2 A Haunting In Oregon (6 page)

Steven settled on taking I-5 south
to Bakersfield, then cutting over to New Mexico via I-40. It would keep them on
freeways the whole way and they could push the speed limit.

It had been years since he’d seen
his father drive. Steven was worried he’d go too slow but it turned out he had
the opposite problem. More than once Steven found Roy going eighty-five, ninety
miles per hour. He had to talk him down.

They were blessed with good
weather and made it through a couple of mountain passes without incident. They
stopped the car only for gas and would use the restroom and load up with food
while pumping. Before long, night settled upon them and they started switch
driving every two hours. Steven found it almost impossible to sleep in the car
but Roy was out the second he hit the passenger seat.

Steven looked out at the nighttime
desert landscape, lit by the moon. There were not many cars or trucks on the
freeway at this hour. The trip had been quiet the past several hours as Roy
slept. Steven thought about how the trip had gone so far. Roy had been a pretty
good road trip companion, even if he had resisted stopping the times Steven
absolutely had to. He was fairly entertaining and when they weren’t sleeping
he’d been explaining more about dealing with ghosts. Steven soaked it all up;
he found it completely fascinating. He marveled that just a few months ago he
would have considered all of this to be hogwash, just as Sarah had. But he saw
and experienced too much to discount it. Now that Roy was sharing with him the
combined experiences of their progenitors, Steven felt he had been let in on
something special, something most people never get to experience. It excited
him and he wanted to pick up as much as he could. He would quiz Roy on the
things he told him and try to fully understand them.  He would be the first to
admit that not all of it sat well with him. Some of it disturbed him. But he
listened to Roy nonetheless and gathered what he could.

As dawn slowly emerged ahead of
them and Steven passed from Arizona into New Mexico, the dry desert landscape
slowly changed color before his eyes. He passed by dinosaur and Native American
tourist attractions without slowing. Soon he was approaching Albuquerque, where
he’d switch north on I-25 to Santa Fe. He woke Roy.

“We’re about an hour away,” he
told Roy. “Anything I need to know about this Albert fellow before we show up
at his doorstep?”

“Nope,” Roy replied, wiping the
sleep from his eyes. “Let me do the talking. I don’t want him to get pissed off
and not help us out.”

“Then I should do the talking,”
Steven said. “I don’t know anyone who can make people angrier quicker than
you.”

“Yeah,” Roy replied, “but once
they discover my charm and charisma they usually come around.”

Steven used the mapping
information from his phone to locate the address. The sandstone pueblo
architecture was a nice visual change from the green of the Northwest. They
wound past art galleries, coffee shops, and signs advertising all manner of
spiritual inquest and services.
Somehow I knew it would look like this,
Steven
thought. “Is any of this stuff legit?” he asked Roy.

“Ten percent,” Roy said. “People
always believe what they want to believe. That will never change. But the ten
percent, yeah, legit. Like Albert.”

The voice on the GPS led them to a
small brick house in a residential neighborhood. It was surrounded by other
brick houses, all the same size, with no outstanding features. The neighborhood
looked fifty years old. There were no signs out in front of the house offering
psychic services, just a lawn with curb and gutter, like any other house on the
street. Steven was disappointed; he was expecting something more grand, like a
lair. This was just a suburb.

They parked the car on the street
and walked to the front of the house. Roy knocked. It was opened by a small old
woman.

“Hello?” she said, smiling at them
over her glasses.

“Hello, I’m Roy and this is
Steven. We’re here to see Albert.”

“Is he expecting you?” she asked
in a sweet and tiny voice.

“No, I’m afraid not,” Roy
answered.

“I’m sorry, he doesn’t take drop
ins. Why don’t you call him and make an appointment?” she said, starting to
close the door.

“We did drive all the way from
Seattle to see him,” Roy said. That caused her to stop closing the door. “We
drove all night, no stopping. It’s urgent.”

She looked at their car on the
street, and saw the Washington license plates. Then she looked at Roy’s face,
checking him out. Then she turned to Steven, giving him the same once-over.

“Well,” she said, opening the
door, “if you came all that way, I suppose you had better come in.”

They stepped into the entryway,
both of them taking care to wipe their feet on the mat outside the door before
entering.

“Why don’t you both have a seat in
here,” she said, leading them to a living room. “I’ll be right back,” she said,
and disappeared down a hallway.

Steven looked at Roy. “She must be
his wife?”

