Nightmare (8 page)

Her voice had escalated to a shout by the end, and as if in
response, a trio of creaking sounds echoed from a room somewhere above us, followed by the building's weight-bearing supports letting out a groan that sounded like a long, slow moan
of pain.

Jordin's complexion blanched snow-white, like a child who'd
been naughty and got caught. I looked around, searching for
the source of the sounds. When it died down, I continued the
conversation as if nothing had happened.

"I didn't think recording devices would be needed," I explained.
"You never said you wanted to gather evidence. You're paying me
for a first-hand experience."

Her eyes still examining the ceiling for the source of the creaks
and moans, Jordin replied, "But gathering evidence is part of the
experience, isn't it?"

I grudgingly bobbed my head in an affirmative, and the two
of us began walking again, shining our flashlights all around and
talking quietly. "Jordin, you need to understand what gathering
evidence means before you commit to it. Imagine long, often
boring hours of wandering through haunted places, well into
the early hours of the morning, shooting video and recording
audio of what more often than not turns out to be absolutely
nothing, all in the hopes that some small out-of-the-ordinary
thing might be captured on tape."

"I can do that," she replied, indignant.

I wasn't finished. "The problem is, if something paranormal is captured on tape, at least fifty percent of the time, you don't
know it at the time that it's recorded. Gathering evidence means
that all of the recordings you make have to later be reviewed,
and it's a very tedious process. We're talking about staring at
hours upon hours of video footage that never moves or changes
angles, and listening to endless hours of audio, usually trying to
pick out the tiniest of unnatural sounds from static and silence.
It's a huge commitment that's usually unrewarding, and would
probably cause your schoolwork to suffer."

"I'll do it," Jordin volunteered. "I'll review all the recordings
by myself. My course load is light this semester anyway."

I sighed, wondering if she truly had any inkling where these
early steps might lead her. But her countenance was not one of
impulsiveness. She appeared resolute, her shoulders set.

She really wants this, I thought. She wants it bad. And again I
wondered what was behind that need.

"Teach me everything, Maia," she said. "Everything. That's
what I'm paying you for."

"All right ..." I said, steadying myself. I allowed my senses
to reflexively become alert, listening, feeling for anything and
everything that might be out of the ordinary. My words came in
whispers, as if to keep from disturbing the silence, but mostly out
of reverence and respect to those who'd died here. This wasn't
some museum or roadside attraction. It was a mass graveyard.

"First lesson," I said as we walked carefully through the black
hallways. "True hauntings are nothing like what you see in the
movies or on TV. There's no CGI effects, no creepy soundtrack,
and actually seeing a genuine apparition with your eyes is the
rarest of occurrences."

"Hmm" was Jordin's only reply.

"Second lesson. There are three classifications of hauntings.
Residual, intelligent, and poltergeist."

"That movie freaked me out," Jordin admitted.

I shook my head, frustrated at how quickly she fell back into
a pop-culture frame of reference. "It was an escapist flick that
had no basis in reality. Poltergeist hauntings are typically subconscious manifestations of intense emotional trauma in the
living. They're almost always caused by the living, inadvertently,
and usually have very little-if anything-to do with the dead.
But they can be very dangerous."

Jordin was openly surprised. "Have you ever seen a poltergeist?"

"Four times," I told her. "It's uncommon, but less so because
most people mistake it for a ghost."

"And the other two kinds of hauntings?"

"Those occur more frequently. Residual hauntings are the
most common type of all, but they're the hardest to classify,
because no one really knows what they are. They're like recordings of past events, playing themselves out over and over again.
The `ghosts' in these instances are usually full apparitions, but
they're unaware of the presence of the living. There's no intention or responsiveness about them.

"If you've ever heard someone describe a ghost that doesn't
know it's dead, the residual haunt is what they're referring to.
Some people don't even consider these haunts to be spirits at all,
but some kind of mental or spiritual imprint left behind after
death. It's as if the traumatic event that lead to their death caused
some leftover part of them to become unstuck in time, and the
act of that death-or sometimes even just mundane acts from
the dead person's life-becomes an echo, playing on a loop that we can perceive. They're not dangerous, but they are fascinating
to witness, and they rarely have any idea that we're here."

"So there's probably a lot of residual ghosts here at Waverly,
because of how they died?"

"Without a doubt," I replied. "But the most unpredictable
type of haunting, the third classification, is the intelligent haunt.
This is what most people think of when they think of a ghost: a
disembodied soul who's completely aware of their surroundings,
their memories ... and any living people they come in contact
with. Why they linger is a huge mystery. It's unknown if they're
stuck in one location-almost always the place where they died-or
they're simply unwilling to leave. But they come in every temperament and variety, just like the living: they can be playful and
harmless, or they can be wicked and vengeful. They're the most
erratic type of haunting, and accordingly, the most hazardous
to your health. But they're the most sought-after type for paranormal investigators, because anything with intelligence can
find a way to communicate, and with communication comes
the possibility of collecting real evidence."

