Pandemic: Letters Of Intent

Paul came in while I was in the shower, not an uncommon occurrence. "Daddy, there's a blanket monster in the kitchen," he said.
"A blanket monster?" I asked.
"Yeah! I set a trap for it!"
It's possible that Paul has been spending too much time with me during the quarantine. I said,"Let me know if you trap him. Do you think he wants any coffee?"
"Dad! You don't know how rude the blanket monster is! It just comes in and makes noise!"
"Okay. Let me know if you catch him."
"Can we take a ride on the bike?" Paul asked.
"You mean, the bike with the trailer attached?"
"Yeah. Your bike, where I can ride in the trailer behind."
Looking up from the couch, I glanced out the window. It was sunny and pleasant. I said,"Sure, I suppose so. Good day for this. Let's do it. After I finish my coffee."
"Where are we going?"
"How about an abandoned cemetery?"

I turned off of Fourth Street and rolled up the hill, Paul's trailer behind me. He was making pleased, excited noises in the back: "Wheeee!" I pulled up in Fairview Cemetery.
"Here we are, pal."
Paul climbed out of the trailer, looking around with some wonder. "The abandoned cemetery," he said with some reverence.
Paul has inherited my interest in abandoned places. While not precisely ancient, Fairview Cemetery is a little-known cemetery within the city limits that was created, and then out of business, about 1926. It's not the coolest or the remotest, but for a little outing with the kid, it'll work.
"Come on, little guy," I said. "Let's walk through."
We took the path through the cemetery, looking at a few of the stones. Paul pointed at some hid back in the trees. "I see some!"
"Yeah. the place is getting a little overgrown."
"Is Ida buried here?"
"No, Ida's over the hill, in Highland."
I let him run ahead a little, darting along the path. He'd been cooped up on our property for so long, and he'd been so good about it. It was good to get him out a little.
For me, too.

Even in a pandemic, there's exploration to be had, to some extent. There's the remains of an old toxic incinerator from the nineties a couple of blocks from our house. When Paul wanted to go on a bike ride the next day, I thought of taking him down there.
It's not exactly Indian ruins, but it'll do.
We pulled up and Paul got out of the bike trailer. "Is that abandoned?" he asked.
I nodded. "It's abandoned."
Paul looked impressed. We looked at the skeletal girders and remaining roof area that stood in the field behind the wire fence. I remember when this thing was operational, back in my twenties, but it was way before Paul was born. To him, this was ancient.
"Look," he said. "A milk container."
There were a couple of empty gallon jugs blowing around in the wind. I said,"Got an idea, little man. Remember when we said skin color doesn't matter, as long as you help people? Let's help Lock Haven a little and pick them up."
"Okay."
"You get that one, and I'll get those two. And we'll put them in the recycling center."

"Can we go for another bike ride?" Paul asked me.
"Sure. We have time. You know what? Let me show you where we're going on a really old map. Would you like that?"
"No. Wait, I mean yes."
I got out the 1925 Sanborn Map and took it down to the kitchen table. It had been almost fourteen years since I'd gotten started in local history, and I'd managed to acquire a decent collection of resources at home. It had served me pretty well during the quarantine. Flipping to plate 25, I found the building.
"Here, kiddo. See this? This is the building we're gonna see. It's an old railroad storage shop. It's not there anymore, but we can see ruins/"
"Cool," said Paul. "Can we go now?"
"It's forty-seven degrees out. I think you're gonna need shoes first."
"Okay," said Paul, grabbing for shoes.
"Not high heels. Wear your sneakers."

Down Myrtle Street, and around the corner onto Park. Then we bore off onto Liberty Street, past the church, and stopped near the railroad tracks.
There are ruins everywhere, little bits and pieces of the past. Sometimes you have to be me to see them, though. The average person walks right by these old things, and never gives it a thought. I've basically built a career on stopping to wonder what the story behind them was.
"Here it is, little man. The ruins of the old storage building."
Paul got out of the trailer, looking around. I'll grant there's not a lot to look at---Along Liberty Street, it's a large, flat concrete floor, with the bases of a couple of pillars embedded into it. No wonder people don't notice it. We walked across it, looking around.
"Look, here's a piece of the wall," I commented. "This place was a hundred years ago."
Paul was strolling around on the concrete flooring. I knelt down. "Hunh."
"What?"
"Check it out---There's writing here." All of the times I'd walked around down here, and I'd never noticed writing carved into the concrete. Paul looked down beside me.
"What does it say?"
"I can't tell---It's pretty old and worn."
"I think that's a P."
I stood up. "Tell you what we're gonna do, little man. We're gonna come back soon with chalk. I'll show you how to chalk this up, and we'll see what it says."
"Okay. Can we use blue chalk?'
"The color doesn't matter. You can do this with gravestones, too, if they're all old and worn out."
"Blue, then," said Paul.