“No,” Roy replied, “that’s him.”

Steven shook his head in an
attempt to clear it. “Him? He’s a transvestite?”

“I suppose, in a way, you could
say he is,” Roy replied.

Albert walked into the room from
the hallway, dressed in a button down shirt, tie, and slacks. He looked as if
he was headed to work. He was two feet taller than the little old lady, and had
brilliant white hair and a goatee that matched, very neatly trimmed. He wore
round glasses that looked very old. Steven and Roy stood as he entered, and Roy
shook his hand.

“Roy, and my son, Steven,” Roy
said, “but then, you already know that.”

“Yes,” said Albert, turning to
shake Steven’s hand. “Thank you for going along with the subterfuge. That’s how
I determined you were legitimate,” he said smiling.

“To the neighborhood you’re a
little old lady,” Steven said.

“An old widow who keeps to
herself,” he said, motioning for them to sit. “I’m going to switch to something
else soon. I’ve been doing the old lady for so many years now, certainly some
of the neighbors must wonder why she hasn’t expired. It won’t do to have them
wondering about me.”

Steven and Roy sat on a sofa
opposite Albert, who sat in a large oversized chair that was obviously his
favorite. Steven suspected Albert was much older than the old man he appeared
to be. It felt like he was interacting with a character from a very old movie.
Albert’s style and language was from a bygone era.

“What can I do for you?” Albert
asked. “You appear tired. Have you been travelling the whole night?”

“I got your name from Dixon,” Roy
said. “He helped me decipher a pattern I observed yesterday. I was hoping I
could speak to you about it.”

“I’d be happy to speak with you on
this matter,” said Albert, adjusting in his seat. “Please tell me the specifics.”

Roy related the story of the manor
and the passageway they’d discovered. He told him how he’d deciphered Albert’s
signature.

“Would you kindly pause your
narrative for a moment?” Albert asked, rising from his seat and disappearing
down the hallway again. Roy turned to look at Steven, they exchanged glances,
but before either could speak Albert returned with a small ledger book that
looked very old.

“Would you be so kind as to repeat
the location?” Albert asked.

“About fifty miles east of
Medford, Oregon,” Roy said. “Opens at 2 a.m., lasts about twenty minutes.”

Albert flipped through the pages
of the book. When he reached the end of it, he flipped through it again. “Hmm,
must be older than I thought,” he said as he rose from his chair and went back
down the hallway. He returned with another ledger, this one much older. He
turned the pages with care.

“Ah, here it is,” Albert said,
“the Maysill contract. Paid in full into perpetuity. What are your concerns, again?”

“It creates an attraction for
ghosts,” Roy said.

“Yes, they always do that,” Albert
nodded.

“So this portal is under your
control?” Steven asked.

“Yes, I oversee it. I have an
assistant who handles the schedule and the execution.”

“Can you tell me how long this has
been going on?” Roy asked.

Albert checked the ledger. “The
contract started in 1850, so approximately a hundred and sixty years, give or
take a few years?”

“You mean to tell me that portal
has been opening there every night for a century and a half?” Steven asked,
surprised.

“Like clockwork,” smiled Albert.
“I always pride myself on honoring contracts to the letter. Highest quality
service, that’s my motto!”

“Do you have any idea how many
ghosts it’s attracted in that time?” Steven asked, becoming a little upset.

“I should think quite a few indeed,”
Albert replied.

Roy jumped in before Steven could
ruin things by becoming too angry with Albert. “It seems to be functioning
flawlessly,” he said. “My congratulations on a job well done. Especially one
that has lasted so long.”

“Well,” said Albert, “I do have
several that predate this contract, but thank you nonetheless. I’m delighted to
hear it’s working out well.”

“That’s just it,” said Steven. “It
isn’t working out well. We need to shut it down.”

“Shut it down? That’s not going to
happen,” Albert said, shaking his head.

“Is there any way it could be shut
down?” asked Roy. “Can you shut it down?”

“Certainly, I could shut it down
by not opening it every night,” said Albert. “But I don’t have that freedom.
I’m under contract.”

“With who?” asked Roy.

“Robert Maysill,” replied Albert.
“Paid in full into perpetuity.”

“But Maysill is dead,” said
Steven, increasingly frustrated.

“I know,” Albert replied. He
turned to Roy. “He seems to not understand.”

“He’s in training, ignore him,”
Roy said to Albert.

