Transmission: A Supernatural Thriller (12 page)

But then, what had been that talk of it's being an unhallowed space? Of hearing noises inside this room that no one had supposedly entered in the last decade?

The woman disappeared down the stairs and Reggie was left to his own devices at the threshold to Agnes Pasztor's former quarters. Steeling his nerves, he turned the knob and gave the door a push. As he did so, something in the back of his mind begged him away from the spot.

He felt himself on the verge of a great and terrible discovery.

EIGHTEEN

The empty energy drink cans clattered to the floor as Dylan shifted his laptop to the other side of his desk. His mouth felt like cotton; all day he'd been snacking on salty foods and drinking only highly caffeinated beverages. His bladder felt close to the breaking point but he didn't want to get up. The articles he'd stumbled upon were just too damn interesting to take a piss break now.

He scrolled, his wrist a little sore from the repetitive motions, and loosed a burp. Kenji was asleep in his bed, buried beneath a mass of covers so that only a few sprigs of black hair were visible beneath. Quietly, so as not to wake his roommate, he read the title to the article.

“Electronic Voice Phenomena: Listening to the Dead.”

His descent down the rabbit hole of paranormal phenomena had been gradual. He'd been looking for something to watch on Netflix for the better part of the day and had stumbled upon an old ghost hunting program. Watching a few episodes while sucking down Red Bull, he'd decided to dig a little deeper, figure out whether all of these recordings the ghost hunters had made were real or fake. This had led him to websites dedicated to electronic voice phenomena and white noise anomalies. For the past two hours he'd been riveted, going from site to site, article to article, learning about all kinds of different paranormal manifestations in recorded media. A lot of what he found was rather suspect, sometimes even humorous, but now and then he'd stumble upon a supposed spirit recording that carried with it something of sincerity. Hunched over his laptop with his headphones on, he'd gotten chills listening to messages captured on tape. The speakers were a mystery, more often than not, and he couldn't rule out the possibility that they were all fakes. Aside from the obvious forgeries where charlatans conversed with dead Presidents and celebrities however, the rest seemed somehow authentic to him. At the very least, he was open to the possibility that the voices of the dead could indeed be captured on tape.

His reading into EVPs and white noise led him deeper still. Photographers the world over had dabbled in spirit photography, capturing a wide range of images that were reputed to feature hints of the paranormal. Some were faked-- they simply had to be-- but others, which pictured strange blobs of light or curious shadows, appeared real to him. There were examples of spirits being caught on video cameras, too; Dylan watched more than his fair share of spirit footage.

All of this led him to evaluate the strange case of Agnes Pasztor in a new light. Since their return from the shack more than a week ago, Dylan hadn't thought about the whole thing too much. Frankly, he couldn't bear to. Even if he wrote off the queer sights through the shack's window that night as a nightmare, to think too deeply on the matter of the tape, of Agnes' voice, was to risk a sleepless night. Now, however, that he'd done a few hours of reading on the subject of paranormal phenomena in recorded media, he fancied himself an expert on the matter. Coming at it from a more scientific angle put a fresh face on the matter and cut down on the irrational fear the ordeal had inspired in him.

Creeping out of the room and down the hall, Dylan made his way into the communal bathroom. The air was icy within as he walked past the stalls to the first urinal. When classes were in session it wasn't uncommon to find guys passed out in there, or heaving in the sinks. Now, he was completely alone. Aside from himself, Kenji and Mike, no one had been in this bathroom for quite a while. It looked rather clean; a stark contrast to its usual messiness. His steps echoed and the hair on his arms stood on end. When was the last time he'd felt this isolated and alone?

He tried not to think about it and simply loosed the night's drinks into the urinal with a sigh.

Thinking back upon his reading, he wondered whether Agnes Pasztor was not a ghost. Her appearance in the documentary, along with her presence in the song Kenji had downloaded, could conceivably be considered two distinct paranormal events. If spirits were energy, like so many paranormal researchers insisted, then it stood to reason that Agnes' energies could interfere with recording equipment and end up captured on the finished products.

