Muffin to Fear, page 11
She shook her head. “There’s more to it than that. Something else is going on among them, something other than the stuff you just talked about.”
“Like what?”
She shook her head. “I wish I knew. I feel . . . something.”
Half Traveler, half Gypsy; that’s what Shilo has always said she is. Travelers, I had recently learned, are descended from Irish immigrants and had “the sight,” as do Gypsies, or Romanichal Gypsies. She would do well on a show like Haunt Hunt because her sense of things is usually spot on. “So you’re sensing some psychic thing, an aura, or something?”
She touched her stomach and frowned. “Uh-uh, just a bad vibe. Tension, and not just what you see, but something else underlying it all. Something . . .” She shook her head, unable to explain.
I laughed. “Oh, honey, you don’t know the half of it. All I want is for them to get done, and go. One more day.”
Chapter Eleven
AFTER WE ATE I walked her out to her car, which had been completely overhauled by our local genius mechanic, Ford Hayes, the fellow who had also made my old Caddy Fleetwood Brougham purr like a contented kitten. Becket joined us, Shilo cooed over him, then got in her car. As she honked and drove off, I waved good-bye, then, followed by my cat, I proceeded directly to the dining room to gather up the garbage. Becket settled down under one of the tables to feast on ham someone had dropped. What a bunch of slobs these people were! I gave them all a look almost as dirty as my dining room—which they did not notice, some clustered together over a chart of shots to be finished and others talking intently—and proceeded to stack dishes and mugs.
Rishelle and Millicent huddled in a corner, whispering. It still puzzled me that the two were now the best of buddies when two days before Rishelle had dismissed the psychic as a fruitcake. Todd and Serina were consulting about something technical, but Todd shouted over his shoulder that they had something to take care of in the attic, and they disappeared. Hugh called Millicent over and spoke with her and Dirk together; it looked like he was giving them a stern lecture. Dirk appeared sulky, arms crossed, scowl in place, and Millicent near tears, her bottom lip trembling so I could see it even from a distance. Good. Hugh was laying down the law; maybe they’d behave.
Dirk at one point yelled, “I was supposed to get that site!”
Hugh jabbed his pointed finger into Dirk’s chest and gave him a dressing-down while Millicent smirked and exchanged looks with Rishelle. Maybe Dirk was being disciplined for going off script the night before. It would be good for him to not get his own way for once.
The sun descended. They started back to work. Again Pish followed one team, while I shadowed the other. Todd and Felice were paired up, with Ian as the cameraperson and a young fellow on sound. Dirk was their psychic companion.
It was boring as hell. Dirk was still sulking, claiming not to feel anything as they checked out one of the bedrooms the cast was using, staged to look unused. Their luggage and crap was all tossed into a shadowy corner of the gallery where it wouldn’t be in shots. Todd did an establishing shot first, explaining that this bedroom in particular was said to be haunted. Someone in Autumn Vale had apparently told him that a person died in that bedroom. I say “apparently,” because it seemed to me at this point that they weren’t above making up stuff to add to the haunted aura.
Lizzie and I stayed behind the scenes, with Lizzie acting as assistant to the sound guy, who used her to hold cords and move stuff out of his way. She was anxious, I could tell, but stayed on task. Todd and Felice, who were very serious about the whole Haunt Hunt thing, used their EMF and K2 meters, REM-PODs, and digital cameras. They used something called a geophone, though I wasn’t sure what it was or what it detected. They recorded sounds, saw shadows, felt auras. They communicated with spirits not of the recently dead, thank goodness, or I would have had to tag team Lizzie and deck someone. Something fell off the dresser—not surprising to me because I saw them place it fairly precariously on the edge, earlier, during the scene staging—and they made a big deal out of an “anomalous temperature drop” in the corner of the room farthest from the radiator. Big surprise in November by a north-facing window in chilly western New York. And yes, I know that’s snarky.
When they took a break, I found Pish in the dining room by the technical tables and suggested we switch teams. He was more than happy to do that, since Rishelle, Stu, and crew were going to trudge out to the garage, and he had no desire to go out into the cold. Evenings were getting distinctly nippy as autumn advanced in western New York State.