“So the contract doesn’t end, just
because he’s dead?” Steven asked.

“Why would it?” Albert said.
Steven realized in an instant that this made sense. With these characters,
things routinely transcended death, why shouldn’t a contract?

“And he’s paid you to keep opening
the portal,” Steven asked, “even though he’s not around to use it?”

“That’s correct,” Albert said
patiently, as though he was speaking to a small child, “he paid a fee that
entitled him to an endless term, running continuously until terminated.”

“But he can’t terminate it, he’s
dead!” Steven said, exasperated.

Albert turned back to Roy. “Am I
not speaking clearly?”

“I told you to ignore him,” Roy
said. “Do you know what Maysill used it for?”

“I do not!” Albert answered
indignantly. “One of the properties of this type of portal is anonymity. It’s
part of what he’s paying for. It’s designed to be unseen, and keep its
occupants hidden. I would not have even told you that Maysill was the contract
holder if I did not believe your intentions were good. That and the fact I have
not heard from him in over a hundred years.”

“Never spied on him once or
twice?” Roy asked. “Maybe took a peek, see what he was up to?”

“I’m offended you would suggest
that,” Albert said. “Not to mention I have approximately—” he flipped the pages
of the book to illustrate his point “—two hundred or so of these portals I
maintain. I don’t have the time or the inclination to prowl around. And I would
quickly lose my client base if I did, so I would appreciate it if you would use
caution when you speak about my services.”

“Forgive me,” Roy replied, “I’m
sure your portals are completely private in every way. I tried to examine the
one we encountered in Oregon, and I assure you, I couldn’t detect anything
about it. Other than your signature.”

“Well there you are,” Albert said.
“And the signature is unavoidable. But it does act as a nice piece of
advertising.” He smiled.

“So the only one who can end the
contract is Robert Maysill,” Steven said.

“Yes,” Albert said. “If he terminates
it, I will cease to create the portal. No one other than him. A contract is a
contract.”

“Of course,” said Roy, “I guess
our next stop is with Mr. Maysill. Thanks for your time this morning, Albert.
It was a pleasure to meet you after all these years. Dixon spoke highly of
you.”

“Dixon is a good man,” Albert
said. “He’s very trustworthy. If you talk to him again, give him my regards.”

“Albert,” Steven said, standing,
“please forgive me if I’ve seemed ignorant. There’s a lot I’m still picking up.
Roy has been very patient with me but I admit sometimes I let my lack of
knowledge show. I’m sorry for that.”

“No need to apologize,” Albert
said, standing as well. “I’ve had trainees, I know how they think. I can tell
you’ll make fine progress if you keep listening to your father.”

“When we find Robert,” Steven
said, “and get him to agree to shut down the portal, do we call you?”

“No, he needs to reach me,”
replied Albert. “He needs to cancel the contract directly with me.”

“How will he…?” Steven stopped.

“Don’t worry about it,” Roy told
him. “He will know how to contact Albert.”

“Tell you what,” Albert said,
“I’ll text you when it’s done.”

Steven was a little surprised at
this. If his assumptions about Albert’s age were correct, Steven just assumed
he’d eschew technology.

“Give him your number, Steven,”
Roy said. Then he turned to Albert. “I didn’t think you even had a phone. I
don’t do the texting thing. Or the internet.”

“Oh really? I was hoping we could
be Facebook friends,” he said, smiling.

As they left Santa Fe, Steven
peppered Roy with questions about Albert, what kind of being he was, what his
true age might be, and what type of contracts he maintained. Roy answered all
he could, but he didn’t know much about the type of work Albert performed, just
that there were people who did that type of thing and their services could be
purchased. Roy felt Maysill must have paid a high price to have a contract that
kept opening the portal endlessly.

As they approached Flagstaff,
Steven made a case for stopping and resting for the night. They were mentally running
on empty and they both needed a solid night’s sleep. Roy agreed so long as
their departure was early the next morning, but when it came time to leave, Roy
was still sound asleep. Steven let him sleep until he woke up on his own, which
was around 9 a.m. Then they piled their bags back into the car and continued
back up I-40, backtracking the way they came.

“Give me your phone, will you?”
Roy asked Steven. “I want to call Pete, give him an update.”

Steven fished his phone out of his
pocket and handed it to Roy, who thumbed through a notepad until he found Pete’s
number. He dialed and Pete picked up almost immediately.

