the day.
As night began to fall, they went back to the command center, and Tina sat in front of her equipment. “Are we going to share our results?” she asked, glancing at Zeek and Adrienne.
“It’s safer that way,” Dr. Lawson said, folding her arms over her chest as if expecting an argument.
“We’re already working together, so we might as well,” Adrienne agreed with an air of resignation.
Chris shot her a hard look. “Thanks for lowering yourself to work with a little channel like ours.”
“I never said,” she began, face flushing red.
“Children!” Lawson clapped her hands together. “Are you undergrads? No? Then act your age.”
“Sorry,” Chris mumbled, shamefaced.
Oscar sighed internally and turned to Adrienne. “I agree with you and Dr. Lawson. It will be safer to share, especially with the nurse trying to drive us off.”
“Her attempts will likely escalate as she grows in strength by feeding off our energy,” Nigel put in. “We should all carry salt any time we enter the asylum, in case we need a deterrent.”
Zeek shifted uneasily at that, and Oscar didn’t blame him. He wasn’t thrilled about the prospect either.
“Well I, for one, am not getting an inch closer to the building than right here,” Tina declared.
“Good,” Zeek said, with uncharacteristic seriousness. “You should stay safe.”
Was she…blushing? Her brown cheeks certainly looked more ruddy than usual. “I try,” she said. “Especially after getting chased around a deserted distillery by a murderous ghost.”
His eyes widened, and he looked as though he was going to ask for details, so Oscar cleared his throat. “What do you have for us, Tina?”
Her demeanor shifted to businesslike. “Gather round, and I’ll show you.”
Oscar leaned over her shoulder as she pulled up the files. “The visible spectrum static cams on the first and fourth floors stayed quiet after you left for the night,” she said. “But the kids on the second floor had a party shortly before dawn. I’m going to fast-forward the footage, so let me know if you need me to stop or slow down.”
The thermal cam revealed the cool hues of the children’s ward common room. Dark blue blobs of cold slowly gathered, moving around the room in ways far more purposeful than would be caused by a mere draft. The flashlight they’d left behind switched on and off multiple times in a row—then the truck Oscar had touched started to roll back and forth, mimicking what he’d done with it.
“Will you be my friend?” the PolterPal shrieked. It then began to giggle, over and over again.
“Jesus, that thing is scarier than the ghosts,” Zeek said. Oscar felt Nigel bristle beside him.
The activity only stopped when the thermal cam picked up the growing warmth of dawn. “I knew I felt something in there,” Oscar said, relieved. “I think the kids were too shy to come out while we were there.”
“They probably didn’t have the best experience with adults in life,” Adrienne said. “Poor babies.”
Oscar nodded unhappily. “And now they’re stuck here.”
“At least they have each other, I guess.” Adrienne sighed, then straightened. “That’s some great footage. Better than anything we got. Good work.”
Was she thawing to them, after the initial shock of seeing her ex show up at the job she’d thought was for her team alone? “Thanks.”
“Here’s the EVP you did on the third floor, in the bathroom by the hydrotherapy tub,” Tina said. “I’ve enhanced the responses into the range of human hearing.”
Oscar’s own voice issued from the speakers. “What’s your n-name?”
And in answer, the flat, chilling voice of the dead: “Mariah.”
“Were you a patient here?” “Yes.”
“What happened to you?” “Cold.”
The crash of the wheelchair hitting the wall outside the room sounded, followed by their chatter as they investigated. Then Nigel asked, “Who’s here? Did you move the wheelchair? If you want to talk to us, speak into the device in my partner’s hand.”
“And that’s it,” Tina said. “She doesn’t answer.”
Nigel frowned slightly. “It seems likely the nurse scared her into silence, as with the laundry chute ghost.”
“Agreed.” Oscar straightened. “The nurse seems like the biggest problem here.”
Adrienne tapped her lips thoughtfully with one fingernail. “If we can remove her, we’ll get better results from the other ghosts.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, A?” Zeek asked, arching his brows comically.
They’d mentioned before—or rather, Zeek had let slip—that they wanted to trap a ghost. Oscar looked to Adrienne expectantly, but she only said, “Just pondering our options.”
She walked over to their laptop. “We started off in the creeper’s ward on the fourth floor. You’ve already heard the audio. I’d say that was our best evidence for the evening, but we had good results with the Dead Ringer on the third floor.”
“The what?” Oscar asked.
