True Believer (19 page)

She pulled out one of the camcorders, slung it over her shoulder, and grabbed another one.

“Okay, Mr. Manly, which way?”

“That depends. Where do you think we should set up? Since you’ve seen the lights, maybe you have some ideas.”

She nodded in the direction of the magnolia tree, where she’d been heading when he’d first seen her in the cemetery.

“Over there,” she said. “That’s where you’ll see the lights.”

It was the spot directly in front of Riker’s Hill, though the hill was hidden in the fog.

“Do they always appear in the same spot?”

“I have no idea. But that’s where they were when I saw them.”

Over the next hour, as Lexie filmed him with one of the camcorders, Jeremy set everything up. He arranged the other three video recorders in a large triangular pattern, mounting them on tripods, attaching special filtering lenses to two of them, and adjusting the zoom until the entire area was overlapped. He tested the laser remotes, then began setting up the audio equipment. Four microphones were attached to nearby trees, and a fifth was placed near the center, which was where he’d set the electromagnetic and radiation detectors, as well as the central recorder.

As he was making sure everything worked properly, he heard Lexie calling out to him.

“Hey, how do I look?”

He turned and saw her wearing the night-vision goggles and looking something like a bug.

“Very sexy,” he said. “I think you’ve definitely found your style.”

“These things are neat. I can see everything out here.”

“Anything I should be worried about?”

“Aside from a couple of hungry cougars and bears, you seem to be alone.”

“Well, I’m almost done here. All I still have to do is spread some flour and unwind the thread.”

“Flour? Like baking flour?”

“It’s to make sure no one tampers with the equipment. The flour is so I can check for footprints, and the thread will let me know if anyone else approaches.”

“That’s very clever. But you know we’re alone out here, right?”

“You can never be certain,” he said.

“Oh, I’m certain. But you just do your thing, and I’ll keep the camera pointed in the right direction. You’re doing great, by the way.”

He laughed as he opened the bag of flour and began pouring, circling the cameras with a thin white layer. He did the same around the microphones and other equipment, then tied the thread to a branch and formed a large square around the whole area as if closing off a crime scene. He ran a second thread about two feet lower and then hung small bells on the thread. When he finally finished, he made his way back to Lexie.

“I didn’t know there was so much to do,” she said.

“I guess you’re developing a whole new level of respect for me, huh?”

“Not really. I was actually just trying to make conversation.”

He smiled before nodding toward the car. “I’m going to go hit the lights on the car. And hopefully, none of this will have been in vain.”

When he shut off the engine, the cemetery turned black and he waited for his eyes to adjust. Unfortunately, they didn’t, the cemetery proving to be darker than a cave. After feeling his way back to the gate like a blind spelunker, he stumbled on an exposed root just inside the entrance and nearly fell.

“Can I have my night-vision goggles?” he shouted.

“No,” he heard her respond. “Like I said, these things are neat. And besides, you’re doing fine.”

“But I can’t see anything.”

“You’re clear for the next few steps. Just walk forward.”

He moved forward slowly with his arms outstretched before stopping.

“Now what?”

“You’re in front of a crypt, so move to your left.” She sounded way too amused by this, Jeremy thought.

“You forgot to say ‘Simon says.’”

“Do you want my help or not?”

“I really want my goggles,” he almost pleaded.

“You’ll have to come and get them.”

“You could always come and get me instead.”

“I could, but I won’t. It’s much more fun to see you wandering around like a zombie. Now move to your left. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

The game proceeded this way until he finally found his way back to her side. As he took a seat, she slipped the goggles off, grinning.

“Here you go,” she said.

“Gee, thanks.”

“No problem. I’m glad I could help.”

For the next half hour or so, Lexie and Jeremy rehashed the events of the party. It was too dark for Jeremy to read Lexie’s face, but he liked how close she felt in the enveloping darkness.

Changing the topic of conversation, he said, “Tell me about the time that you saw the lights. I heard everyone else’s story tonight.”

Though her features were nothing but shadows, Jeremy had the impression that she was being drawn back in time to something she wasn’t sure she wanted to remember.

“I was eight years old,” she said, her voice soft. “For whatever reason, I’d started having nightmares about my parents. Doris kept their wedding picture on the wall, and that was the way they always looked in the dream: Mom in her wedding dress and Dad in his tuxedo. Only this time, they were trapped in their car after it had fallen in the river. It was like I was looking at them from outside the car, and I could see the panic and fear on both their faces as water slowly filled the car. And my mom would get this real sad expression on her face, like she knew it was the end, and all of a sudden, the car would start sinking faster, and I’d be watching it descend from above.”

Her voice was strangely devoid of emotion, and she sighed.

“I’d wake up screaming. I don’t know how many times it happened—it just sort of blurs together now in one big memory—but it must have gone on long enough for Doris to realize it wasn’t just a phase. I suppose other parents might have taken me to a therapist, but Doris . . . well, she just woke me up late one night and told me to get dressed and put on a warm jacket, and the next thing I knew she’d brought me here. She told me she was going to show me something wonderful . . .

“I remember it was a night like tonight, so Doris held my hand to keep me from stumbling. We wound our way among the tombstones and then sat for a while until the lights came. They looked almost alive—everything got really bright . . . until the lights just faded away. And then we went home.”