“Good news, we found the guy,” Roy
said into the phone. Steven could hear the buzzing of Pete on the other end,
asking Roy questions.

Roy filled Pete in on their visit
with Albert, leaving out a good number of details like his name and the little
old lady garb. They chatted for a while, then Roy hung up.

“He was surprised when I told him
about the contract with Maysill,” Roy told Steven. “I don’t think anything like
that had occurred to him.”

“Maysill built the place a year
after the contract started,” Steven said. “I doubt the portal ran to an empty
field before the house was there.”

“It’s all speculation until we
talk to him,” Roy said.

“Is that what we’re going to do?”
Steven asked.

“Yes,” said Roy. “Pete tells me
he’s buried in a cemetery in Medford. We’ll go there and conduct a séance.”

“Not a trance?” Steven asked.

“I prefer trances when I’m dealing
with ghosts,” Roy said. “As far as we know, Maysill is just a corpse six feet
under. It’ll be easier to rouse him with a séance.”

“What if we can’t rouse him?”
Steven asked. “What if he stays dead, or doesn’t want to talk to us?”

“I think a man who had the foresight
to contract out an endless portal is likely to respond to a séance. But we’ll
see.”

They continued trading off driving
and resting, stopping for gas, food and drinks. Steven was able to convince him
to stop for a real meal in Bakersfield. Roy was antsy throughout the meal,
wanting to get on with the trip back to Oregon. Steven distracted him by
talking through how a séance would work. Once they were back on the road, they
made good time and pressed on into Northern California as the day ended.

It had been about an hour since
the sun set when a tire blew out and Steven pulled the car over to the side of
the freeway.

“I thought you said this car could
handle it?” Roy asked.

“Must have hit a nail or
something,” Steven replied. “The tires aren’t very old.”

“I hope the spare is in good
shape,” Roy said, getting out of the car.

Steven walked back to the trunk
and opened it. He handed Roy a flashlight from an emergency kit and asked him
to make sure oncoming traffic were aware of their presence while he went about
changing the tire. Roy offered step-by-step advice on jacking the car, removing
the lug nuts, and removing the tire. Steven let him talk. The trip had gone
well so far, and he didn’t want to start a fight by telling Roy he was capable
of changing a tire on his own.

It was the middle of the night
when they reached Medford.

“Should we go on to the manor?”
Steven asked.

“No, let’s just get a motel here
in town,” Roy said. “Our business is all here tomorrow. No sense in going out
there only to have Sarah kick us out.”

They drove though the main drag of
town and found a motel that would work for the night.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to
try and find the gravesite tonight,” Steven said, bringing the suitcases from
the car to the room.

“There’s no way I could conduct a
séance right now,” Roy said. “I’m beat. We’ve spent the last three days on the
road. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

They settled into their rooms.
Steven climbed into his bed. He was worried about Roy’s stamina, but Roy showed
no signs of illness or slowing. Other than being tired from the drive, he
seemed fine. Steven himself was tired from the long hours on the road. He was
probably being overprotective, worried when he didn’t need to be.

The motel room was small by most
standards, and stuffy. He got up and turned the on the air to get the
circulation going. The white noise of the fan would drown out noises from the
street and make it easier to get to sleep.

-

Steven awoke to the sound of his
phone ringing. He picked it up off the night stand, and saw that it was 9:00.
The call was from Pete. He answered it.

“Hello?”

“Is this Steven?” It was Pete’s
voice.

“Yes, this is Steven. What can I
do for you, Pete?”

“Are you and Roy back yet?”

“We stayed in Medford last night,”
Steven said. “We’re at a motel.”

“Thank god you didn’t stay here,”
Pete said. “It’s happened again. Another death. If you and Roy come out here
right away you might make it before the cops. They’re my next call.”

“We’re on our way,” Steven said.
“Try to wait as long as you can before you call the police.” He hung up and
walked next door to Roy’s room.

Roy opened the door. “I just got a
call from Pete,” Steven told him. “There’s been another death at the manor. We
need to leave now to get there before the cops.”

It was as though he’d electrified
Roy, who began throwing on clothes. Within a minute they left the motel’s
parking lot, kicking up rocks.

When they arrived at the manor
there were no ambulances or police cars outside. “We might have beat them,”
Steven said. They parked their car in the same spot they had used when they
stayed there earlier in the week, and ran to the front door. Pete was there to
meet them.

“Thanks for coming, guys. Follow
me,” he said, leading them down the corridor and into the south wing hallway.