"I brought coffee," Tif said, coming in the door. She handed me a tray with coffee cups on it---Two frozen concoctions, and one the right way, black and hot. "Figured I'd support local business."
"Looks good. Thanks." I took my coffee, and handed one of the frozen ones to Paul.
"Can we go yet?" Paul asked.
"Finish your drink first. We got time." I turned to Tif. "You ready to go chalk up some mystery letters with us?"
"That's why I'm here."

With Paul in the trailer and Tif behind us in her wheelchair, we rode down Liberty Street to the ruins. I pulled up with the bike, and we climbed out. I was wearing my gray ghost sweatshirt.
"Let's draw with chalk!" Paul said happily.
"Hold up, don't touch anything yet. I'll tell you how to do this." I knelt down and blew some dust off the letters. "You run the chalk over it sideways, like this...." I brushed the chalk over the letters. "Makes them pop a bit." Paul helped, and we colored it up. "These are pretty worn down, though. I'll have to come back with some shaving cream."
"Shaving cream?" asked Tif.
"Yeah, you spray it on and then squeegee it back off. Leaves you with shiny white letters. You can also reflect light with a signal mirror and it leaves the letters in shadow, but that requires a sunny day, and when's the last time we could count on one of those?"
I knelt back down and looked at the letters. Paul had taken the chalk and was drawing a doll on the concrete nearby. "I'm thinking some variation on Pennsylvania. This was the Pennsylvania Railroad at one time, so it makes some sense."
"Can we go have dinner now?" Paul asked.
I smiled.
"Get in the trailer, little man. Let's go."

"Dad? Are you real busy?"
I glanced over at Paul. "Not really, why?"
"Can we go do the shaving cream?"
I dropped the dishes I was washing and said,"Yeah, sure. Let's get the bike."

For the third time, we rode down to the old ruins. I had the shaving cream and a roll of paper towels in my pack, and I picked up the vehicle ice scraper we'd filched from the garage to use as a squeegee. "Come on, little man," I said. "Let's get to work."
I knelt down and sprayed a line of shaving cream over the letters. Setting the can down, I spread it around with my fingers, then reached for the paper towels and realized that Paul already had sprayed a six-inch heap of shaving cream onto the ground.
"Paul, dammit, don't waste the shaving cream. Here." I wiped off my hands, and he gave me the squeegee. I ran it over the letters, pushing off the excess shaving cream and leaving the rest embedded in the lettering, leaving a white set of letters.
It was clearer. However, "clearer" doesn't necessarily mean "clear." I looked them over, squinting at them, and said,"Hunh. What do you think, Paul?"
Paul looked it over. "Maybe it's in cursive."
"I think it's some variation of Pennsylvania or Philadelphia. This was, at one time, both the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, so it figures. Did you learn anything, little man?"
"I learned how to shave a sidewalk!"
"Close enough. Come on, let's ride."

I was in my office that night, working on writing, when Paul popped in. As he does.
"Dad? Can we go wrestle?"
"I suppose."
"It scares away the blanket monsters when we wrestle."
"Does it, now?" I don't know where he gets these things.
Paul nodded. "Yes! The blanket monsters don't like it when people wrestle. So if we do it, they'll run away forever."
I stood up.
"Okay, little man. Let's go wrestle."

Pandemic: Digging In

"Recording. We are investigating Paul's room, noon, April 11, 2020. Lou."
"Paul."
I watched as my digital recorder counted up the seconds. I had my LHPS vest on, but hadn't bothered zipping it up. Next to me, Paul sat with his tie-dyed shirt and black tights.
"Is there anyone here?" I asked.
"Is Ida here?" Paul asked.
We waited as the recorder counted off three seconds. Paul had been interested in doing an EVP session today---For some reason, he'd begun to take an interest in Ida, our ghost.
"Where did you drink the poison?" Paul asked.
We heard a small noise. Could have been anything, but his face lit up. "Did you hear that? That was Ida!"
"Should we play it back?" I asked, reaching for the recorder.
"Yeah. And then let's do another."

