I laughed. “How’s the feed from our equipment?” I asked, motioning Steven over to the far corner of the room. He set down his thermal imager on one of the desks so he could hold the end of the tape measure while he wove around the desks to the corner of the room.
“Everything looks good,” Gil said. “I’ve got a little spike in your electrostatic, though. Are you near an outlet?”
I looked down where I was standing by the window, and sure enough there was an outlet there. “Roger that on the outlet,” I said. “I’ll move over as soon as Steven gives me the measurement.”
“Fourteen feet, two inches,” Steven said, clicking off his flashlight.
“Uh…M.J.?” Gil said in my ear.
“Hold on, Gil; I gotta write that down.” I held the tape measure awkwardly under my arm while I scribbled on my clipboard.
“Er…this really can’t wait,” Gil said, alarm in his voice.
I stopped writing and pressed the headset to my ear. “What’s up?”
“I don’t want to frighten you,” Gil said. “But is Steven’s thermal imager facing you?”
I glanced across the room, and in the dim light I could just make out his meter on one of the desks. “Roger that,” I said.
“Then you might want to turn around,” he said.
“What’s going on?” Steven asked, holding up his night-vision camera to navigate his way through the desks.
I didn’t answer him right away. Instead I turned around and dropped my clipboard. On the other side of the window were two wide-eyed, frightened little faces staring into the classroom at me. I gasped, pointing at them while I backed up, and that was when one of the little boys disappeared. “Wait!” I called out to him, but he was gone.
“Whoa,” Steven said as he spotted the other little boy through the camera. “I can see through him!”
“Gilley, are you getting the feed from the camera?” I asked, my eyes as wide as those of the other little boy on the far side of the glass.
“I am!”
Slowly I set down my clipboard, never breaking eye contact with the energy in front of me. “I’m M.J.,” I said to him.
“Did something happen to you here?”
The little boy nodded.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” I asked.
Eric, came into my head loud and clear.
“Hi, Eric,” I said gently. “Can you tell me what happened to you?”
The hatchet man came….
And just like that Eric’s image disappeared. “He’s gone!” Steven said, still recording through his camera.
“He’s still here,” I said. “I can sense him. Eric, if you’re still with us, can you tap on something?”
Immediately there was a hard knock on the chalkboard. Steven swiveled and pointed his camera at the chalkboard. “Eric, were you hurt in this classroom?” I asked. Nothing happened, so I instructed, “If you were hurt in this classroom, please knock twice for yes, once for no.”
Two knocks followed, and I could sense Eric’s anxiety increasing. He’s coming! I heard in my head, and just like that Eric’s energy vanished.
I was about to call out for him when a scream loud enough to wake the dead ripped through the earpiece in my ear. “Ahh!” I yelled, tearing it out of my ear.
“Gilley!” Steven said, and ran out of the classroom. It took me only a moment to realize the scream was connected to my best friend out in the van.
Racing after Steven, I flew down the hallway and through the double doors while Gilley’s frantic cries for help echoed across the school grounds. At the van we saw a large figure holding something clublike in his hands, and with it he hit the van. “Bastard!” Steven said next to me as we pounded the pavement.
“Stop it!” I screamed as we got closer. “Step away from him, you demonic son of a bitch!”
The figure backed up and looked at me, and that was when I realized he wasn’t a ghost, but a real, live man with a bat. Steven must have realized it too, because he slammed on the brakes and pulled me protectively behind him. “Gilley,” he called to my still-frantic partner. “Are you all right?”
“You can’t be here!” the man with the bat said. “This is private property!”
“Put that thing down!” I snapped at him, furious that he had attacked Gilley.
From inside the van we heard Gil yell one last time; then everything went quiet. “Gilley!” I shouted. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” he said meekly, sticking his head out of the window closest to us. “I thought it was that Hatchet Jack guy.”
“You can’t be here!” the man said again, and it was then that I realized he looked just as scared as we did. It was also when I noticed that he was wearing a uniform that looked like it was made for a janitor. “Do you work here?” I demanded.
“I’m calling Owen!” he said. “He’s going to come down, and then you’re going to be in big trouble!”
“M.J.,” Steven whispered over his shoulder. “He is suffering some mental-capacity issue.”
I squinted at the man. His name tag said Nicholas. “We have permission from the dean to be here,” I said calmly to him. “Dean Habbernathy told us we could be here.”
This seemed to catch Nicholas off guard. “Oh, no, he didn’t!” he insisted, much the way a stubborn child would respond. “You’re liars and probably thieves! I’m calling Owen, and you’re going to be in big trouble!”
“Who is this Owen?” Steven asked him, still eyeing the bat in Nicholas’s hands.
“He’s my brother,” Nicholas said. “He’s the dean.”
“Nicholas,” I said calmly. “We want you to call your brother. By all means, get him on the phone so that you can see we’re not thieves or robbers or bad people, okay?”
In the distance there was the sound of sirens, and I realized the police were likely on their way. “He called the cops,” Steven said.
“I called them,” Gilley said, holding up his cell phone.
“You’re in big trouble!” Nicholas said with a little bounce to his step. “The police are coming to arrest you!”
