Thin Ice: Cold Wave

In decades of ghost-hunting, I'd never seen anything this terrifying.

"Do not touch anything," I said.

Paul and his little friend Emma looked up at me as we stood in the music store, among the expensive musical instruments. I was looking around at the inventory, absolutely terrified that something was going to be broke within the next five minutes.

"Your mom is picking up your violin for school," I said to Paul. "In the meantime, you guys stay calm. Do not test the drums. Do not try the guitars. Just don't. Touch. Anything."

"Okay," said Paul.

"Oooh, are those pianos?" said Emma.

I walked outside into the parking lot. I didn't want to see whatever came next. It was snowing. I dug into my pack, pulled out my binoculars, and looked south, toward the river.

"I have a new UFO sighting," I told Emily. "Well, new for me. It happened in 1992."

I was packaging some papers, and she was trying to fix a printer jam. She asked me,"Where's this one?"

"Williamsport. So I thought I'd take a look while we were getting Paul's violin with the kids. I really didn't want to be in there with them. Paul's friend Emma somehow manages to be both a little sweetheart and a holy terror simultaneously. She's a nice kid, but she's wild. Every time she comes over to the house, we get things broken, expensive perfumes sprayed on the dogs, my shaving cream used to make slime, and whatever else she can think of. In retrospect, bringing her along to the music store was not a well-thought-out move."

"Oh good god," said Emily. "So how'd you find out about this UFO?"

"My friend Norman shared it on his blog," I said. "In February of 1992, a whole lot of witnesses all along the Susquehanna saw boomerang-shaped UFOs with flashing lights in the sky. There were newspaper articles about it; I'm going to check the archives later. My personal file designation for this is WP-92, but at the time it was known as the Williamsport Wave."

"Any ideas?"

"It being 1992, I can safely rule out drones, but otherwise, not yet. Gonna run down the checklist, look at airports, military testing, and stuff like that."

"That makes sense, to have a sort of standard operating procedure."

"If you have any thoughts, let me know. I can use the input," I said. I picked up the small drill I'd brought in. "I'll be down in the basement doing some repairs."

Emily smiled. "Got it."

I walked downstairs. The basement of the print shop was becoming quite a project for me. I'd started by creating a little secret hideout, and then expanded, and the whole thing was becoming a big work thing on my part. I had a whole lot of new shelf space created, I was weekly cleaning out all of the scrap cardboard, I had a workspace, and I even had vague plans to make an exercise area on the south end. 

I walked into my hideout, and got a dry-erase marker. I wiped off the laminated sign that read "42 DAYS WITHOUT AN ALIEN INVASION" and changed it back to zero. My way of keeping track of UFO investigations.

Using the drill, I moved a portable light from one space to a better one, and then repaired a small table and moved it into my work area. I moved some useless junk down to the far end out of the way, and cleared off a shelf and moved it into place. Then I went back upstairs to get some of the stock paper and bring it down, thus clearing some space above for other purposes.

Everyone was in the front office. Emily grinned at me. "We can hear you hammering down there."

"Got some stuff fixed," I said. "Did you know there are three mattresses down there?"

The boss laughed. "I knew about one of them. Did you see the oven?"

"There's an oven?"

We had a vegetable platter on the table; I helped myself to a couple of them. "My suggestion is that we move all the paper stuff away from the west wall. That seems to be where the moisture is coming in. I'll work on that once this seriously gets underway."

Kelli laughed. "You've been at this two weeks, shoving stuff around all day, and you're not seriously underway yet?"

"Well, been making myself a secret headquarters."

"Is there room to lay down one of those mattresses?" Emily asked. "I've been looking for an apartment."

I grinned. "Wouldn't it be cool to stay overnight and ghost hunt?"

"That'd be creepy."

"Nah, you get used it."

"I'll never be late for work," she said. "I can call upstairs and say,'Hey, I'm working from home today.'"

It was snowing and icy at the bus stop on the corner. Of course, that didn't stop Paul and has friends from wearing light jackets and sandals. Meanwhile, I was wrapped up in my puffy vest with my fleece hood. I used to worry that my kid was just weird about the cold weather, but it turns out they're apparently all like that.

"Don't forget, Dad," said Paul,"The Bingo fundraiser for my dance class is Sunday."