“How did it go?” I asked.
He shrugged. “They heard some ghostly moaning, which I think was Stu’s stomach grumbling, and caught a thermal hotspot image of a partial apparition. It was Becket wandering down the hallway, but don’t tell them I told you so.”
Becket, once again! Helpful little beast. The ghost of kittens past? I snickered and toddled off to follow Millicent, Rishelle, and Stu out to the old carriage house, built in the mid-nineteenth century, now a garage/workshop where the oldest car was parked until Ford Hayes could haul it away to fix up. It was frigid out, probably in the low forties. I was underdressed with just a heavy cardigan over jeans and soft-soled shoes with no socks, so I was chilled to the bone by the time they started.
Stu and Rishelle started with an establishing conversation about the carriage house, that it was built in the mid-eighteen hundreds, had been converted to a garage, and still held the previous owner’s old car. It was so weird; they whispered all of this as if the spirits were listening in, or . . . something. Not sure why. They got started, creeping around a place I rarely venture into because it feels kind of cold and unwelcoming, just the thin blade of their tiny flashlights slicing through the dark. We ran into cobwebs and tripped over tools.
They scanned the car with their equipment and got nothing, but when they got closer to the tool bench that lined the far side of the space, things got better. It was a gold mine of ghostly investigation, apparently. Stu and Rishelle had strong readings on their equipment, and Millicent had powerful sensations.
It was genuinely creepy at times. I was behind unruly-haired Arnie, who had the Steadicam on a body mount, and Serina, who was holding a boom mic, as well as a production assistant and Hugh Langley, who had his shot list on a clipboard, with a book light attached, on its lowest setting. We were a veritable legion, though the hunting crew was supposed to be virtually alone. I had seen enough shows to know that it worked, in a curious sense, in the same way it does on house hunting shows where it truly feels like only the couple looking for a home and the real estate agent are present. The camera and crew become invisible by virtue of being ignored.
We all crept close to the tool bench. Millicent, visible only in a shadowy sense, quivered all over. “Oh! No, so cold, such . . . fear,” she cried, and collapsed to the filthy floor, trembling and twitching.
Stu and Rishelle helped her to her feet.
“What’s going on, Millie?” Stu asked, brushing her off gently.
“Tell us,” Rishelle urged, supporting her over to an upturned pail, which Millicent sat down on.
Sobbing, Millicent muttered, “There is someone in this place who doesn’t like us being here. There’s a memory . . . sad . . . lingering . . . death! We need to get out!”
“Millie, we can’t! We have a job to do,” Stu said, earnestly. He took this all very seriously, and it was my impression that he believed in what they did. “This is important work! We’re trying to help the restless spirits find their way.”
“Sweetie, we need to figure this out,” Rishelle said, her hushed tone soothing. To Stu, she said, “I’d love to get some levels and see if we can figure out what’s going on.” She turned back to Millicent. “I won’t have you bullied, though, I mean that. If there is a malevolent spirit present we don’t want to risk your safety.”
“I can’t stay, I just c-can’t!”
“Why don’t you go outside until we’re done?” Stu said. He appeared eager to get on with the exploration.
Millicent went to huddle outside in psychic misery, but the other two spent another few minutes inside, and Arnie, the cameraman, got some great shots of the two investigators swiping cobwebs aside and examining the workbench area where Millicent had collapsed. He got some cobwebs tangled in his bushy hair, so he pulled his knitted cap down over his ears and tucked his hair up underneath it. I had to smother a laugh, he looked so idiotic, but no big deal.
Finally we exited, and Stu, Rishelle, and Millicent did some final thoughts outside of the carriage house.
“I couldn’t stay, I’m sorry!” Millicent appeared distraught. “There was something in there that was trying to use me to get to you. It was terribly frightening!”
“There’s definitely something there, and I think we need to meet with the rest of the crew to figure it out,” Stu said.
