Chapter 4 #2
“This way,” he told her, and they headed toward the back of the cottage.
Even though it wasn’t his place and he was just renting it, he was glad the paint still looked fresh and the garden was neat and pretty, with snapdragons and viola and lobelia blooming in the flowerbeds and quaint gravel walkways crisscrossing the fenced-off backyard.
It gave the appearance of a home that had been well cared for, and certainly not one with an electrical panel that would be malfunctioning in any way.
Marjorie eased the satchel off her shoulder and set it on the ground, then fished around inside. A moment later, she pulled out a small, rectangular device, one that made Ben want to smile…although he had a feeling she probably wouldn’t share his amusement.
She was holding an EMF meter, something that ghost hunters regularly employed because they claimed spirits were basically forms of electromagnetic energy that could be picked up by one of the devices.
Of course, EMF meters had first been designed simply to measure electric and magnetic fields in the ELF — extremely low frequency — range, but now Ben guessed they were far more well-known for their much more interesting role in ghost-hunting.
“This will let me know if the field around this panel is especially strong or if there are any other anomalies specific to this location,” Marjoie told him as she switched the thing on. It made a few beeps but otherwise seemed mostly quiescent.
“It sounds kind of quiet,” he replied. Even though he’d devoted his life to cryptozoology these past few years and wasn’t anything close to a ghost hunter, he’d gone on a couple of expeditions to haunted houses, just to see what it was like.
He still didn’t know if he’d seen any ghosts, although there had been a couple of uneasy moments when he’d walked through a cold spot and the EMF meter had lit up and started making squealing noises like a Geiger counter that had been placed next to an atomic bomb.
The one Marjorie currently held didn’t seem to be doing anything close to that.
“It is quiet,” she said, and now she sounded annoyed, as if she wanted to hold him personally responsible for having an electrical panel that was behaving itself.
“So it doesn’t seem — at first glance, anyway — as if the panel is the problem.
Still, this is just a preliminary reading.
There’s a bunch of other stuff I want to deploy…
an RF spectrum analyzer, a trifield meter, maybe some RF interference hunting equipment.
” She paused there and glanced around. “Do you know of anywhere in town that hasn’t been experiencing these phenomena?
I really need to get some baseline readings before I go much further. ”
“Not really,” he replied, which only made Marjorie look that much more irritated. “But I’ll admit I haven’t asked that many people about it, either. I think your best chance is to get some readings away from the houses and the businesses on Main Street, just to be safe.”
She didn’t appear too thrilled with that entirely unscientific suggestion. Rather than argue, though, she only lifted her thin shoulders and said, “Okay, I’ll see what I can find. At least if I stay away from people, I won’t have to deal with them interrupting me and asking what I’m doing.”
“Probably not,” Ben agreed. While he’d already learned that the residents of Silver Hollow were a friendly bunch and the type to always stop and help someone who was having car trouble or to lend that missing ingredient you needed for your latest batch of quick bread, they also tended to be a little nosy…
not so strange in a place that didn’t have a lot of diversions to offer.
If Marjorie could manage to stay away from as many of them as possible, so much the better.
“How long is all this going to take?” he asked next, and the grad student looked even more sour, if possible.
He could imagine a similar expression on Michelangelo’s face when the church elders asked him how much longer before the roof of the Sistine Chapel was finished.
But her tone sounded level enough as she said, “I’m not sure. Definitely the rest of the afternoon. I’ll try to collate my findings and get back to you tomorrow morning. I only have the one Monday class I’m teaching this summer, so I don’t need to be back in Davis until late on Sunday.”
Ben hoped it wouldn’t take that long to get all this figured out.
On the other hand, he had no idea what they were actually dealing with here, and if it turned out the readings Marjorie took were so anomalous that they were also outside her realm of experience, then she might need a while to get to the bottom of things.
If she ever could.
“Okay,” he said, hoping he sounded unworried by the prospect of her investigation lasting longer than the single day they’d originally discussed. “I have something I need to do later today and this evening, but you’ve got my cell number if you need anything.”
Marjorie didn’t look too concerned. “I doubt I will. It’s not like you’d be able to help me take these readings.”
After delivering that remark, she returned the EMF meter to her satchel and marched off.
Had he ever been dismissed so thoroughly?
Probably not. On the upside, it sure sounded as if Marjorie Tran could handle everything on her own just fine, which meant he was free to do whatever he needed to do.
Sidney wouldn’t be off work for a few more hours, so he’d already planned to go to his makeshift office and finish editing the YouTube video he’d been working on.
If Marjorie had needed him to stick close by, then he could have put that task on the back burner for another day or so, but obviously, that hadn’t happened.
