2 A Haunting In Oregon (3 page)

“Useless!” Roy said, removing his
blindfold and standing up.

At first Steven was concerned Roy
was talking to him in anger for having turned on the light.
He told me not
to disturb him until he took off the blindfold,
he thought.
I should
have listened to him
. But Steven was far too shaken by the image of the
woman shooting herself to sit calmly and let the trance continue.

Roy could see the concern on
Steven’s face. “No, not you — her,” Roy said, motioning to where the body had
fallen, but was now completely gone.

“What happened?” Steven asked.

“I could only get about thirty seconds
with her before she would go hysterical and blow her brains out. I went through
the loop five or six times. You saw the last one. The last loop.”

“You watched her shoot herself
five times?” Steven asked.

“It’s the only way I could talk to
her. At first she would communicate. I could ask a question or two. Sometimes
the answers were muddled, sometimes not. But after two or three questions, she’d
start crying and ranting on and on about a guy named Benny, accusing me of
turning him against her. Then, well, you saw. Then it would start again, and
I’d ask a few more questions before she’d get all worked up. What a stupid
bitch. I hate these kinds of ghosts, they’re so self-obsessed.”

 “Did she say anything useful?
About this place?”

“What she said was ‘they come in.’
That’s all I could get. She’s been haunting this room for eighty years. I tried
to get her to tell me if anything different has happened in the past few years,
but she’s so wrapped up with Benny she doesn’t notice much. And as you know, she
never leaves this room. Something comes into the room – that’s all I could get
out of her.”

“I could blindfold you again,”
Steven offered, “and see if you could get more out of her?”

“I’d rather try my luck with
another one,” Roy said, “than spend another minute with that stupid cow.”

“All right,” Steven said. “We know
there was one in the hallway. Want to try there?”

“Sure,” replied Roy.

They replaced the chair and left
the room. Steven went into his room and retrieved a similar chair from his
desk, and placed it in the middle of the hallway immediately outside his door.

“If I remember right,” Steven
said, “it went up and down this entire hallway, and down the steps into the lower
hallway.”

“I might get up and follow it,”
Roy said, sitting in the chair. “If I do, just follow me and make sure I don’t
take a tumble down stairs or anything.”

“Right,” Steven said, placing the blindfold
on Roy.

Steven jumped into the flow
earlier this time, anxious to learn from which direction the ghost would come.
After several minutes, he saw the white figure materialize at the end of the
hallway and begin walking toward them. As it approached he could see it was a
tall man, a foot taller than Steven or Roy. He had a gaunt face with a sunken
forehead. He was wearing a tuxedo, but the jacket was ripped in several places
and he had blood on his shirt. Steven saw Roy begin to communicate with the
figure, and it turned to face Roy, temporarily abandoning its rounds. They
talked as though they had met each other on the street. Occasionally as they
talked the man would glance both directions down the hallway, then return his
attention to Roy. After several minutes conversing the figure reached inside
his tuxedo, feeling his chest. When he pulled his hand out it was covered with
blood. He turned and continued walking down the hallway. Roy did not follow him;
instead he rose from the chair and removed the blindfold.

Steven dropped out of the flow,
felt the familiar stab of pain in the back of his skull. He turned to Roy.

“Better?” he asked Roy.

“Much better,” Roy replied. “Let’s
go inside, I’ll tell you about it.”

Roy sat down in the living room
and Steven went to the kitchen, hoping to find something to drink in the refrigerator.
There were water bottles, and he took one for himself and Roy.

“You two were talking for a
while,” Steven said.

“Yeah, his name is Mr. Dennington.
He insisted on exchanging names, rather a formal fellow. He talked as long as
he could before he felt compelled to continue going down the hallway. But I got
what I wanted – at least, as much as I was going to get.”

“And what was that?” Steven asked.

“He’s heard that they get invaded
every night,” Roy said.

“Invaded?” Steven asked. “What,
the ghosts get invaded?”