"Down at the Piper Museum, right? I've signed up to volunteer for it. I also donated five tour tickets that I had Emily design for me. I won't forget."

The kids were playing around. One of the boys, a nice enough kid, always chats with me about stuff he's interested in. I decided to put the kid to use.

"Hey, Wyatt, you're into planes, right? Do you know any of them that are sort of boomerang-shaped, with a couple of lights on each wing?"

"B-52 Spirit," the kid said immediately. "It's a stealth bomber."

I nodded. "That helps."

The bus came, and the kids all climbed on. "Bye, Dad! Love you!" Paul called as he ran for the bus.

I walked home in the snow. Rosie and Butters were waiting for me when I got there. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. Worked on an article for a while, and then re-read some reports of the Williamsport Wave.

Might have been some sort of plane, but it wasn't a stealth anything; witnesses reported hearing a loud noise as it flew. I found an account from one guy who claimed he'd figured it out, and it was an old dirigible from a New Jersey company, but when I looked up the company, they'd gone out of business by that time.

I checked social media, and saw that one of my former editors had posted a photo. She'd seen what appeared to be a deer in her yard, but it was weird---Short and chubby and not entirely deer-like. I looked at it and smiled.

"It's called a Not-Deer," I told Emily. "That's when people think they've seen a deer, but then they realized there's something wrong with it. They kind of look like deer, but you can see they don't quite line up. This one is pretty easily explainable; people are probably just seeing deer with some sort of disease or deformity. In this case, a former editor of mine posted a photo of what looks like a deer, but it's especially chubby and has forward-facing eyes."

She grinned. "I like how you can just come up with all these different cryptids."
"Oh, there are plenty of them. You familiar with the Squonk?" 

"Is that some kind of Bigfoot?"

"No, the Squonk is a little pig-like creature indigenous to Pennsylvania. They're considered very ugly, and they know it, so they sit in the forest and cry all day."

"Awww...."

"I know. Everyone loves the Squonk. Funny thing is, if the Squonks knew how much people love them, they'd stop crying."

Emily grinned. "Is it still cold out?"
"Like twenty-nine degrees. Solid sheets of ice outside. Plus a wind warning."

"Did you have any trouble biking in today?"
"Oh, you have no idea."

"When's the first day of spring?"

"I think it's March twentieth, and personally I cannot wait."

"So, any ideas for investigating?"

"I figure I'll call DCNR and ask about the Not-Deer. They can tell me if there are any genetic anomalies or anything that could explain it. As for the Williamsport Wave....Well, down at the Piper Museum they have files on a lot of government testing and flights. I need to get a look during Paul's Bingo game Sunday."

"You mean....."
I nodded. "That's right. I gotta sneak into the Piper Museum."

"B-4."

I stood by the door, directing people into the Bingo game. We were on the third floor of the Piper Museum, where I'd once been the curator. Michelle had met a couple of her work friends and gone to play, and Paul had disappeared with some of his little friends from dance class. After telling me that I was embarrassing and instructing me not to look directly at him. And then asking for money.

The owner of the dance studio came up. "How's it going?" she asked.

"Smooth enough," I said. "Not too much overcrowding yet."

She nodded. "Good. Now, those tour tickets you donated....Is that one ticket per person, or....?"

"Nah, unlimited number of people. I've done tours with as many as ninety people; I can handle whoever they can come up with."

"Oh, good. I'll make an announcement. I'm not even sure I know ninety people."

Looking through the door, I saw my friend Ian walk out into the hall, and I stepped out and chased him down. Ian works with the DCNR, and is the guy who books me for speeches and stuff in the state parks. 

"Ian! Hey! Got a question for you."

"Hi, Lou! What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking into deer lately. Is there anything, any condition or something, that might make a deer look like it has front-facing eyes?"

"You know deer don't, right?...."

"Yeah, I know, they're not predators. But is there anything that might give that impression?"
"Discoloration, perhaps. Or a genetic mutation. Or, most likely, some sort of sore that people mistook for eyes."

"That could be. Thanks, Ian. E-mail me about programs this summer, okay?"

"You got it."

I walked into the room across the hall. Michelle wouldn't notice; she was playing Bingo. She was probably used to this by now anyway. I'd been slipping off on some little side quest on family trips and events for the last couple of decades; she'd probably be alarmed if I didn't disappear for a while. 

