Episode Thirteen, page 11
Matt: But it’s fake. It goes against everything we’ve tried to do for years.
Claire: What would you have thought if I said something? What would you have thought of me?
Matt says nothing, no doubt chewing on how badly he wanted to believe a spirit moved the objects and how he would have reacted to this belief being challenged.
Kevin: Anything I might have done, I did it for the show—
Jessica: Oh, shut your mouth. You did enough. So what do we do now?
Claire: I’m not done yet. I happen to think Kevin’s right about one thing.
Kevin: Thank you—
Claire: I don’t agree with what he did, but he’s right that I don’t belong here and that it boxed us into this corner. I helped make this show, but in the end, I’m breaking it.
Matt: That’s not true.
Claire: I don’t think ghost hunting should be done by people who believe in ghosts, but the opposite is true for ghost hunting TV. If you want to change up the show, I should leave and you should do your investigations the way other shows do it.
Matt: You—you can’t, this is—
Claire: It was never real science in my book anyway. It was just debunking.
Jessica: I asked, what the hell are we going to do? Why the hell are we even talking about what to do next with a show that may not exist tomorrow?
Kevin: Somebody had to step up to save—
Matt: ENOUGH.
We hear the sound of his chair scraping the floor.
Claire: Where are you going? Please—
Stomping footsteps. The room erupts in cross talk.
Matt: I’ve had it!
Jake: Wait!
Matt: What’s the point? I’m done!
Jake: Listen! Do you hear that?
A steady bassline shimmers in the air, barely audible. For a few moments, no one says anything as they all tune in to listen.
Jessica: I think it’s music. It’s music, right?
Jake: Where is it coming from?
The music grows louder, little by little. More cross talk.
Kevin: Hang on. I know this. It’s an old flower power song from the sixties. Can’t remember the name. It’s by the Prayer Beads.
Jessica: How do you know?
Kevin: Everybody knows this song. They were a hippie one-hit—
Jessica: Did you set this up? You better not have set this up.
Kevin: This isn’t me.
Matt: Jake.
Jake: What?
Matt: Get the camera.
The camera jerks from the floor onto Jake’s shoulder. The music suddenly leaps in volume.
Female singers: THE GROOVY PEOPLE ARE HERE
The paranormal investigators flinch at the blast, pale and gawking. Jessica lets out a startled scream. Claire points off-camera.
Claire: Lights! I see lights flashing outside! Look!
Kevin: Matt. MATT.
Singers: GOOD TIMES WILL LAST ALL YEAR
Kevin: The monitors—
The camera swings toward the two monitors showing the Apparition Room.
Which is now occupied by a swirling whirlwind of light.
Hands reach from the light toward the trigger objects with impossibly elongated fingers like tendrils—
Jessica: What is that? What the hell is happening?
Matt: Let’s go!
The team rushes toward the stairs and finds itself in near total darkness lit up by powerful, strobing flashes from the windows. The group stumbles, disoriented.
Jake turns on the camera’s light, which illuminates wild, panicked faces.
Jake: Go, go!
They climb the stairs.
Singers: DON’T LET THE MAN GET YOU DOWN! TURN YOUR SAD FROWN UPSIDE DOWN!
They stop in front of the Apparition Room’s closed door. The trigger objects and Ouija board clatter like shrapnel against the walls and floor. The remote camera bangs off the door.
Singers: A BRIGHTER FUTURE IS NEAR
Matt: Okay, everybody ready? I’m doing this.
He opens it—
And rears at the sight of a blinding shaft of shimmering light surrounded by flying trigger objects.
The glow coalesces into the form of a grotesquely tall woman, so tall her head tilts almost sideways below the ceiling, hairlike strands of light splayed around a ghastly jack-o’-lantern grin.
Matt: I…
The spirit’s hand reaches to beckon him to come closer, a little closer.
Chorus: OPEN YOUR HEART AND LEND ME YOUR EEEAAAEAR
CRASH
The camera jumps and pivots toward the stairs, Jake acting on years of body memory to always follow the action. Another crash.
One by one, the wood steps crumple and splinter as if under the impact of anvils dropped from a great height. As if an invisible giant is walking down the stairs.
CRASH, CRASH, CRASH
Chorus: THERE’S NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR
Laughter creeps onto the flooded audio like EVP. Peals of laughter. The house or a spirit that inhabits it appears to be laughing at them.
Claire’s face fills the screen, showing she is the one laughing. From joy or hysteria, it is impossible to be sure.
Claire: This is real! It’s really real!
The house trembles with a vacuum roar pulsing up from its foundation. The music reaches a deafening volume, warbling with distortion. Plaster rains from the ceiling.
The record skips. The team’s gasps produce puffs of visible water vapor like miniature ghosts as the temperature suddenly drops to freezing.
Chorus: NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR—
NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR—
NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR—
Matt: Everybody, out! Out of the house!
