Nightmare (27 page)

MARCH 18TH

I had to wait a full week and a half for an appointment with my
doctor, only to be greeted by a med student when I was taken
into the exam room.

The student doctor-and I'm not kidding, he was younger
than Doogie-asked me a full set of questions about the trouble
I was having with my heart. He read them off of a multi-page list
on a clipboard while I repeatedly said no to increasingly personal
questions about my family history, my sexual history, and my
use of alcohol and drugs.

He listened to my heart with his stethoscope, which had teddy
bears on the fabric cover-I'm just saying-and made some further notes on his clipboard before excusing himself and promising
me that Dr. Hudson would be with me shortly.

Which of course was doctor-speak for You mightspeak to another
human being in about an hour, ifyou're lucky.

I wasn't lucky, and it was actually an hour and a half before
Dr. Hudson entered. She apologized for the delay and made some
glib comments about her student's examination of me, and then
informed me she was ordering a number of tests.

A full day of tests later-including a visit to the hospital for
several of them-and I sat waiting in a different exam room for
Dr. Hudson to enter and give me the news. By now, I was all set
to hear that the diagnosis was dreadful. It was something my
pragmatist father had taught me when I was young: Hope for the
best, but prepare for the worst.

Only ten minutes passed between the time the nurse left me
alone in the examination room and when Dr. Hudson entered.

"Well, Maia . . ." she began, taking a seat on a round stool.
Two of her students filed in behind her and closed the door,
standing at attention and observing closely. "It looks like you're
suffering from panic attacks."

"What?"

I must've misheard her. I didn't panic.

She nodded. "This is good news, Maia. It's very treatable."

"But ... how?" I was still struggling to understand. "What
brought this on?"

Dr. Hudson gave a little shrug. "Panic attacks can be caused by
all sorts of things-reaction to another drug or withdrawal from
one. Heavy drinking. Most often it's hereditary. But sometimes
it can be triggered experientially, and based on what you told
me, I'm inclined to think that's the case for you. Your recent ... extracurricular activities ... you told me you've been undertaking are going to have to stop. Any experience terrifying enough
to cause a panic attack like this most recent one you had could,
in extreme circumstances, cause an arrhythmia," she said. Then
she added, "That's a heart attack."

"I know what arrhythmia is. . . ." My head was spinning. It
was like someone had just told me that I was really half Nigerian
instead of half Mexican. "I still don't understand. I'm not afraid
of the paranormal. I never have been."

"It's not a matter of choice, Maia," Dr. Hudson said in her
most condescendingly soothing tone. "Your body is having a very
harsh stimulus-driven physical reaction that you really have no
control over."

I almost felt angry-angry at myself and my own body for
betraying me. How could this be happening?

"So how do we treat it?" I asked.

"Well, I'm going to give you some reading material to look
over, as we find that equipping yourself with knowledge is the
best preparation. And I'm going to prescribe an antidepressant
for you, a newer one with antianxiety properties that we've found
to be very effective. It's low impact on your system otherwise,
and that's the kind of treatment we like. I'm also going to give
you some Valium, but I need to stress that it is only to be used
during an extreme attack, to prevent a full-on arrhythmia. It's
not to be used otherwise, as it's highly addictive.

"Lastly," she said, "I have to insist-you must avoid situations
that produce the kind of stimulus that could trigger a panic
attack."

It was about a week later when Jordin rang me up and asked
me to come by her condo downtown. She said she had finally
finished reviewing all of the photographic, video, and audio footage we'd collected in our "tour" of the South, and she wanted
me to see what she'd found. She sounded excited, so I promised
to stop by after my last class of the day.

I'd been taking my new antianxiety medication for almost a
week now, and felt like I was starting to benefit from its effects.
I hadn't had a single panic attack since we'd returned to New
York, which was pretty encouraging, though I was nonplussed
to realize that I only experienced these attacks when Jordin and
I were investigating. It was possible that the one thing in all the
world that triggered a panic attack in me was the one thing that
shouldn't bother me in the slightest: the paranormal.

On the other hand, if the paranormal was my trigger, then
that was good news for my career plans. Cops and detectives deal
with crimes committed by the living, which apparently posed no
medical issues for me.

I had never been to Jordin's condo before, or even her dorm
room for that matter. I found it surprisingly spartan. It was huge,
don't get me wrong, the kind of open space only someone as
wealthy as Jordin could enjoy. It had modern furniture and a few
art pieces-but very little personality. Cold, unwelcoming, even
sterile, it made me think of a mausoleum.

This place wasn't really hers. It couldn't have been. She had to
have bought it furnished, sight unseen. That must've been it.

I wondered if she and Derek planned to live here after they
were married. She'd introduced me to him briefly after we got
back from our week-long trip, and I couldn't picture him in these
surroundings at all.

