Chapter 30 The Trap
Chapter thirty
The Trap
“Our pleasures were simple - they included survival.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower
For her term project, Hailey might have undertaken a jaunt into a dark tunnel, rehabilitated a needy creature, written her report, and been done in a few hours. Instead, she decided to build a better ghost trap.
And Giselle wasn’t a fan.
“For the thousandth time,” Giselle grumbled, “as your roommate, I strongly object,” she said as the two walked from their ParaComm class.
Hailey turned to her and smiled proudly.
She was about to compliment Giselle’s carry-over of non-not-polite words outside of class, but then Giselle stepped a little too close to the Chattering Gazebo.
It immediately recoiled, saying, “An acoustical nightmare as usual, Giselle. How I wish you’d keep your loathsome vibrations away. You really do know how to repel any creature, don’t you? Oh, I suppose it comes naturally to a—”
Giselle jumped back before the gazebo finished.
“I hate that thing,” she muttered.
After a whole class of forced conversation with Giselle without a single accidental insult, Hailey’s foot jumped in her mouth.
“So, what kind of monster are you?” she asked in an innocent voice, and Giselle slowly scowled. “Insensitive…” Hailey mumbled. “Was that insensitive? I’m sorry,” she said as fast as she could.
“You need a blurt filter. Maybe that should be your term project,” Giselle growled.
The day’s ParaComm discussion topic had been “My Term Project,” and Giselle thought redesigning a ghost trap bordered on suicidal stupidity.
She hadn’t been shy about sharing that opinion, either.
Apparently, she hadn’t been shy about sharing it a thousand times now.
Hailey dismissed it with a wave.
“Why did the gazebo say you vibrated?”
“Because I do.”
Hailey frowned. She figured she only had one more shot at this before her roommate clammed up for the rest of the night, and she tasked her every last brain cell to contemplation.
Finally, and with only another minute or two before they reached Eureka Hall, Hailey’s gray matter came up with a humdinger.
She bit her lip, made a curt, confident nod, drew a breath, and said, “Wha—”
“Banshee,” Giselle burst out.
Hailey’s mouth fell open. No wonder she didn’t have any friends.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why would you need to know? It has nothing to do with you!”
“Sorry,” she said quickly, her eyes wide. “Okay. No big deal. You’re a harbinger of death, that’s all.”
In trying to wrap her mind around it, Hailey imagined Uncle Pix’s reaction. He would never believe it. If he did, he’d probably blow a gasket. But Giselle wasn’t a murderer. Matter of fact, she could warn Hailey if there was a murderer lurking about…
Giselle frowned. “I can’t tell when someone’s going to die,” she snapped. “That’s why I’m here—my family’s ashamed of me, and this whole college thing is a huge joke to them.”
A silver string flew out of her eye.
“They told me to study medicine and—quote, ‘figure it out’.”
Another thread of silk let loose and blew away.
“That’s why I look like this.” She uncrossed her arms and threw her hands up then hugged herself again.
“Don’t all banshees look like you?”
“No!” Giselle yelled. “They only go ‘hag’ like this when they’re about to die!” She pulled a cobweb from her eye, balled it up and let it fall. “I’m just an ugly, useless abomination that nobody likes.” She cried softly as Hailey walked next to her.
“Well, I like you,” Hailey offered, stroking Giselle’s hair. “And look.” She held a golden lock in her hand, staring at it with one eyebrow up. “Your hair’s turning blonde.”
Giselle rolled her eyes.
“And I saw David staring at you in class today. Like, staring in a good way.”
“You’re lying.”
Hailey shook her head.
“Don’t you remember, when you almost laughed…
after I said the thing about Professors Mum, Loon, and Starr, and the whole class turned to see who the idiot was, only you were already staring at me with daggers, like normal—that’s why you didn’t notice—and then you stifled a laugh and everyone looked away, except for David.
He kept looking at you not me, and he even moved his head a little to see more of you. ”
Giselle went silent, but at least she wasn’t crying anymore.
“Anyway,” said Hailey, getting to her point, “I think someone’s being a little hard on herself,” she peeped as if she were encouraging a three-year old. “You’re not useless. In fact, I could sure use your help.”
“How?”
“The gazebo gave me an idea. Tell me more about these vibrations.”
Giselle shrugged. “Every creature has a death frequency, and I know it instantly—it vibrates inside me. A real banshee would know when someone was about to bite it and could wail out their frequency.” She looked tentatively over at Hailey.