“They are not,” I snapped, annoyed by this whole ordeal.
It turned out, however, that Nicholas was right on the money, as I found out a short time later, when I was handcuffed and furious in the backseat of a black-and-white. “This job blows,” Gilley grumbled, squished in between Steven and me in the backseat.
“How do you tell the difference between blowing and sucking?” Steven asked. “I have heard you Americans use both; this thing or that sucks or it blows. Which is better?”
Gilley smiled wickedly and opened his mouth to answer, but I gave him a warning look and said, “Don’t you dare,” leaving Steven’s question unanswered.
To my relief, at that moment another car pulled up next to ours in the parking lot. The cop who had thrown us in the backseat of the black-and-white called to his partner, who was currently inside our van digging around for any incriminating evidence. “The dean’s here,” I said.
“Great,” Gilley grumbled as he fought with his handcuffs.
“Maybe Mr. Happy Pants will cut us a break for a change.”
We all watched as Nicholas hurried over to his brother’s car and began pointing at us excitedly. One of the cops approached the car, and he and the dean spoke at length, with lots of glances in our direction.
Finally the cop came over to Gilley’s side and opened the door. “You three,” he said gruffly. “Step out of the car.”
Gilley hurried to clamber out; Steven and I followed. The cop unlocked our handcuffs and said, “The dean here has vouched for you.”
“Thank you, Dean Habbernathy!” Gilley said with a wave to the rather grumpy-looking man in the car.
“Try to stay outta trouble from now on, okay?” the cop said.
“The season for false alarms at this place started early this year,” grumbled his partner.
I looked sharply at him. “I’m sorry; what did you say?”
r />
The cop I’d addressed seemed to realize he’d revealed more than he’d meant to, and tried to cover up with, “Nothing. We get called out here a lot, and it’s always the same story.”
“And what story is that?” asked Steven.
The cop adjusted his security belt, uncomfortable that we weren’t letting him off the hook. “You’re here to hunt Hatchet Jack, right?”
I gasped. “Yes!” I said. “What do you know about him?”
Again the cop seemed to fidget uncomfortably. “Only that through the years we get one or two calls, usually teenagers from around town who dare one another to go looking for Jack in the woods. They’re always so surprised when they find him,” he added with a snicker.
My eyes darted to Gilley, and an unspoken exchange passed between us. “You know what’s funny?” I said to the cop. “We’ve been trying to dig up information on Jack online, and we’ve been coming up with zilch. You’d think that a legend like him would have a couple of Web sites devoted to him.”
The cop gave me a snarky grin. “You gotta remember that Lake Placid is a tourist attraction. The last thing the locals want the tourists to read about is some ghost haunting their ski slopes. If you live here, you benefit in some way from tourism, and no one wants to jeopardize their bread and butter.”
“Makes sense,” Gil said to me. Before we could ask the cop any further questions the dean had come out of his car and approached us. “I’m sorry about Nicholas,” he said with no real empathy in his voice, which was curt and annoyed.
“He can be a bit too zealous about looking after things here at the school.”
“We’ll be on our way then,” said the other cop. “Dean Habbernathy,” he added, giving the dean a salute before motioning to his partner to leave.
I looked over the dean’s shoulder at Nicholas, standing by his brother’s car looking dejected and sad. “He was just doing his job,” I said. “No harm done.”
The dean sighed heavily, as if his brother were an unusually heavy burden. “I had, of course, informed Nicholas that you would be here, but I’m afraid his disability causes him to forget the more important things.”
I scowled. I didn’t like the dean, not one bit. I didn’t like the look of irritation he gave Nicholas, and I certainly didn’t like the way he talked about his own brother. “Again, Dean Habbernathy, there was no real damage done other than a little lost time.”
“Very well,” said the dean, but I could tell he was still irritated and embarrassed. “I shall leave you then to your investigation.”
As he was about to turn away I called, “Hold on one moment, sir.” When he turned back to me I said, “I’m interested in something we came across tonight in the elementary wing. In the school’s history, did any of the children ever go missing or die while they were in attendance here?”
The dean looked shocked. “Of course not!” he said, completely indignant. “Northelm has never lost a child in attendance. Their safety and well-being is of our utmost concern!”
I was surprised by his reaction. It seemed overly severe. “I didn’t mean to imply any negligence on your part, Dean Habbernathy. My apologies if that’s how it came out.”
The dean scowled in distaste and turned away to deal with his brother, whom he ordered into his car, and the two drove over to the other side of the parking lot, where the dean parked, apparently so that they could talk in private. “Geez, M.J.,” Gil said to me as the dean drove off. “Way to win him over.”
“Oh, whatever,” I said, completely annoyed. “Listen, about what the cop said—”
“I’ll check the old blotters for any sightings on Hatchet Jack. Towns like these usually keep those down at the courthouse under the Freedom of Information act. I’ll also recheck the local paper. Maybe we missed something in our initial online run-through.”
“Good,” I said.
“Are we going back in there tonight?” Steven said, motioning over his shoulder.
