Over My Dead Body

"I know what I wanted to ask you, Lou," said my boss. "There's a small cemetery out in Woolrich, near Crestmont. I saw it the other night. You know the one?"

"Sounds like the Rich Family Cemetery," I said. "I'll double-check that, but that's probably it. It's where the whole Rich Family is buried, the ones who founded Woolrich clothing."

"I was wondering," he said, and went up to his office.

I stood up from where I'd been laminating some menus. Slow day. I walked over to our file archive---We have our old files going back years along one wall. I'd been put in charge of keeping them organized and clearing out the old ones, so I'd arranged them to my satisfaction, which meant all the historic ones in one easily reachable place.

I pulled the file for CCGS, Dunnstable Township. The compiled cemetery indexes. I paged through and found the one---It was only two pages. I made a copy, refiled the original, and took the copy upstairs to the boss.

"Here you go," I said. "This is the cemetery you asked about."

He looked it over and smiled. "This is the one," he said. "My gosh. How did you find this?"

"All the cemeteries are indexed," I said. "I have them all at home, but why wait? We printed them all."

It was the most excitement I'd had in a while.

Since getting home from Utica, I'd been kind of at loose ends. I had no new adventures planned, and nothing had yet come out of the woodwork to interest me. Sooner or later something would, but in the meantime, I was mostly just going through the days, being bored.

The problem with trying to make an adventure happen is that you can't. No amount of trying to force it will really get something exciting to happen. So all I could do was wait, and talk to Chloe, and hope for something good to come along.

"Well, I got a message this morning," I said. "A woman in Mill Hall wanted to know if we do house cleansings."

"Cleansings?" asked Jay. "You mean like...."

"Yeah, like you walk around and try to exterminate the ghosts," I said. "I told her we didn't, that we're researchers who handle things scientifically. And, it turns out, she's interested in an investigation."

I was sitting with Lex and Jay in their living room. They have an apartment downtown, and between thirty and forty cats. We each had a cat on our respective laps. I had a cute little stripey one. There was a small fat yellow one I hadn't seen before---That one had been too shy to come out from under the bed before, but was now coming out to make friends with me.

"Well, good," said Lex. "I can use an investigation."

"Me, too, to be honest," I admitted. "And Chloe's back from Florida, and she said she's looking forward to one, as well. The client is in an apartment complex in Mill Hall; I'm going to see what I can find out about the property. She says she's experienced sounds, items moving, and full-bodied apparitions. She has lost two brothers recently, so I want to handle her gently."

"When can we plan this one?" asked Lex. The cat jumped off my lap, and was immediately replaced by a bigger, stripier cat with a patch of white covering half its face.

"We do have the sixteenth available. We all talked about that. I think I'm going to see if I can set it up then. Jay, I'll get you her number, and you can start the paperwork."

I love researching in the courthouse annex. I actively despise having to get into the courthouse annex. I chained my bike in the parking lot, pulled out the spare pocketknife I carry at these times, and left it with the bike. I really miss the pre-2001 days when you could get into these places without being treated like a potential terrorist.

I signed in and put everything from my pockets into the little bin. "What can I help you with?" asked the security guard.

"Coming in," I said.

"Where?" he asked me.

Into a public building funded by my tax dollars, where I will look up legally public information. "Register and Recorder." Asshole.

I went upstairs and started going through the deeds. This one was much easier than many of them; the deeds went back in time in big jumps, and mostly seemed to be within the same family. They had spent a total of about six dollars on this property over the past century. I wound up with the information the Michael Jobson, Civil War veteran, had bought it with his wife in 1886 and started a farm there. They'd given it to their daughter Jennie when she'd married Thomas McLean, who'd died in 1937. That was something. Then their kids had inherited it, and mostly kept it between them, eventually buying the others out until T. Scott McLean had sold it to the current rental company in 1983.

I copied all this down into a little notebook I'd made myself at work, then stole a few paper clips before I left. Might as well get some of that tax money back.

I could find out the rest of what I needed without ever leaving my office. First I checked the owners against the cemetery records, and found most of them buried in Dunnstown. I found out that Thomas had died of an ulcer at age sixty-four. Okay, that's old to be going off to college, but young to die. I marked him as a candidate.

Using the cemetery records, which I keep on a shelf by the wall, I checked every member of the family. It turned out there were two granddaughters, as well, who'd died at very young ages. Okay. There was always something. I added them to the list.

If you got it, haunt it.

"Lou!" CHloe leaped up and ran down the hallway to give me a hug as I got into Lex and Jay's place. "I've missed you!"

"Missed you, too, kid," I said. "Happy sixteenth. I have some presents for you."

Jay was getting her team shirt on. "Ow," she said. "Ow ow ow. This is rubbing on my new tattoo, and it hurts."

"Jay, you're not required to wear the uniform. Just pick something with short sleeves."

"I can't. There might be selfies. Is the food done yet?"

"Be patient," said Lex.

"Chloe, I'm gonna let you direct Jay to drive to the investigation tonight," I said. "It's basically your territory, you know Mill Hall. You know the easiest way to get there."

"Okay," said Chloe.

I sat down on the couch and opened up the black pack I'd brought. "Some of this, kid, is stuff I've wanted to give you for a while. Some of it's birthday stuff. You can even keep the pack." I pulled out a couple of bandannas.

