Ghost College (3 page)

Chapter Five

We were at the Denny’s across the street when I got a phone call from Dr. Stevens. He apologized for his royal freak-out and went on to tell me that something had come over him. Some deep and primal fear had seized him and the next thing he knew he was standing in the parking lot, clutching his chest, gasping for air, certain he was going to have a heart attack. Now he felt like an idiot and just wanted to get the hell out of there.

He begged me to do anything we could to help them and to remove whatever it was that was in the building. Unlike amateur ghost hunters who run around graveyards and abandoned buildings on the weekends, my wife and I offer a real service.

A ghost-removal service.

Yes, we’ve heard all the
Ghostbusters
jokes, and some would argue that we were ripping people off. Although a skeptic at heart, I had seen enough evidence of the paranormal to know that something was going on out there, and a lot people needed help, even if it was all in their heads.

I was just waiting to see my first ghost.

But I doubted I would.

Anyway, Dr. Stevens and I nailed down a price, double if we started tonight. He wanted to be able to come back to work tomorrow and not wonder if something was peeking over his shoulder. I made no promises but told him we would do our best.

I snapped shut my cell phone just as a platter of chocolate pancakes appeared before me.

My wife shook her head. “You do realize you’re a grown man.”

“Grown men eat chocolate.”

“
But not chocolate pancakes.”

“
Says who?”

She shook her head and sipped her coffee. “What did the good doctor say?”

“Said he was sorry for his graceless exit. Said he wanted whatever was in there out. And said he would pay us double if we expelled his unwanted guest tonight.”

“
Double is good.”

“
So what do you think we’re dealing with?” I asked. Half of my pancakes were already gone. Holy sweet Jesus, those little suckers were good.

“
I have no clue what you just said,” my wife said.

I swallowed and repeated my question.

“Better,” she said. “Now if only I could remove the image of the chocolate chips stuck between your teeth.”

“
Good luck with that.”

She shook her head. “Anyway, I think we’re dealing with at least one spirit and perhaps something else.”

I nodded, getting it. My wife claimed I was more psychic than I gave myself credit for, which isn’t saying much since I never gave myself any credit at all for being psychic. I said, “The reason he ran off.”

“
Exactly. He felt something. Saw something. Heard something.”

“
And it wasn’t the girl?”

“
The girl didn’t manifest, or your camera would have picked up on it.”

We’d had that debate a dozen times, since I saw no reason why a camera should detect something that wasn’t there in the first place. The way I saw it, if there were tens of thousands of ghost hunters happily clicking away every night, how come nobody had ever presented an indisputable image of a ghost? But I just kept chewing, talking with my mouth full. “So he saw something else?”

“Would be my guess,” said Ellen.

“
Something dark?”

“
Hard to say.”

“
What’s your impressions?” I asked, mopping up the plate with the last bite of pancake, picking up any errant whipped cream or chocolate chips along the way. Her impressions were worth more than physical evidence. I was here to get the job done, not win a Nobel Prize for physics. Or metaphysics.

“
Too soon to say,” said Ellen. “But there’s a reason why a little girl has been in this building for a hundred and fifty years.”

“
Trapped?”

“
Or held prisoner.”

“
By what?” I asked and waved for the bill. If we were going to investigate tonight, then we needed to get started A.S.A.P.

“
That remains to be seen.”

“
Or unseen.”

“
Honey, it’s hard to be enigmatic when you have brown teeth.”

I gave her an extra-wide grin.

Chapter Six

One of the tricks of this trade is to secure your legal permissions beforehand, which we’d handled via the Internet. The release form was the most critical. It gave us unfettered access to the hunt site and basically protected us from claims that we had stirred up unwanted, invisible forces. While such a claim filed in court would actually be great publicity, Ellen and I preferred to avoid drama, do our jobs, and let everyone rest in peace.

Especially the dead.

The best part of the release form was the clause that protected us from any claims of “infliction of psychological or emotional distress.” Our attorney had insisted on the language because she said someone might claim our actions had led to their demonic possession. I’d countered that I would love to see such a case go to trial, but in the end, the expense, hassle, and lost time would not be worth the entertainment value.

The main part of the administration building was still unlocked, and since our maps had shown the original building footprint there, we decided to focus our efforts near the president’s office. We’d already had a hit on the ghost girl—rather, Ellen had; I couldn’t claim much credit—so it made sense to expect a return encounter.

“
Break out the EMF,” Ellen said.

“
We ought to market a line of these one day.”

“
Then we’d spend all day running a business.”

“
At least we’d have a day job instead of always working the night shift.”

I clicked on the meter. While some of the cheesier models had a row of lights detecting surges in electromagnetic radiation, I preferred a Trifield meter, which helped narrow anomalies down to either electrical, magnetic, or radio disturbances. Any device marketed as a “Ghost Meter” was a piece of crap, about as useful in our line of work as a silver cross and a vial of holy water.

