Fired Up

"So," I said,"How much would you want to know if I thought I'd found a secret panel upstairs?"

The Boss considered it for a moment. "Let's take a look," she said.

We went up to the old bedroom on the second floor of the library---Her old office before she'd moved downstairs. In the back of the large wall shelf, there was a small hole.

"See, I can hook my finger in here and pull if we remove these shelves," I said. "If you look at the seams around it, it looks like it's designed to be taken out. Maybe something behind it."

"Hmm," she said. "Let's give it a shot."

"You've kind of gotten more fun since I met you," I said, and started pulling at a shelf. It got a few inches, and then stopped dead. I couldn't work it out.

"Looks like They built onto the shelf at some point," she said. "Secured it in place."

"Yeah."

"To get in there, we'd need a crowbar and some other tools," she said. "It could take the res tof the afternoon."

"Yeah."

We looked at each other for a moment.

Five minutes later, we were standing in front of the shelf, holding a crowbar and a couple of hammers.

"Okay," I said. "Let's do this thing!"

"Hey, I get to sit between the new people! Hi, Beech Creek Girl." I sat down at the meeting between Claire, our new tech person, and Beech Creek Girl, who was running the Beech Creek branch. She actually had a name, but one of our trainers had called her "Beech Creek Girl," and now we all called her that.
"Come and visit in Beech Creek," she said. "It's scary being alone in the building."

"Well, I've never heard anything about it being haunted, if that helps."

"I don't know; I've heard noises in there. Someone walking around on the empty second floor."

"Really? I can look into that."

"I tried to research the history of the building, but...."

"Let me guess. You trusted Google."

"Well.....Yes."

"That was your first mistake. The internet is about the worst way of doing this research short of consulting psychics," I said. "I got the Historic Resource Survey Forms downstairs; I'll check into it for you."

As you may assume, I work at the public library. I'm in Adult Services, which means I plan programs a lot. Though I admit that a casual observer would never guess that to be anything like my highest priority.

I started studying  the Beech Creek Library when I got into work. I was working on that half an hour later when Claire came in.

"Finding anything interesting?" she asked. Claire was the new tech person, and we'd immediately become friends based on the fact that she'd worn a Mothman T-shirt to her first day of work.

"Checking into the branch library for Beech Creek Girl. Showing her how Google is crap for this kind of thing."

"Anything good?"

"Place used to be a church---I knew that. Built in 1866. I pulled the Historic Resource Survey Form. Then I checked Linn's History---There was a cemetery connected with the place. These days, it's pretty much open, but back then, it was only church members. Two women were buried there, currently unmarked---Eliza and Lizzie. Both of them died from yellow fever in the later 1870s---Lizzie was twenty-four, and Eliza was nineteen. I'm gonna send it all over to Beech Creek."

"You should come and check out my place," Claire said. "We have some stuff happen."

"You live up along the railroad tracks, right?"

"Yeah, by the river."

"That's the area where there's the legend of the Headless Trackwalker. A guy who was killed in a railroad accident; he's said to still be walking the tracks."

"There was also a woman who burned to death in the basement in a furnace accident. We'd love to have you guys come and check it out."

"I'll talk to the team," I said. 

"Good news, little man," I said to Paul as I cleaned the kitchen. "I'm having a ghost hunting meeting, but it's here at the house tonight. So I don't have to go anyplace."

"Yay!" Paul said. "Will Ashlin be coming?"
"She should. We're going to discuss an investigation next week."

"I'll go wait for her!" Paul announced, and ran for the front door.

"Put on shoes," I called after him. "It's like eight degrees outside!"

As Paul ran out the door, I sat down and turned on my laptop. I brought up my messages.

Three minutes later, I went out and got Paul. 

"Hey, kid. Bad news. Ashlin's not feeling well; she can't make it tonight."
"Aw. Too bad. The others are coming, though, right?"

"Yeah. Well, not SaraLee. She just had surgery; she's been excused."

"Okay."

We went back to the kitchen. I looked at the laptop, and then said,"Damn. Millie can't make it either; she forgot the meeting was tonight. And Heather figures it's not that useful with just the two of us."
"So nobody's coming?"

I shook my head. "Nobody's coming. No meeting."

"Then can I have one of the sodas?"

"Sure."

He grabbed a root beer from the fridge and ran off. Wearing my LHPS uniform, I stood alone in the dark kitchen.

"I'm telling you, Casey, you can't schedule anything lately," I said on my cell phone, sitting in the old stairwell. "Between COVID and the goddamn weather, It's impossible to do anything. I'm sick of it."

"At least you have a team," Resurrection Casey commented. "Been trying to build one up out here in Slatington, but nobody seems interested."

"Yeah, that's the Slatington I remember," I agreed. "My childhood was a boring hell."

"You think this is ever gonna get better?" Casey asked. "Or is this just our life now?"

I considered it. "It has to get better," I said. "I won't accept that the rest of my life is just going to be this kind of crap. Things have to get better. We healed after Spanish Flu, we healed after polio. We're gonna come back from this, too."

