“That means I have to get a lead on a real person,” said Mike.
“Don’t worry, I’ll talk to my subscriber services. They’ve probably gotten at least one misplaced phone call I can send your way.”
“That’s great, Bruce. Thank you,” said Mike.
“No problem,” said Bruce. “You guys satisfied one of my deepest curiosities, and I got to see my Grandma again. I owe you one. Plus, I’ve got my reputation to think of. The day one of my articles doesn’t generate unwanted attention is the day I need to start thinking about hanging up my keyboard. We’ll get you overrun with haunted mice before you know it.”
“Thanks again,” said Mike.
“I’ll be in touch,” said Bruce.
Mike heard the phone click as Bruce hung up.
BRUCE’S PREDICTION FINALLY CAME TRUE. Mike and his team received a list of phone numbers of readers who had hastily dialed the first number they had seen in the paper: subscriber services. Mike, Gary, and Katie divided the list and interviewed the potential witnesses over the phone. When they met again, they had culled the list to the top ten.
“I still put the Butler case in front of Meyers,” said Mike.
“That’s only because you didn’t talk to Meyers,” Katie defended. “He’s got a really compelling tone. He sounded much more credible than anyone else I talked to.”
“Yeah, but it’s a baby,” said Gary taking Mike’s side. “I think the next logical step we need to take is to make contact. How are we supposed to make contact with a baby? I’d rather do an adult apparition. There’s at least some chance of successful contact that way.”
“You’re jumping to a conclusion though,” said Katie. She took another sip of her soda and shook her head. “This thing is intelligent. It locked him out of the house after moving the phone out of the house and somehow getting it to ring. It may be manifesting as a baby, but it’s more mature than that.”
“That’s the other thing though,” said Mike, lowering his voice. “That’s pretty freaking creepy, don’t you think? Didn’t you say it laughed at the guy?”
“Yeah,” Katie admitted. “When he got outside and picked up the phone it was the baby laughing and then the line went dead. He has caller ID and it just said thirty-four on it.”
“No, wait,” said Gary, shaking his head. “It didn’t say thirty-four. It said, ‘Three, four.’ I bet it’s from that movie, Nightmare on Elm Street. They have a rhyme at the beginning that says ‘One, Two, Freddy’s coming for you. Three, four, better lock your door.’”
They sat silent for a second before Mike spoke—“Come on, that’s a stretch.”
“I know,” Gary said, smiling, “but you had chills for just a second, admit it.”
Mike laughed. “Yeah.”
“Fine,” Katie said, disgusted. “So you guys are afraid of babies and joking about it. That spirit could be tortured, just trying to find some help in getting out of limbo, and you’re going to pick the less believable case because the baby is ‘pretty freaking creepy.’”
“Okay, you’ve got a point,” said Mike. “I admit, I’m a little jumpy. We’ve had some difficult cases lately.”
“The grandma was okay,” injected Gary.
“She wasn’t his grandma,” said Mike. “But still, I am a little gun shy and perhaps I was leaning towards the case that had a less active entity.”
“We can go talk to him,” said Katie. “He’s just over in Saco. Probably less than twenty minutes from here.”
“You know what? That’s a great idea,” said Mike. “We’ll go over with no equipment or anything and just get a feel for him and the case.”
Gary leaned out into the aisle and flagged the waiter. “Check?”
Katie picked up her phone and consulted her list to arrange the meeting.
As they climbed into Mike’s car, Katie relayed the rest of the information she had collected about the case. “He moved in about ten years ago, but nothing happened for the first eight years,” she announced as she closed her door. Katie sat in the back, but leaned forward to read from her notebook as Mike drove.
“Hey, can I smoke in here?” asked Gary.
“No,” said Mike, turning on to the highway.
“He said that the activity began when he started to remodel the second floor. There used to be just a couple of bedrooms up there at the top of the stairs. Bill decided to add a bathroom and another bedroom by putting a big dormer across the back of the house,” said Katie.
“You got a ton of information,” said Mike, taking his eyes off the road for a second and raising his eyebrows.
“He’s very thorough and he talks fast,” she said. “Anyway, he said that as soon as they pulled out the old walls and opened up the back of the attic, the activity started. Started that same night, he said. At first they just heard laughing and stuff being knocked over. After a few weeks stuff started moving around. The workers would ask Bill to stop moving their tools and he kept saying that they must be mistaken, but then the tool would show up in some strange place.”
“Like what?” asked Mike.
“He said the worst one was a guy’s framing gun,” she pronounced slowly. “I’m pretty sure that’s what he called it.”
“That makes sense,” said Gary. “If it was a good one, those things are expensive. It’s a nail gun that you use for framing.” Mike and Katie glanced at Gary, not understanding. “Big nails? For framing walls? Never mind.”
“So the framing gun was missing and Bill said that the guys were ready to quit because they were pissed that Bill was stealing their stuff,” Katie said. “But just before the foreman stopped the work, the guy who was pulling down the old ceiling yelled that he had found it.”
“In the ceiling?” asked Mike.
“Yeah,” she said. “They were totally freaked out. They said it couldn’t have possibly have gotten up there. The ceiling was at least fifty years old and nothing was disturbed. Plus, Bill said that the thing fell out of the ceiling with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs all over it.”
“Probably just one of the guys playing a joke that got out of hand,” offered Gary. “Those guys are always pulling pranks.”
“Well then it got really out of hand,” said Katie. “They didn’t finish the job. Bill could barely get them to finish putting the new roof on.”
“What happened?” asked Mike.
“One of the guys cut his hand off,” said Katie.
“What?” Mike whipped around and nearly swerved out of his lane.
“That’s all I know,” said Katie.
“Did he talk about anything else?” asked Mike.
“Nope,” said Katie.
“It was probably the remodeling,” said Gary. “I’ve heard of lots of people who only start seeing activity in their house after they start a major renovation project.”
“That’s generally true for intelligent hauntings or earthbounds,” said Mike. “They don’t like changes to the physical space. But the rest sounds more like poltergeist or even demon.”
“Or something else,” said Gary.
“Yeah, true. Let’s not jump to conclusions. This could just as easily be another crackpot,” said Mike.
Katie leaned back and crossed her arms.
“We just have to be evidence-based,” said Mike, looking in the rearview mirror.
“He said pull up to the garage,” said Katie. “He’ll meet us there.”
MIKE SHUT OFF HIS VEHICLE and they looked at the rectangles the headlights cast on the garage door. After half-a-minute the headlights shut off and they sat in the darkness for a few seconds before the porch light came on. A man lifted the garage door from the inside and waved them into the garage.