Down in the lobby, I took a moment to plan out my route. I'd been the curator of this museum for three years; I knew every hallway and stairwell. I knew which doors led where, and which were most likely to be unlocked.

There was a door way back in the back that led down to the hangar. I had to climb over a small barricade, but I walked down the stairs and onto the floor. I walked past the planes; I'd always loved these airplanes. I took a moment to stop at my favorite, the Piper Aztec, and then I walked into the workshop area and behind some old Piper signs.

The staircase was where I remembered it, on the exterior wall behind the workshop. It led upstairs, into the archives.

"I'm in." 

I've always wanted to say that.

There was a lot of stuff in here, if you knew where to look. And I knew---This had once been my office.

I checked the air route map first. It showed me that the area where the Williamsport Wave had been sighted was, in fact, a legal air route---Planes were routed along that part of the Susquehanna. 

That's a start.

I checked a couple of other files, and found what I needed. There had been some aircraft testing done in the nineties at Fort Indiantown Gap. It would have likely taken them along the river.

"Bingo."

I slipped out, retraced my route, and went back upstairs. The Bingo game was still going on. I made the rounds, checked to see if I was needed.

Paul appeared out of nowhere. 

"Dad? We had a spill in the play room."

"Okay," I said. "Let's go see."

We walked into the play room, which was actually just an empty room where they'd sent the kids. Paul and his little dance friends were having a good time in there, occasionally breaking out into songs. One of them asked me,"Did you bring the tickets for the haunted tours?"

"Yeah, that was me."

"He does that all the time," Paul said airily.

Her eyes widened. "Do you see ghosts?"

"Well, we investigate them."

One of the other girls said,"Can you tell us some ghost stories?"
I smiled.

"If you'd like," I said. "We've been to a lot of haunted places."

On Monday, the temperature rose to forty-six degrees by the time I left for work. It's amazing how warm that can feel after almost two months of weather in the teens. I biked in to work with my lighter jacket on for the first time in a while.

Downstairs, in my hideout, I looked at my sign. "0 DAYS WITHOUT AN ALIEN INVASION." I scrubbed out the zero, and added a one.

Emily found me outside the back door of the Hecht Building, along Mill Street, facing the YEarick Building. The bank sign across the street said it had gone up to fifty-two degrees.

"Thought you might have gone down to your secret hideout in the basement," she said.

"I figured I'd come and enjoy the nice weather for a bit," I said. "Looks like spring might be on the way."

"About time. How was your weekend?"

"Bumped into a friend who answered the Not-Deer question. And I did get into the files over at Piper---Turns out there was military testing from Fort Indiantown Gap around that time, so that may have accounted for the Williamsport Wave. All of the secret passages and concealed stairways are where I remember them being."

Emily laughed. "And you just snuck in."

"It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're not above a little trespassing. How was your weekend?"

"It was nice. I spent time with my sister, since she was home from college."

"Ah, good. Glad you had a good time." I looked out at the street. "Nice day."

"Nice day," she agreed, and we turned our faces to the sun.

I smiled.

"The cold doesn't last forever," I said. "Spring is coming."

Thin Ice: Rats

Snow was falling outside as Tif and I sat in McDonald's over breakfast. With temperatures up as far as thirty-three degrees, we'd decided to get together before work.

"What time is it?" Tif asked me.

I glanced at my watch. "Nine-fifteen."

"Plenty of time. I don't have to be in until ten today."

I drank some coffee and leaned back in my chair. "I need to find a yeti."

"The cup brand, or....?"

"No, god, Paul has cups all over the house. We have way too many of those. I need to go looking for a creature; I'm easily bored."

"It's hard to get out in this cold."

"Yeah, I've been having that problem. Actually I've been trying to keep busy; I've looked into two cryptids and a ghost since the cold weather started. But, you know, it's hard when it's too cold to go anyplace or stay outside for very long."

"I'm sure something will come along," said Tif. "Something always does, for you."

"The boss said you're going out on deliveries with him," Kelli told me when I walked in. "He has to pick up some shelves in Mill Hall for the basement."

"Sounds good," I said. "We're trying to clean up a bit down there."

"Take some of your equipment," she told me. "You're stopping at the place that used to be haunted, the old K-Mart building."