"We're going to dig up the backyard," I announced to my wife. I've learned the best way to reveal these plans is to just rip off the Band-Aid.
"Uh-huh," she said. "Instead of that, you could always try cutting back some of that brush while we're on lockdown."
"Yeah, you know all those times I said I was going to do home maintenance when I had the time?" I asked her. "Turns out that wasn't the issue. During the week, I figure we'll do an archaeological dig in the backyard."
"You're going to fill it in eventually, though, right?"
"What do you care? You never go back there. A few years ago, Barb found an article about a homeowner on our street who found a secret root cellar for bootleg whiskey under his property. That was George Yost, Ida's father. This whole area was big for stills, because before it was settled, there were a lot of springs up here. It's why everyone's basement always floods immediately."
"You and Paul?"
"And Tif. I know there's something under there---A few years ago, when some guys came to install a new pipe next door, they dug up traces of an old wall or foundation---I can see where it runs under there. We're gonna spend the week digging it up."

"You've gotten sort of more interesting since you've been so bored," said Tif. "Which is really saying something."
"Not my fault I live in a fascinating area," I said.
We were out in the backyard, digging. I'd marked off a grid area about eight feet long, about where I thought the old wall was. I was working in my Zombie Response Team T-shirt. Tif was digging more or less randomly in holes, and I was working slowly in the precise squares I'd learned to do. Paul was popping in and out, in between playing in his sand pit and swinging.
"So far, I found two rusty nails and a razor blade," I said. "Not bad for surface area."
"Does Mom know we're doing this?" Tif asked.
"I told her," I said. "I'm not above just doing it without informing her, but I had the time, so...."
"I found an old pocketknife," she said.
"We'll clean it off and put it in the can." I was keeping the finds in a coffee can I'd filched from my own recycling. Stuck at home, with the local recycling services cancelled, I'd found ways to put a lot of that stuff to use. I was beginning to understand my grandmother's love for reusing junk after the Great Depression.
"How far down are we going?" Tif asked.
"Until we hit the wall I think is there. Or until we get bored. Worst case, it keeps me busy a while. Best case, it'll give me some aged whiskey and a new Batcave."

"You're wearing a ghost shirt on Easter," Tif said.
I looked down at my grey sweatshirt with the ghost on it. "You're right. Totally inappropriate. Easter is no time for things that come back from the dead."
She was sitting on the porch steps. I was putting in a couple of hours working on the dig. Paul was flitting back and forth between us, mostly playing on his swing. I held a piece of glass up to the light. "Bottle. Definitely. Looks like probably medicine."
"How can you tell?"
"Got this ridge here. Rules out windows and lenses. Could have been the bottle Ida drank acid from."
"You had to get macabre, didn't you?"
"I mean, I doubt it. Not old enough." I pulled a large, rusty nail out of the sifter. "Old nail. If I had to guess, I'd say I'm down to about 1945 now."
"That's weirdly specific. You know this how?"
"Well, sort of an educated wild guess. The house was refurbished in 1942, after Ida's family sold it. They collapsed the back wall right over into this yard---Because of the war, they couldn't tear it down and rebuild, so they built another house inside the first and tore the old one down around it. This is an old nail, but not square-nail old. I'd guess this in the forties, maybe from the new construction."
I was somewhere around eight inches down, where the good stuff was beginning to show up. "What's this? Ceramic?" I tapped the piece against my teeth.
"Hey! Does Mom know you do that?! We're trying to avoid a virus here and you're sticking things in your mouth?"
"It's an old trick. You can't identify the substance, you tap it on your front teeth. A little practice, you can feel the difference between wood, stone, glass. Yep. It's ceramic."
"So what are you hoping to find?"
"Well, whatever's there. I know there's the stone foundation down there, and I'm hoping to get down to that. It's not like I don't have the time. Before Ida's grandfather built the house, the property belonged to a woman named Ellen Curts and her husband George. He built the plain-looking house on the corner of Water and Vesper. If there were old hiding places for alcohol up here, woulda been during their time. We'll see."

