Forest of Shadows (30 page)

John sat in stunned silence. First a boy outside chasing shadow figures from the house, now a full-grown man appearing before his daughter and talking to her, offering advice and apologies. Lurking shadows and full apparitions of a boy and now a man. He’d never heard of a case involving such distinct yet utterly opposite types of manifestations. Were they related, or living symptoms of differing causes? 

“Did he scare you at all, honey?”

“No. He did say he has two sons who come around. The oldest one I think is the boy that I’ve seen. He said he has a younger son, too, but we can’t see him.”

He wrapped his arms around her and gave her a hug. “You are one special girl. Have I ever told you that?”

“All the time.”

While John held his daughter, he contemplated what all of this could mean, what it was leading to and what he needed to do to step up his efforts to capture the phenomena on tape, whether it be audio or, preferably, video. He was here, after all, to gather incontrovertible proof that ghosts were real.

His brain was a hive of frenzied thoughts and plans. He didn’t even hear the phone ring until Eve said there was a call for him. 

Jessica walked with him to his room so he could pick up the phone. 

“Hello.”

“Hi John, it’s Judas. I’m here with Muraco and some of his friends,” he could barely disguise his sarcasm at the mention of the word friends, “and they would like to meet you, soon. They say they want to help.” There was a rustling, like something being draped over the phone, and he added in a near whisper, “I don’t know how much help they’ll actually be. Muraco has it in his head that they can be a bunch of ghost busters. I might have walked away, but one of them has a father who helped build the house.”

“So when do they want to meet?” John replied, intrigued. This was turning into an
uber-surreal
day, and that was saying much, considering. 

“How about tomorrow at Phil’s Bar? It’s right across the street from the diner.”

“Would two o’clock be okay?”

“Perfect. I’m sorry about all this, dude. I know you wanted to keep a low profile.”

“That doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. Don’t worry, I can handle it.”

One of the EMF meters that John had kept permanently on in the hallway outside Jessica’s bedroom door started to beep, escalating in frequency until it sounded like a steady, high-pitched wail. It lasted thirty seconds, then slowly wound down and was silent. 

John felt a tingle, like tiny fingers tip-tapping up his back and through his scalp. The house suddenly felt very, very crowded. 

John had spent the morning setting up two video cameras, one in the upstairs hallway and the other down in the great room facing the stairway, as well as several audio recorders to see if they could catch any EVP phenomena when they were all out of the house, leaving it in relative silence. He also set up a trigger object in the empty room. 

A trigger object, in this case an empty glass, was something that was carefully placed in a supposed hot spot. After noting its exact placement by tracing an outline around it, you returned later to see if it had been moved. It was primitive, but in tandem with a video camera trained on the object, it could yield rich results. 

He wished he’d sent more equipment up here, though he had no way of knowing he’d stumble into a veritable gold mine of the unexplained. 

“Let’s go, Dad, I’m starving,” Jessica called to him through the open front door. 

They had all agreed to pick up some food and other supplies first, then go to the diner for lunch. Afterwards, he would go across the street to the bar to meet with Judas and Muraco while Eve took the kids to the gas station to fill up one of the genny cans. John told her about a tiny public park he’d spotted once before next to the school and if the rain held out long enough, she’d let the kids play on the swings until his meeting was over. 

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” He looked through the view finder of the downstairs camera one more time and eyed the tape recorder sitting on the dining room table to make sure the record button was still locked on. 

The events of the past twenty-four hours had all fit together too perfectly and John was no longer sure they were in charge of their own destiny. If events were leading him to a greater truth, the best he could do was go with it and use everything at his disposal to record it for all to witness this strange journey. 

As they pulled out of the driveway, Eve turned up the radio and leaned over to him to say, “You know, I really am glad to be taking a break from the house. I know I came here the skeptic with an open mind, but it’s getting harder and harder to keep that comfortable position.”

“The last thing I want is to see you uncomfortable. If it’s too much, just let me know. I can arrange for you and the kids to go back to New York tomorrow.”

She stroked his arm and replied reassuringly, “No way, buddy. You can’t get rid of us that easy. How can we be afraid of a phantom when we have you around? There is no way we’re going to leave you, and that’s final.”

They smiled at one another and John was suddenly struck by an urge to lean over and kiss her. After Anne died, he’d never even considered becoming intimate with any woman, much less as close a friend as Eve. 

Something felt different now. He wasn’t the least bit comfortable with this new feeling, though he’d be lying to himself if he said he didn’t want to see where it would take him. 

Leaning into one another, her hand warm on his arm, the sound of the radio and the kids humming along in the back seat began to fade. John felt his face flush and his pulse hammered in his ears. The warm blue in her eyes flickered with equal anticipation and he suddenly felt like a teenager again, fumbling with his emotions and his own physical response to them. 

“Daddy, look out!” 

Jessica’s squeal shattered the moment and he looked forward road just in time to jerk the wheel and swerve around a deer standing perfectly still in the middle of the road. As the Jeep pulled around to its right, the deer moved only its head so its obsidian eyes could follow their evasive maneuver. 

“Crap!” John exclaimed. “What the hell is a deer doing in the road in the middle of the day?”

John checked the rearview mirror and saw only the empty road. Perhaps the deer had been too startled to move and broke from its paralysis after the threat of the oncoming car had passed. 

Liam clapped his hands, enjoying what he must have thought was a carnival ride. 

Eve began to laugh and it didn’t take long for him to join her. To think they were almost in an accident because he wanted to kiss his best friend of five years. Was it a sign? Did the deer save them from making a terrible mistake? Yet more questions begging for answers he couldn’t provide. 