“Do you get a vibe on ghosts, too?”
“Yeah. Ghosts are easy. They all have the same frequency. Why?”
Hailey pressed her brow down. “If there’s a frequency that repels all ghosts, could there be one that attracts them?”
“How would I know?” she yelled.
“Can you control it—you know…the vibrations you give off?”
Giselle whirled around. “What good is it if I can control it? I can’t tell when to wail—I’m useless,” she spat. “Just ask my mother.”
“If you can control it, I can measure it,” Hailey said excitedly.
“I know a friendly poltergeist we could use as a test subject. You throw different frequencies at him, and we’ll observe his response…
see if he’s attracted to one. Then I could reproduce that very frequency in a crystalline matrix, so a ghost would be drawn into the trap, surrounded by vibration, stuck there forever, and there you have it—ghost trap,” she concluded, looking sunnily to her roommate.
“You want me to sing to a ghost.”
“Well, yeah,” Hailey said brightly. “So?” she sang. “Whaddya say? Will you help me?” she begged, lightly touching Giselle’s arm.
Stopping dead in her tracks, Giselle glared at Hailey’s hand for what seemed like an eternity before she sniffed loudly.
“Fine,” she snarled.
With Giselle’s cooperation, it took less than a month to figure out which frequency to use for the new Hook-a-Haunt (that was what she was calling it).
She even had time to design a Boo-Be-Gone, which would very effectively repel a poltergeist, though Giselle didn’t want her name associated with that one.
Growing the crystals proved a bit more challenging, but with Asher’s guidance, she was making great progress. And that progress did not escape the attention of the mostly free and healthy population of specters at Bear Towne, who quite liked the ineffective golden ghost traps currently in use.
As Hailey worked late into a chilly October night, alone inside Asher’s lab at Olde Main, she got the feeling someone was watching her. More than once she got up from her work station to investigate, but the place seemed deserted.
After her third security check, Hailey threw down her goggles and rubbed her eyes, deciding it was time to call it a night.
It was just after midnight when she stood up to go. She didn’t know Asher had left campus. She didn’t know the poltergeists knew that, and she sure didn’t know that Asher kept in his lab no fewer than five desktop staplers and two staple guns.
But when she turned toward the door, she found, hovering in midair and blocking her path, all seven— locked, loaded, and unhinged.
She stared at them for a good three seconds as two of them flanked her left side and a roll of tape moved on her right. Poltergeists—too many to count—swooped across the ceiling, sharp wisps of wind-swept fog, and, ironically, they had her trapped.
Hailey broke for the exit, batting down one stapler as six others stung her in the back and arms.
The tape sprang to life and unwound with a shrill “ZZZZZ!” flinging itself around and around her wrist so tight it cut off her circulation. While she battled that, the six staplers hit her back and arms over and over while the seventh darted for her neck.
Hailey staggered to the door.
The tape caught her other hand, binding both together, yanking them up and away from the latch, as the staplers slapped against her with an unrelenting click-click-click-click-click and periodic ka-chonk of the staple gun.
“Tomas!” she yelled, looking desperately into the glass of the door she couldn’t reach. “Help me!”
Immediately, Tomas appeared, raised his eyebrows, shot into the room, and created enough of a distraction for her to high-tail it out of there.
Hoping to find Asher, Hailey punched the out-between, and with her hands bound tightly with Scotch tape, stumbled outside and headed straight for the observatory, moving her torso as little as possible…
trying not to think about a thousand staples lodged in her skin, especially the ones from the gun, which felt like they’d splintered bone.
Asher will help, she told herself, but when she reached the tower door, she found it locked.
“Asher,” she called, but he didn’t answer.
After shivering and bleeding for thirty seconds on his doorstep without a response, Hailey spun around stiffly and walked as gingerly as she could toward Eureka Hall. The temperature hovered around ten degrees that night, and Hailey’s breath came out in curt, painful puffs.
Shaking violently and holding her arms as still as she could with her hands still painfully bound, she trudged up the stairs, trying not to disrupt her shirt, which, along with her bra, was pretty much sewn into her back and glued into place by dried, frozen blood.
At last she reached the third floor, and thankfully, Fin’s door was wide open; his light flooded the hallway. When Hailey stepped onto the landing, he shot out of his room.
“Where have you been? It’s past midnight—where’s your coat—”
He cut himself off and rushed across the hallway, ripping the tape off her wrists and rubbing them gently.
Hailey sighed, still shivering as blood returned to her fingers.