"Can you put an alien patch on my mask?" I asked Michelle.
Sitting at her sewing machine, she said,"If you have an alien patch available, sure."
"I usually keep a ten-pack around."
"Once I'm done making yours, I'll make one for Paul, and then Biz," she said. "We can drive it up to her."
I walked into the TV room, where Tif and Paul were getting rowdy. I said,"Paul, I have a question for you, and I'm not sure I want a straight answer. A lie will be fine. How did toothpaste get all over the wall of the bathroom?"
Paul looked at me, and very seriously said,"I don't know, Daddy."
He's getting better.
"I'm gonna go outside for a while," I said.
I walked outside and lit a cigar. I'd cut way back on cigars since Paul was born, mainly because I didn't have the time anymore. I didn't usually smoke around him, but he was in the TV room, playing with Tif. I walked out to the garage.
Months ago, when I'd begun cleaning the garage, I'd built myself a little concealed space. I had a couple of chairs, a small shelf, and the walls were made of boxed-up crap. I sat down on a chair that had once belonged to my grandmother, smoking my cigar, surrounded by my camping equipment. Fortress of Solitude. I could use a little solitude right now.
I've lived here a long time. I've always tried to help my city....Protect it where I could. But I never envisioned anything like this.
It took me maybe a minute and a half to begin getting bored. How the hell did Superman ever do this at the North Pole? I walked back out and pulled the tarp off the dig.
Long ago, I'd gotten good at digging and smoking a cigar at the same time. I did some work on it, digging out a few more squares, going down a few more inches. I let myself get lost in the sifting and digging---There's something oddly relaxing about archaeology, for me, at least.
Two rusty nails. I like rusty nails. I found a white ceramic bead, from before they were all plastic---Paul would love that. And in the sifter, I pulled a stone, but one that had obviously been worked.
It was jagged, chipped into the shape of a rough lightning bolt. About two inches long. When I washed it off, I realized that it was slightly sparkling---Sandstone, maybe. I took it inside.
Tif and Paul were playing some game that seemed to require Paul leaping off the couch in his underwear. I held up my find. "What's this look like to you?"
"I mean, a rock," said Tif.
"Harry Potter's lightning bolt," Paul said immediately.
"That's it," I said. "A lightning bolt. Pretty sure this was worked; it didn't form like this by accident. This looks Native American to me. And it seems to be sandstone, I think, which means it's not original to this exact property."
"What do you think it is?" Tif asked.
"Something Native American. An amulet, an effigy. Without falling into the religious fallacy, I'd guess at some sort of decorative amulet. This far from the river, I'm a little surprised. It's a find."

Paul was looking in the mirror, smearing makeup on his face. He announced,"I'm trying to make myself all white, like a ghost."
"Wait here a minute," I said. I walked upstairs to the bathroom, where I remembered a long-unused tube of white makeup. I went downstairs with it. "Here, little man. Sit down."
Paul sat on my lap, and in a few minutes I had him made up pale white, with black circles around his eyes. He looked in the mirror and squealed.
"I'm a ghost now! Oooooh!"
"Yeah, little guy, you're a ghost." I walked into the kitchen. Paul followed me, and put on my alien hat, then picked up my whip.
"Now I'm Daddy!" he declared. "I have a whip and I'm white!"
Also he had dark circles under his eyes. I laughed. "Yes, little man. You're just like Daddy. What are you going to do?"
Paul looked at the back door.
"I'm gonna go outside and dig."

Pandemic: Dead Ahead

"Bagel's done, little man," I said. "Looks toasted to me."
"Can I have it?" Paul asked.
I handed it to him. "Might still be a little hot."
He bit into it as I placed the lid back on the can of Sterno. We were sitting out on the porch, working on cold weather training. Paul ate his bagel with an emergency blanket wrapped around himself, one of those thin foil deals.
"Mmmm."
"How's the emergency blanket working, buddy?"
"Good. It's snuggly."
"In an emergency, you can use that to warm up. You can use it as a signal mirror for help. You can make a fire reflector or a shelter out of it. About the only thing you can't do is fold it back up."
Paul finished his bagel.
"Can we go draw with chalk?"
"Sure."
We walked around to the sidewalk out front. I knelt down and scrawled a message on the sidewalk, with an arrow pointing at my house. Paul sounded it out."
"Send....beer."
"You never know."

I pulled the meal out of the oven. "Pork chops with garden stuffing. Here you go, guys."
"Any word on when the library reopens?" Tif asked.
"Right now, it's completely up in the air. I've had someone e-mailing me almost daily to ask. The state library association has closed libraries indefinitely. I got an e-mail today from the boss, telling me to find some ways to do adult programming online."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. We talked about it; I had her guarantee me that this wasn't going to be permanent. I don't want to be pressured to keep everything online once we're back up and running."
"It's all we have right now, though," said Tif.
"I know that. I also know that our dependence on technology has made everyone much stupider and less capable. We have people who can't read maps and do math, because they're dependent on machines to think for them. I don't want to participate in my own obsolescence."
"I always did think you overstated that. It's the future."
"So was thalidomide."
"There's no changing things, though."
"Which is why we're all sipping New Coke in our Edsels. Of course it's possible to change things. All you have to do is refuse. Which is what I prefer to do."
"She just wants to keep the library in the forefront of everyone's minds."
"I know. And I know it's all we have. That's why I'm going along with it, to some extent. I have a couple of ideas."
"Like what?"
"I thought I'd start with a tour."