Zeek jumped in. “It’s really cool! It’s a bell, right, mounted on top of this box. There’s an EMF reader rigged into it out of sight, so it looks like an ordinary bell. That way it won’t confuse any ghosts who don’t know about modern technology.”
“That’s a good idea,” Oscar said. Nigel made a noncommittal noise beside him.
Adrienne brought up the video file. Even raw, the footage was good—both Adrienne and Zeek knew how to work a camera. On the screen, Adrienne explained how the Dead Ringer worked, then put it near the entrance of the patient room they’d chosen. She began to ask questions: “Is anyone here with us? If you are, can you ring that bell in the doorway?”
There was a brief moment of silence, but before she could ask another question, the bell rang in a soft, sweet pitch.
“Holy shit!” Zeek yelled on camera. “Did you see that?”
Oscar glanced at Chris and caught them mid eye-roll. Zeek’s reactions were a bit over-the-top, but Oscar was starting to believe they were genuine, not just a show he put on for viewers.
On the video, they did a brief back-and-forth with the bell, until the responses abruptly stopped.
“Look at the time stamp,” Tina said. “It stopped ringing the bell right when the wheelchair got shoved into the wall down in the south wing.”
“We couldn’t hear anything,” Adrienne said. “But maybe whatever we were talking to could.”
“Do ghosts communicate?” Zeek asked. “With each other, I mean?”
Dr. Lawson had remained silent for so long Oscar had almost forgotten she was there. “Sometimes,” she said. “Most are so wrapped up in their own trauma they don’t seem to acknowledge much else, but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of doing so.”
“That’s really everything,” Adrienne said. “We did try some spirit-drawing with a planchette in the arts and crafts room, but…well, let me show you.”
She dug a piece of paper out of her backpack and passed it over. There was a continuous pencil line that first looped, then went off and drew… “Is that a chicken?” Oscar asked, holding it up and squinting.
“Turn it on its side,” Chris said. “See? Definitely a pig.”
Adrienne shot them a glare, as if suspecting they were making fun of her. “Anyway, that’s what we’ve gotten so far. Combined with your results, I think it’s safe to say this is the most active site we’ve ever been on.”
“Our viewers are going to. Lose. Their. Minds.” Zeek made a head-exploding gesture.
“Right.” Oscar bent to grab his backpack. “We should get going, unless there’s anything else…?”
There wasn’t. They all loaded up on the gear they were taking in, then stepped outside.
Oscar turned to Nigel. “Chris and I are going to the cemetery first, so we split up here.”
“Okay.” Nigel reached out and touched his arm. “Be careful. This nurse—Della Young—could be dangerous.”
“I know, which is why I want you to be careful.” Oscar planted a kiss on top of Nigel’s head. “You have a walkie-talkie—call me if anything goes wrong.”
“I will.” Nigel reluctantly stepped back, then turned to join Adrienne and Zeek. Oscar watched them until the yawning maw of the front doors swallowed them up.
Nigel trudged after Zeek and Adrienne. The only ghost-hunting he’d truly observed first-hand had been with Oscar and the others; mirror-work would be a new, and hopefully interesting, experience.
As they entered the asylum, Nigel sneezed—then doubled over as a cough tore its way unexpectedly out of his lungs.
“You okay?” Zeek asked worriedly.
“Just allergies.” Unless the congestion was morphing into a chest cold. Nigel took a deep breath—was there really something gathering in his lungs, or was he imagining it?
Adrienne shone her head lamp on the patch of mildew on the wall. It looked even bigger than it had this afternoon. “It’s a wonder we aren’t all sneezing our heads off,” she said. “God knows what’s in the air in a place like this. We’re probably sucking down asbestos.”
“You think so?” Zeek asked, worried.
“No idea.” She led the way past the elevator to the northern stairwell.
Nigel stretched his legs to keep up with her. “So what’s the plan?”
“We’ll start on the fourth floor, with the creeper,” she said. “Zeek and I will set up the mirrors, then you film anything that happens.”
They started up the stairs; Nigel rested his hand on the smooth wood of the banister. How many other hands had touched it over the years? “Do you have any guesses as to what the creeper is?”
“I think it’s like, from another dimension or something,” Zeek put in.
“Shadow people aren’t aliens from another dimension,” Adrienne said, not bothering to hide her annoyance.
“You don’t know that! They could be.”
Nigel privately agreed with Adrienne. Human ghosts were real; there was no need to invent wild alternatives. He kept silent, though; thanks to the congestion building in his lungs, he was too busy sucking in oxygen to talk. By the time they reached the fourth floor, he was thoroughly winded.
