The Ghost Chronicles (31 page)

After a few agonizing moments, she exhaled deeply, blinked a few times, then turned to me again. She was back among the living. Although she hadn’t spoken yet, I could see it in her eyes.

“I’m okay. He…he wanted to speak so badly,” Maureen said.

“I know, but he’ll have to come find us later.” I pointed at the trap door. “All you’d need is to take a wrong step, and you’re history. Come on, let’s get out of here while the getting’s good.”

I nodded at the reporter, indicating he should go down the ladder first. Maureen, still visibly shaken, followed. I held her arm and guided her through the opening. Yelling to Doug below, I called out, “You have her?”

“I’m fine, Ron,” Maureen said.

Sheri and her team greeted us in the kitchen. “We were able to see a little of what happened up there on the base camp monitor,” Sheri said, her voice thick with excitement. “Did Maureen know about the history of this lighthouse?”

“No. I didn’t tell her anything,” I said.

“Wow, should I tell her some of the things she hit on? It really fits,” Sheri said.

“No. Let’s wait until we’re done with our investigation. Then you can fill her in.” Although she seemed a little disappointed, she agreed. I didn’t want Maureen to have any preconceived ideas when she was channeling.

I walked from the kitchen into what, in the past, must have been the dining area. Now the only things in the room were some lawn furniture: a large wooden picnic table and a couple of chairs. I guess there wasn’t a need for anything else in a building that’s
primarily used for day tours. Brrrr. That included heat. “This can be our safe room,” I said.

“Safe room? Ron, what are you talking about?” Sheri inquired.

“It’s a meeting place where we choose to ignore the spirits.”

“Ron,” Maureen poked me in the arm, then said in a voice only I could hear, “where do we sleep tonight?”

“Ah, sleep’s overrated,” I said. “Besides, when do you think you’re going to have time for sleep?”

“Oh, I—will—find time,” she said. “If I don’t get sleep, I get bitchy.”

I bit my tongue.

“Okay, you guys ready for round two?” I said. I stood there with my EMF meter and temperature gauge. “Who wants to go to the attic?” I paused, looking around the room, waiting for volunteers. “I have an idea. Karen, Leo, you come with me. Maureen, why don’t you stay here and take a break?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Maureen said, then, not missing a beat, she turned to Terry and picked up where she’d left off in their conversation.

Fifteen minutes later, in darkness, the three of us sat Indian style on the rough-hewn beams and sparse boards that made up the attic floor. Well, two of us sat Indian style; I, on the other hand, shoved a piece of weathered cardboard box and unused insulation aside and sat with my legs straight out. My rickety knees would have none of it.

“All right, Karen, why don’t you do some EVPs, then we can take a moment of silence and see if we get any response?”

Karen turned on her recorder, placed it on the floor in front of us, then said in a calm, steady voice, “Is there anyone here that would like to speak to us? We would like to thank you for this opportunity to be here with you tonight.”

Silence. Well, as silent as it could be with the wind whistling through the cracks in the wall.

I glanced down and noticed the red light; the voice recognition indicator was lit up like a stoplight. Someone was trying to communicate.
Cool
, I thought.

I could barely make anyone out. Only when they shifted their positions did I see black silhouettes, a shade darker than the expanse of the attic. Yet I couldn’t be sure if it was them or a trick of my eyes as they adjusted to total darkness.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye a green light flicked atop the roof rafters and along the wall. “Did you see that?” I asked.

I couldn’t see anyone as Karen and Leo turned to look around us, but I felt their movement as the boards beneath me creaked.

“Oh, wow. Look at the green lights!” Karen screamed.

It wasn’t just me. Amazing! The green lights were zipping this way and that, dancing back and forth, over our heads and down around our feet. We sat, mesmerized, like kids watching fireworks for the first time, until they just stopped.

“I don’t see them anymore,” Karen said.

“If there’s anyone here, can you please give us another sign?” I asked.

We sat patiently in the darkness, with only wind and the grumbling of Leo’s stomach breaking the silence.

“If there’s anyone here, can you please give us another sign?” I asked again.

This time my question was answered.

The green light brushed my cap and shot across the room toward Karen, weaving its way through her hair. Almost instantaneously Karen’s voice echoed my own. “Did you feel that!”

“What? I didn’t feel anything,” Leo said.

