2 A Haunting In Oregon (4 page)

“But don’t you see,” Pete said to
Sarah, “they can. Roy knows what he’s doing. I need you to give them a chance.”

Sarah placed her hands on either
side of her plate. “You’re not going to change my mind on this,” she said. “I
don’t believe in spooks and spirits, and I’m not going to start. But I won’t
stand in your way. If you want to continue on with this charade, please
proceed, but just leave me out of it.”

“Well, that’s good enough,” Steven
said. “We can work with that.”

Sarah stood and took her plate
with her as she left the room.

-

Pete unlocked a large heavy door
and swung it open, revealing a staircase leading down. He flipped a light
switch and they heard the pop of a series of fluorescent lights turning on down
below. “Now this is quite interesting down here. Follow me,” he said and
descended the wooden stairs.

The basement was extensive. It was
essentially a long series of rooms that opened into each other. Parts of it
were finished, others were not. As they passed from room to room it seemed as
if the basement mirrored the expansion of upstairs but without any attempt to
harmonize the styles of the old and new areas.

“Do people come down here much?”
Steven asked.

“No, usually just me,” Pete said.
“I have a little workshop over there, and the furnaces and water heaters are
all down here. Laundry is done upstairs, so maids never come down here. We use
this place for storage – you can see there’s more than enough room. Much of it
is empty.”

Roy began moving through the
various rooms of the basement, marking them out in his mind. “Do you have a
chair down here I can use?” he asked Pete. “And a flashlight?”

“Sure, right over here,” Pete
said, going into his workshop to retrieve them. He sat the chair in front of
Roy and handed the flashlight to Steven.

“Pete,” Roy said, “you’re welcome
to say if you want. I’m going to try and contact some of the ghosts that haunt
this room. It can get a little strange and if you’re at all squeamish it would
be better if you went back upstairs and didn’t watch.”

Pete seemed excited at the
opportunity, but then he hesitated as he furrowed his brow. “Is it dangerous?”
he asked.

“It can be,” Steven offered. “I
stay awake while Roy goes into a trance. I watch him to be sure he’s safe. He
communicates while he’s in the trance. Once he comes out of it we’ll learn if he
was successful. But I’ve seen some bizarre things while he’s in the trance. You
can’t speak or shout out while it’s going on.”

Pete seemed to be going through a
pros and cons list in his head. “If I go back upstairs will you tell me what
happened after you’re done?” Pete asked.

“Absolutely,” Roy said, sitting in
the chair.

“Then,” Pete said, relieved, “I’ll
leave you to it with no interruptions from me and wait for you to come up.”

“Would you turn out the light on
your way up?” Steven asked.

“Sure,” Pete said and turned to
leave. Steven wrapped the blindfold around Roy, and after a moment the light
clicked off.

Twenty minutes passed.
Occasionally Steven heard a footstep overhead, but most of the time it was
extremely quiet and still.
He must have the furnaces turned off,
Steven
thought. When he did hear a sound, it was very different than upstairs. The
multitude of connected rooms amplified some sounds while dampening others.

He let his eyes slowly adjust to
the darkness of the basement. There were no windows, so it was extremely dark.
Little lights from devices began to appear – the red glow of a battery
recharger in the next room, the flicker of the pilot light under a nearby water
heater. They cast just enough light that after several minutes he could make
out the outline of Roy sitting in the chair just a few feet away.

As Roy’s head started to lower to
his chest, Steven entered the flow so that he would have a better view of what
was going on around them. The room was suddenly much brighter. Steven turned to
scan the room and was startled by a large man stumbling toward him. He was
shirtless, and it looked as though pieces of his body had been hacked with a
knife or large blade. His eyes were glazed over, and his mouth hung open. His
teeth were rotten and green. Steven moved out of the way as the man passed by
him. The man had defecated in his pants, and was streaming a trail of blood,
feces and urine behind him. He stumbled another ten feet and then passed
through a wall, out of sight.

Steven turned to look at Roy. He
was talking to a young girl, maybe nine or ten years old. She had chains on her
wrists and ankles that descended into the cement floor, secured somewhere
beyond it, but she could clearly move around. Her dress looked like something
from the 1960’s, a short skirt and a striped top, and her hair was cut into a
bob. Every now and again one of her chains would tighten, and she would become
irritated and tug on it until it loosened up.