“Yes, the ghosts, the whole place.
Something invades, at night. He’d never seen it, just heard about it from other
ghosts. You saw him, right? Did you notice the blood?”

“Yes,” Steven replied.

“He’d been in some kind of
altercation, he’d been stabbed. He was also drunk. He was trying to find his
room. I think he appears for only a short time each night until he finds the
room he’s looking for. We happened to catch him in the middle of his routine.”

“Twenty minutes either way and we
might have missed him?” Steven asked.

“Yes,” Roy said. “Ghosts like him
are on a schedule. He’ll always appear every night around the same time, wander
the hallway looking for his room, find it, and be gone until the next night at
the same time. They love their routine, won’t ever give it up.”

Steven thought of the ghosts that
had plagued his house. “Kind of like knocking every night at 3 a.m.?”

“Exactly like that,” Roy said.

“What invades the house every
night? Did he know?”

“He didn’t,” answered Roy. “I
suspect he finds his room before it happens and he’s done for the night. But
he’d heard about it from other ghosts.”

“Why would something invade? The
place is clearly haunted, isn’t that enough?”

“That’s a good question,” said
Roy. “Things often go deeper than just ghosts, as you’ve learned.” Steven
remembered what had happened at his house, months back. Ghosts were just the
start of it; the real trouble had been far worse than the ghosts. Perhaps this
was similar.

“You think there’s an entity like
Lukas involved?” Steven asked.

“Don’t know yet,” said Roy. “It
doesn’t seem like that kind of thing, but it’s too early to know.”

Steven shuddered at the idea of
running into Lukas, or anything like him. “What do we do next?” he asked.

“We’ll try the basement next,” Roy
said. “He told me the ghosts down there are particularly angry about it.”

“I thought you said angry ghosts
aren’t a good thing to be around?” Steven asked skeptically.

“If they sense we’re here to
help,” Roy said, “there’s a good chance they’ll be cooperative rather than
angry. After all, they’re not angry at us. They’re motivated.”

“Unless we’re walking into a
trap,” Steven said.

“True, ghosts can be deceptive and
manipulative,” Roy said. “And very dangerous. It’s wise to be cautious. Still,
Dennington didn’t seem like the type to lie. He would have considered that discourteous.”

Steven had learned to trust Roy’s
judgment on these types of things and he didn’t press the matter further. Still,
the plan sat uneasy with him. They didn’t know the full scope of what they were
dealing with and it wouldn’t be the first time Roy had misjudged something.
Steven was going to keep his radar on high.

“I need to study up on this
invasion thing,” Roy said. Steven knew he was referring to his book, a
collection of knowledge and guidance that had been passed through their family
for several generations. It was hand bound and contained multiple sections,
handwritten by his father and back to his great-great grandfather. The book was
almost impenetrable to Steven, but Roy had been slowly exposing pieces of it to
him since their experience at Steven’s house. The more he experienced, the more
sense the book made to him.

“Give me an hour with the book,”
Roy said, “and we’ll go down to the basement and see what’s there.”

“Dad, it’s nearly 1 a.m. Pete said
he was expecting us down for breakfast at 8. Are you sure you want to keep
going tonight?”

“Maybe you’re right,” Roy said.
“I’ll study up for a bit, then turn in. We can hit the basement tomorrow.
Probably locked anyway.”

Steven wished Roy a good night and
returned to his room through the adjoining door. He left it unlocked.

As he settled into bed, he grabbed
The Ghosts of Mason Manor
and read a little bit of it. The house was
constructed in 1851 and was continually expanded until 1948. The original owner
was Robert Maysill, an industrialist who made some money during the gold rush
years. He named the house after his wife’s father, a successful man who funded
Maysill’s initial ventures. His successors didn’t fare as well in business and
wound up selling the house in 1911 for what they could get for it, and since
that time it passed through a series of owners. Pete and Sarah were the first
to turn it into a business rather than a home.