The northern wing of the fourth floor was a mirror-image of the southern. The same half-tiled walls, metal doors, and gritty floors. Discoloration crept across the plaster ceiling high overhead; no doubt the slate roof was leaking somewhere. An abandoned gurney, complete with thick leather straps, sat askew in the hall.
Grit crunched under their shoes as they made their way through the long halls to the ward where the creeper was said to lurk. The air remained oppressively quiet, as though the walls swallowed up every sound. How many screams had they muffled over the long years?
“This is where you found the camera from the first investigation?” Nigel asked.
“Yeah.” Zeek looked around, then pointed at the floor in front of one of the patient cells. “It was laying right about there. Covered in dust, of course.”
“I wonder what staircase the man died on,” Adrienne said. “If we could find out, we could use a spirit box or EVP.”
“Ghost hunters talking to a dead ghost hunter?” Zeek grinned. “That would be super cool! He’d know all about this stuff from life, so I bet we’d get some great responses.”
“Especially if we could learn his name,” Nigel mused. “One of the survivors still lives in Weston. It might not hurt to talk to him.”
He caught himself—should he be giving the other team ideas? They were working together for the moment, but if this was indeed some sort of competition for Ms. Montague’s patronage…
Curse the woman for putting them in this position. For not being upfront with them when she called to say she’d secured the site for investigation.
It shouldn’t sting. Dr. Lawson had warned him from the beginning. He’d known there were strings attached to Montague’s help, even if he hadn’t known what they were.
Adrienne was silent as well, perhaps thinking similar thoughts. Zeek, however, seemed untroubled by any musings. “Great idea! Maybe we can drive over tomorrow afternoon and talk to him. Does that doctor lady know how to get in touch with him?”
“Dr. Lawson, and probably.” Maybe he should go with them. Or Oscar—someone from OutFoxing the Paranormal , anyway.
“Let’s get the mirrors set up, then we’ll shoot the intro,” Adrienne said, clearly ready to get to work. “Nigel, there’s not much for you to do right now, so just stay out of the line of sight of our static cam in case anything interesting happens. Zeek, change out the cam’s batteries, would you?”
Nigel stood out of the way, watching with curiosity as they set up. Two well-wrapped mirrors emerged from Zeek’s backpack, along with two white candles and a small fire extinguisher. “If either candle falls over, stop filming and grab the extinguisher,” Adrienne instructed him. “The last thing we need is for this place to burn to the ground.”
“Where would the ghosts go if that happened?” Zeek asked.
“That’s hard to say,” Nigel replied. “If the asylum was completely destroyed and razed to the ground, they might move on. If ruins remained, some might continue to haunt the place, so locked into their own suffering that they still see the asylum as it was when they died, no matter its current state.”
Adrienne glanced at Zeek. “Remember that crybaby bridge? The old slaughterhouse that was supposed to be beside it?”
“Oh yeah. That’s one of the first videos on our channel,” he added in Nigel’s direction. “There was this crybaby bridge in Tennessee, and legend said there was an old slaughterhouse right on the other side. No trace of it left. We got some readings where we thought it might have been, but…” He shrugged.
“What about the crybaby bridge?” Nigel asked, curiosity piqued. Crybaby bridges were too numerous to count, at least legend-wise. All had the more or less the same story: a distraught woman, living in an era without safe access to abortion or birth control, throws her newborn off of a bridge. Half the time, she was said to jump in after it; one-hundred percent of the time, the cries of the baby were supposedly still heard by anyone stopping on the bridge.
“We just heard a couple of weird sounds that probably came from foxes,” Adrienne said with a grimace. “The place was pretty much a bust, so we really focused in on the stories behind it. Zeek challenged the baby to a fight for control of the bridge.”
“He wanted to…fight a baby?”
“I wouldn’t have actually punched a baby,” Zeek hurriedly put in. “And the viewers loved it! We sold a ton of ‘Fight me, ghost baby!’ t-shirts.”
Adrienne stepped back and observed their set up. The two mirrors sat about five feet apart, facing one another, a candle in front of each. “Okay, Nigel, this is how it’s going to work. We’re going to turn off most of the lights, then take our places in front of the mirrors. We’ll light our candles and look into the mirrors. If we’re lucky, we’ll see something.” She looked at him. “Ready?”
He suddenly became aware of the vast bulk of the asylum at his back, as though it were a presence watching.
Waiting.
Throat dry, he nodded. “Let’s do this.”