The large man emerged from the
wall he had disappeared behind. This time he was dragging an axe behind him. He
seemed to be walking directly at Steven. Steven knew that he was just walking a
pattern that he endlessly walked, but the sight of it coming directly at him
unnerved him greatly. He moved several paces to the right assuming the man
would continue along his original trajectory, but the man changed direction to
point directly at him again. Now he was concerned. Roy was seated about five
feet away. He didn’t want to disrupt Roy in his trance, and Roy didn’t appear
in danger, but the large man was now several paces from Steven and he was
beginning to wonder how he was going to avoid him. He drifted several steps
back to the left, and the man changed direction again. Steven was convinced
that he was aware of him, and targeting him. He was now within a couple steps.
The large man’s glazed eyes cleared, and Steven saw the pupils focus on him.
Then he raised the axe, and smiled, exposing his rotten teeth.

Scared and not knowing exactly what
to do, Steven exited the flow, and as he felt the pain rise from his neck and
into his scalp, he felt a breeze blow against his face and then swirl around
his back, as though something had passed around or through him. Roy was still
seated, his head thrown back. Steven decided to stay out of the flow for now.
Not seeing the disturbing images the basement contained was fine with him.

After another five minutes, Roy
seemed to straighten up and reached up to remove the blindfold. Steven clicked
the flashlight on, shining it on the floor between them. He couldn’t resist
looking at the wall where the ax man had disappeared and then reemerged.

“I think we’d better go talk to
Pete,” Roy said standing up, “and then go back to our rooms and try to sleep. We’ve
got more work to do and we’re going to be up all night.”

They walked back through several
rooms and finally found the staircase. Steven followed Roy shining the light
ahead for him. He was always a little worried about Roy right after he emerged
from trances. Several times in the past he had been lightheaded and lost his
balance. Once, he passed out. Roy seemed strong and determined though, and
marched up the staircase without any hesitation.

Pete met them at the door, clearly
excited to hear about the results. “How did it go?”

“Where can we talk,” Roy said to
him, “privately?”

Pete led them down a hallway that
made several turns. It finally ended at a door that Pete unlocked with his key,
and he held the door open for them to enter. Steven saw that it was a small
room that could be used for a conference or meeting, containing three long
tables, twenty or so chairs, and a podium with a screen behind it. “We’ll be
fine here,” Pete said, grabbing a chair. “Sarah is on the other side of the
manor.”

Roy and Steven sat. Steven was as
anxious to hear what Roy had to say as Pete was.

“You’ve got an anomaly here,
Pete.”

“An anomaly?” Pete asked. “What
does that mean?”

“There’s an event that happens
every night in that basement,” Roy replied. “It’s unusual; it’s something I’ve
not seen before.”

“Ghosts?” asked Pete.

“No, not ghosts,” Roy said. “Well,
yes, there’s ghosts. You’ve got some real winners down there, let me tell you.”
Steven thought of the ax man – maybe Roy had seen him too. “The anomaly is
something that the ghosts are drawn to. It’s why you have so goddamn many of
them.”

Pete was enthralled by Roy’s
story. “What is it?” he asked breathlessly.

“I don’t know yet, but the ghosts
tell me that’s where all the trouble is coming from. It occurs for about twenty
minutes every night. When it does, I suspect it acts like a beacon to every
ghost for miles in all directions. They’re slowly drawn to it.”

“Why would they be drawn to it?”
Pete asked, becoming alarmed.

“Don’t know. They might feel it
holds a solution for them. Or maybe they just like how it feels. But like a
moth and a lightbulb, there’s nothing they can do with it when they get here.
They just hover around it.”

Pete narrowed his eyes and lowered
his voice. “Is it what’s causing the deaths?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Roy said. “But
we’ve got to figure out what it is and why it’s here. I know the ghosts aren’t
happy about it.”

“I thought you said they were
drawn to it? They don’t like it once they get here?” Steven asked.

“I’m guessing most of the ghosts
here were drawn to this thing over many decades,” Roy said. “Based on the
number of ghosts we’ve seen I’d say it’s been attracting them for a hundred
years, probably more. I’m seeing some very old clothing if you know what I
mean. Something changed very recently, something that angers the ghosts who are
smart enough to pay attention to it.”