He grabs Claire’s hand and yanks her toward the grand staircase, now hazy in a massive, settling dust cloud where its center had been crushed. She stumbles drunkenly, still cackling. Kevin lingers a moment before bolting after them.
The house continues to tremble at its foundations, raining bits of plaster, as if threatening to come crashing down on their heads.
Jake: Wait—wait! Where’s Jessica?
The camera swings toward the apparition, which now stands stooped and grinning in the doorway.
Jake: Holy fuck—
The view jerks and swims, the microphone filled with pounding footsteps, stopping only when the screen goes blank.
DAY THREE
Claire Kirklin’s Journal
In the ninth century, a Chinese alchemist working to produce an elixir for eternal life accidentally invented gunpowder, which changed the world.
I now know exactly how that alchemist felt.
Though the comparison isn’t quite accurate. After all, I originally set out to prove the existence of ghosts and ended up doing just that. If the alchemist had actually discovered immortality, then we’d be the same.
On the other hand, according to legend, the man scorched his face and burned his house to the ground at his moment of discovery. That’s how I feel this morning: burned by playing with things I don’t understand.
I can’t wait to play more.
Play until I do understand.
I’m not making much sense, I know. I’m making all the sense. Nothing makes sense, not anymore. My entire understanding of reality has just dramatically shifted, like an earthquake that leaves everything standing but very, very shaky.
God, I feel like I really understand my husband for the first time.
I feel like I know everything and that I really don’t know anything.
You’ll understand too, after you watch the video.
You’ll be changed. Burned. And if you’re like me, you’ll want more.
I’m rambling. For a while, I couldn’t express myself at all. Couldn’t even produce a coherent thought. All I could do was laugh, which kept bubbling up out of me. Now I can’t stop writing. It feels good, getting all this out of my head. Defining it makes it real and is giving me a sense of control I sorely need.
We drove the camper until we reached Denton and just kept going, north all the way to Fredericksburg. There, we found a pub that was open and stopped in a remote corner of its parking lot. For a long time, we sat in numb silence. I didn’t trust myself to form words. My thoughts and memories were like puzzle pieces that needed to be fitted together, but first I had to describe them.
Finally, Matt spoke behind the wheel. “Is everybody okay?” He must have realized how ridiculous that sounded because he added, “Is anybody hurt?”
No one answered. Jessica, who’d sensibly run like hell after we’d seen the spirit manifest on the Base Camp camera monitors, lay shaking in a fetal ball on one of the two couch beds, as if willing herself to escape all the way by physically disappearing. Hugging his camera, Jake opened his mouth with a little hitch of breath, though no words came out. Kevin stared out a side window with his hands splayed against the glass, as if keeping watch in case the spirits followed us to finish what we’d started.
Matt eyed them all in the rearview mirror, idly twirling his wedding band around his finger, which he does when he gets nervous and which on any other day I’d find endearing.
Then he turned his head toward me, though he seemed to look right through me as if I weren’t there. Shock was written all over his face. My husband seemed more machine than human right then. I should have felt sympathy and asked him right back if he was okay, but I had nothing to give.
Instead, I stared at the pub with its black awning and windowed view of warm, mellow revelry and felt another boiling urge to laugh.
Look at those people in there having fun, I wanted to say. They have no idea.
Whatever their beliefs, in the end, they know they live in a normal, predictable world governed by the laws of physics.
Very soon, they’ll be awakened. They’ll learn it’s all an illusion.
I had a giddy thought: I might get the Nobel Prize for this.
We were astronomers who’d gazed up through their telescopes and accidentally found an alien spaceship. We were Sir Alexander Fleming, who took a two-week vacation while experimenting with influenza and came back to discover mold had grown over his sample and inhibited viral growth, which led to penicillin. We were John Walker, a pharmacist who mixed antimony sulphide and potassium chlorate and tried to scratch it off, only to see it burst into flame, inventing the match.
Next to me, Matt finished a long yoga breath. “I could use a drink.”
I’m writing down what everyone said to the best of my memory. It’s important to document this exactly as it happened. History was made tonight. When people ask what our lead investigator’s first words about the phenomenon were, I want to be able to tell them the exact words, even if they were “I could use a drink.”
The camper’s door slammed. I didn’t remember Matt even opening it, but there he was, walking away toward the bar. I was surprised he would walk away from me like this, but we were all alone right then. What we’d seen had scoured us down to our essence. We were almost spectral ourselves.
“All right,” Kevin said. “I need a… Yeah.”
He climbed over the empty driver’s seat and got out next.
The bar’s normalcy called to me as well, a chance to regroup and try to process exactly what the hell happened back at Foundation House tonight, but I resisted for a moment. For two days, I’d suffered a pointless camping trip in a rambling health hazard and couldn’t wait to get back to my own bed and comforting routines of home. Now I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back.
If I did, what happened might not have happened. I might wake up and discover it was all a dream, its vivid details already crumbling.
“Bring the camera,” I said. “We should watch the tape.”
“I don’t know if we…” Jake shook his head. “Okay. Screw it.”
