“What was that thing you signed?” asked Katie.
“It was a contract that Bill had his lawyer draw up,” answered Mike. He rolled his head around, trying to find relief from the stress building up in his neck. “Part non-disclosure for the technology of the amplifier, and some language about how we can’t seek damages if any of our equipment gets destroyed on his property. Also some stuff about how we won’t destroy his property through negligence. Standard stuff.”
“Standard? What about any of this is standard?” she laughed.
“True,” Mike smiled. “I think he was just trying to cover his bases.”
“Anything financial?”
“Not really,” answered Mike. “Nothing I saw, at least. Honestly, I really don’t think that Bill is trying to profit off this whole thing, he just wants his house back.”
“I think Bill tries to profit from anything he does,” commented Katie. “We really haven’t talked financials either.”
“How’s that?” asked Mike, rolling his neck again and scratching his head.
“Well if you end up profiting, what about me and Gary?”
“Oh, I won’t profit. I’m not in it for the money. Someone else will end up making all the money. That’s just the way it is with scientific breakthroughs. I remember when I was a grad student, the professors used me like slave labor. They push, and push, and then they never made a dime. I didn’t have a chance. A step down from nothing is less than nothing. I was lucky I didn’t owe them money at the end of a project.”
“So Gary and I get less than nothing?” asked Katie.
“No, no, I didn’t mean you guys,” said Mike. “I was just saying that’s the way it was when I was in school. You guys are in this for your own reasons, right?”
“Yeah, I guess,” said Katie. “Hey, don’t forget, Gary wants to show you something.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mike, pushing himself up from the stool dramatically. “The boss’s work is never done.”
Katie watched him leave the garage and folded her arms.
“GARY,” SAID MIKE as he climbed into the van. “What’s up?”
“I’m trying to work in the new numbers,” said Gary. “Give me a second.”
At the front of the cargo area, Gary had folded down the small table and propped a laptop open with a map on the display. He typed coordinates from a piece of scrap paper into the application.
“Yup, it aligns,” said Gary.
“What’s that?” asked Mike.
“Okay, let me start at the beginning,” said Gary. He zoomed out the map display revealing a view of New Hampshire and scrolled over to the Maine coast. “You remember our first couple experiments with the new instruments? How we saw that big bias point to the west?”
“Sure,” said Mike. “The sunset was giving off a ton of signal and everything peaked.”
“Yeah, right,” said Gary. “That’s what I thought too. But then as we worked more and more cases we started to do a lot of work to the south.”
“But the readings were all pretty much west,” said Mike.
“Well, not quite,” said Gary. “They all had a west component, but some were more northwest than west.”
“Okay,” said Mike. “Sure, but the earth is on an axis. The sun’s not always west. Plus it was earlier and later in some of the measurements.”
“Yup, that’s true,” said Gary. “I didn’t think anything about it either. When I plotted the bearings on my paper map, they just seemed to be pretty random lines. But then I started thinking, those maps use a Mercator projection,” Gary pointed to a map hanging on the wall of the van. It showed the New England states and had several red lines traced across from the locations where they had conducted investigations.
“What does that mean?” asked Mike.
“Well, simply put, north and south, east and west, are all straight lines on these maps, but we live on a sphere.”
Mike shrugged.
“That means if I just walked off in a straight line, then it wouldn’t appear as a straight line on this map. It would make a curve. It’s called a ‘great circle curve,’” said Gary.
“Where are you going with this?” asked Mike.
“If I use a mapping program, I can put in the positions and bearings of our readings and plot the great circle curves to see where the lines actually go.”
“And that gives you a different answer than your paper map?” asked Mike.
“Sure does,” said Gary. “Check this out." He spun the laptop towards Mike and overlaid the data. The red lines from their investigations curved gracefully and all met at a common point in New Hampshire. “See where they meet?” asked Gary.
“I do,” said Mike. “What does it mean?”
“You tell me,” said Gary. “Once I factored in the projection, these lines all meet within two hundred feet of each other, and it’s in the mountains of New Hampshire, near Campton.”
“Can you zoom in?” asked Mike.
The display changed as Gary decreased the scale and individual roads appeared on the map. The satellite imagery disappeared, leaving just the labeled lines of roads.
“What’s this dotted line? It goes right near your intersection,” commented Mike.
“Looks like a hiking trail,” said Gary. He pulled up the information on the line and reported—“It has two names according to this: ‘Moose Cross Trail,’ and ‘The Ledges.’”
“Huh,” said Mike.
Their conversation was interrupted by a knock on the side of the van.
The producer poked his head through the door. “We’re all done with our shots. Ready for your setup,” he said.
“Hey,” called Mike after the man’s head had vanished around the corner.
“Yeah?” The producer looked back in.
“Did you guys see anything?” asked Mike. “Anything unusual?”
“What, in the house?”
“Yeah,” said Mike, frowning.
“Just a house,” said the producer, raising his eyebrows.
“Thanks,” Mike called out as the producer dismissed himself. “That’s weird,” he said to Gary. “I wonder if the entity in Bill’s house hides before sundown.”
“Could be,” said Gary. “But Bill said the contractors were hearing stuff all day when they were here.”
“You’ve got a point, but maybe its behavior has changed,” said Mike. “Either way, let’s get in there and get the equipment online while nothing’s going on.”
“Roger that,” nodded Gary.
GARY, KATIE, AND MIKE FINISHED their preparations several minutes before sunset that Thursday afternoon. In the driveway, Leslie chewed the inside of her lip and talked to her producer about the editing schedule required to get the piece on the air that weekend, and to create a compelling teaser for their station to run to generate interest. Bill waited in his garage, reviewing the schematic of Mike’s paranormal amplifier.
At the edge of Bill’s yard, Gary leaned against a rock and smoked his cigarette. Just upwind, Katie stood with her arms crossed and the two spoke casually. Mike surveyed the scene, looking at everyone gathered for this unique research, and tried to think of how the night’s events would change his life. Convinced that he had finally arranged the right people at the right location, he was certain that he would finally have solid evidence. His theories would be confirmed, and his positions vindicated.
Mike narrated his own television biography in his head—“Paranormal research started as just a hobby for Dr. Markey,” he imagined the announcer saying while his college pictures glided across the screen. “He left his field of study and invested every dime to prove his theories.”