“The maid found her this morning,”
Pete said as they approached the room.

“Where is the maid now?” asked
Steven. “And where is Sarah?”

“I gave the maid the rest of the
day off,” Pete said. “She was hysterical, and I didn’t want the other rooms to
see her. I suspect she’ll quit on me. Sarah has been sick all morning, she
doesn’t know about it yet. I wanted you to see this before she found out,
otherwise you’d never get to.”

Pete unlocked the door to the
guest room and they all went inside. Pete closed the door behind them.

Steven brought his hand to his
mouth, afraid he might vomit.

The covers of the bed had been
pulled down to expose the body.
Just as the creature did to Sarah
,
Steven thought. But the similarity to Sarah ended there. The woman in the bed
was drenched in blood. It had soaked through all of her bed clothing, which was
stuck to her like a second skin. It had seeped off the body and into the
mattress. A red stain encircled the corpse at least six inches wide. The woman
had defecated, and the stench was overpowering.

“We don’t want to be involved with
the cops,” Roy said. “So let’s not touch anything.” He approached the woman’s legs,
and waved Steven over. “Look!” he said, pointing to a spot midway down her
thigh.

Steven could see a small hole,
about the size of the proboscis they had seen before.

“Guys, I need to place the call to
the authorities,” Pete said. “I don’t dare wait any longer.”

“Go ahead,” Roy said. “We’ll be
done before they get here.” Pete turned away and placed the call to 911.

“Why wouldn’t a coroner figure out
about the puncture mark?” Steven asked. “It’s pretty obvious to me.”

“We know where to look,” Roy said.
“And who knows what kind of skills the locals have.”

Steven moved his hand next to the
puncture wound and passed over it. “You’d better check this out, Roy,” he said.

“I told you not to touch
anything!” Roy said.

“No, I’m serious, watch,” Steven
said. As he passed his hand a few inches over the wound, the wound changed
shape, twisting to match the angle of his hand. “Something’s stuck in it. Should
I pull it out?”

“What is he talking about?” Pete
asked, hanging up from his call. “Pull out what?”

Steven wrapped his hand around
something that no one in the room could see, just above the puncture wound in
the woman’s thigh. As he pulled it away from the body the puncture wound sealed
shut. He held the invisible object up for Roy and Pete to see. Only small streaks
of blood, hanging in the air inches from Steven’s hand, gave the object shape.

“It broke off,” Roy said. “It
broke off in her.”

“I can’t believe it,” Pete said.
“Why can’t I see it?”

“None of us can see it,” Steven
said. “It’s invisible.”

Pete stood looking at Roy and
Steven, completely dumbfounded.

“Pete, we need to get this wrapped
up and get out of here before the authorities arrive,” Roy said. “Do you have a
bag of some kind we could put this in?

“Yeah…” Pete said, and opened the
door to leave the room. He closed the door behind him.

“So it stuck in her, and pumped
into her more hemorrhaging agent than normal,” Steven said.

“Or,” Roy offered, “it pumped in
too much agent, and when it realized its mistake, the body was so swollen it
couldn’t remove the proboscis. Like when you squeeze the flesh around a
mosquito and it can’t pull out.”

“And the tunnel was closing,”
Steven said, “so it had no choice but to break it off and return to the
passageway, or be stuck here.”

“For all we know,” Roy said, “it might
not have made it back. It might still be in the house, waiting for it to open
tomorrow. Let’s get out of here. We’ve learned enough.”

Pete returned with an oversized
baggie. He held it open while Steven dropped the invisible proboscis into it,
and sealed it closed.

“Can I?” asked Pete.

“Sure,” said Steven, handing him
the baggie. “Just don’t crush it.”

As they walked out of the room and
back to the entryway, Pete felt the invisible prod through the baggie. “If
Sarah could see this, she’d have to believe. This is incredible.”

“Mind you don’t stick yourself
with the sharp end,” Roy said.

Pete passed the baggie back to Steven,
holding it by the top. “Here you go. Absolutely incredible.”

Steven placed the baggie into his
satchel as they rounded the corner into the entryway, where two cops were
standing.

“Thank you both for staying with
us,” Pete said. “Please come again.”

“Yes, thank you,” Roy said.
“Lovely place, beautiful. We’ll come back. Come along Billy.” He marched past
the cops and out the door, with Steven following quickly.

Behind them, Pete motioned for the
officers to follow him down the hall.