“Maybe in the last five years,
since the deaths started?” Steven asked.

“Could be,” Roy replied. “Ghosts
don’t keep track of time very well.”

“What can we do?” Pete said
nervously.

“You’re not going to do anything,
Pete, that’s why Steven and I are here,” Roy said. “We have an appointment back
down in the basement tonight, at 2 a.m.”

“An appointment?” Pete asked.

“Yes,” Roy replied. “I made an
arrangement with a little girl who killed her parents decades ago. She’s going
to help us.”

Pete’s eyes went wide.

“Don’t worry, Pete,” Roy said,
“She wants it dealt with as much as you do.”

Roy sat in the same chair he’d
used earlier in the day. Steven had wrapped the blindfold around his head once
more and stood about five feet from him with the flashlight.

“What time is it?” Roy asked.

“Ten to two,” Steven answered.

“Good,” Roy replied. “The little
girl said it would start right at two. I’m going into the trance. Don’t slip
into the flow with me. See what you can see staying out here. This is all about
observation. I can pick up what’s inside the River, you try to detect what you
can out here. We’ll put it all together after it’s done and see what we’ve got.”

 “Right,” Steven said, and turned
off his flashlight. He leaned against the wall in the room, and waited.

They didn’t have to wait long.
After a couple of minutes he felt a small vibration and humming sound coming
from the room next door. He walked slowly over to it, taking small steps, not
wanting to stumble over anything. When he reached the other room the sound was
louder. It was like the sound of a refrigerator turning on, only much lower in
frequency. As he approached it he could feel the vibration increase. It felt as
though something was lightly shaking his skin.

He wanted to jump in the River so
badly, to see what this thing might be. But he knew Roy was examining it too
and Roy might not feel the vibration or hear the sound. He had his own job to
do. He felt frustrated by the lack of light. He remained in the room and
watched for anything unusual, waiting.

He checked his watch; it had been
humming for almost ten minutes. It kept a steady rhythm. Steven sensed there
were huge amounts of energy around him, performing some purpose he wasn’t
allowed to know. He walked back and forth in the room, trying to sense its
dimensions, trying to feel when the energy increased and dissipated. In his
mind he formed a circle that was about ten feet across. He kept testing the
circle, wanting to ensure he had the right size to report back to Roy.

Suddenly it stopped. The vibration
and humming disappeared completely. He stopped walking, waiting to see if it
would come back. Instead he heard Roy standing. He flicked on his flashlight
and walked back into the adjoining room to see if Roy was all right.

“What was that?” Roy asked.

“I was hoping you knew!” Steven
replied. “I know it was about ten feet across, vibrating and humming in the other
room.”

“That’s where it started,” Roy
said. “But it continued up the stairs, like a snake.”

“If felt powerful,” Steven told
him, “as though there was a great deal of energy passing by me. When the
humming stopped the feeling was gone.”

“I have no idea what that was.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Let’ go back to our rooms,” Roy said. “Now
that we’ve experienced it, we might be able to glean something from the book.”

-

Back in their adjoining rooms in
the north wing, Roy slowly turned the pages of his book, looking for sections
that might explain what he just saw.

“It was like a tunnel,” Roy said.
“A private tunnel that had been carved out of the River. I couldn’t see into
it, no matter what I tried.” He flipped the pages, scanning rapidly.

“Mind if I look over your
shoulder?” Steven asked.

“No, go ahead,” Roy said. “My eyes
are tired anyway.”

Steven looked at the pages of the
book as Roy scanned them. Ninety percent of the writing seemed jumbled to him.
The words were in English, but they made no sense. A small number of sections
stood out to him; they dealt with things he had experienced while helping his
dad rid his house of ghosts. When he saw writing about transformation and
protection, he could understand the sentences because he had been exposed to
that before. But most of it was just a blur, everything running together,
making no sense at all.

After turning dozens of pages, Roy
turned a last one and said, “I don’t think I can keep my eyes open!”

“Wait – turn back a page,” Steven
said. Roy flipped the page back.

Steven scanned the page. “There –
‘passage’!”