“Anything unusual?” Ellen asked, eyes closed.

The hallway was quiet, and Headphones Boy was nowhere around. I had to admit, the guy knew how to run a mop. The floor was spotless. “Yeah,” I said. “These kids are all either quietly studying away or else all tucked in. It’s way too quiet for a college campus.”

“These are Bible students, Monty. We’re not on the set of ‘Animal House.’”

“
Still, you’d think they’d be hanging out in the rec center, eating chips and drinking Dr. Pepper or something.”

“
Maybe they all have exams coming up.”

“
Yeah. That Book of Leviticus is pretty tough. A cookbook for the priests.”

“
Be respectful, now. We’re guests here.”

Ellen was a good buffer for my sarcasm and cynicism. I’m sure I frustrated her from time to time, but in general she was steadfast and pure, and I suspect it was her noble, generous heart that caused ghosts to trust her.

Assuming they existed, of course.

As we centered our search on the original building footprint, the Trifield’s needle twitched a time or two, but I narrowed the cause down to clumps of electrical wires running up the wall. Amateurs would have considered any bump a sure sign of paranormal activity, but there were so many possible causes of fluctuation that the true anomaly was in getting no unusual readings at all.

“Think we should set up video?” I asked, whispering now that we were seriously on the clock.

“
Yeah,” she said. “I’ve got a feeling.”

As I set up our camera on a collapsible tripod, Ellen moved about the hall near the president’s office. She had her arms up before her, like a caricature of a mummy or a sleepwalker. She eased forward with her eyes closed. The stance served the double duty of letting her feel changes in temperature and keeping her from running face first into a wall. And it was a lovely face, so that would have been a tragedy.

I started the camera and held my watch in front of the lens to record the time, stating it aloud for the benefit of the audio track. “11:36 p.m.,” I said.

I also showed the Trifield so we’d have a baseline. For best results, we should have visited during the day and taken levels so we’d have data for later comparison, but the pressing nature of the job meant we’d have to fly by the seat of our pants. I wasn’t even sure what we’d do with suggestive data even if we captured it, because neither of us was too wrapped up in the paranormal industry.

Sure, we liked to get paid, but it was also a calling. Ellen, a sensitive since her dead father had visited her bedside at age seven, often shared the vivid story of how he’d apologized for dying of a heart attack before she was grown and gone from the nest. And little Ellie had soothed him and told him she understood, and said she believed he had another place to be, and she was sure they’d meet again. That story always gave me chills, especially the part where she described her smiling dad, ghostly tears leaking down his milk-white face, waving as he disappeared into the wall forever.

Me, I guess I was in it for Ellen. She was so sincere about all that stuff that it seemed like a miracle to me, because I was pretty sure I’d have turned down a bad road if not for her. I didn’t have much use for religion, faith, or mysticism, but I’d long since come to accept that there was more going on in this world than we could see and understand.

While Ellen tuned in her sixth sense, which she’d described as sort of like turning the knob on a radio to track across the different bandwidths, I took some surface readings with the spot thermometer. Most surfaces were a reliable 68 degrees, probably the setting for the heating system, though that was about the same as the outside-air temperature.

I was about to put it away when I scanned the red dot across the president’s door. A cool sixty. Either someone had stored an igloo in there, or something odd was going on.

“Hon,” I whispered. “The office.”

She’d already turned and headed that way, clued in to something I couldn’t measure. She put her slim but strong fingers of one hand flat against the door—it still gave me a rush to see the gold ring I’d given her—as if feeling the beating of a heart.

“She’s back.”

I moved the camera up so it could shoot inside the office, and then I tried the handle. In his hasty departure, the president hadn’t returned to lock his office, and neither had we when we left. Apparently Headphones Boy had skipped it as well, because the handle turned with a click loud enough to wake the dead.

The door swung open, on its own, with a creak like the lifting of Dracula’s coffin.

Chapter Seven

“Battery’s dead,” I announced.

And it was. Just like that. One moment I had a full charge and the next the EMF meter was drained dry. I tried my backup battery. Drained, too. Although peculiar and noteworthy, it was also a major inconvenience. I said as much.

“She’s trying to manifest,” said my wife, shivering a little. “Cut her some slack.”

“
Well, can you ask her to stick her finger in a light socket or something? Now I have to go back to the van.”

“
Go ahead,” said my wife. “I’ll be here with her.”

“
Right. Be back in a minute. Maybe she can hold off on her grand appearance until I get back.”

“
You’re being rude, Monty. She’s a frightened and very confused little girl. Now get going.”

I got. The battery thing could have been random, bad batteries from the same batch. And the cold door? Give me a little time, and I’d think of a rational explanation.