"Yes! Bandannas!"

"You told me you only had the black one. I have some extra colored ones for you. And....Here's a couple of Henry Shoemaker books. I had doubles."

"Oh, yes."
"And here's the last seven of the cemetery indexes. You can now look up any marked grave in the county. Up until 2008, and anyway, we don't really deal in anyone that recent."

"Check that out," commented Lex.

"My goal is to give Chloe all my resources," I said. "I'm not gonna last forever, and someone will need to take over." I pulled a stuffed Bigfoot out of the bag.

"That's adorable!" Chloe said.

"Someone gave me this who, it turns out, wasn't a very good friend. Make good memories with him. Give him a good home. Now, my grandmother died in 2007, and I inherited her teddy bear collection. Like three hundred of them. Every now and again, I meet someone worthy of owning one. Here you go." I handed her a small teddy bear, with a hat and a little bag. 

"I love it!" said Chloe. "Thank you!"
"Happy birthday, kid."

"Is it time to eat yet?" asked Jay.

"We should turn up here," said Chloe, in the back of the car with me.

I looked out the window. "Before 1983, this was all farmland. It was in the same family for almost a hundred years."
"Careful where you park," Lex told Jay. "I think they're really touchy about parking here."

Jay pulled in, and the client, Patty, came to the door and met us.

"Thank you for coming," she said.

"Thanks for having us," I said, and we went in.

Chloe had her camera out, which, of course. Lex and Jay were moving around the living room with their EMF detectors. Jay said to Patty,"I just need to finish a little paperwork, and have you sign the confidentiality form. Are there any hot spots here?"

"Well, mostly down here. It's where I spend the most time."

"What's the move, Lou?" asked Lex. "You're in charge. What's the first step?"
They'd actually already been doing it, without being told to---Photos and an EMF baseline. I said,"Well, this is a democracy."

"Great. We elect you. What's your orders?"

"Once we're done checking the EMFs, let's sit down for an EVP session. Who has a recorder?"
"Got mine," said Lex. "Ashlin couldn't make it, and she usually has the other one."

"I have one." I said.

Chloe smiled. "Of course you do."

We sat down on the floor and turned on the digital recorders, and started the session. Dates and times, locations, everyone goes around and says their name. Procedure. Lex said,"I'm showing a weird temperature drop on the stairs."

"Check it out. Get photos."
Lex and Chloe moved for the stairs. I stayed with Jay and the client in the living room, continuing the EVP session for a few minutes.

"Lou?" Lex called. "Do you have some painkillers? Chloe's not feeling well."

I pulled them out of my pack and gave Chloe two of them. "Are you okay, kid?"

"Just....Something affecting me," she said. "I'm not feeling goog, all of a sudden. I don't know why."

"Do you need to get outside, get some air?" Lex asked.

Chloe nodded. "Yeah. That'd be good."

We walked outside to the backyard, which was pretty nice for an apartment complex. The land dropped on a slope, and we had a pretty nice view. Chloe took the painkillers with a can of soda Lex got her from the car.

I looked at her. "You okay, Chloe?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Let's do this."

We went back in, and took up positions on the stairs. Everyone sat down; Lex and I were at the top, Jay and Chloe midway down on the landing. Lex said,"I'm feeling something here, too. The air is....I don't know, heavy. Something's affecting us."

"I'm getting no EMFs." I said. "This place is well wired. So that's good news/bad news. It's good that any EMFs we get aren't immediately explainable, but bad that I can't write off your feelings to high EMFs."
"Does that affect people?"

"Some people. EMFs can cause mild illness in some people, headaches and nausea. I had an investigation a few years ago where the place wasn't haunted, the family was just affected by very high EMFs."

"I'm starting to feel it again," commented Chloe.

I walked down the stairs to her and took her hand. I've always felt intensely protective of Chloe. "Hey. You don't have to do this. Nobody's gonna force you to push through it."

She squeezed my hand. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure? We can fold right now."

"Do you trust my judgement?"

"I do."

"Okay, then. I'm good."

"Okay."

I got back into position.

"I can't believe you don't feel that, Lou," said Lex.

"I'm not very sensitive to these things," I said. "I'm pretty impervious."

"Got a weird photo in that room over there," reported Lex.

"Temp drop right over here," said Jay.

"I'm getting that on the thermal," Lex said.

I looked at it. "Oh, that is strange."

The sun was going down when we left. Jay and Lex were standing in the doorway, and I was standing by the car, talking to Chloe.

"You okay? How you feeling?"

"I'm fine now. Something in there was setting me off. I don't know....I didn't want to act like I'm psychic...."

"You were definitely feeling bad," I said. "That's not in question. As long as we don't jump to conclusions about it, it's fine. Something was causing it."

"But I'm okay now," she assured me.

I nodded. "You know, Chloe, you're one of the things that makes me glad I lost my job at the library. I think if I were still working there, you and I wouldn't have reached out to each other, and we wouldn't have gotten this close. You'd still be just the kid who comes on my tours. And I wouldn't want to miss out on knowing you."

She smiled. "Me, either. I'm glad you got fired."

I grinned. "Yeah. Me too."