Nightfall. Frantic activity. Summit Paranormal Investigations is in full effect. The cold, dark void swallows everything. Everyone’s gathered in the breakfast room.
Doug checks his various sensors and recorders one more time.
Doug: “Jake. Take a camera and a recorder to the sitting room. See if you can coax Evelyn out.”
Jake nods as he stashes an extra battery pack in the side pocket of his cargo shorts.
Doug: “Emily.”
The short blonde perks up from her seat in the corner by the window. She’s not much older than me. Plump, but still adorable.
Doug: “I want you to take the thermal cam and stay close to Sean. Follow him around and see if you can get some hits.”
Her blue eyes stare into mine. Is she blushing?
Emily: “I will.”
Dr. Benson rummages through some legal pads and spiral-bound notebooks in his briefcase. “Donna. Go with Emily and Sean.” He hands his athletic assistant a slender silver device. “It’s set to pick up anything within the human audio spectrum. The battery’s fully charged, so, you should get a full ten hours out of it. Any questions?”
Donna turns the recorder over in her hands. “None.”
Benson edges closer to the large round table. “Very well. Patty and I will stay here with --”
“Dylan,” the plump, middle-aged man says, not taking his blue eyes from the row of three laptops.
“Dylan,” Benson continues, “and observe everything we can.”
Dougie drops his duffle bag to the parqueted floor and moves toward the foyer. “I’m going into the basement and steam room. We’ll do a comms check on the two-ways in five. Got it?”
Jake, Emily, and Dylan: “Got it.”
The group fans out. I take cautious steps into the foyer toward the stairs. Moonlight turns the hardwoods pale. Sconces still flicker on the hallway walls to my left. Eerie yellow eyes in the dark.
Donna: “Getting anything, Sean?”
My head nods slowly. An invisible pressure surrounds me, pressing down. “They don’t want us to leave.”
Emily fans her thermal cam around the foyer. “Sixty-nine degrees. Seventy.” A moment of stark silence. “Jesus, Sean!”
Donna jumps at the sharp outburst. “Damn it. Don’t do that.” She moves alongside Emily. “What is it?”
Emily: “See there? Around him?”
I watch Donna’s face lengthen in the screen’s soft glow. “Fifty-eight all around him.”
Emily: “We call it a thermal anomaly. A common occurrence when a paranormal event happens.”
Donna: “Could be just a pocket of colder air in between ducts or vents.”
Nauseating waves blur my vision. Black sickness. Overwhelming pain. “Something’s here.” My voice cracks.
Emily: “There aren’t any air ducts in this – What is it, Sean?”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“S-something is really close.” Throbbing headache, like a migraine.
(Two-way radio squelch)
Doug: “Emily. Come in.”
(Squelch)
The petite blonde pulls her radio from a hip pocket of her jeans. “I’m here, Doug. Go ahead.”
Doug: “Jake and I are in position. Anything yet? Where are you?”
Emily: “We’re moving down the hallway between the library and the dining hall.” Her voice speeds up. “We’ve got thermal pockets around Sean. He says something’s here, Doug.”
Doug: “Good. Just stay with him and don’t stop recording whatever you do. This kid’s the real McCoy.”
Emily: “We --”
Her scream rattles my eardrums. The radio thuds to the floor.
Doug: “Emily? Em!”
A man. Tuxedo jacket, soiled slacks. Maybe half of a foot taller. A gaping bloody hole in the chest of his ivory shirt. Sunken cheeks. One eye stitched shut, the other socket – hollow.
Donna: “Holy fuck.”
The feeling of rage consumes me. Betrayal. Lies. Hidden secrets. I fall to my knees; my hands fly over my face. “My eye!” God, it hurts. The cold metal splices the tendons around my socket.
Hands on my shoulders, shake me so hard that I slam against the wall. It’s Donna. “Sean! Sean, snap out of it.”
Wrenching agony in my chest. Ribs being forced apart.
Donna: “Sean! It’s not real.”
Stinging pain on my left cheek. My breathing slows. The pain melts.
Em: “The apparition’s gone.”
(squelch)
Doug: “Em? Are you all right?”
Em: “Fine. Full form male apparition in the hallway. Sean went down for a bit, but he’s okay.”
(squelch)
Doug: Excellent. I’m getting some voice activity near the pool. Why don’t you guys head to the music room and see if there’s anything.”
Em: “We’re on it.”
My energy’s drained. Each upward step feels heavier than the last.
“Oh, God!” Emily exclaims. She picks up her camera and staggers back from a marble bust of McAllister setting at the head of the stairs.
Faint light from the sconce above it gives its ghostly white face a maniacal look. Shoulder-length hair like serpents. Chiseled chin, deep-set eyes, and a nose like a crooked beak.
Donna scoffs and scans the hall, opening to the floor below. “Talk about a narcissist.”
Light footsteps on the floor to my right.
Em: “Did you guys hear that, too?”
My gut sinks.
Clip, clop… Clip, clop.
I spin to my right and give chase. “It’s going this way – toward the music room.”
Donna’s nails burrow into the flesh of my left bicep. Her long black hair sways in front of her face.
Em: “Thermal scans show nothing. Nada.”
One foot over the other, I lead our trio closer. One of the two massive doors into the area swings open on a whining hinge. Donna’s grip tugs me to a halt.
“I-I don’t know about this,” she says. Her tone has lost most of its objectivity.
Emily whispers now: “Temp’s dropping like a rock.”
I turn in time to watch the last remnants of her breath dissolve in the frigid air. More small puffs of warmth from her trembling mouth.
Dark and gentle music resonates from it. Something classical. Chopin?
Emily: “Sounds like Rachmaninov.”
Donna and I both give her a look.
“I was a piano major in college,” she says in an offended tone. “It obviously didn’t work out.”
Such sorrow in the melody. An invisible dance upon the black and white keys. I step past the fireplace. Its warmth is a welcome change.
“H-hello?” Between the cold and this eerie serenade, my nerves are shot.
No response. The specter begins another haunting melody.
A quick glance toward Donna – Little Miss Non-believer. “What do you make of this shit?”
Her awestruck grey eyes say what her frozen face can’t. The mask of terror slowly shakes back and forth.
Yeah, thought so, bitch. Freud couldn’t explain this crap away on his best day.
Em: “Stop, Sean!”
Something’s got her rattled.
“Don’t move.” Her gaze remains fixed on the little screen on her thermal cam.
Donna: “What’s wrong?”
Emily’s words run out in a worry-drenched string: “Another form. Dark. Standing next to her by the bench.”
“Henry?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Can’t tell. There’s something very wrong.”
I squint and stare off into the shadows near the piano bench as the keys flurry in a crescendo. I sense you. I know you’re there. Your energy isn’t like hers, though. Emily’s right. There’s more to you.
The shade’s dark limb lowers to the back of the neck of the female ghost at the piano. An emotion, sinister.
“He means to tear her apart!” I scream, storming toward the piano.
Donna: “Sean!”
Sharp cold pain pierces my torso. It feels like I’m being impaled by a dozen icicles. No breath in my lungs as my back slams into the hardwoods. Skating back out the doors along the floor. Racing. Small stars consume my vision after my head impacts the hallway wall. The girls glide in on either side of my crumpled mass.
The towering doors to the music room swing closed with deliberate force.
Em still struggles for air: “C-can’t breathe.”
A low guttural growl rattles the walls and ceiling. I grab a handful of Em’s tee-shirt and stammer to my feet. Flickering sconces dart past us on both sides.
(Radio squelch)
Doug: “What the hell was that? Jake, Em, are you guys all right? Come in!”