Rishelle, looking gorgeous in a low-cut V-neck cashmere sweater, her heart tattoo rhythmically moving with her heaving breath, nodded. “I heard some things in town about this place, but I didn’t believe them. Now I believe.”
Mabel’s story, I thought. She must have been telling it to half the town.
“Okay, kiddies, we’re done for the night. Let’s pack it in,” Hugh said.
“What did you all hear in town about the garage?” I asked, following them.
They ignored me. We made our way back through the black night to the castle. The other team was done for the night, too. We all gathered in the dining room by the equipment table. Arnie slipped a memory card from his camera into an editing bay. He pulled off his knit cap and tossed it aside, watching something, his lips pursed. I circled and caught a glimpse; it was just Millicent doing her swoon.
“What an awesome night!” Rishelle crowed, eyeing her husband. Her tone had a distinct edge of wanting to one-up the other team. “Millicent was wonderful! She got some good stuff, didn’t you, Millie?”
The psychic looked like she wanted to weep. She huddled on a chair, knees up, hugging them, swathed in her array of scarves. “I guess so,” she said, faintly. “There is something there, in the garage by that workbench. I’m scared, guys. I mean, I know I always say I’ve got something, but sometimes . . .” She stopped short of confessing she pretended to feel and experience things on other occasions. “This was . . . terrible. Dark. Scary. I don’t ever want to go out there again.” She caught back a sob.
Dirk paced back and forth, his battered face twisted in anger, muttering to himself.
Chi-Won Zhu looked alarmed and knelt by Millicent, taking her hands in his. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want,” he said, his voice gentle.
“Aw, look at the tech guy cuddling the nutty psychic,” Dirk sneered. He threw himself down in a chair and put his booted feet up on another. “Sounds like a fake-out to me.”
Millicent stood, pushed past Chi, and stomped over to face Dirk. “It was not fake! I defy you to go into that place and not feel what I felt! You wouldn’t. You’d be too scared. You’re a big cowardly bully, no more a psychic than . . . than Stu is!” She whirled and headed to the kitchen.
Disgusted with the lot of them, I drove a sleepy Lizzie to her grandmother’s and got back just as the extra crew was leaving for their motel. It was an unsettling night, and not just because I was missing Virgil, who had called earlier grumbling about surveillance, and how much of a pain it was. The ones I was billeting started heading to bed around four in the morning.
I felt restless and ill at ease. Pish was weary and gray. I made him go to bed while I cleaned up the kitchen as the Haunt Hunters eventually made their way to their rooms. Millicent had apparently recovered her spirits, because she and Rishelle were whispering and giggling, arm in arm, as they climbed the stairs and separated, to go off to their own rooms. Millicent dashed back out, though, and grabbed Chi-Won Zhu’s arm, tugging him aside and talking to him in whispers.
I was up a couple of times checking on noises. I heard whispering and slamming doors, but decided there was no ghostly origin, just the spirit of nooky and hanky-panky. As tired as we all were, you’d think they would have settled down, but no, they had to be like restless ghosts at a séance. Was that usual? I wondered
I caught Felice creeping up the stairs, a coat on over flannel pajamas; she defensively said she thought I wanted smokers to do so outside. I couldn’t blame her for that. However . . .
“I thought I locked that door?” I hissed at her.
“I found the key,” she said with a shrug. “On a peg by the back door.”
“Hand it over!” I said, hand out, snapping my fingers. She dropped the key in it. I went down and relocked the back door, but as I was returning up the stairs, Hugh was coming down.
“I wondered what all the commotion was,” he said with a frown. He had on a handsome heavy housecoat and his feet were bare.
“Hugh, you’ll catch cold, with bare feet in this castle!” I told him I was just locking up, not wanting to worry him about his wandering crew, and with a sigh he nodded, turned, and climbed back up, returning to his room. I made it to bed, jammed a pillow over my ears, and slept.