I went back the way we’d come, hung a right, and found myself in a better-lit hallway. It was late and the place was dead. The dorms were on the far side of the building, across the commons we had seen earlier. No doubt a handful of the professors were burning the midnight oil and decoding the Book of Revelations. For the most part, though, we had the building to ourselves.

Which was just the way I liked it.

It’s tough doing a paranormal investigation if there’s outside interference. Hell, it’s tough doing a paranormal investigation even with no disturbances. So why did I do it?

Why not? The investigations were fun. We seemed to really help our clients, and it brought me closer to my wife. And there was just enough weird shit to keep me interested. I couldn’t tell you how many times we captured shadows of people who weren’t there. Or how many times our equipment had been moved. Or how many times I was dead certain someone was standing next to me when there wasn’t a soul to be seen. And then later convincing myself nothing had happened.

Anyway, for now, it was a good gig. It beat following cheating housewives around, and it definitely beat working behind a claims desk, listening to one sad story after another. Granted, nothing beat the sad stories of some of these alleged hauntings, but they were just that: Stories.

I moved on down the dim hallway. The temperature seemed to be dropping, but that could have been my imagination. I checked my thermometer. Drained as well. Damn that greedy little ghost girl.

Ellen and I were always aware of temperature. When the temperature dropped, things often got interesting. Anyway, I could have walked under an air con vent. Or perhaps a nearby window was open. Granted, the warm night was barely cooler than the warm day. There were many reasons for temperature drops, and very few of those reasons were paranormal.

I continued on, doing my best to ignore the very overwhelming feeling that I was being watched. I looked at my forearm. The hair was standing on end. Most ghost hunters lose it about then, going ape shit and declaring the place haunted.

Don’t look around. Don’t do it. You know you’re alone. You haven’t passed a living soul.

I looked around anyway. The feeling of being watched was nearly overwhelming. You know the feeling. Maybe you’re sitting at a Starbucks wasting your life away with a tech magazine, and you just feel someone watching you. You turn and sure enough the creepy old guy you spotted on the way to the counter is zeroing in on you for whatever reason. People know they’re being watched. And it has nothing to do with sixth sense.

Oh?

My wife would argue otherwise. She would say that such feelings were proof that everyone was psychic. I would suggest that some people had heads like lead pipes, hollow on the inside and shielded from all stimuli and radiation, but I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. I did, after all, have to live with the woman.

So I looked.

There was, of course, nothing there. Just a long stretch of hallway that eventually led back to my wife and the ghost girl. But that didn’t stop the feeling of being watched.

I shrugged it off as best as I could and, ignoring the goose pimples that now seemed to spread over my entire body, headed for the side door.

That is, until I heard the music.

I paused and was curious to note that my heart rate had increased. Now why was that? It was just music, wasn’t it? Just a professor plinking out the tunes while grading that week’s essay assignment on the Book of Leviticus. I nearly felt that professor’s misery, and could almost see the poor bastard reading first paragraph after paragraph that began: “Leviticus is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, and the third of five books of the Torah or Pentateuch...” All, of course, lifted word for word from Wikipedia.

You wonder why they even need professors anymore, but I guess somebody’s got to play the piano.

The more I listened, the more I was certain the music was not a recording. Someone was playing an instrument nearby. I was certain of it.

To my left was a corridor we hadn’t yet explored. The music seemed to be coming from down there. I stood in the main hallway, biting my lip, debating. I could run out to the van and get my equipment, or I could investigate the music.

Ellen and I were not here to document the paranormal. We were here to eradicate unwanted guests. My wife wouldn’t need physical evidence. My testimony alone would be sufficient for her.

Screw the batteries.

I hung a left and followed the music, which grew steadily louder. This side hallway was lined with closed door after closed door.

Except for one.

It was on the left and I’ll be damned if the music wasn’t coming from in there. Perhaps I was in the music wing. Did a Christian college offer music degrees? Perhaps a B.A. in Gospel Appreciation? I didn’t know, but apparently there were music classes offered.

Just a student working with his music instructor. Getting a late-night lesson in. Made sense. Music students were often obsessed with their craft. Myself, I was obsessed with chocolate pancakes.

I approached the door. My heart seemed to both slow down and beat harder. I breathed easily though my nose, listening. I was cold again. Freezing. My hair was standing up in places where I hadn’t even known I’d grown hair.

The music continued playing. A classic diddy, with a lilt. Mozart, probably, but what the hell did I know?

And with my heart pounding nice and steady, I eased the door open.

Chapter Eight

You ever see those player pianos in the old Western movies, where the keys mash themselves while the little metal wheel scrolls inside the upright box?

That’s what this piano was doing, playing itself. Except it was a baby grand and didn’t have the upright box. I knew as much about pianos as I did about the afterlife, quantum physics, and Nepalese politics, but even a dummy like me could tell there was no mechanical operation to the instrument.

