Hot Pink

I erased the number on the board, and scribbled in a new one. The sign in my office now read 118 DAYS WITHOUT AN ALIEN INVASION.

My office was an alcove in the basement of the print shop. I'd been setting it up for months. I actually liked it down there, and I got a lot of work done. Just about everyone else was scared to go down in the basement of the Hecht Building, so I had the whole place to myself mostly.

When I got upstairs, Emily was waiting by the big printers.

"I thought I should tell you, Lou," she said. "I turned in my two weeks notice yesterday. I accepted a remote position with pay I just couldn't turn down."

"I'm happy for you," I said. "Gonna miss you a lot, but I'm excited for you. You're gonna kick ass at your new job. Don't ever doubt yourself."

"Thanks, Lou," she said. "I'm gonna miss everyone here, too. My last day should be July second."

"Day after Paul's birthday," I said. "It's a Wednesday. I'll be here."

She nodded. "Okay. Good."

"Hey," I said. "I gotta say something. When I came to work here ten months ago, it was a really hard time in my life. I came here figuring I'd just stick it out until I found something better....I've since stopped looking. At the time I came here, I really needed a friend. You've been a good one. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't been here."

Emily smiled. "Thanks, Lou. Thank you for saying that."

The annual Best of Clinton County festival had been going on for something like twenty years now. This one happened to be smack in the middle of a horrifying heat wave---We'd had a record cold winter, and now we had several days that would work for the Appalachian Great Fire Ape. I was downtown with Michelle, Paul, and Rylan, and the kids had already found the booth to get their faces painted.

I saw someone I knew manning the booth for Boxes of Hope, a breast cancer charity. "Hi, Traci," I said.

She smiled. "Hi, Lou. Thanks for that article you wrote about our new headquarters---That gave us a lot of positive attention. Want a tour?"

"Sure," I said. "Michelle, this is Traci---She created this whole organization. I'm gonna take a look at her offices; I'll catch up with you."

"Actually, Dad, I want to come too," said Paul.

"Okay, then," I said. "Come along. We'll all go."

Traci led us up the steep stairs to the offices, where everything was pink. The walls were pink, the floors were pink. All of the desks were pink.

"Nice color scheme," I commented.

"At first I hated pink," Traci laughed. "Now I've gotten to like it."
"You still having some paranormal activity?"

"Of course," Michelle said,"There would be something paranormal involved here."

"I still have things happening," said Traci. "This painting fell off the wall not long ago. We hear noises. The doors open and close sometimes."

"Still want me to come over sometime and do a little investigating?" I asked. "I work right across the street; I could easily stop by after work."

"That would be great," she said. "Let me know when you can come. I can be here pretty much anytime."

"Sounds good," I said. "I'll send you a message."

I brought out the stack of wedding invitations and put them on the shelf. Emily, at her desk, said,"I guess I won't be seeing you do that too much longer."

"You'll be missed," I said. "You've really done a lot for this place." I picked up the EMF detector I'd brought in for work purposes months ago---She'd had it on her desk ever since. "I guess I'll hang onto this until I can train your replacement. Can't have her wondering what the hell we're measuring with this."

Emily smiled. "I'm going to miss this place, too."

"You probably will get messages from me on my days off still," I said. "Texts when I'm out of town."

She laughed. "That's fine."

"Heat's supposed to break soon," I said. "Should go back to just regular hot instead of Mogollon Monster levels of hot. You notice I wore my Hawaiian ghost shirt today?"

"Yeah, I like that. Perfect for the heat. A ghost shirt for every occasion."

"Oh god, I got paranormal clothes for every five-degree variance." I was wearing my Hawaiian shirt with ghosts on it and my rainbow ghost shirt for Pride Month. "Next week I get to go across the street and investigate Boxes of Hope."
"They having stuff happen over there?"
"They tell me they are. It's plausible. Back in the pre-World War I days, that used to be an armory. The military was in there, so it's possible there's a war casualty haunting the place."

"Makes sense."

"After the war, Colonel Edward Troutman Miller decided it was ridiculous to have the military running all over town for their stuff, so he donated his farm to make it easier. It's how we got the National Guard Armory over in Dunnstown."

"I didn't know that," she said.

"Most people don't. It's another one of those Lou things. I got my first article published about 2008, and at the time, nobody knew shit about local history. Since then, though, I've seen an increase in interest. More people are interested in local history, and I think a lot of that was my influence."

Emily nodded. "I'd say it was."