"Oh, right, the Van Campen Massacre happened there. April of 1769, if I remember right." I picked up the EMF detector from Emily's desk, and she grinned at me. I'd gotten one a few months ago for office use. "I'll just borrow this one. I'll bring it back."

It was something to do. I went back and cut a couple of gift certificates for Emily, and a few brochures. Then I accompanied the boss out to make a few deliveries. We dropped off a couple of boxes, and then pulled into the hardware store in Mill Hall. I got out the detector and turned it on, and it spiked to red almost immediately.

The boss smiled. He seems to be routinely amused by my investigations. "Checking the place out?" he asked.

"Yeah, this place has been haunted for over thirty years now. They used to see a lot of ghosts back when this was a K-Mart. There was a big battle here back when this was all Northumberland County."

"If I get a couple of shelving units for the basement, can you put them together?"

"Oh, sure. Easy enough."

Back at work, I walked into the front office and dropped the EMF detector back on Emily's desk. She grinned up at me. "You find anything?"

"Thing lit right up. Immediately gave me high readings. It wasn't anything like a full investigation, but it's encouraging."

"There was a battle out there?"
I nodded. "The Van Campen Massacre. In April of 1769, a group of militia officers woke up to find themselves surrounded by over a hundred Susquehannocks. I think seven of them survived the attack. They buried all the bodies in a hole, and I'm pretty sure they're still under Harbor Freight someplace. Northern corner, I think."

Emily shivered. "You know the damnedest things."

"You get used to it. I've written about this a bunch of times."

"Got any other investigations coming up?"

"Well, Ida's birthday is Saturday."

"The ghost in your house?"

"Yep. She was born February first, 1888. Paul and I may stay up late and do a little investigating. We do that sometimes on the anniversaries."

"You should watch Charlie's Angels. Doesn't Ida like that movie?"

"She does! Almost every time I watch it, we get some activity."

I hauled the shelves down into the basement and began putting them together. I walked around and adjusted the lights a little bit---The basement was full of fixtures and outlets that didn't work, but if I ran a couple of extension cords and maximized the ones that did, I could get a decent amount of illumination. Toward the front of the basement, I saw a vent about nine feet up that looked like it went through the wall and into the furniture store next door. I climbed up with my flashlight and took a look.

I went back upstairs to Emily's desk.

"I think I found a secret tunnel into the store next door," I said.

She looked up. "Really? So we could crawl over there and steal their snacks?"
"In theory,  yes. I'd have to use a ladder to get into it, and I think I'd need to work my way over the to vent, and then crawl through that like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. So what I'm saying is, it might be possible. Getting the gang together for one last heist."

She shook her head. "How do you find this stuff? I've worked here over a year and I've never noticed that."

"I have absolutely no life."

I went back downstairs. I shoved some stuff around, and cleared out some more space. By the time I was done, I had a row of shelves and a table I could use as a workspace. I looked things over with some satisfaction.

Out of curiosity, I pulled out the ladder---We had a wobbly wooden ladder I'd discovered pretty early on. I set it up near the vent, climbed up, and peered inside.

I went back upstairs. We can see the sign at the bank across the street from our window, and the temperature had risen a bit. But we were getting freezing rain outside, which was fun.

"I can see light coming through the vent," I said. "It would be a tight squeeze, but it means that it definitely comes out the other side."

"So you're saying you could do it?" Emily asked.

"In theory, I could do it. I also saw a hole in the wall that looked like something might have tried to chew its way out, but that could be just my imagination."

The boss looked up from his desk. "Well....."

"Oh, is there something I'm not aware of? This is gonna be cool."

"Quite a while ago, we saw a really large rat chew its way through the brick wall out front. You know that hole in the brick?"
"We have a rat cryptid, and nobody told me?!?"

"It was really, really big."

"I mean, you get giant rat cryptids, but mostly in New York. I love this; our building has its own cryptid."

"It's Ida's birthday," I said. "You ready to stay up late and do a little investigating?"

"Bet," said Paul.

It was twenty degrees out, but we weren't going anyplace. I was wearing my black "Paranormal Investigator" shirt and a fleece vest. I went upstairs to my office and got out a couple of pieces of my equipment---The laser thermometer, the EMF detector, and a camera just in case. I brought them all downstairs and set them on the couch.