Like the president’s office, this room was cold, too. I wish I’d brought the video camera, assuming we’d had good batteries, of course. As it was, I pulled the still camera from my pocket. The camera had a video feature, though it had a limited memory capacity and would probably only catch about 30 seconds.

I figured even 30 seconds would be enough to prove I wasn’t crazy or hallucinating. There was sheet music on the wooden flap in front of the keyboard, and I swear to God, a page flipped just as the music skipped a note. Unfortunately, the still camera was dead, too, so Ellen would just have to take my word for it.

I approached the piano, feeling a little helpless because I didn’t have any gizmos. I was trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t afraid, that I was a man of science and logic, but my scrotum shrunk tight enough to crack a walnut or two.

The piano stopped abruptly, and its last notes lingered in the air. By the time I reached the instrument, most of the tones had died away. I touched the seat and it was ice cold.

I flipped the sheet music back. The name of the hymn was “A Voice Upon The Midnight Air,” and it was old, according to the little notes in the corner of the fold. It had been written in 1840, though it looked like the musical notation had been updated in the last century. Some people just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

I was one of them. I sat at the piano and, although I could read music about as well as I could read Latin, I pecked at a few keys. I went at it a little faster, the tones clashing as I mixed black and white keys with abandon. But when I went for one of those booming bottom keys that sound like a frog choir at a funeral, it went mute. I pounded again and all I got was a
doint
.

I lifted the lid. There, jammed between where the little wooden hammer hit the fat bronze string, was a scroll of paper, crumpled and wrapped with a red ribbon.

This would make things easier. We all sought those messages from beyond, and here one had conveniently scribbled itself out. I unrolled the crinkled, thick paper and tried to read it. The black letters were done in a stylish calligraphy. I couldn’t read Latin but I could recognize it.

“
Non omnis moriar. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam
.” And below that, as if in signature, was “
Tenebrosus magister
.”

Ellen was smarter than me and had actually finished college, although she’d studied German instead of Latin. I thought maybe she could translate it, and I didn’t think batteries were going to be much help on this case.

I was hurrying back to the president’s office, eager to share my alleged encounter, when I rounded the corner and almost slammed face-first into the president himself. He was clutching a big coffee and seemed calmer now despite the caffeine injection.

I’d always admired a man who could switch from booze to coffee when midnight approached. I’d never been able to pull it off myself.

“I couldn’t leave my school at such a critical time,” he said. “Have you made any headway?”

“
I know about the Latin,” I said. “But have you heard any talking pianos?”

He looked confused and glanced at the wing I’d just left. “Students are under curfew on weeknights,” he said. “In their rooms by eleven, in bed by midnight. No one should have been playing.”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” I said. “No one was playing.”

He looked past me again. “Where’s your wife?”

“I thought she was with you.”

“
I can hardly see how you can joke at a time like this, Mr. Drew.”

“
On the contrary. You ever heard of ‘gallows humor’?”

He closed his eyes and began muttering something that I soon recognized as the Serenity Prayer. When he was done, I gave him the piece of parchment I’d found.

“Do you guys teach Latin?” I asked.

He shook his head, squinting at the paper. “This is a progressive institution. We realize most of the mission work will be in Central and South America, so we teach Spanish.”

“I guess I’ll have to run this through the Internet, then, and hope I find a good translating program.”

“
Not necessary. I studied Latin as an undergrad, when I thought I was going to be a lawyer.”

I didn’t tell him he should have become a shyster. Even the lousy public defenders I’d known in my former life brought home six figures, and while the president was probably doing okay for himself, he was missing the chance to really sock away some cash.

“Great,” I said, wondering if I’d need to test the paper and ink for age. That antique look could be contrived with a little bit of heating and careful application of dirt. “What does it say?”

He cleared his throat and translated. “‘Not all of me shall die. I will either find a way or make one.’ And below that, ‘Dark Master.’”

“Whoa. That sounds like a pretty heavy promise. Any idea what it would be doing stuck inside a haunted piano, or who this ‘Dark Master’ is?”

“
If I knew, I would have saved a small fortune not hiring you guys.”

I patted him on the shoulder as I moved past. “Ah, you’re finally catching on to that ‘gallows humor’ thing.”

I didn’t have time for theories, because the note suggested something around here was only partly dead. And that meant part of its ghost was likely hanging around. I could just picture this Dark Master guy popping out of nowhere, standing on one leg, holding his head in his solitary hand and looking around for the rest of his parts.

And I’d left Ellen alone for far too long in a place like this, where neither pianos nor presidents could be trusted.

Chapter Nine

“
You’re too late,” said my wife when I stepped back into the president’s office. “She’s gone.”

“
Hey, you’ve seen one ghost, you’ve seen them all, right?”

“
Close the door and leave the lights off.”