Giving Up the Ghost (32 page)

Amy asks if there is someone here whom the spirits want to talk to.

Suddenly, we start hearing a lot of loud sounds emitting from the radio.

Fft-fft-fft-fft-hmmmm-fft-fft-fft-heeaam-fft-fft-fft-fft-hhmmmm-fft-fft-fft-fft-hyyyyymm
.

“It said ‘him,’ ” Amy says, raising her eyes to me, the only male (okay, living male) anywhere in the administration wing. “It wants to talk to you.”

Tiffini busts out her dowsing rods. Almost as soon as she has them in position, the left one starts to shake and tremble.

“Show me what ‘yes’ looks like?” she says.

Almost immediately, the dowsing rods swing across each other, forming an
X
, then go back to their normal position, pointing perpendicular from Tiffini’s chest.

“Okay, very good,” Tiffini says. “Now, can you show me what ‘no’ looks like?”

Again, almost immediately, the rods swing outward, both pointing as far away from each other as possible.

Tiffini asks if it would like to communicate with us, if it would like us to move to another area of the building, and if the second floor would be a better location. After each question, the dowsing rods cross themselves, then return to their normal position, meaning yes.

“Are you the warden?” Tiffini asks.

The rods cross and then straighten once, twice, and a third time.

This perks Tiffini up considerably.

“Are you Warden Glattke?” she asks.

Again, the rods cross and straighten, three times.

“Uh-oh,” Tiffini says. “I think it’s him again. He answered three times.”

After a momentary pause where I realize that the women all know what Tiffini is talking about, I bite.

“Umm, who is he?” I ask. “The ‘three’ thing.”

“Oh, he is a mischievous one who likes to play around and lie a lot,” Tiffini replies. Whenever they ask this spirit questions, he answers three times. So they call him the One Who Answers in Threes.

This seems reasonable.

So, at his request, we came upstairs. Once there, the One
Who Answers in Threes tells us he was the warden, and that he was the warden’s wife, and that he was murdered here, and that he was a prisoner, and a bunch of other things. Basically, the One Who Answers in Threes answers yes to everything. Well, almost everything.

I ask if I can try. Tiffini tries to mute my expectations, as I am untrained in how to use the dowsing rods. Plus, who knows if I have the ability to summon spirits?

After I’m given a brief tutorial on how to hold them, the rods are completely still. My hands are out in front of me, positioned almost like I am about to throw a punch but with my fingers loose and relaxed. The rods are resting on the outside of my index fingers.

“Do you want us to leave?” Tiffini scolds the One Who Answers in Threes. “Because if you keep playing around, we’ll walk right out of here.”

The dowsing rods quickly whip outward and back three times.

“No.”

I didn’t move at all. I didn’t move the rods. My eyes dart around, looking to see if there is something that would make a breeze to move them. But if there was a breeze, wouldn’t I feel it against my hand too?

My skepticism melts away. I feel my stomach fill with adrenaline. At the very first sign of something I can’t easily explain, I’m back at square one. I notice the rods beginning to shake. Except this time I know what’s causing it.

I am beginning to tremble.

“Oh! I think we’ve got something here,” Tiffini says, bringing her EMF meter up to her face. “Zero-point-four … zero-point-five.”

Cheryl starts to bark out commands to the One Who Answers
in Threes, indicating that the answers should be sent through Amy’s EVP radio. Amy squats against the wall in almost a fetal position to concentrate. She turns her headphones up so loud we can easily hear them throughout the hallway.

Fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft
.

“Now you are going to answer me,” Cheryl calls out. “Is your spirit bound here, or did you come here recently?”

Fft-fft-neeer-fft-fft-fft-fft
.

“New!” Amy shouts out.

“Does that mean he’s … oh, zero-point-seven, zero-point-eight.”

The three ladies seem to get quite excited. I stand next to them, now clenching the dowsing rods tight so that they can no longer move. Even in the dark, Tiffini notices my grip on them, shakes her head, takes them from my hands, and places them in the front pocket of her hoodie.

“Tell me when you came here,” Cheryl says sternly.

Fft-fft-fft-fft-fred-fft-fft
.

“Friday?” Amy offers.

“When did you arrive in town?” Cheryl asks me.

“Yesterday,” I answer. “Friday.”

Fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-heeaam-fft-fft-fft-fft
.

“It said ‘him’ again,” calls Amy, quickly looking up at me before returning her concentration to the radio noise. “You should have him ask the questions.”

It still doesn’t sound like anything consistent, just random syllables from a scanning radio. Still, my mouth is completely dry.

“One-point-two … One-point-three!” Tiffini exclaims. “Temperature is still going way down. Sixty-two-point-six … sixty-one-point-seven!”

The hallway feels noticeably cooler. Cheryl looks at me.
“You ask questions,” she says. “And don’t be afraid to provoke him.”

“Okay,” I answer.

We all stand still for a few moments.

I feel something new and unexpected.

I suddenly want to believe this is real.

I want to accept that we are talking to a ghost.

I want to let go of every bit of skepticism I have.

I am completely terrified and I want to believe.

I have no idea what to ask.

“Okay,” I yell out. “So … I’m here. I’m listening. If you have anything to say, I’m all ears.”

“One-point-three,” Tiffini yells.

Fft-fft-see-fft-fft-fft-hee-tuu-fft-fft-fft-ur-mmm-fft-fft-fft
.

I take a step back from the others.

“One-point-seven. Temperature sixty degrees,” Tiffini calls out.

Fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft
.

“One-point-eight.”

“Do you know anything about a Little Girl?” I ask.

I feel completely foolish saying this out loud. The ladies have no idea what I’m talking about, and I immediately cringe, thinking of what must be going through their minds.