I climbed out with unsteady legs. My feet tested the ground, and I was a little surprised to find it solid. I looked up at the sky that had cleared after the rain. A few stars glimmered in the murky light pollution.
Time blurred again. Jake stood next to me, one of his arms supporting a visibly trembling Jessica. I asked her if she wanted to stay in the camper.
Eyes wild, she gave her head a quick shake. I caught its meaning. She didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything, but she wanted to be alone even less.
Inside, we drew a few curious stares. They probably thought we’d just survived a car crash or the local version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Haunted eyes, dirty with plaster dust, reeking of stale flop sweat. As the saying goes, we weren’t from around here.
Matt sat alone at a table with a half-finished pint of something dark in front of him, staring off intently toward his own private horizon. I joined him, ordered something, and the server went away.
“Let’s play the tape,” I said. I had to be sure it had happened.
We watched it.
And I started laughing again.
Kevin Linscott’s Journal
After all the shit went down at the house, we drove up to the Hibernian in Fredericksburg. I hoped to get everybody calm enough that we could talk about what happened and come up with some sort of plan of action.
We seated ourselves around one of those dark wood tables you find in pubs. I laid my hands on it and enjoyed its solid feel.
I put down my first pint of Guinness without even tasting it. I ordered another and decided I might just get good and drunk. I earned the right tonight.
After my second pint went down, I started to get my bearings. Over our heads, a big TV screen on the wall replayed a football game broadcast earlier in the night. The Saints pounded the Buccaneers. The stadium crowd let out a breathless roar at a Hail Mary pass.
An average night in America. Perfectly normal. The wood paneling, taps behind the bar, and cute servers in black tees and red plaid skirts all gained substance and became real.
For a TV show about veteran ghost hunters, you’d think we wouldn’t be this affected, but what happened tonight is unprecedented. The spirit world teases. It likes its jump scares that leave you wondering. Bang, bang. A wisp of cold air on the back of your neck. It goes for creep and dread over outright shock.
It doesn’t put on a big horror extravaganza with everything on the menu.
Claire said we should watch the tape. Steeled by my third Guinness, I huddled with the team, heads touching so we could all get a look. The only problem was we had to watch it on a tiny screen, and we could hardly hear anything over the NFL game playing out over our heads.
But it was all there, real and true.
Okay, I did move the trigger objects, and I know that wasn’t right. Everybody probably fakes a little in this business, which I’d call a margin of error, but I took it too far. It hurt the others, but it hurt me the most. I’d given up a career in law enforcement to search for the truth. I’d spent years building up a rock-solid reputation as a ghost hunter. And then I dirtied it in a moment of zeal.
As Claire confessed, she’d boxed us into a corner, and somebody had to step up and do something—provide the only evidence that she’d accept and that would keep our investigations going. Some might even call me a hero for doing what I did, but no, I don’t deserve it. I am tough enough to admit I screwed up.
After the shit went down, though, I felt vindicated. All along, I’d been right the house was active. I was right that ghosts exist.
Soon, everybody will know it.
We watched the tape, and then Claire started laughing in a way that gave me the creeps. You know somebody for a while, and all of a sudden this new personality comes bursting out. It’s unsettling. I felt like I didn’t know her now.
I asked her if she was Claire. I had to check.
“I’m not possessed, Kevin,” she said, and started laughing again.
Some people aren’t built for this kind of mental strain. I had my work cut out for me pulling them together. Matt looked like he’d gotten a lobotomy. Jake’s face flickered between gray and green. Jessica showed all the signs of shock.
“We watched it three times already,” I growled at them, taking command. “It happened. We need to snap out of it and talk it out.”
“I need to know if one of you staged this,” Matt said.
Then everybody looked at me.
I couldn’t believe it. Were they serious? I very calmly explained my first name isn’t Gandalf, and my last name sure isn’t Steven goddamn Spielberg.
“It was real,” Claire said, back to her old professor self. “If it was a hoax, it deserves its own category at the Oscars.”
For once, the professor and I agreed one hundred percent.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Matt said. “The amount of energy.”
“A thousand pounds of force to crush each stair,” Claire lectured. “A thousand watts to produce all the light. And who knows how many joules to fling around all the trigger objects. It shredded the Ouija board into toothpicks.”
“It’s just unbelievable.”
“I believe it,” I told him. “It proves we were right all along.”
But he said we were wrong. We’d gone in there with our tricks and gadgets, tech that could detect the slightest whisper and EMF change, and we’d turned up nothing. Then, boom, the spirits came out to party with bowling balls.
Some people just can’t see the big picture.
“We were lucky to get out of there alive,” Jake said.
Then Jessica finally spoke up. “If it wanted to kill us, we’d already be dead.”
She said she’d learned enough about the paranormal to know a ghost can pass through a wall without disturbing it. A ghost can also do stuff like slam doors and apparently karate chop a grand staircase. In short, it can both pass through and affect matter.