The ghost stories in the book were
typical fare – jilted brides, mothers with lost children. Steven thought about
the ghost in the room next door to him, just feet from where his head now lay. It
unnerved him a little, but knowing the ghost was unlikely to ever leave the
room was comforting. Still, he knew she was over there, endlessly blowing her
brains against the other side of the wall where Steven was sleeping. He
wondered if he would hear the
splat
of it repeated throughout the night.

Stop it
, he thought.
You’re
just giving yourself nightmares
.

He shut the book and turned off
the light. He hoped Roy was doing the same, but he knew it was more likely the
old man was prowling through the book, looking for answers.
He’s a tough guy
,
Steven thought.
Tougher than me in many ways
.

Steven’s relationship with his
father had changed dramatically in the past months. When they were young his
overly religious mother kept him busy with church activities, and Roy always
seemed out of the loop. After he grew up, he and Roy always fought, so he
avoided him. It was easy to avoid his parents after he married Sheryl, though
his mother always wanted to visit her grandson after he arrived. Roy had always
been an enigma to him and he assumed it would always be that way.

That all changed when Steven asked
Roy to help him with the knockings in his house that were keeping him up at
night. He learned that there was much more to Roy than he imagined, and as they
fought to rid Steven’s house of ghosts they formed a new bond. Roy could be cranky
and argumentative but Steven figured out how to deal with it rather than make
it worse. And now he wanted to learn as much as he could from Roy. Roy said
that Steven had the gift too, perhaps even stronger than Roy. It opened a whole
new dimension in his life.

He slipped into the flow, and let
himself drift up above the manor, looking down on it as he and Roy had done
earlier in the trance. There was Roy, still reading his book at a table. Steven
looked for the ghosts. He couldn’t see them with the clarity that Roy had shown
him in the trance, but he could still detect they were there. The ones
wandering the yards and the adjacent meadow were easier to see.
Wow
, he
thought.
There are so many of them, far more than the ghost book related.
He counted at least two dozen outside.
Why are they all here?

The counting was making him
drowsy. He slipped out of the flow, back in his bed. Once the pain subsided, he
fell asleep and dreamed of the ghost next door.

-

“How did you sleep?” Pete asked,
filling Roy’s cup of coffee at the same table they had eaten dinner at the
night before.

“Not bad,” Roy lied.

From Roy’s tone, Pete knew that
Roy was not being honest. He looked at Steven for clarification.

“You know,” Steven told him,
“first night in a new bed, it’s always difficult.”

“Yeah, I know how that goes,” said
Pete.

Steven didn’t feel the need to
relate the nightmares he had. Pete already seemed aware of the drain the place
had on people. He felt sorry for Pete and didn’t want to rub it in.

“Actually, it was awful,” Roy
corrected himself. “But part of that is my fault. I was up half the night.
Steven and I did some work.”

Pete looked up at Roy as though he
wasn’t quite ready for the news. Maybe he only half believed that Roy could
help, and coming to terms with some results from Roy’s work might be more
frightening than what he already knew. Pete glanced into the doorway that led
to the kitchen, checking for Sarah.

“You don’t want her to hear this?”
Steven asked.

“No, I’d rather not,” Pete said.
“She’s already skeptical, I’m afraid this would just set her off.”

“Is she out of earshot now?”
Steven asked.

“I think so,” Pete replied.

“I don’t give a shit about that,
Pete,” Roy said. “Sorry, but I don’t. You’ve got one hell of a haunted place
here, but if she wants to kick us out, no problem, we’ll go. I’m not gonna have
my hands tied. You were the one who conveniently forgot to mention the virus to
me before we drove down.”

“No, no,” Pete protested, “it’s
not like that, Roy, it really isn’t. I’m just trying to keep things smooth, avoid
any unnecessary confrontations. I want to hear what you found out. Go ahead,
please, tell me.”

“Well,” Roy continued, “like I
said, we did some work last night. We made contact with two of them, learned a
little about what to do next.”

“Which is what?” Pete said, almost
in a whisper.