He could almost hear her shrug. “Even though I was young, I knew then what had happened, and when I got back home, I couldn’t sleep, because I’d just seen the ghosts of my parents. It was like they’d come to visit me. After that, I stopped having the nightmares.”

Jeremy was silent.

She leaned closer. “Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” he said, “actually, I do. Your story would have been the one that I remembered from tonight, even if I didn’t know you.”

“Well, just so you know, I’d rather my experience not end up in your article.”

“Are you sure? You can be famous.”

“I’ll pass. I’m witnessing firsthand how a little fame can ruin a person.”

He laughed. “Since this is off the record, then, can I ask if your memories were part of the reason you agreed to come out here tonight? Or was it because you wanted to enjoy my scintillating company?”

“Well, it definitely wasn’t the latter,” she said, but even as she said it, she knew it was. She thought he realized it as well, but in the brief pause that followed her remark, she sensed that her words had stung.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he said, waiving it off. “Remember, I had five older brothers. Insults were mandatory in a family like ours, so I’m used to it.”

She straightened up. “Okay, to answer your question . . . maybe I did want to see the lights again. To me, they’ve always been a source of comfort.”

Jeremy picked up a twig from the ground and tossed it aside.

“Your grandmother was a smart lady. Doing what she did, I mean.”

“She is a smart lady.”

“I stand corrected,” he said, and just then Lexie shifted beside him, as if straining to see into the distance.

“I think you may want to turn your equipment on,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because they’re coming. Can’t you tell?”

He was about to make a crack about being “ghostproof” when he realized that he could see not only Lexie but the cameras in the distance. And, he noticed, the route to the car. It was getting lighter out here, wasn’t it?

“Hello,” she prompted. “You’re missing your big chance here.”

He squinted, trying to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, then aimed the remote at each of the three cameras. In the distance, the red power lights switched on. Still, it was all he could do to process the fact that something actually seemed to be happening.

He glanced around, looking for passing cars or illuminated houses, and when he looked toward the cameras again, he decided that he definitely wasn’t seeing things. Not only were the cameras visible, but he could see the electromagnetic detector in the center of his triangle as well. He reached for his night-vision goggles.

“You won’t need those,” she said.

He put them on, anyway, and the world took on a greenish phosphorescent glow. As the light grew in intensity, the fog began to curve and swirl, assuming different shapes.

He glanced at his watch: it was 11:44:10 p.m., and he made a note to remember it. He wondered if the moon had suddenly risen—he doubted it, but he would check on the phase when he got back to his room at Greenleaf.

But these were secondary thoughts. The fog, as Lexie had predicted, continued to brighten, and he lowered the goggles for a moment, noting the difference between the images. It was still growing brighter outside, but the change seemed more significant with the goggles. He couldn’t wait to compare the videotaped images side by side. But right now all he could do was stare straight ahead, this time without the goggles.

Holding his breath, he watched as the fog in front of them grew more silver by the moment, before changing to a pale yellow, then an opaque white, and finally an almost blinding brightness. For a moment, just a moment, most of the cemetery was visible—like a football field illuminated before the big game— and portions of the foggy light began to churn in a small circle before suddenly spreading outward from the cluster, like an exploding star. For an instant, Jeremy imagined that he saw the shapes of people or things, but just then the light began to recede, as if being pulled on a string, back toward the center, and even before he realized the lights had vanished, the cemetery had turned black once more.

He blinked, as if to reassure himself that it had really happened, then checked his watch again. The whole event had taken twenty-two seconds from start to finish. Though he knew he should get up to check the equipment, there was a brief instant in which all he could do was stare at the spot where the ghosts of Cedar Creek had made their appearance.

Fraud, honest mistakes, and coincidence were the most common explanations for events regarded as supernatural, and up to this point, every one of Jeremy’s investigations into such events had fallen into one of these three categories. The first tended to be the most prevalent explanation in situations where someone stood to profit somehow. William Newell, for instance, who claimed to find the petrified remains of a giant on his farm in New York in 1869, a statue known as the Cardiff Giant, fell into this category. Timothy Clausen, the spirit guide, was another example.

But fraud also encompassed those who simply wanted to see how many people they could fool, not for money, but just to see if it was possible. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, the English farmers who created the phenomenon known as crop circles, were one such example; the surgeon who photographed the Loch Ness Monster in 1933 was another. In both cases, the hoax was originally perpetrated as a practical joke, but public interest escalated so quickly that confessions were rendered difficult.

Honest mistakes, on the other hand, were simply that. A weather ballon is mistaken for a flying saucer, a bear is mistaken for Bigfoot, an archaeological find is discovered to have been moved to its current location hundreds or thousands of years after its original deposition. In cases like these, the witness has seen something, but the mind extrapolates the vision into something else entirely.

Coincidence accounted for nearly everything else and was simply a function of mathematical probability. As unlikely as an event might seem, as long as it is theoretically possible, it more than likely would happen sometime, somewhere, to someone. Take, for instance, Robert Morgan’s novel Futility, published in 1898—fourteen years before the Titanic sailed—which told the story of the largest and grandest passenger liner in existence that sailed on its maiden voyage from Southampton, only to be ripped apart by an iceberg, and whose rich and famous passengers were largely doomed in the icy North Atlantic because of a lack of lifeboats. The name of the ship, ironically, was Titan.