Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Oscar and Chris both swung their cameras toward the ceiling, revealing the stamped tin tiles. Nigel did the same, then turned back to the mirror, just in case. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared, at least to his sight.
“That sounded like a kid,” Oscar said with a frown. “I thought it was only adults who summered here.”
“There would have been servants. Maybe one of them had a child.” Children died of all sorts of things back then: disease, poorly stored poison, accidents. Fortunately most of them didn’t linger as ghosts.
“Let’s go check it out.” Oscar moved toward the hall, and they followed.
Oscar went up the stairs first, testing the soundness of the steps. Though the risers groaned and complained, they seemed solid enough, and he beckoned them up after him.
The air grew hotter and more stale as they climbed. The dust here was underlain by a whiff of rot, as if something had died in the walls. A bird, perhaps, nesting in one of the chimneys? Though they hadn’t seen any birds since arriving on the island.
The same oversized hall ran past the landing, though on this floor the old furnishings hadn’t yet been removed.
Decaying chairs that had probably once been comfortable were gathered into clusters for easy conversation.
The old wallpaper was striking: a repeating patter of art-deco trees, the faces of animals peeking out between the trunks and branches.
Though the sun had faded it, darker squares betrayed where paintings had once hung.
Maybe they’d been valuable, and the Vanderwalls had sent them off to be appraised?
Oscar shone his flashlight on the floor. “No footsteps in the dust, at least not out here. Let’s go to the room above the parlor.”
More doors opened off the hall up here than downstairs, indicating the floor had been divided into smaller chambers. Oscar went to the one furthest at the end, which would more or less be above where they’d been standing when they heard the footsteps.
The door creaked open to reveal a bedroom that contained a bed with a moldering down mattress, partially covered by an equally decrepit comforter.
It conformed to what Nigel thought of as the late Victorian notion of masculine style: brown wallpaper, heavy wainscoting of dark wood, the furnishings very square and heavy with not a curve in sight.
As with the hallway, the walls showed darker patches where paintings once hung.
Sweat trickled down Oscar’s forehead, but rather than open the windows, he switched the spirit box back on. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
No answer.
“We heard you running. My name is Oscar. What’s your name?”
The static briefly dropped out. “Gloria,” replied the voice of a little girl.
Ullman’s daughter. But hadn’t she died in the winter, when The Cottage was deserted, at least according to Montague? Could there be a servant’s child who had the same name?
Oscar met his eyes, clearly having the same thought. “Hi, Gloria. Did you live here?”
“I do now.”
It was an odd answer. “Did you die here?” Nigel asked, hoping for clarification. Chris backed up a little to get him in the shot as well.
There came a burst of indecipherable static, but no more words. After a few more prompts, Oscar turned off the spirit box. “I guess she’s done with us.”
“What did you sense?”
He considered for a moment. “Curiosity,” he finally said. “I think she wanted to know more about us.”
Chris lowered their camera slightly. “Can we get some of these windows open?”
“On it.” Oscar put away the spirit box and forced open the protesting windows. “Let’s take a look around at the rest of the rooms on this floor, then leave the PolterPal here where we encountered Gloria.”
Chris shuddered. “That thing is going to murder us all in our sleep.”
Nigel barely suppressed a sigh of irritation. “It’s just a tool that monitors EMF, temperature, and vibrations.”
“It talks.”
“It’s a doll that responds in pre-recorded ways to prompt child spirits to play with it!”
“Maybe, but it’s creepy as hell.”
“You’ve just seen too many movies.”
Oscar cleared his throat. “All right, let’s check out the rest of this floor.
Most of the other chambers turned out to be bedrooms as well. This must have been where Ullman and his six friends slept; Nigel would bet the third floor turned out to be for the servants.
Ullman’s room was immediately obvious as belonging to the master of the house.
It was larger than the rest and contained a fireplace with a heavy mantelpiece, a chair, a lounge, and an enormous bed.
Upholstery and bed clothes were both a deep red, though anywhere the sun had touched was badly faded.
Above the fireplace hung a dusty portrait that must be of Ullman himself: a sober man in a gray suit, his black hair slicked down in accordance with the style of the times.
A bay window looked out over the ocean; they were directly above the dining room with its stunning view. Oscar moved toward it to open the windows—then froze.
“What is it?” Nigel asked immediately. This must be where Ullman had shot himself in a fit of despair.
So Oscar’s answer surprised him. “I’m sensing a lot of anger.”
“Anger? Not sadness?”
“I know the difference,” Oscar snapped, then caught himself. “Sorry—I let it bleed over into me. That was sloppy.” He took a deep breath, eyes going unfocused. “I’m pretty sure it’s the same spirit we encountered down in the parlor.”
“The one who wants us to leave.” The anger made sense, then. It was a response to their intrusion, not a long-ago echo from the day of Ullman’s death.
“Yeah,” Oscar affirmed. “He is not happy. We definitely need a static cam in here. Maybe a cat ball, too.”
Cat balls were new additions to the OtP toolkit. They were clear plastic balls sold as cat toys, with lights inside that would flash when the ball moved. Which meant if anything unseen touched them, they’d light up like a Christmas tree.
“Let’s try an EVP for now,” he suggested.
Oscar took out his digital recorder and asked a few questions, waiting for several seconds between each one so that any answers could register. Tina would go over the audio files later and see if there was anything on them that they couldn’t hear.
Once done, they checked the final two rooms on the second level.
The one nearest the stairs opened onto the tower as expected.
Like the space on the ground floor, it didn’t look to have been used as anything but a storage space, with a dismantled bed propped against the wall and a wardrobe and small chaise longue shoved haphazardly inside.
The final room was directly above the library and looked as though it had been a drawing room, filled with chairs, bookshelves, and two card tables, one folded open to reveal a green leather playing surface.
The walls had dark paneling, and a taxidermied marlin gaped at them from above the fireplace.
Nigel could easily imagine the seven men socializing here in the evening, sipping sherry and smoking cigars while they played cards or read.
By this point, they were all exhausted. It had been a long day, starting with a five-hour drive from Durham to the coast. Chris and Nigel went down to fetch two static cams, the PolterPal, and a cat ball.
The PolterPal was a doll with White skin, golden curls, and blue eyes, wearing a dress that wouldn’t be out of place on a Victorian-era toy.
Unlike a regular doll, its legs and torso were stiff, so it could remain seated upright in the middle of a room.
While Chris set up the static cam in the corner of the bedroom where they’d encountered the child ghost, Nigel flipped the doll upside-down so her dress fell over her head, and switched her on.
“Come play with me!” she shrieked in a voice that was almost, but not quite, that of a little girl.
“Jesus, that scared me,” Chris muttered.
Nigel rolled his eyes. Why Chris was so determined to dislike the PolterPal, he didn’t know. “It’s just a pre-recorded sound to indicate something—in this case me—is touching the doll.”
“Come play with me!” she agreed.
“You say that now, but when you wake up with her cold little hands around your throat, your last thought will be that I was right,” Chris predicted.
Nigel shook his head and put the doll in place on the floor. They set up the other cam and the cat ball in Ullman’s room, then rejoined Oscar, who had been slowly walking up and down the hall.
“I’m not sensing anything else right now,” he said. “Just the angry ghost I assume is Ullman, and Gloria. Both of them are quiet at the moment.”
“So no sign of Robin?” Nigel asked hopefully.
“Not yet.”
“That’s good.” For Dr. Lawson’s sake, he hoped Robin had moved on long ago. Though it wouldn’t help with Montague’s dreams in that case.
A soft rapping sounded from the third floor. Nigel froze and looked up, but it didn’t come again.