It was a pretty threadbare hypothesis, but the similarities between the recordings of Agnes and the EVPs he'd been listening to were uncanny.

Zipping up, Dylan strolled out of the bathroom and continued down the hall back to his room. As he walked he was painfully aware once again of just how empty the dormitory was. Or, was it? All night he'd been reading up on the supernatural. Some people believed that the dead were present at all times, and that their voices could sometimes be pulled out of thin air, as it were, and recorded. A terrible shudder coursed through him at the thought and he quickened his pace. At that moment, despite the lack of any visible presence, he felt like the silent hallway was teeming with furtive life.

When he returned to the room, he found Kenji sitting up in bed, wiping at his eyes. “How long have I been out?” he asked, pawing at his phone.

“A while,” replied Dylan, shutting the door. He made his way to the desk and plopped down into his chair, stretching. “I've been doing some reading,” he said, pointing to the laptop. “About EVPs and stuff.”

“EVPs?” Kenji drew in a deep sigh and let his legs dangle over the edge of the bed. His black hair was a mess, with several cowlicks sticking out in wild directions. “You still talking about that ghost hunter crap?”

Dylan scoffed. “Look, just because you don't think it's real doesn't mean there isn't something to it. I mean, look at what we found-- that recording of Agnes?” His voice trailed off a little as he went on. “What if it were, like, the same kind of thing?”

Kenji shifted at the mention of the woman's name and looked up uncomfortably. It'd been a while since he'd thought about the trip to the shack, the mysterious recordings of Agnes Pasztor. The two of them had successfully avoided any deeper involvement in the matter and had even begun to put it out of their minds completely. This conversation was evidently dragging him back to the shack, to the unease their discoveries had dredged up. The details they'd sought to forget were highlighted now in harsh focus. “What are you talking about?” asked Kenji, shaking his head. “That's ridiculous.”

“Not really,” insisted Dylan. “Think about it. If this Agnes is, you know, a ghost, then this all makes a lot more sense. EVPs have been captured for a long time now, and I think some of them may be genuine. The dead live on as energy, and when that energy interferes with recording equipment, or...” He paused, looking for the right words. He brought a can of Red Bull to his lips but found it empty. “Let's say that a dead person-- a spirit-- wants to reach out to the living. How could a disembodied soul do that without a conduit? They'd need some kind of outlet to make themselves heard, and I think that media... sound waves, recording equipment, things like that, would work. If the souls of the dead are energy, then they should be able to interfere with our recordings. Thus, Agnes wanted to reach out, tell the world something. And she managed to do so through audio and video.” Crossing his legs, Dylan grinned widely, pleased with himself.

Throwing a piece of gum in his mouth, Kenji worked over the notion for a short while. Arms crossed, he eventually shrugged. “Seems far-fetched. I mean, to begin with, this isn't just some isolated photo or grainy recording. We have Agnes appearing in two very different pieces of media that come from two distinct content creators. I mean, unless the members of Jackal Priest secretly worked on a World War Two documentary.” Dylan was about to protest his skepticism, but Kenji continued before he could get a word in. “What seems more likely to me, is that this was an intentional implantation of information by a living person. Agnes inserted herself into two pieces of media that would be heard and seen by others because she wanted to spread a message. That message was a set of coordinates. Ten years ago, she disappeared, and the last traces we have of her are these weird recordings. She hasn't been seen since. I wonder what happened to her. When you look at this as a whole, there's something undeniably suspicious about it. Agnes disappears ten years ago, but has the foresight to leave behind a cryptic message. I not only wonder
what
happened to her, but whether she knew it was going to happen in advance. Know what I mean? If something happened to Agnes, did she know it was coming? That's the only thing that makes sense to me, otherwise why would she go through the trouble of inserting her message in those recordings? Something like that would take planning, foresight...”

Dylan massaged his jaw. “Not necessarily. What if I'm right and she's a spirit reaching out from the other side? Maybe it was a cry for help. Just think: something bad happens to her. She gets killed or whatever. Murdered, right? In death, her spirit reaches out and she sends out an SOS. Some clue about what happened to her in the hopes that her killer will be found. Maybe that shack belongs to the person who killed her!” He took off his glasses and polished the lenses with his shirt.