"Boy, I hope so," said Casey.

"Have to," I said. "I have an investigation coming up, and I'll tell you....I need this. First time I'll be wearing the new outfit for an official investigation. COVID has taken a lot from all of us. I've been running around depressed and scared for almost two goddamn years. It's time for me to come back from that. I need to be what I was again."

"I want that for you," Casey said.

"So what do you have going on?" I asked. "Anything good lately?"

"Got reports of UFOs over Walnutport. I'd like to get a good look at the skies above the whole town."

"Oh hell, there's a place near my dad's where you can see it all. I'll give you directions."

I got off my call and sat down at my desk. A moment later, Claire came over, telling me,"Two guys are fighting over there."

I stood up and walked to the stacks. There were two guys---One, we'd had problems with before. The other was new. The new guy was asking to use the phone to call the cops. I nodded to Zach, who handed him the phone, and told Claire,"Get the Boss."

"I was just sitting there, at the computers, and he was filming me," the guy was saying on the phone. Behind me, I could hear the other guy also talking to the cops on the phone. "I want him to delete it off his phone. I felt a pain in my leg, and I think he put a curse on me." I continued listening as he began saying crazier and crazier things. "There are cannibals here...."

The Boss came out. "Problem?"

"Been a while since we had one of these," I said. "I'll get the incident reports."

It was me, Ashlin, and Heather. We pulled up at seven PM, grabbed our stuff, and knocked on the door.

Claire opened it, her brother and two friends standing behind her. We went in, and I said,"Hi, Claire. Any hot spots in here? Places where the activity happens more?"

"Not really," she said. "It's pretty evenly distributed around the first floor."

"Okay," I said. "Thanks for letting us investigate. It's the first real investigation LHPS has had in...."

"Almost two years," said Ashlin.

"Yeah," I said. "It's been too long."

Claire smiled. "Anytime. I'm glad you guys could come."

"Let's get to work."

I opened my bag, and pulled out the tac vest. I slipped it on, the big vest with the alien patch, the skull gloves, the gauntlet with bottles on it. And once it was on, I felt something surge---Back in action. Back, finally, doing my thing.

"Let's start here. Get photos from every angle. Get a baseline temperature reading, too. Once we get all that, we'll do an EVP session."

We spread out and got photos and readings. Heather had taken my advice and bought several good pieces of equipment. I noticed she had exactly the same brand of EMF detector and digital recorder that I preferred. One of Claire's friends asked me,"Where did you get that outfit?"

"Amazon, mostly. I shouldn't be allowed around Amazon unsupervised."

"It's really cool."

Claire laughed. "That is his dream outfit, with the gloves and the gauntlet."

"I wanted to look a little less like a cop or a terrorist, so I added the little goth touches."

"That's great," said Claire's friend.

"I have a temperature spike," I said. "Baseline in here is about seventy-two, but it just spiked to eighty."
"Isn't it usually a temperature drop?" asked Ashlin.

"Usually, yes."

"But it's not unheard of to have a spike?" Claire asked.

"It's not. Especially in cases like this, when the ghost died in a fire. It would make sense that the temp would get hot."

Heather was checking the room with her digital recorder.

She said,"Did you hear something upstairs?"

"I didn't---Did you?"

"Heard something walking around up there."

"Keep recording. I'll check it out."

I pulled my thermometer and headed up the stairs. I checked the readings in every corner. I admit I dragged it out a bit; being back in business, back in my ghost-hunting outfit again....It felt good. Damn, did it feel good.

We gathered around the table, sitting down to do another EVP session. All three of us had our recorders going, and Heather and I both had our EMF detectors turned on and sitting on the table. We'd been through this before; sitting around and asking random questions in the hope of attracting a ghost.

We basically went around the table, asking questions. "Can you tell us your name?" "Is anyone here?" "When did you die?" I'd been through this a million times before with Ashlin, and Heather was doing well for her first time out. I heard a noise, and glanced at Claire.

"That's the furnace kicking on," she said.

I nodded. Then both EMF detectors lit up, immediately spiking to red.

Heather leaped up, surprised. Ashlin immediately got photos of the table. Good girl. I pulled my thermometer and began taking readings.

"Is that normal?" asked Claire.

"Not really, no," I said. "We got a spike on both of them at the same time; that's pretty unexpected."

'They're down now," said Heather. "Both green."

"So just got a surge for a moment there, when the furnace came on," I said. "When the ghost here died in a furnace fire. That's a win."

Carrying my bags, I walked up the porch steps and into the house. As always, Rosie ran to meet me at the door, not backing down until she got to lick my face. Paul wheeled into the room on his hoverboard.

"Daddy! I missed you!"

I gave him a hug. "I missed you, too, little man."

"How was your ghost hunt?"

"It was good," I said. "We may have some evidence of ghosts."

"That's great!" he said. "Hey! Mom! Dad caught a ghost!"