After dinner, I rode my bike down behind the library and parked. There was a homeless guy on the patio who left when he spotted me. I looked over the backup library shelves, which had gotten somewhat disorganized. Leaving the general public to mess with your stuff will do that.
I spent the next fifteen minutes clearing it up some. Hardbacks, paperbacks, fiction, nonfiction, childrens, comic books. Once I had it looking pretty good, I got my bike and rode around to the side door.
For the first time in four weeks, I entered the Ross Library. It was a record even from before I'd worked there. The place looked like hell.
Someone had been stopping by the pick up the outside book drop, but the books hadn't been scanned in. A note at the desk said they needed to be quarantined first. Huge stacks of books were piled all over at the desk. Mail was dumped. It was depressing as hell.
I pulled my mail out of my mailbox, and found the Ipad there. New Boss had left it so I could use it to do some programs from home. I slipped it into my pack.
The tiny alien I'd left on my desk was unmoved. The ghosts, apparently, had calmed down. I sat down at my desk---I'd expected it to feel somewhat foreign to me after all that time, but it felt good, a relief....Not like coming home, precisely, but maybe like coming to the home of a relative who made you feel safe.
I turned on my computer and checked all my messages. There was a nice note from the mayor, thanking my for the series of columns I'd been writing and attempting to keep people upbeat. There was a note from a woman named Linny, whom I'd met through the crisis contact webpage I'd been running, updating me on how things were going. Linny and I had begun to become friends over the past week, though we'd never met.
The phone rang on my line. I picked up. "Ross Library."
"You're not supposed to be there. We're closed."
"Oh, hi, Boss," I said. "Just picking up the tablet."
"Good. Now go home."
"You sure? I could---"
"Lou. You're like a crack addict. We're closed. Go home and spend time with your family."
"I come to this job so I don't have to spend time with my family."
"Look. I miss work, too. What's your shirt say?"
I looked down at myself. "Aliens made me do it."
"Appropriate. Now go home."
She hung up.
I turned on the tablet and tried the passwords, which the Boss had left me on a post-it. I was in. I was going to have to play around with the thing some, and I'd hate every minute of it. But it was all I had right at the moment.
I tried to think of anything else I might need. Historic files, documents. I had no idea when I might be back. That wasn't a normal thought.
But it wasn't a normal time.

My wife was asleep on the couch when I walked in the door. Paul was walking around in the living room. He ran into the kitchen and handed me a piece of paper with some writing on it.
DO CUM BAK DAD SUN.
Do come back, Dad, soon.
"I was worried about you," he said.
I gave him a hug. "It's okay, little man. You know who's been teaching you all the survival stuff lately? I know how to survive. Nothing's gonna hurt your daddy."

I stood at the end of the street, holding the tablet. I held it up, facing me, and took a deep breath.
And then took another deep breath.
And then lowered the tablet.
I turned around and looked at the E.H. Young House, the last remaining home from a tobacco family in Lock Haven. It was still there. I lifted the table again, and lowered it again.
No matter how you cut it, I felt stupid.
I give tours to people, goddammit. Not machines. No matter how you phrase it, there's nobody here. I feel like I'm giving a tour to my fucking microwave.
Finally I raised the tablet, bit down hard on my back teeth, and hit the button.
"We're here at the E.H. Young House, the last remaining home of the tobacco industry in Lock Haven. Young had tobacco fields and ran a cigar shop down the street. His company created the popular Vest Pocket Cigar, back when tobacco was still a big industry in town."
I hit the button again, turning it off. It hadn't killed me. It sucked, but it hadn't killed me.
I moved off down the street.
I stopped and did the Gardner House and the Gross House, and then stopped in front of the Harvey House. When I raised the tablet, a guy came out the front door at me.
"Hey! What're you doing?"
"Little historic research, sir," I called back. "Your house was built in 1906."
"1898, actually," he said. "Someone told me that. They just didn't have deeds before 1904."
Where do people get this shit? I said,"That's simply not true, sir. Deeds have been around since the country was founded. In Clinton County, they go back as far as 1839."
"What're you, some kind of smart-ass?"
"I'm the county historian."
"Well, what if I don't want my house researched?"
"I mean, legally I can research anyplace I want."
"Oh yeah, mister smart-ass historian?" He advanced toward me, coughing menacingly. (If you don't think it's possible to cough menacingly, you haven't lived in Lock Haven during a pandemic.) I leaped back, putting about another fifteen feet between us.
"Hey!"
"Yeah? You want some of this?" He moved forward, spitting in my direction.
Coronavirus or no, this guy was nuts. I bolted around the corner and down into the alley. Then I cut up into someone's yard. When I felt I'd lost the guy, I walked back to the corner and filmed myself with the Harvey House visible behind me.
"This is the William Harvey House, built in 1906. It's the only house of its type in Lock Haven. You might know it as a Jacobethan Revival style, or you might know it as sort of Spanish-looking, but not really." And I turned off the tablet and took off down the street.