When does Leo feel anything?
I used to think that I was as psychic as a brick, but compared to Leo, I looked like one of America’s most documented psychics of his time, Edgar Cayce. Pushing myself up to my knees, I turned on my flashlight, scanning the area. But no matter what angle I looked from, there was nothing there. “Whatever touched us is gone.” With our bones aching from our awkward positions, we decided to call it quits and made our way back downstairs. Karen and Leo filled everyone in on what had just happened. As far as I was concerned, no amount of explanation would do it justice. What we had witnessed was something extraordinary.

I took a seat next to Maureen, who was finishing up a salad. “
Still eating
?”

“What do you mean, ‘Still eating’? I just started,” she laughed.

Following suit I scarfed down a sandwich and some chips, then said, “Okay, I think it’s time for the basement. Let’s go.”

Maureen turned her wrist over. “Are you kidding me? It’s only eleven o’clock? It feels more like two in the morning.”

“That just means we have more time to investigate. I think we should do more overnights like this.” The way Maureen rolled her eyes, I could only assume she wasn’t having as good of a time as I was. “Ah, lighten up, will ya?”

Maureen didn’t respond, but the heat of her stare told me all I needed to know.

We gathered at the top of the basement stairs, then descended into the dimly lit cellar that at that moment could have doubled as a freezer. My sleeve brushed against the rusted oil tank as we took our places, ready to communicate. I looked past Maureen to where Karen and Leo stood. “Why don’t you guys stand over here a bit more.” I pointed to a spot in front of the storage shelf, which housed cleaners and painting supplies. “Right over there.”

Before we were completely ready, Maureen said in a low, guttural voice, “He’s here.” This night was hopping. With my EMF picking up fluctuating readings, I turned to Maureen. “Can you take out your pendulum?” I paused. “Leo, start taking pictures.”

* * *

I took out my pendulum.

He was back. The same man I’d felt while we’d stood in the lighthouse. I held my pendulum between my thumb and forefinger. The spirit’s thoughts becoming my own, I said, “I didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident. Everyone is blaming me.”

“It’s him.” Ron’s voice echoed my sentiment. “Who did you kill?” Ron asked.

Like a puppet on a string, I felt my head turn toward Ron of its own accord, “Who—are—you?” The words, thick with emotion, rolled off my tongue.

“We are here to investigate this lighthouse. More importantly, who are
you
?”

Ron continued with his questions, but before I knew it, and as if we’d insulted the entity, he was gone. Just as quickly as he’d left, a woman’s presence appeared. “There’s someone else here,” I said. “It’s a woman. She seems disoriented. She doesn’t know where she is.” Her energy felt thick, touchable even. As I reached out to her with my mind, a sharp stabbing pain started at
the base of my skull and seared through to the front of my eyes. I pressed my fingers to my temples, which were now throbbing. “Oh dear God.” As hard as I tried to get her name, I couldn’t. “I think she was struck with a blunt object on her head.” Still confused, she was unable to think clearly. I was suddenly filled with overwhelming sadness. My chest grew heavy. Weary. “I’m ready to go upstairs. Now.”

Through it all I heard Leo snapping a series of pictures with his 35mm camera. As we exited the basement, I found myself wondering what, if anything, would show up on the film.

With no rest for the weary, we immediately bundled up and went outside onto the boardwalk. Thermal Dan, our thermal imaging specialist, Leo, Ron, and I headed back toward the dock to see if there was any activity. Ron was in the lead, with Dan and I following close behind. Dan slowly made a sweeping motion with his handheld, heat-sensitive/thermal-imaging camera. “What the heck is that?” he said.

Ron backed up a few steps, as he and I peered over Dan’s shoulder. There was nothing visible to the naked eye, yet on camera a dark black image, a stark contrast to the light gray background, was zipping past us, swooping down, first from our left, then our right.

Intrigued, I stepped in for a closer look. That’s when something hit me. I grabbed my head. “What the hell was that? Something just hit me in the head.”

“What? What hit you?” Ron asked.

“I don’t know, it felt like I just got smacked in the temple.” We walked a few more feet, and
bam
! I grabbed my head again, half expecting to find blood. “What the hell? It hit me again!”

“You’re kidding, right?” Ron frantically looked from side to side, while Dan scanned the horizon.

Undaunted by what happened and curious, we pushed on.

We didn’t take more than a few steps before it happened again. I’d never had the butt end of a gun smashed into my temple, but if I did, I’m sure it would feel like this. The pain was excruciating, as Ron and Dan’s voices faded into the distance.

I dropped like a rock.