Kenji chortled. “Dude, shut the hell up. You're out of control. This is all so ludicrous I don't even know where to start. If your theories are dependent on the existence of the supernatural then they're crap theories. I expected better out of you, what with your being a chemistry major and all. This is hardly scientific.”

“Whatever,” said Dylan, turning back to his computer and scrolling around. “You're just being dense. This is clearly some paranormal shit, man. Either that, or...” His gaze narrowed as he clicked through a number of pages.

“What now?”

Dylan skimmed a new article. He was on a site dedicated to conspiracy theories, a large forum whose membership was constantly posting new threads and articles. Even at this hour things were bustling. Among the newest threads in the EVP section was a discussion on what were called “numbers stations”. This was the first Dylan had read of them, but as he skimmed he gave Kenji a rundown. “Ever hear of a numbers station? It's a radio station that just dishes out jumbles of letters and numbers. No one knows what they're for or who runs them. Says here, that... maybe they're a government project. Or that secret societies use them to transmit information to their followers. Think it might be something like that? Think that Agnes was a secret society member wrapped up in some classified project? Like, maybe the Illuminati were trying to spread some message through the media and we were just the ones who picked up on it? Maybe they held meetings out at that shack, and...” He shut the laptop and massaged his eyes. “Ah, fuck it. I'm going to bed,” he declared.

NINETEEN

The air that met his nostrils was heavy with more than dust. It was cold, filthy air, reaching out to him in waves as though generated by the movement of some unseen thing within the room. Stepping into the small space however, it became obvious that there was no one inside, and further, that no one had been in there for many, many years.

The dust on the floors was unbroken. The woman's claim that the house's occupants knew better than to enter this room rang true. There was a window to his right, next to a neatly-made bed weighed down by a blanket of dust. A dresser sat at the foot of this bed, and the opposite wall featured a medium-sized bookcase that still had a couple of volumes in it. Crouching beneath the edge of the bed like some beast lying in wait was a small wooden trunk. These objects, and a small, woven rug at the room's center besides, were all the room had to offer. There was no closet, no frivolous furnishings or anything else to be seen in the inkiness.

Reggie closed the door behind him and immediately regretted doing so, distinctly feeling as though he'd just locked himself in an enclosure with a lion. Holding a hand up to his nose to block out some of the dust that circulated through the air, he took a couple of nervous steps inside. The floors beneath his feet squealed, much unaccustomed to foot traffic. This space had all the allure of a dim funeral parlor and was every bit as unsettling to him, but still he felt pulled deeper in. Try as he might, Reggie couldn't simply turn around and leave. He was supposed to be here, had visited this house for a reason. As much as he would have liked to deny it, something had been set in motion the minute he'd decided to look into the footage of Agnes Pasztor. Walking through her deserted room was simply the most recent development in this investigation of his, and that he was slowly, blindly ambling to a yet unseen end-point was never in doubt.

Standing in the center of the room, the door and the hallway that would lead him to freedom seemed so very far. He canvassed his surroundings slowly, cautiously, reverently, half-afraid that the room's occupant, missing for ten years now, might barge in at any moment and accost him. No one came, however. From other rooms in the upstairs Reggie could make out hushed murmurings and doubtful shuffling, but nothing more.

Scanning the bed, Reggie realized that Agnes Pasztor had probably made it herself. A tremor seized his hand as he reached down and touched the dusty bedspread. One day, about ten years ago, Agnes had taken great care in making this bed. Then she'd been shunned from the house by the other tenants. Not long after that, she'd disappeared without a trace, but not before appearing in two recordings with a cryptic message to share.

Once, Reggie had watched a television show about serial killers and their upbringings. During this program, the host had toured the childhood homes of numerous killers. Their belongings, bedrooms and families were featured, and he remembered feeling terribly uneasy as he watched. It wasn't every day that one got such a glimpse into the private lives of others, and it was even rarer to learn about the day-to-day lives of infamous killers.