“We’ll need access to the
basement,” Roy replied.

“Sure, no problem,” Pete said, “I
can take you down there right after breakfast.” Pete looked worried. “What’s in
the basement?”

“Don’t know yet,” Roy replied,
“it’s just the next step. There’s a lot going on here, Pete. A lot I haven’t
figured out yet. I’m still gathering information.”

“And what information might that
be?” asked Sarah, walking into the room with a plate of toast, which she sat in
the middle of the table.

“I’m communicating with ghosts,”
Roy told her. Pete looked frozen, wondering how Sarah would respond.

“Well, isn’t that interesting,”
Sarah said smugly. “Please do enlighten us about the spirits and spooks. Are
they telling you anything?”

“They’re giving us some things we
can check out,” Steven said, jumping in. “Hopefully we can learn more about
what’s going on.”

Sarah turned to Steven. “Oh, so
you’re talking to them, too?”

“Yes,” Steven replied, a little
embarrassed but not willing to lie to her. “I am. At least, I watched Roy talk
to them.”

“Oh,” she said sarcastically, “just
watched. I see.”

“What’s the strangest thing you’ve
seen here?” Roy asked her.

“I’ve never seen anything strange
here,” she replied.

“Now, that’s not quite true
Sarah,” said Pete.

“It’s completely true,” she said.

“No, remember that once,” Pete
said, “I found you in the north wing scared to death. You thought you heard
voices.”

“It was my imagination,” she
protested.

“Here we go,” Roy said.

“But at the time,” Pete said, “I
recall you insisted I check and be sure. You were terrified.”

“It might have been Mr.
Dennington,” Steven offered. “He roams the north wing hallway at night.”

Pete and Sarah placed their forks
back onto their plates simultaneously. Pete looked at him, delighted. Sarah
looked at him with pity.

“At least,” Steven continued, “he
did last night.”

“Really?” Pete asked.

“He was one we made contact with,”
Steven said. If Roy wasn’t going to fill them in, he would.

“And what did he tell you?” Pete
asked.

“We need to check the basement,”
Roy said.

“Do you actually believe this?”
Sarah asked Steven.

“Yeah, I do,” Steven replied. “I
saw him. In the hallway.”

Sarah studied him, looking for
signs of dishonesty or any crack of incredulity. He stared right back at her,
almost a dare. After a moment she looked down at her plate of food.

“Well, great,” she said, “so
there’s a ghost in the hallway. I suppose you two can get rid of it, and we’ll
be done with this crap.”

“Not just one,” Roy told her.
“Hundreds. We both saw hundreds of them, in the house, in the yard, everywhere.
It was like an anthill of ghosts.”

Pete spilled his coffee and set
his cup back on the table. Sarah cleared her throat and stood, grabbing her
plate. As she turned to leave, she said to Pete, “I’ve had enough. You better
not be paying them anything. I swear to God, if you’re paying them we’re going
to have a problem.”

“Sarah!” Pete said, rising.

“There’s only one problem,” Roy
said. “It’s not us, and it’s not the ghosts. It’s something else.”

Pete turned to him, bracing
himself for even more news. He clearly appeared at his limit. Everyone paused,
waiting for Roy to explain.

“He’s right,” Steven offered. “The
ghosts have been here for a long time, or most of them have. That’s not the
issue. There’s something else going on.”

Sarah returned her plate to the
table and sat down. Steven turned to look at Roy, unsure if he should continue,
if he should tell them about the ‘invasion’ Dennington had mentioned. Roy shook
his head no, and Steven took the hint.

Sarah sighed, and held her
forehead with her hand. “Listen, I’m sorry to both of you. You’re guests here,
and you don’t deserve the way I’ve acted toward you. My father values your
opinion. I don’t want to stand in the way of that. But you have to see my side
of this. If we have a virus here, it needs to be eradicated. If it’s not a
virus, we need to know what it is so we can rectify it and move on. There’s
nothing I can do about ghosts.”