* * *

“Maureen, what the hell are you doing?” I’d been so consumed with the black shadow that I hadn’t even realized Maureen was on the ground. Until, that is, she began writhing and screaming. Her fingernails dug into the soft, weather-worn boards as she frantically crawled like a crab on her belly. “Maureen!”

She’d already slid her body across four feet of boards and was getting dangerously close to the drop-off I’d spied earlier in the day. Without waiting to see what she was going to do, I reached into my pocket, pulled out the little vial of holy water, and dove onto her. Turning her onto her back while holding her in place, I moistened the tip of my finger with the holy water and made the sign of the cross on her forehead. Returning the vial to my pocket, I placed the palm of my hand on her head and determinedly whispered, “I command you to leave this body. It is not your own. Leave in the name of Jesus Christ. I command you to leave.”

For what seemed like hours but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, she was eerily still. Her back rose and fell with each heavy intake of breath. “Maureen, are you back with us?” I shook her gently. “Maureen, answer me.”

She looked up at me through heavy-lidded eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks. I’m getting my ass kicked tonight.” She shook her head as if to clear the cobwebs. “It felt like the same woman from the basement.”

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

“I don’t really know. One minute I was watching that black thing, and the next I felt something swoop down and hit me in the head. I think she was showing me how she died. I think she was hit by a blunt object, maybe the butt end of a rifle, right here,” she pointed to her left temple. “She was running for her life.” She swallowed hard. “I was running for my life.”

“Yeah, it almost looked like you were trying to crawl away from an attacker. It looked pretty scary.” I glanced at her tear-filled eyes. “Why don’t you go back to the house and take a break. The rest of us will finish up out here.”

Leo, who had been hanging back until now, said, “That sounds like a good idea. Come on Maureen, I’ll walk you back.”

* * *

As I walked with Leo back to the house, the skin beneath my fingernails was stinging so badly I wanted to scream. It felt like I had had tiny matchsticks shoved underneath them. The pain must have shown on my face, because the second I walked into the dining room, Kathleen, one of Sheri’s helpers, ran over to me. A nurse by trade, she said, “Are you okay? What happened to you out there?”

“I, um, fell.” She looked at me, disbelief evident in her eyes. That’s when I looked down at my jeans and noticed a large green stain stretching from my hip to my ankle. How the heck did that happen? I went into the bathroom with Kathleen at my heels.

“Let me see your hands,” she said.

I spread my hands out and held them up to the light. Slivers of pressure-treated wood, along with layers of dirt and moss, were wedged beneath my fingernails. No wonder I was in pain.

Kathleen grabbed her medical supply kit and within minutes
she had removed all the splinters. Before bedding down, I sat and chatted with Sheri and the other ladies.

Sheri looked at me, cocking her head to the side, then leaned in toward me, staring at my left ear. “Oh no…Maureen,” she said, in a hushed tone. “You’re missing one of those lovely earrings.” Reaching up, I touched each earlobe. Darn it, she was right, my anniversary gift was now lost. I thought of what I’d just been through. If I’d lost it outside, I could kiss that earring goodbye. Surely it was gone for good.

Before I had a chance to dwell on my loss for too long, Ron and the rest of the group shuffled into the dining area. I slid closer to the ladies, making room at the picnic table.

“Ron, is now a good time to share the history of this place?” Sheri asked.

He stood for a moment and looked around the room, as if realizing the team was too exhausted to continue investigating. “Go for it,” he said.

She began, “There have been numerous reports of hauntings. However, the information I think you picked up on, Maureen,” Sheri glanced in my direction, “is the tragic events surrounding the murder-suicide. You see, a man by the name of Fred Milliken, described as a ‘giant’ of a man, lived on Wood Island with his wife and three children for several years in the 1890s. He was a game warden and a special policeman who had allowed a young lobsterman by the name of Hobbs to take up residence on Wood Island.” A hush settled over the room. Everyone was mesmerized by the story Sheri told. “According to the newspaper reports, on June 2, 1896, young Hobbs visited Old Orchard Beach. After becoming intoxicated, he headed back to the island. He told a friend he was going back to the island to visit Milliken. Only he
took his rifle with him, for the purpose, he said, of shooting some birds.” She paused to take a breath. “Upon his return, Milliken, realizing Hobbs was drunk and carrying a rifle, ordered Hobbs to hand over the weapon. Hobbs refused. When Milliken approached, he was shot in the abdomen and died forty-five minutes later. Hobbs, distraught over what had happened, returned to the small rented shack located behind the keeper’s house. He then put the same rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The bullet passed through his head and lodged in the ceiling.”