Jordin welcomed me in very excitedly, and ushered me quickly
to a large desk she'd placed in an otherwise unused room. It
had been thoroughly outfitted with the most modern computer
equipment money could buy and three huge side-by-side monitors, along with all of Jordin's recorders and other investigative
tools.

She sat down behind the desk and started by playing some
EVPs for me. The first few were garbled and indecipherable. She
pouted when I said as much, trying to convince me that she
could understand what was being said. But I didn't hear anything
resembling a human voice.

Thankfully, she was just getting warmed up.

"Remember the gazebo at the Myrtles?" she said, cuing up
a new audio file on her computer. "You said a soldier was seen
there sometimes."

"Of course."

She clicked Play, and out of the computer's speakers came
the loud hissing sound of static, followed byjordin's own voice
shouting, "Grab your gun and fall in!" In the silence after that,
a faint male voice could be heard saying, "Leave me alone."

"Not bad," I said.

She played several more for me, including one particularly
chilling recording from St. Louis Cemetery of a voice whispering that we should "lay down and sleep." I rubbed the goose
bumps away from my arms after hearing it. Whatever had said
it, it wasn't a friendly voice, and neither of us believed that it was
all that concerned with us getting rest. And of course there was
the unsettling one she'd caught at the Myrtles in the room with
the painting, where a male voice had declared its preference for the blond one. Based on the face she made when she replayed it,
it hadn't gotten any easier for her to listen to.

Next Jordin turned to her only still photo. She had the clear
outline of a male figure from somewhere far belowdecks within
the battleship North Carolina. It was impossible to forget the dark
apparition she'd chased down there alone for over an hour while
I tried to crawl up to the main deck, fearing that I was having
heart failure.

It was an impressive photograph, I couldn't deny it. It was
rather dark, but the distinct shape of a human-type form was
visible standing in the middle of a corridor. You could almost
make out its apparel, but the image was just too dark to perceive
that level of detail. I knew and she knew that this was a picture
of a genuine haunting, but a skeptic would easily dismiss it as a
staged photograph using a very much alive stand-in.

We moved on to video, and this was where she had found
the best stuff. First she replayed the video from the Myrtles for
me, proving that there was a slight variation in the expression
on the face of the painting in that room. Again, a cynic would
say it was a trick of the light or something, because the change
was subtle. But I knew what I saw.

Jordin had also managed to catch some video of the shadow
person moving through St. Louis Cemetery, but it was a fleeting
shot, and hardly conclusive. She showed me again the video of the
face she'd seen peeking at us at the cemetery, and I have to admit,
it still creeped me out. Whatever it was, it wasn't human-not
even a deceased human. We also reviewed the thermal imager's
recordings from the cemetery, which caught the shadow person a
few times, but it was nothing a skeptic would accept as ironclad.
She had a few other bits: some strange sounds caught on video, a door that closed itself, a picture frame on a tabletop that seemed
to be pushed over facedown. As paranormal investigative evidence
goes, it was exceptional stuff.

But her last find was the most striking. It was from a stationary video we'd set up in a main corridor of the North Carolina. I
watched in astonishment as a partially closed door some twenty
feet down the hall from the camera suddenly came to life, shifted
off of its hinges, and seemed to walk sideways out of the frame.
One second it was part of a hatch, the next it had tilted to one side
and for all the world moved like something that took a step.

"That's unreal," I commented.

Jordin nodded.

"That's one of the best pieces of evidence I've ever seen, Jordin. Seriously, even my parents would be jealous over that one.
You've done a fantastic job, with all of this."

I expected her to be thrilled-I wasn't exactly known for offering praise, after all-but she had an odd look on her face.

"How does it feel to have captured real evidence of the paranormal?" I asked, trying to boost her enthusiasm.

Jordin turned in her seat to face me and smiled, but there was
a hesitation about her reaction. "Good. Really good."

I knew what was wrong, though I didn't know what it
meant. "Even with all this ... you're no closer to contacting
your parents."

She looked over my shoulder at nothing, registering a sad,
distant expression. "I've proven that the paranormal is real, to
my satisfaction. I don't expect any of this would hold up in court,
but after all I've seen and done ... I know it's real. But that's all
I know. I have no idea how to reach out to my parents, or even
if I can."

I sighed. "Didn't you say your parents were Christians?"

She turned to me slowly and nodded.

"Then ... don't you believe they're in heaven?" I couldn't help
frowning, because Jordin once again defied my understanding.
"I mean, I'm not an expert or anything, but as beliefs go, that's a
pretty universal one for Christians. If you're a believer, then when
you die, you go to heaven. Right? Don't you believe that, too?"