I finished my article and sat back. This one was a hard news piece about the Pride cruise, and I'd resisted a headline of "Out Of The Closet, Onto A Boat.". I looked at my watch; I had a few hours. Actually, with Paul in day camp and Michelle at work, I had most of the day.

I walked up to my office. Butters followed along with no clue what was going on. 

I checked the city directories, one at a time, working my way through the twentieth century. Boxes of Hope had been a department store for most of it. I'd been told once, years ago, that employees downstairs believed it was one of the old managers, but it was one of those things I was a little dubious about. I checked the old Sanborn map, and found the armory.

That seemed to me to be the most likely possibility---A war ghost. From the old armory days.

Emily was walking past me at the cutter, and I smiled at her like I always did. Except it wasn't like always. It was her last day. I was wearing the cryptid shirt she'd given me for Christmas---She hadn't commented, but I was sure she recognized it.

"Hey." I reached out and turned off the cutter. "Brought you a little going away gift." I handed her a compass. She turned it over in her hands.

"Thanks! What is it?"
"It's a compass," I said. "Every adventurer should have one."
She figured out how to open the lid and smiled. "I'll add it to my stuff."
"You got it. You know I'm going to miss you."
"I'll miss you guys, too."

"You've been a good friend."

"You have, too," she said. "You really made me feel a lot better about things. You came here and gave me someone I could relate to. I usually try not to get too attached, because everything ends, but...."

"Yeah. I know. Hey, you're always welcome to visit. Send messages, call. Someone's going to do your job....but nobody can ever replace you."

"Thanks for saying that. You know, I will miss the Paul stories."

"Chances are you'll still get to hear them. I can always send a message, and I know you keep up with the dance videos."

"That's true."

"Hey," I said. "If there's ever anything I can do for you....I'm here."

The offices at Boxes Of Hope were entirely pink, making me stand out in my black outfit. I'd shown up wearing my standard ghost shirt and a black bandanna---No vests, no equipment belts at the moment.

"Hi, Traci," I said. She was waiting at the top of the stairs.

"Hi, Lou," she said. "This is my son."

I nodded at the adult man standing in the office. "Nice to meet you. So where have things been happening mostly?"

"Well, for starters, this painting fell off its hook." She pointed to a nice piece of art hanging on the wall by two screws. "I came into the room, and it was just hanging by one of those screws, swinging back and forth."

"Which means it had just happened. Was anyone else here?"

"No, I was alone in the building."

I had my EMF detector out and took a few readings. She led me into another room. "This movie screen fell over one night....."

There was a retractable movie screen propped in a corner. Traci showed me a photo with the screen standing up, and a stack of pink towels and shirts in front of it. "I was in another room, and I thought I heard it fall. I came in here, and it was lying down. But it couldn't have just slid....It wasn't touching the pile here."

"So it was over here?"

"Yes. At first I wondered if it just fell over, but there was no reason for it to do that."
"And it wasn't touching the pile?"
"No."
"Which is weird. So it didn't just fall over; it was almost thrown. What's on the other side of this wall?"

"Just the roof."

"Back of the building?"

"Yes."

"So it's not too likely that there would have been anything outside to knock it over. No trucks going by, nothing like that."

"I tried to think of some way to explain it...."

"No, you're right, I don't see any easy explanation either." I took some photos and did some more EMF readings. "This measures electricity. Now, something I notice that's interesting---Everything you're telling me is happening near an outlet. I'm getting EMF readings, but there's outlets here. This place is pretty well wired for an old building, but I do get a bit of a spike near the outlets, which is to be expected. The part that interests me is that there could be ghosts standing right there for all I know, hiding themselves by the outlets."

"That's really interesting."
"I'm not getting any unexplained temperature readings. I know this place used to be an armory, so I'm wondering now if there might be a soldier ghost using the outlets as camouflage."

Traci smiled. "I like that."

"What I want you to do is keep an eye open. Make a note of anything else that happens, and let me know. See if there's a consistent time or day of the week or anything---Sometimes you get patterns like that. I can come back and do some more checking, and even bring the whole team if you'd like."

"That would be nice. Do you guys do that thing where you ask questions?"
"We do, yes. Sometimes when it's just me, I skip that part---There's not much point in me trying it alone. But with the team, sure, we do that. I'll do a little digging, and see if I can come up with anything else myself."

"Thanks for coming."

"Of course. We'll keep at it. Keep me posted, okay?"

I biked home and let myself in the back door. Rosie and Butters came running to greet me. I set down my shoulder bag and turned on my laptop.

I sat down at the table. Then I sent my good friend a message to tell her all about the investigation.