Come on
, I think.
Just tell me something so I can end this
.

Fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft
.

“A Little Girl in a Blue Dress. Do you have anything to tell me? Was She real?” I call out.

At that moment I wonder: What if I actually get a response? I mean, I’ve been struggling to make any sense out of this for more than twenty years. Of course, I’ve never given this any consideration or thought at all before this point, but what do I plan to do with my answer?

Fft-fft-fft-unnn-fft-fft-ger-fft
.

“Anger,” Amy calls out.

“Is that supposed to be an answer?” I call out.

“One-point-two … zero-point-nine,” Tiffini says.

The three of them look at one another.

Fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft
.

“Zero-point-four,” Tiffini reports, moving the meter around the air trying to get a different reading.

Fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft
.

“Zero-point-zero.”

Fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft-fft
.

After a few moments of listening to the burst of static from the radio, Cheryl steps toward me. “I think he’s gone,” she says.

I pause and step back from the others. Everyone is quiet.

I’m feeling something else now, that feeling you get when you realize you’ve been cheated. That epiphany of being scammed or robbed. I don’t blame the three of them.

I blame myself.

The ghost isn’t gone. He was never there.

I know this, but still, I was right there. I felt foolish. No one pushed me into believing. Even after all I’d thought and experienced, I went there so willingly.

The ladies begin to pack up their gear. It’s 4
A.M
. You can start to see an outline of color on the horizon. The evening is almost over. I am completely exhausted and still have a seven-hour drive home in front of me.

Instead of bringing me to any conclusion, my night in Mansfield Reformatory has just left me more uncertain. I know I need to come back to Ohio soon. It’s time to face some real ghosts.

About a week after returning from Mansfield Reformatory, I received a Facebook message from someone named Jason Patterson. It was Laura’s youngest brother. The last time I had seen Jason, he was about seven years old, sitting with his parents on the couch watching television with a coloring book in his lap. Now about thirty, he was the family’s only surviving child. His parents had received my letter, then mentioned it on the phone to Jason. I got the distinct impression that Jason was intended (by himself or his parents) to be the gatekeeper. His responsibility was to check me out.

It seemed that Jason, who was ten when Laura died, had started his own quest to learn more about his sister. She seemed as enigmatic a presence in his life as she was in mine. Jason and I helped each other, shared stories, and started connecting each other with friends we knew how to find. Over the next few months, a small network of people emerged—other friends, Laura’s boyfriend at the time of her death, and her parents—people reconnecting to talk about a young life we all missed so badly.

I eventually worked up the nerve to ask Jason if their family
still had her copy of
Slaughterhouse-Five
, and if so, would they be able to look inside it for me to see if there was an envelope. I felt completely ridiculous asking, partly because I feared the answer and partly because it felt like a potentially semi-creepy thing to ask. Part of me hoped that Jason or his parents would still have it sitting on a shelf in their living room. Then they could pull it down and easily determine if there was a letter nested inside. If it was there, unopened, that meant that Laura had never seen my letter and probably never knew (for sure) how I felt. If the book was there but the letter wasn’t, then it was reasonable to assume she had found the letter and, thus, read it.

Jason and his mother looked, but the book wasn’t around anymore, nor was it in any of the remaining boxes of Laura’s things. I don’t know why I was surprised to learn this. I’m not sure I could put my hands on any given possession I owned twenty-five years ago. At the time, I surrounded myself with trappings I considered absolutely essential to the life I led: books, magazines, tapes, albums, clothes, et cetera. They defined me. Yet I probably couldn’t fill a shoe box with the things that have stayed in my life since then. Tapes and albums were replaced by CDs, which, in turn, were replaced by binary computer files. Clothes were worn out or became dated. Books were loaned, stolen, lost, forgotten, or sold for rent money. I guess they were, in hindsight, the most meaningless parts of me.

As I connected with the Pattersons and others who’d passed in and out of Laura’s life, I had to let go of any notion that Laura and my relationship was in any way a unique one for her. I didn’t want to, but I kept finding a web of people throughout her life, men and women, with whom she had similar deep,
intimate, and intense one-on-one friendships. Yet, just like me, no one knew much about anyone else. Every single one of them admitted that when they first heard from me (and why I was contacting them), they initially felt a bit threatened. They all thought their relationship with her was unique and were a bit jealous to hear they weren’t the only one. I have to admit I felt the same way about them. Laura was my best friend; she was a lot of other people’s best friend as well.

I think that was Laura’s gift. She was a mysterious girl who had an amazing talent for making you feel like the most interesting and important thing in the world to her. You just naturally assumed that you were as special to her as she made you feel.

I learned a lot of other things about Laura as well. I learned how badly New York hadn’t ended up the way she’d planned.

When she moved to New York, she changed her name. For no clear reason, she started going by her middle name, Lee. When I spoke to anyone who’d met her after she left Ohio for college, they always referred to her as Lee and found it kind of silly that people from Ohio know her as Laura. She got a job at a bookstore and started assembling a new life. But school was hard, New York was overwhelming, and she seemed to become a magnet for dark people and dark situations.

After Laura had dropped out of school entirely, her mother got a call from her roommate. Laura had been living in some crappy apartment with a woman and her child, who noticed that Laura hadn’t been home in a few days. No one knew where she was. Her things were still in the apartment. She had simply vanished. A few days later Laura’s mother got a phone call. The other end of the line was silent, then the phone was hung up. Laura’s mother managed to get the number of the
caller, somewhere in New Orleans, and called back. She asked if Laura was there. The voice who answered said there was no one by that name there. A few hours later, Laura called.