I glanced at my watch. It was past midnight, which was usually pretty good for hunting ghosties, but my sixth sense was telling me that all was quiet on the western front and we had probably gotten the most out of our first foray into the elementary wing. “I’d rather go back to Teeko’s and analyze the footage from tonight. There’s a larger puzzle here, and I want to try to get a handle on it.”
Steven looked relieved, and Gilley was already packing our stuff into the van. I had to hide a smile at his enthusiasm to leave.
We drove back to Teeko’s, and I brewed some coffee while Steven and Gil set up the feed from the camera to the big-screen TV in the living room. When we’d all gotten our coffee and were sitting comfortably on the couch, Gil pressed the play button and we watched the film. “I reviewed the footage on the drive back here, and I’ve set it up so that you can see what’s happening on the thermal imager and the night-vision camera at the same time,” said Gil. “We’ll start with this sequence first, though.” Gil clicked a button on his remote control, and the window for the thermal imager expanded and filled the screen. “This is when you two first came into the classroom. See the windows?”
“They’re blue,” said Steven.
“Yep. Nothing giving off much heat there, but wait for it,” Gil said, and a few moments later three little warmer green circles appeared very faintly against the blue outline of the window.
“Three?!” I gasped. “I thought there were only two!”
“Watch,” said Gilley, and sure enough the third and faintest of the little circles faded into the blue background as the two others became clearer and more greenish yellow. Incredibly, we could also see that the circles that formed the boys’ heads were now attached to little bodies as well.
“What happened to the third ghost?” Steven said.
“You’ll see in a bit,” said Gilley, clicking another button and reducing the picture from the thermal imager so that it coincided with the footage we’d gotten through the night-vision camera.
“Wow,” I said, peering at the screen, which showed the two frightened boys looking at us through the window. As the boys faded away Gilley increased the thermal imager footage again, and I was amazed that both yellow outlines had clearly come through the wall and entered the classroom.
“This is where you start asking Eric questions,” said Gil.
“Watch what he does.”
On the video feed you could hear me asking Eric to knock twice for yes and once for no. Eric’s yellow outline was over at the chalkboard, and a little stick of yellow came away from the outline of his body and blazed orange as it knocked against the outline of the chalkboard. “That is freaking me out!” Steven said, and Gilley and I both gave him a smirk, but quickly glanced back at the screen.
“Did you sense that he was so close to you?” Gilley asked me.
I thought back, trying to remember the moment. “I wish I could say yes, but I honestly don’t remember. I think I was just focusing on keeping the dialogue going.”
Gilley nodded and pointed at the screen. “This is where it gets really scary. Go back to the window in the left-hand corner of the screen.”
Our eyes followed his direction, and we all sucked in a breath as we watched a figure of blazing red appear out on the lawn and begin walking with purpose toward the window. “Jack,” I said in a hushed voice.
“Yep, and this is when the boys sense him.”
The two yellow outlines of the boys darted with amazing quickness out of the room through the window and were joined by the reappearance of the third little green energy. They darted across the lawn in the opposite direction of the approaching red image, then faded altogether into the woods. At that moment the imager began to shake violently, and the screen was too difficult to watch. “What’s happening?” I asked.
“This is when I was attacked by Nicholas,” Gil said with a hint of embarrassment.
“So what can you make of it?” Steven asked me.
I shook my head. “I have no idea,” I admitted. ?
??We’re clearly dealing with a psychopath,” I said. “Hatchet Jack is one deranged son of a bitch, and the fact that we’re now seeing evidence of three young boys who have become grounded on the school’s property…” I let my voice trail off, not really knowing what conclusions I could draw.
“Well, it’s obvious that whoever Jack was, he killed three little boys.”
“The third one could have been a girl,” Steven pointed out.
I nodded. “Yeah, that energy was so light even I didn’t pick up on it. And I don’t think we can assume too much here, guys.”
Gil cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that even though these energies are interacting with Jack, we can’t automatically assume he murdered them.”
“How else would they know about him?” Steven asked me. “Besides, don’t you remember that Eric confirmed that he was hurt in the classroom by Hatchet Jack?”
“Grounded spirits can definitely interact with one another, and often their interactions aren’t pleasant. A grounded spirit is already in a state of confusion, and when it encounters another spirit wandering around in what it considers its territory, there can be a confrontation. That’s as often a cause for doors slamming or objects being tossed around as because we physical energies irritate the spirit.”
“This ghost stuff is so complicated,” Steven said with a sigh.
I smiled. “I know, I know. The first thing we need to do is work on the children,” I said. “They’re the ones I’m most concerned about.”
“You want to cross them over before we tackle Jack?” Gil asked.
“Yep. I’m not comfortable knowing there are children running around the ether in terror. Plus, maybe we’ll be able to get one of them to open up and tell us what happened. I’ll do my best to try to find out the year or decade they died in, and we can focus our investigation from there.”
Steven looked upset, and in a low voice he asked me, “Do you think they were students at the school?”
“I couldn’t say for certain,” I said. “And, again, I really don’t want to jump to conclusions. The school has been in existence for only the past hundred years. These kids could have been on the grounds long before then.”