I watched as my friends all appeared on my computer screen---Zach, Barb, Mel and Jim, Tracey, New Boss. A Zoom meeting. A goddamned Zoom meeting. I sat and tried not to visibly give off too much attitude about doing things online.
"Hey, guys," said Zach.
"Hey, man," I said. "Got your Easter card. I miss you, too."
"Wait a minute," said Mel. "did he write that he missed everyone? I no longer feel special."
"I do miss everyone," said Zach.
"The board wants us to do what we can from home," said New Boss. "Part of that is programming. Lou has a blog for the library where he'll upload his programs. If anyone has any ideas, you can participate."
Paul came in quietly, hugged me, and walked out. I was sitting in my office, my camping equipment behind me---You could see one of my whips on the webcam. I wondered if that counted as bringing a weapon to work. I wondered if I could drink a beer during this meeting. Two of the dogs, Duke and Gwen, were sitting contentedly on the chair in the background.
"We're allowed to enter the library just for retrieving work-related items," said New Boss. "Nobody is to be doing actual work in the library. But you're allowed to go in and out quickly, to pick things up."
I tuned out. That made it feel more like a regular staff meeting.
Paul came in and hugged me at one point. Gwen jumped on my lap and licked my face. I looked up as I realized New Boss was saying my name.
"What else did you have in mind?" she asked/
"Thought I'd do a haunted tour."

"Lock Haven, Pennsylvania," I said. "Some say it's a very haunted place. The Native Americans used to call it Otzinachson, which according to some sources meant 'The Demon's Den.' It's a place where anything paranormal might happen. Tonight I'm going to tell you about some of this. Follow me."
I lowered the tablet, which had been focused on me, with the downhill part of Lock Haven in the distance. I was adjusting to this, learning to make it sound a bit more like a normal tour. I still hated it, understand. But I was adjusting.
I walked downhill and filmed in front of the Shoemaker house, and then uphill to where Great Island Cemetery had once been. The sun was going down; the light was perfect for this. I raised the tablet and began talking, but then turned it off as someone came around the corner.
"Mind if I ask what you're doing?" he said.
Goddamn it. Not again.
"I'm recording a historic tour for the library," I told him.
"Oh, yeah? This house historic?"
I'd been aiming the camera at myself, getting the view over my shoulder behind me. He thought I'd been filming his house. "Well, I was filming that direction, see...."
"Yeah, but is the house historic?"
"No, I was filming over there. It used to be a cemetery."
"Oh, yeah? I didn't know that! I'm gonna have to look into that!"
"Once this is all over," I said,"Come see me at the library. I'll give you the information."
"Okay, I'll do that."
It was nice to not have been spit at. The bar had been set real low lately.
I lifted the tablet and gave it another take. "The area behind me was once the Great Island Cemetery, founded in the 1700s. It was moved in 1918. At the time, there was said to be two ghosts, a woman in white, and a woman in black."
I heard something from my pack, and recognized the sound of my EMF detector. Something had set it off.
I was giving my haunted tour, and the ghosts approved.

I sat down on my back porch and filmed a quick clip....The porch where Ida had died. I gathered up my stuff and went upstairs to upload the videos.
There was a message on my computer from the mayor, telling me to check my front porch. I walked downstairs.
"What're you doing?" asked Michelle.
"Joel sent me a message telling me to check the porch."
A small box was sitting on our porch. I brought it inside and laughed.
"What is it?" asked Paul.
"You remember what we wrote on the sidewalk yesterday?" I said.
Paul thought about it a moment, then lit up. "Send beer!"
"Yeah." I pulled a bottle of lager out of the box, and smiled. "Joel and Mitzi sent beer."