With any luck, he’d have the video edited and uploaded and scheduled before five o’clock, and then he could meet Sidney knowing he didn’t have anything on his plate that absolutely needed to be handled.
Just in case all hell decided to break loose.
She texted him around four-thirty to ask if he wanted to meet for an early dinner at her house, and of course he’d said yes.
While they went out to eat at least once a week — further fueling rumors that they were dating even though they both knew that wasn’t quite the reality of the situation — usually, they ate at her place, just because doing so provided them the privacy they needed to discuss all the otherworldly goings-on in their lives.
No bottle of wine tonight, though, not when they were going to be heading out into the forest just as soon as it began to get dark.
The time stamp on the video of the black-clad stranger carving the trees showed that he’d started his activities around eight-thirty, well after the hour any hikers would have gone home, but definitely not the middle of the night.
As to whether it was wise to even be confronting such a personage without backup…well, there was no reason for the man to think they were hunting him. A simple explanation that they were out for an evening walk in the woods should be enough.
He hoped.
Sidney answered his knock at the door right away and let him in.
Because they were heading back out to the forest, she’d kept on her jeans and T-shirt and hiking boots, but he noticed that the lightweight nylon shell she toted along on all those woodland treks was hanging from the coat rack near the foyer, just waiting to be pressed into service.
“I hope fajitas are okay,” she said as he followed her into the kitchen. “I thought it would be better to have something I could make fast but also wasn’t too heavy.”
“That sounds great,” Ben replied, although he couldn’t help adding, “but I’m fine with getting takeout, too. You don’t always have to cook for me.”
Her nose wrinkled in amusement. “I wouldn’t call throwing some precut veggies and sliced chicken into a pan and sprinkling them with seasoning exactly ‘cooking.’ It’s fine.”
And because her tone was firm, he guessed she wanted to leave it there. Still, he’d do his best to either take her out for dinner or bring her favorite takeout to their next evening meal, just to show that he really didn’t intend to keep sponging off her.
The table was already set, with a hot pad awaiting the arrival of the skillet with its complement of sizzling chicken fajitas, so there wasn’t much for him to do except wait.
“How’d it go with the grad student?” Sidney asked as she popped some tortillas into a padded warmer and put them in the microwave.
“Good,” he said, then felt he should add, “I mean, she seems competent. And also very happy to do things on her own until she has something of use to report, so I’m mostly staying out of the way.”
“Convenient,” Sidney remarked, then reached over to turn off the gas on the stove and lift the heavy iron skillet from the burner.
Ben moved out of the way so she could hurry the food to the table, then followed her into the dining room.
A small smile curved the corners of her mouth as she went on, “I mean, unless you minored in physics or electrical engineering and could give her some help.”
“No,” Ben said, and couldn’t help smiling a little himself. “I minored in history. I recognized the EMF meter she got out to test the electrical panel on my house, but that’s only because I know ghost hunters use them.”
Was that a shadow of a dimple showing in Sidney’s cheek? “I hope you didn’t tell her that.”
“No, I know when to keep my mouth shut.”
A chuckle, and she went back into the kitchen to fetch the tortillas and the bowl of rice that had been waiting on the countertop.
Now that all the food was on the table, they both sat down, with him at the head of the table — she’d asked him to take that seat as his own a while back, and he’d gone with the flow — and her seated at his right.
A moment of silence while they dished up their food and poured themselves some water from the pitcher she’d set down there earlier, and then she said, “I did a little asking around about the electrical glitches, and it sort of sounds like they’re moving from east to west. We had that hiccup this morning at 8:44, and Jasmine Perez told me her electricity glitched at around 8:46.
She’s on the other side of town, farther away from the forest. And I heard almost the same thing from Eliza Cartwright, since her house is on the street as Jasmine’s. ”
“So you think this really is all coming from the forest?”
Sidney’s shoulders lifted. She’d taken a bite of fajita as he was speaking, so she had to wait until she was finished chewing before she could reply.
“I honestly don’t know what to think. But if the electromagnetic instability is originating in the forest, then I suppose it makes sense that it would be emanating outward in waves.”
If that was even how electromagnetism worked. He didn’t have enough background in the subject to begin to take a guess.
“Well, I suppose we’ll have to see what Marjorie Tran has to say. It sounds as if she should have some preliminary information tomorrow morning sometime.”
And he’d just have to hope he would actually understand what she was saying when she presented her findings.
“That should be interesting,” Sidney replied, then paused. For a few seconds, she didn’t say anything.
When she spoke again, her tone was decidedly grimmer.
“I guess the real question is whether we’ll be able to do anything about it.”