Lunch from the diner was sitting in his stomach like a lead weight. They did their best to ignore the poorly concealed stares and poured on the charm with the middle-aged waitress in the hopes that nothing funny was done to their food. The children were naturally oblivious to the tension in the room and he was surprised to see how well Eve took things in stride. He guessed this time around she was prepared for it, summoning up her deep reserve of New York moxie. She even gave a little finger wave to anyone who dared to gaze too long at them. 

While Eve took the kids out, John strolled over to Phil’s Bar. The bar was a small square, brick building with a lone window facing the street. A couple of neon beer signs buzzed in front of a drawn black curtain, always pulled shut to keep the interior dark, the way the regulars liked it. 

When he walked in, he was greeted by a downright hostile glare from the bartender who scratched at his chest with the silver hook he had for a left hand. An old man looked up from his beer, caught his eye, and went back to mulling over his near empty glass. 

Phil’s smelled like a typical bar—stale beer, smoke, mildew and just a faint aroma of too many gullets that had spilled their contents after exceeding their limit. 

For the first time since he’d arrived in Shida, he felt like he was back home, out for a night at Mom’s Bar with Jack. 

“Back here!” he heard Muraco shout. There wasn’t any need to call him over, since other than the seedy bartender and old man, the crowd of young punks in the back were the only other patrons. They had pulled together a pair of tables with three pitchers of beer atop them, one nearly empty. Judas and Teddy sat forlornly in the center of the rabble. 

Muraco gently kicked an empty chair in his direction. “Have a seat.” He turned to a redheaded girl and said, “Why don’t you go play some songs on the jukebox? We don’t need Phil tuning in with his bionic ear.”

She smiled as she shimmied past and John recognized her as the pretty waitress from the diner. He couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing with this crowd. Then again, he didn’t exactly fit in either. 

“Everyone, this is John. These are my buds, Wadi, Ciqala, Ahanu and the girl at the jukebox is Erica. You know Teddy and Judas.”

Judas gave him an apologetic look. 

“You want a beer? I got an extra glass.”

“No thanks. I just had lunch.” An old Def Leppard tune erupted from the jukebox speakers. John looked over at the bartender, who seemed to be contemplating coming over and bludgeoning him to death. “He seems like a nice guy.”

Wadi snorted. “He’s been pissed at the world since he shot his hand off on a dare. Plus, he hates us.”

“Including me, I gather.”

Ahanu nodded. “Shit, even if you were a white tourist just comin’ through and looking to throw a little cash his way, he’d hate your guts.”

Muraco and his gang looked like a Native American version of Alex and his cronies from
A Clockwork Orange.
They were all in uniform, the uniform being battered leather jackets, faded blue jeans and T-shirts. They looked like a group of guys who would sooner break your legs and take your wallet than give you the time of day. Wadi had dazzling red hair tied up in a dozen braids while the rest had longish straight black hair. John was glad they were on his side. 

“So, what did you guys want to talk about? Muraco said one of you had a father who helped build the house.”

Ciqala stubbed out his cigarette. “Yeah, my old man built a shitload of the houses here. When I asked him about your house, he got all pissed and asked me why I even cared.”

He lapsed into silence and John’s heart sank. Another dead end, and this time he’d even managed to tarnish his public image even further by hanging out in a bar with Shida’s darker elements.

“Tell him the rest, ass-pole,” Wadi said, backhanding his friend in the arm. 

“Yeah, well, he got drunk that night and started mouthing off to me, told me to stay the hell away from that house. At first I thought he was afraid I was planning on robbing it or something. Then he started getting all weird. He told me he and his crew started the house but they had to get a team from Washington to finish the job. The guy who had it built paid for these guys to come all the way up here just to construct his little escape to nature. When I asked him why his crew got kicked off the job, he just said they couldn’t do it. He kept saying it over and over. They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t do it. Next thing I know, he’s all pissed again, screaming that I better listen to him this time. When I asked him why, he said I don’t belong there. If the white fool,” he flicked a nervous glance at John, saw he wasn’t bothered, and continued, “if the white fool wants to live there, that’s his problem. That house ain’t meant for me and I better not go near it.”

“Sounds ominous,” John said. 

“My father’s no pussy, man. The dude freaked out when I brought up that house.”

Erica, the lone female in the testosterone-laden meeting of the minds, visibly shivered. She said, “I remember it was a big deal when that man came up and bought the land to build his house. I was only about twelve at the time. The whole town was buzzing, and not in a good way. Then when the house was built, the man moved in and I heard about a year later he left.” The Def Leppard song ended, bathing the bar in momentary silence. “The guy that lived there never came to town. I heard that he had all his supplies delivered to him from some place in Fairbanks. It’s kind of funny how something that was such a big deal just kinda faded away. I mean, here’s the biggest, most extravagant house being built right here, and no one ever talks about it. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen it.”

Wadi chirped in, “I bet hardly anyone else has, either. And you’d think we would have used a nice, empty house to hang out in.”

This realization brought them all to silent contemplation. The jukebox blared back to life and Judas spilled his beer across the table. 

Erica continued, “I know this might sound silly, but when I was a kid, my aunt used to tell me and my friends to stay near our house when it snowed or else the bad spirits of the woods would take me. She called them
ixitqusiqjuk,
said they were souls of the white man who drifted on the winds to swallow us up. I thought at the time it was just my crazy aunt out to scare us. She’d never been right in the head, even committed suicide when I was still young. Ever since then, even though I know it was the ramblings of a sick person, I’m afraid to go in the woods in winter.”