Pandemic: Gorilla Warfare

I lit the little votive candle. Very seriously, Paul watched me.
Then I blew it out, took a match, and dipped it into the melted wax.
"See, little man?" I said. "Let that dry, and the match is waterproof. We can take that out in the woods, get rained on all night, and still start a fire."
"I want to try," said Paul.
I handed him the matches. He dipped one in and rolled it around.
"Good," I said. "Once they dry, we'll keep them in this pill container. It's from Kasper's pills."
We both did a couple more. I said,"We can also do this with dryer lint. Put wax on it, and it's waterproof. It gets wet, it doesn't matter. Still start a fire."
"We'll take it camping," said Paul.
"You want to take a little ride?"
"Yes! Can we take our scooters?"
"Of course."
We got our razor scooters and headed east down Grouse Alley. I was wearing my black jacket tricked out with all the equipment in the pockets, and Paul was wearing a sleeveless shirt and black vest with his boots. We looked like Mad Max in Lock Haven. During the pandemic, we'd been riding around a lot on the scooters. Perfect transportation, given the situation. Months ago, I'd been trying to think of some way to get around when I was travelling without my bike. In this crisis, I'd found it.
We went down South Jones Street and past Mount Vernon. Pulling off to the side of the road, I looked over the industrial pond and the stream that led out to Bald Eagle Creek.
"I'm scared, Daddy," said Paul.
"What's scaring you?"
"The train tracks are scary."
"It's okay, little man. Nothing's gonna happen if we're careful. There's not a train coming right now. You remember what the most important thing is if you're lost in the forest?"
"Water."
"Right. You can only live a couple of days without water. I'm trying to plan out a way to get some if everything goes down."
"Can we get water?"
"Pretty sure. I can get under that fence to the pond and get some, or hike along the tracks until I reach Bald Eagle Creek. And since they're not taking recycling at the moment, we have plenty of containers. I'm sure it won't come to that, but it pays to be prepared."
"Can we go back home now?" Paul asked.
"Sure, little man. We can go back home."
"Race you," he said. "Last one home is a dirty rotten egg."

"So the Express has me writing a series on disasters from the past," I said at the dinner table. "It's giving me something to do from home." I took a sip of iced tea.
"Are you day drinking?" Tif asked.
"It's iced tea. I'm not above that at the moment. But it's iced tea."
"Not handling the quarantine too well?"
"It's not easy being a stay-at-home paranormal investigator," I said. "How many times can you search your own house for ghosts?"
"You already know your house is haunted."
"Yeah, so there's not even any suspense to it."
"Come up with anything good for your articles?" asked Tif.
"The 1847 flood was interesting; I never looked into that one before. It seems to have hit hardest up around Keating area. Amusingly, I found a story of a lost treasure up there."
"What kind of treasure?" asked Michelle.
"The cabin of Robert Lusk was washed away. He'd been storing gold in one of the hollowed-out logs. He chased it down river, but couldn't catch it. It broke apart, and he never did find the log."
Tif laughed.
"We should go and look," suggested Michelle. "If you found lost alcohol, you can find a log full of gold."
"It crossed my mind," I admitted. "We could even take a drive up there during the pandemic. At the best of times, Keating is not exactly overpopulated with people."

I walked into the backyard carrying three bandannas, three jackets, two mops, and a giant stuffed gorilla. As one does. Dumping the whole thing onto the ground, I laid the gorilla in the grass and cut a stick from a nearby branch. "Okay, little man," I said. "Which leg did the gorilla break?"
Paul considered it a moment, and then pointed at the gorilla's left leg. "This one."
"Okay. Now, what do we do for a broken bone?"
"A splint!"
"Right. Let me show you." I tied the stick along the gorilla's leg with the bandannas, holding it in place. "Now, he can't walk out of here with a broken leg, right? He's gonna need help?"
"Right."
"Right. So we're gonna make a stretcher. You ever see that on TV, where they carry someone who's hurt like that?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. In an emergency, you can make a stretcher out of poles and some jackets."
I laid the mops parallel to each other, and slid the jackets onto them, putting the mop handles through the sleeves. Then I zipped up the jackets. I laid the whole thing beside the gorilla, who was being remarkably calm about all this, and said,"Okay, see? We gently roll him this way, and slide the stretcher under. Then we lay him back down. Grab those ends."
Paul picked up his end, and I lifted, and we picked up the gorilla. I said,"See how this works? We can carry him until we get help." It's not exactly complete selflessness with which I am teaching him these things. During the pandemic, I have been trapped in the house eating canned food with a five-year-old, and my blood pressure is already alarmingly high. I might need this kid to know how to provide medical care.
"Let's carry him to the hospital!" The hospital, in Paul's estimation, turned out to be on the concrete sidewalk a few steps away. We gently lowered the gorilla to the ground. Paul knelt beside him.
"He needs surgery," Paul declared,"But he's gonna be okay."

