In fact, in a strange sort of way, she felt liberated by it.
Sara looked over at Deb, who was sitting against the wall with her head in her hands, her fake legs spread out in front of her, looking strangely like skis. She seemed off in her own world. Sara then looked at Pang, and saw he had some new gizmo in his hand.
Pang glanced up at her. “I’d like to try an EVP recording.”
“What is that?” Sara asked.
“Electronic Voice Phenomenon. I ask a question, and record the response. The human ear isn’t as sensitive as a microphone. So answers could get picked up by the recorder that we wouldn’t otherwise hear. Then we can hear them in playback, with the sound boosted up.”
“Why do you want to do this?”
“Because maybe we can find out what these spirits want. I’ve investigated a lot of supposedly haunted houses. They’ve always had rational explanations or have been inconclusive. What’s happening here, now—it’s unprecedented. If we can prove that there is another plane of existence, and if we can get some answers from those who inhabit that plane, it will be the greatest scientific discovery of the century.”
Sara thought it was a bad idea. “Deb?”
Deb didn’t reply, apparently remaining a prisoner of her thoughts.
“Frank, what do you think?”
His eyelids fluttered. “I think it’s a break, not a sprain. Sprains don’t bend the wrong way.”
“Look,” Pang said, “you don’t have to do anything. Just stay quiet. This isn’t just for bad spirits. There may be some good ones around that can help us. But we won’t get that help, unless we ask for it.”
Sara sighed. She was used to life spiraling out of control despite anything she did. If Pang wanted to do this, Sara didn’t see how she’d be able to stop him.
Pang stood, holding up a silver gadget with a red blinking light on it. Keeping it at arm’s length from his face he said, “Are there any spirits here?”
Sara didn’t hear a response, but she supposed that was the point. After ten seconds, Pang sat down and pressed a button. A moment later his recorded voice was heard, louder than he’d originally spoken.
“Are there any spirits here?”
They all listened to the white noise that followed. No ghosts responded to Pang’s question.
Pang pressed another button and asked again, “Are there any spirits here?”
Sara found herself concentrating on the silence. The underground tunnel they were in had a slight echo to it, and the single bare bulb hanging from the wooden brace overhead didn’t illuminate more than a few meters into the darkness.
Pang stopped the recording and hit play again.
“Are there any spirits here?”
He turned up the volume, until the recording became almost a hiss. Then he pressed stop.
“Did you guys hear that?” Pang said, the excitement in his voice apparent.
Sara shook her head.
“At the end. It sounded like whispering.”
Pang played it again, the volume even higher. There was a faint murmuring sound, but Sara wouldn’t have called it a voice.
“Someone said yes on the recording. Did anyone else hear it?”
“Apophenia,” Frank said.
“What’s that, bro?”
“Your mind is seeking a pattern in randomness. Like seeing Jesus’s face in in in burned toast. You want to hear a voice, so you think you hear a voice.”
“You still saying spirits don’t exist? So what broke your arm, bro? Was that your mind seeking a pattern when that bleeding ghost dropped from the ceiling?”
“That,” Frank said, “is harder to dispute. But your EVP recording is nonsense.”
“Whatever, bro.” Pang pressed the record button once more. “Are there any spirits here?”
The silence ticked past.
Pang played it back.
“Are there any spirits here?”
Sara listened hard, to see if the faint murmur returned. Then the recorder let out an ear-splitting screech and wailed:
“I’M COMING DOWN THE STAIRS!”
Everyone turned to look as Jebediah Butler, dripping blood, stepped off the dark staircase and into the dim light.
Fran
Fran set down the magazine in mid-sentence and glanced over at her sleeping men.
Duncan, fifteen years old, but still young enough that there were traces in his face of the little boy he once was. And Josh, caring, strong, as close to a soul mate as could ever exist.
She closed her eyes and thought about Butler House. Having survived Safe Haven, Fran could imagine all too well what was going on right now in South Carolina. There would be blood. And death. And unimaginable horror. They would need help.
Looking at her family, Fran knew there were things worth fighting, and dying, for.
For the hundredth time she questioned whether they were doing the right thing.
And for the hundredth time, she didn’t know the answer.
Tom
Seeing Ol’ Jasper in the hall ahead, Tom did a reversal and ran back the way he came, passing Sturgis as he stuck his head out of the satanic chapel. Without his flashlight, Tom was at the mercy of his glow stick, which didn’t illuminate more than a few steps ahead of him. He bumped into a wall when the hall turned a corner, kept sprinting, and wound up in front of some double doors.
Tom tugged one open and saw he was in a large, open room. Tile floors. Ornate, crystal chandeliers. A row of chairs against one wall. A stage.
It was a ball room.
He drew his gun, keeping his knife in his left hand, and began to make his way across the dance floor. It was dark, quiet, eerie, and Tom was shaking so badly he felt he might fall over. He’d never been so frightened, and his mind kept flitting between the horror of what was happening and the horror of what he’d already gone through. He kept replaying the same terrifying scenes, over and over, and wanted to find someplace safe to hide and never come out again.
But people were counting on him. Good people. And fear be damned, Tom wasn’t in the business of letting people down. Even if he was going to die of fright in the process.
Tom reached a doorway, cleared it, spinning as something lunged at him in the darkness.
He fired, his Sig kicking, and then jumped to the side as a black object hurtled past him. Keeping a bead, he stared as it jerked to a stop and swung from the ceiling.
A body bag.
But he quickly realized something was strange. Bodies had weight as well as mass, but this swung like it couldn’t have weighed more than a few kilograms.
Tom reached for it carefully, and squeezed.
Fake. A prop, like they had in haunted houses around Halloween, where you paid ten bucks to have some teen in a mask jump out and say boo!
What was the point of that?
He followed the track on the ceiling—a metal rail that the body bag had been hanging from—and came to a breakfront.
Tom braced himself for something to pop out, and his expectations were met when a rubber zombie pushed through the cabinet doors, making a pneumatic hissing sound. Another phony prop, probably triggered by a motion sensor, like the body bag had been.
Though in a state of hyper-alertness, some rational thoughts still managed to gain traction in Tom’s fear-addled brain. He felt like he was missing some key element. They’d all been summoned here, offered money to be part of an experiment. Forenzi, though certainly odd, seemed sincere enough. He’d told them the goal was to scare them, and he’d made good on his promise.
But had Forenzi’s promise involved these silly Halloween gags? Was that his plan? And had something gone terribly wrong?
Tom was fighting for his life against an unknown enemy that apparently couldn’t be harmed. He had shot two of his attackers, and also slashed Sturgis across the chest. But that didn’t even slow them down.
Was there something supernatural going on? And if so, how did these dime-store attempts at scares mesh with what was happening elsewhere in Butler House?
Had the fake haunted house somehow become real?