"Okay. So, three types of hauntings,"Jordin repeated. "Got
it. Anything else?"

"Well, there is a fourth type, actually ... but we won't be
going near any of those."

She stopped short. "What is it? Tell me."

"Demonic," I replied, matter-of-fact. "Not all investigators consider those cases to be hauntings, since no humans are
involved. But like I said, it doesn't matter, because we're steering
clear of known demonic haunts."

Jordin shivered. "You're sure there's nothing like that here?"

I nodded, confident. "Countless investigators have spent hundreds of hours in this place, and no one has ever reported
an encounter with anything terribly threatening."

She didn't look reassured.

We stationed ourselves in a central hallway on the notorious
fifth floor, where the highest rate of paranormal activity was
regularly reported, and where I had once seen and heard some
very strange things myself. The walls around us were again tagged
with layers of multicolor graffiti, courtesy of locals and visitors
who felt the need to leave their own mark on the place.

But it was the dead who had left the most of themselves
here. The fifth floor was the ward where patients were sent when
the disease affected their minds, the place where the mentally
disturbed lived and died.

Tonight, instead of actively searching for activity, we waited
for it to come to us. I sat cross-legged on the floor with my
Advanced Psychology textbook, studying for my first exam of
the semester by flashlight. I was only half listening as Jordin
prattled on.

As much as I wanted Jordin to feel like she'd gotten her money's worth on this trip, there were limits to my patience. To my
dismay, she seemed incapable of maintaining silence for very long.
And I began contemplating the fact that despite her grandiose
wealth, even Jordin Cole might not have enough money to get
me to go on another of these trips. It was the first small feeling
of encouragement I'd felt since we'd arrived.

"We've been here for six hours," said Jordin.

"Mm-hmm," I said absently, snuggling deeper into my sleeping bag to stave off the freezing cold.

"This place is creepy as all get-out," she said, rubbing her
arms nervously. "I still feel sick to my stomach."

"You mentioned that."

"It smells funny, too."

"Yep," I replied with a sigh.

Jordin glanced over, watching me study as if I were oblivious
to our bizarre surroundings. A tinge of impatience seemed to
strike her. "So is anything else going to happen, or what?"

I looked up at last. "Whatever's in this place, it doesn't operate on our timetable."

She frowned, her shoulders slumping. "I didn't think it would
be so ... dull."

I grinned. "Welcome to paranormal investigation. Hours
of tedium, punctuated with seconds of skin-peeling terror. Just
how it is."

I watched Jordin in amusement an hour later as her eyes tried
very hard to close themselves. She wasn't used to staying up all
night and it showed.

But I had my reasons for requiring that we stay awake at least
until four a.m., which was still forty-five minutes away.

Then, from the darkness down the long hall to our right,
came a voice.

"Jordin!" I hissed, throwing my sleeping bag open.

"Hm?" came Jordin's groggy voice.

"Get up!" I whispered.

Her eyes blinked wide, and she saw that I was already standing. She quickly grabbed her flashlight and joined me.

"What is it?"

"Shh!" I whispered.

In the distance, the sound of a muffled cough could be
heard.

I instinctively ran toward the sound, trying hard to keep my
feet from clomping on the cement floors. I was fifty feet down
the hall before I thought to look back and see ifJordin was following. To her credit, she was right on my heels.

We slowed to a stop as we heard the sound again, and I threw
a warning hand injordin's face. Both of us fell completely silent
while the coughing went on for almost a full minute, as if someone in some distant room was having an asthma attack. It was
still far away, somewhere down at the farthest end of the facility.
I wasn't even sure it was on this floor, but we had to go after it.

I'd never heard coughing at Waverly Hills before. I'd heard
voices, seen shadow people, picked up on lots of strange smells,
and experienced a dozen or so other odd occurrences. But this
was new.

It made sense, though. Waverly Hills was a sanatorium for
tuberculosis patients, and fits of coughing were one of the most
prevalent symptoms.

My heart pulsed hard, my face felt flushed, and sweat prickled
at my scalp beneath my thick black hair, even in this bitter cold.
The rush had me.

Who had spoken? Who was coughing? Was it really a ghost?
Was it something else?

Was I about to come face-to-face with a disembodied soul?
Would I be able to interact with it, touch it, and communicate?

Could it tell me what it's like on the other side of the veil?
Could it explain what happens when you die?

The sound grew as we neared the end of the hallway, more than three hundred feet from where we'd started. It had to be
coming from one of the patient rooms on either side of us, or
the last room straight ahead at the end of the hall.

There was a scream. It was muffled, but it was there, and it
was close to us.

We ran the last few feet and I pointed into the room on our
left.

"Put a light in there!" I whispered. I did the same to the
room next door.

On the left was an old elevator, closed up and not
functioning.

As soon as our flashlights illuminated the rooms, the coughing and screaming stopped. All fell silent.

I shined my light throughout the large, empty room, checking
every corner, every wall, the ceiling and floor. Nothing.

I ran over to the room Jordin was in and repeated the procedure. There was nothing.