"Good night, little man," I said, and kissed Paul on the head. "We'll do more stuff tomorrow."
"Daddy? I'm scared of ghosts."
I sat down on the edge of his bed. "How come?"
"They float around and go woooooo."
I smiled. "Well, buddy, the only ghost we have here is Ida. And she doesn't do any of that. She just watches quietly, She was a kid, too. She's kind of like a big sister to you; I bet she loves you."
"Okay/"
"Love you. See you in the morning."
"Good night, Daddy," he said. "I love you."
I closed his bedroom door and stepped out into the hall. Walking down to my office, I sat down at the computer. I was working on an article for the Pennsylvania Wilds---I'd thought of writing an article about the survival skills I was teaching Paul, in the hopes it might give parents a way to keep their kids busy. It's not easy writing articles to promote tourism during a quarantine.
I was a few paragraphs in when I heard something downstairs. I walked on down, and found the gorilla knocked over. We'd left him sitting at the bottom of the steps, and he was lying on his side a couple of feet away.
Could have fallen over. But I live in a haunted house. Besides, I'd been a little bored lately.
I walked into the kitchen and picked up my backpack---The first time I'd touched it in days. I usually have a few pieces of investigative equipment somewhere near. I got out the small pouch and emptied it onto the table.
Camera, laser thermometer, EMF detector. I scanned around the room and found no temperature readings. Walking through the downstairs, I took several photos. I was saving the EMF detector for last. Our house, for some reason, had metal beams, which made the EMFs go absolutely nuts.
In 1905, my house had been owned by the Yost family. Ida Yost had been abused, and killed herself on my back porch by drinking an ounce of acid on August 19, 1905. Ever since we'd moved in, we'd thought her to be haunting the place. Unexplainable things had happened almost since the beginning.
I went upstairs and shot a message to SaraLee.
She was online, and she and I had a quick discussion. She'd come to visit s few years back, and had some psychic insight. I don't trust a lot of psychics, but I trust SaraLee.
L: Sara, a few years ago, you visited and commented that you got a feeling in my house. Can you give me some information on that? I'm having some nighttime experiences.

S: I felt sick with a vomiting bug in the upstairs bedroom. She would always manifest in the room second door on the right.

L: Well, your descriptions of the layout fit. And you getting sick like that, when she drank acid.

S: I never knew the poisoning thing. She did not like her dad. There was some abuse there.

L: Yeah, I found court records once. Her father was charged about two weeks after her death.

S: Love the validation! 

L: I'm gonna go poke around with some equipment. I'll keep you posted. Thanks, Sara.
Psychics drive me crazy. But I'd become quite fond of SaraLee.
I walked back downstairs and picked up my equipment. I sat down at the table and pulled out the file I had on Ida---Research I'd done years ago. I had her obit, the court and cemetery records, a listing of who had owned the house. It didn't tell me much that I didn't previously know; I can't remember everything, but I'd had Ida's story memorized for over a decade.
The kitchen lights began to flicker---Flashing on and off rapidly. It was the most dramatic thing I'd seen in this house for a while. I pressed the button on my EMF detector, and it lit right up, registering high EMFs.
Then it all stopped, and things went back to normal.
I did another sweep of the house with the equipment, but it had all died down.
"It's all gonna be okay, Ida," I said, and went back upstairs to finish my article.

"Okay, little man," I said. "Daddy's had his morning coffee. Let's go outside and learn a few things. You remember how to fix a broken leg?"
"You get a stick, and tie it like...." Paul made tying motions around his leg.
"Right. Do you remember what it's called?"
"A splinter!"
"Close enough. Come on, let's do some learning."
"What are we learning today?" Paul asked.
"Let's give the gorilla a break," I said. "Today we're gonna learn how to do CPR on your duck."
We picked up the stuffed duck and walked outside with it. I set him down, and Paul climbed onto his swing set. He began to push himself back and forth.
"Hey, Daddy! Ida wants you to push her on the swing!"