"No digital recorder?" asked Paul.

"I figured we'd watch some TV and that'd be interference."

We sat down on the couch. I turned on my EMF detector, and it flickered to yellow and then went dead. I tried it again with the same result.

"I think I'm losing the battery," I said.
"What kind is it?"
"Think it's a nine-volt. I don't believe we have any of those stocked up."

"We probably should," said Paul. "Want to use mine instead?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea."

I went back upstairs and fished Paul's EMF detector out of his vest. I grabbed my all-in-one, too, and brought it downstairs. If you stay in paranormal investigation long enough, you wind up with multiple copies of everything.

Paul turned on his detector and set it on the arm of the couch. I sat down with him and turned on mine, and looked it over. He aimed the laser thermometer around the room.

"It's about sixty-four," he said,"But I'm getting a hundred over there."

"A hundred? There's no way anything in this room should be reading a hundred. Not with yeti weather outside."

"Now it's gone."

"That could be something."

I looked at my detector, which was flickering. "I think the battery is going out on this one, too."

"All of your batteries are going dead."

"Well, they do get a lot of use."

He glanced over at his detector. "It's getting a reading, Dad."

The light was going up to yellow and back again, repeatedly. I nodded. "That's something. Looks like Ida's here tonight to spend her birthday with us."

I walked into the Hecht Building at the usual time and stopped by Emily's desk. "So I spent the weekend looking at maps and studying the building," I said.

Emily grinned. "I don't talk to you for two days...."

"So it looks like the building, or parts of it, is a lot older than we thought," I said. "I found an old photo showing that it used to be three stories. Edward Hecht ran a clothing store in here from 1887 on, and then around the Fifties, they seem to have torn off the top two. But the layout of the whole thing is exactly the same on the 1925 Sanborn Map. Now, it looks like most of this block was all interconnected at that time, so it's not too hard to imagine that there was a family of giant rats running back and forth on the block."

"Eww."

"I checked with Cryptipedia, by the way. Giant rats do actually classify as cryptids, but they're what you call OTAs---Off-Territory Animals. Normally this is an actual real animal that people aren't used to seeing in a specific area. The Mothman has been thought to be one of these."

"You know," Emily said,"I never told you this before, but years ago, someone recommended you to me."

"Really?"

"Yeah. A few years ago, I was feeling really discouraged, and thinking that this wasn't really a good place to live. And someone told me that there was the guy named Lou, kind of famous, and he worked at the library. They said I should talk to you. And now, we're friends."

It wouldn't have been like Emily to reach out to me out of nowhere, but I was glad we'd met and become friends now. I smiled. "I didn't know that. That's really cool. Sometimes, I guess, things work out the way they should."

"So, what are you going to do now?"

"Think I'll do something I don't get the chance to do all that often. Go hunting a cryptid in my work building."

I walked to the back, hung up my backpack and my jacket by the cutter, and then went down into the basement. It was shaping up pretty nicely; I'd made myself a little office and work area down there, and I wasn't done yet. I found the vent that led to the next building, and paced off enough of a measurement that I could tell where it would come out, roughly, on the other side. 

Then I went back upstairs and slipped out the back door onto Mill Street.

Our back door is directly beside the back door of the furniture store next door. It's a few feet away; I wasn't outside five seconds. I ducked in the back door and found an employee vacuuming.

"Hi," I said. "I work next door."

"Oh, we know."

"I was wondering if I could look around the basement a bit."
"Sure. Go ahead."

I walked down the stairs into the basement, and looked around. All the way in the back, there were a few doors marked "Employees Only." Well. They hadn't specifically told me not to go in there. I opened what I figured was the right one and walked in.

It was a small, concrete room with a very damaged drop ceiling. No wonder they didn't want the general public wandering in here. I shined a light up toward the ceiling and saw it almost immediately---There was a spot where the vent came out of the wall and led back into our basement.

Theoretically, I could crawl from one side of the building to the other, especially if I didn't mind squeezing through the vent. It made sense that rats could live comfortably down here, too, particularly if they had access to food storage.

I got out before anyone thought to come and see what the hell I was doing down there. I walked back outside and back into the print shop.

I had an envelope printing job waiting for me. I looked across the building at Emily's desk, and gave her a thumbs-up. Across the room, she grinned and did it back to me.