Roy quickly read the section
Steven had identified. Steven picked up a few more words as he looked, but not
enough to understand much more. Roy, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying
what he was reading.

“What?” Steven asked. “Tell me.
What does it say?”

“It’s a passageway,” said Roy. “It
leads somewhere a long way from here. And it’s completely private.”

“No way to know what’s inside, or
where it leads?” Steven asked.

“Nope,” Roy said, reading. “That’s
one of its purposes, to protect the traveler inside from prying eyes.”

“How is it made? Does it say?”

Roy continued reading the page.
“It’s constructed by someone, it isn’t naturally occurring. And it takes a
shitload of power to do it. I can only think of a couple of people who could
pull this off.”

“You know other people who do this
kind of thing?” Steven asked, surprised.

Roy marked the page he was on, and
flipped to a section towards the front of the book. He showed it to Steven.

“It looks like a list of names,”
Steven said.

“It’s a directory,” Roy told him.
“When we meet someone, we record it. This goes back four generations, so
there’s a lot of names here.”

Steven glanced at the bottom of
the list, and he saw a name that gave him a chill: Michael. They had dealt with
Michael in Seattle; Roy felt he was not a threat anymore, but Steven wasn’t so
sure. He was even less sure now that he saw Roy had recorded Michael’s name in
the book.

“Some of these people,” Roy said,
“could create that thing. They have the ability and the experience. But I have
no idea which ones.”

“Seems like we’re at a dead end,”
Steven said.

“Not entirely,” Roy replied. “We
still have one more thing to check out. The end of the passageway.”

“What do you mean?” Steven asked.

“Remember,” Roy said, “when we
were downstairs, I told you it snaked upstairs? The tunnel ends somewhere.
That’s where we’ll catch whatever is passing through the tunnel, when it
emerges from it. Tomorrow night.”

“We’ll have to follow it from the
basement to wherever it ends?”

“Right,” Roy answered. “We’ll have
about twenty minutes to locate the end of it, and observe what comes and goes
before it shuts down and disappears.”

“Let me get this straight,” Steven
said. “The passageway that snakes up from the basement is like a private
tunnel, that keeps its occupants secret —”

“And protected!” Roy interjected.

“— and protected as they move
through it. It goes from somewhere in the house down to the basement. But where
does it go from there?”

“That’s the power of it,” Roy
said. “That’s why you felt the humming in that spot. That’s the point where the
tunnel acts as a portal. Once you pass through the basement, you wind up at the
origination of the portal.”

“And where is that?” Steven asked.

“I have no idea,” Roy answered.
“Let’s figure out what’s moving through it first and see where that leads us.”

-

The next morning at breakfast, Roy
filled Pete in on the overnight events. Pete sat enraptured as Roy recounted
the passageway in the basement and how they pieced together their next step.
Roy did not mention to Pete the time they spent studying his book – Steven
guessed he considered the book private, something for his and Steven’s eyes
only.

“It sounds like you’re making
progress!” Pete said. “I’m thrilled to hear it. Do you think you’ll have an
answer tonight?” he asked.

“Not sure,” Roy said. “This stuff
isn’t predictable. I think we’ll know more tonight. I don’t think we’re close
to an answer yet, though.”

“It’s just that, well, we have
guests coming tomorrow,” Pete said. “There will be people in some of the
rooms.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Roy
said. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet. It could be dangerous.”

“We need the revenue,” Pete said. “Sarah
would flip out if I asked her not to take reservations because of what you’re
working on. She’d have my head!”

“Can you make sure they’re in the
south wing at least?” Steven asked.

“Sure, I can do that,” Pete said.
“It’s only three rooms. The south wing can handle that easily.”

“Great,” Roy said. “And if we run into
them in the halls or at breakfast please don’t tell them what Steven and I are
doing here. We’re just sightseeing.”

“Sure, here to take in the beauty
of the place,” said Pete.

“Steven and I will have another
late night tonight so we’re likely to sleep though most of the day today.”

“No problem, I won’t disturb you,”
Pete said.

“No Sarah this morning?” Steven
asked.

“No, she’s not feeling well,” Pete
answered. “Spent most of the morning in the bathroom, poor thing.”