The next morning around ten everyone met in the dining room, looking bleary-eyed. The day was to be dedicated to any further establishing shots they needed, final interviews, and then they were going to retreat to their offices in Buffalo to review the footage and make much out of virtually nothing. In a few weeks I would get a call, and Todd and his investigators would come and on camera tell us what they found. Or what they said they’d found. Whatever. Then they’d splice it all together into a half-hour segment of an hour show. I was so eager for them to leave I would have sworn to seeing a flying polka-dotted pig to give them something to talk about so they’d leave, if that’s what it took.
Hugh glanced around the table and frowned. “Where’s Dirk?”
Some of the cast and crew looked at one another, as if seeking answers, but most shrugged.
“Still sleeping?” Pish asked.
“With my luck he’s had a heart attack,” I muttered under my breath, but I was more concerned that he had some kind of hidden concussion from Lizzie’s “attack” and was lying unconscious. I volunteered, since it was my abode, to check on him. But he was not in his room at all and hadn’t been all night, unless he was a domestic goddess and made his bed up exactly as neatly as he found it. Unlikely. I returned to the dining room.
“He’s not there, and it doesn’t look like his bed’s been slept in.”
Some people exchanged looks. Odd looks. Secretive looks. My Spidey senses tingled.
Hugh appeared to catch those looks as well. “What’s going on here? If anyone knows where Dirk is, he or she had better speak up now.”
“I may know where he is.” That was Chi-Won Zhu, a man of so few words I could probably repeat every one he’d said. “I mean, I hope not, but . . . maybe. Follow me,” he said, and marched from the dining room and out of the castle.
Chapter Twelve
WE DUTIFULLY FOLLOWED the tech specialist out of the castle, across the flagstone terrace, around the side, with cast and crew members in clusters, asking one another what was going on. More of the crew was arriving from their motel billets on the highway between Autumn Vale and Ridley Ridge, but they were too busy with their technical vans and equipment to even notice our weird troupe. Becket, who had escaped as I was closing up for the night, disturbed by the odd creatures in our midst, came bounding out of the forest and joined us, swishing through the lengthening dew-dampened grass that tossed in a turbulent wind that was picking up.
I caught up to Pish, who strode along, a worried frown on his face. “What do you think is going on?” I asked, breathless. “Why would Dirk be out here?” Doing one of those horror film classic scenes spending a night in a haunted locale? Maybe a Blair Witch Project kind of shoot; one man, one camera, one helluva haunted locale.
He had indeed seemed put out that we came back from the garage with lots of good stuff, as Stu and Rishelle crowed. I realized now that that was what he had been complaining to Hugh about the evening before when he said it was “his site”; he had marked out the garage as his once he heard Mabel’s story, but Hugh had taken it away from him as punishment for his misbehavior in using Tom Turner’s murder in his shtick.
He wasn’t the type to take that lying down. He’d want to one-up Millicent and the others.
We got to the carriage house garage and stopped. “Who’s got the key?” Chi asked.
Everyone looked around. I had my keychain and stepped up. There was the lock, looking as though it was snapped shut as it was when I left it the night before. I eyed Chi, uneasily. “Why do you think Dirk is in here?”
“Please, check. I can’t . . . I mean, he likely isn’t.” He blinked, his eyes dark, blank pools behind his glasses. “It wouldn’t be the first time he’d taken off on his own, right?” He glanced around at the others. Some nodded.
“Yeah, he sometimes goes off investigating and vlogs his findings,” Todd said. “Makes me crazy,” he continued, glancing at Hugh. “But he’s production’s pet, so he does whatever he likes.”
“Did you say ‘vlogs’?” I asked.
“Vlogs . . . video blogs,” Lizzie said, coming up beside me. Someone had dropped her off. “Come on, Merry; get with the times. He does vlogs and posts to YouTube.”
“And sometimes he takes off at the end of shoots when he knows his part is over,” Stu said.
I frowned and looked around. All the vehicles, as far as I could tell, were there and accounted for. He was not gone, unless he had learned to fly. “But if he’s in here, then the lock shouldn’t be locked, right? I mean, that’s impossible.” I tugged at the padlock and it fell off the hasp; it wasn’t locked. But I had left it locked at the end of the shoot, I was sure of that. I narrowed my eyes and glanced around.