-

Steven tried to read the rest of
The
Ghosts of Mason Manor
but he found it slow going. Beyond the history of the
place, the stories were meant to titillate readers and give them a thrill. Having
seen what Steven had seen recently, the descriptions of moaning spirits and the
like bored him. He would rather be reading Roy’s book, but Roy was reading it
himself, searching for more on portals and private passageways. Bored, he had
walked the grounds of the manor, familiarizing himself with the various
sections and the outer buildings. The place was huge and the way it had been
expanded over the years was truly strange, with what must have been different
architects and clashing styles. After his survey he took a nap and rose just
before dinner.

Roy walked into his room through
the adjoining doors they had agreed to leave open.

“I may have a way to trace it,”
Roy said. “A signature. Whoever creates this portal is likely to leave a
signature. If I can detect it, we might be able to track down who is creating
it.”

“How will you do that?” Steven
asked. “What does a signature look like?”

“I don’t know for sure. It won’t
be on the outside of it, I’m sure of that. I’ll have to look for it at the end
of the tunnel, where I might be able to see the inside. Then I’ll use this,”
Roy said, producing a round mirror.

“Wait, did you pull that off the
wall in your bathroom?” Steven asked.

“Yes!” said Roy. “If there’s a
signature, it’ll only be visible indirectly. We’ll never see it staring at it
normally. I’ll use this once we reach the end of the tunnel to look into it and
see if I can detect a pattern.”

Steven frowned at Roy for ripping
his bathroom apart, but inside he smiled at this news. There was a good chance
that tonight’s surveillance would yield some answers that they could use to
shut down the portal. And just in time, with guest arriving the next day.

-

Precisely at five minutes to two
Steven and Roy turned off the flashlight in the basement and awaited the
opening of the passageway. Roy had decided to not go into a trance, feeling he
could detect the tunnel by just slipping into the flow. Since they would have
to navigate up the stairs and who knows where from there, Steven would remain
out of the River and help guide Roy through the house.

Steven waited, worried that the
humming might not come again. He wondered if it appeared each night at
precisely the same time. He imagined an anal retentive mastermind somewhere,
obsessed with creating the portal at the exact moment every night.

After several minutes of silence,
and just as Steven was beginning to fear that it would not return, the humming
arrived and Steven felt his skin crawl. Roy began to walk, and Steven walked
with him, turning the flashlight on and keeping it focused immediately in front
of Roy’s feet. Roy took small steps but there was an urgency to them. Roy’s
mind was in the River, and he was just mechanically moving his legs, trusting
Steven to make sure he didn’t walk into something or fall.

They reached the staircase and
slowly marched up it, Roy in the lead, Steven keeping his hand on Roy’s back,
and shining the flashlight down at their feet, carefully maneuvering each
stair.

At the top of the stairs, Roy
turned and moved down a hallway. Steven followed. They were moving in the
direction of the central rooms, where the dining room and kitchen were located.
They slowly passed through each, and Steven saw Roy turn down the corridor that
led to the south wing. They walked down the hallway until Roy came to a stop
near a door.

“You need to see this,” Roy said.
“Jump in.”

Steven entered the flow and
immediately saw the glowing tube proceeding back down the hallway behind them.
Roy was floating several feet away, further down the hall. He joined him.

What’s going on?
Steven thought.

Just watch,
Roy replied.

Nothing happened for a moment. He
kept his focus on the opening of the passageway, and after a few seconds he saw
a creature emerge. It moved like an oversize, lumbering dog. It had two large
eyes on the sides of its triangular head, and three stubby horns that stuck out
above the eyes and its central forehead. It passed out of the tunnel, walked a
short way down the hall, and passed through a wall into a room.

That’s Sarah’s room
, Roy
thought.

What do we do?
Steven
asked.

We watch what it does
, Roy
replied.

They both moved inside the room.

Sarah was sleeping in the bed; the
creature approached the foot of her bed and slowly pulled the bed covering down
until Sarah’s body was exposed. Steven saw her pale legs and felt guilty for
being in her room without her permission, seeing her exposed in this way. He
began to feel that he needed to stop the creature before it could hurt her.

Do not stop it,
Roy
thought.
We need to see what it’s going to do.