Ghost Hunt 2: MORE Chilling Tales of the Unknown (15 page)

Jen crossed the room to stand in front of the windows.

“I think you can see the lake from here,” she said. “I can see flashlights moving around.”

All of a sudden, she shivered.

“It’s cold in here, colder than in the hall.”

Mark blew a puff of air. It showed white, even in the darkened room. “Yep, it’s definitely cold.”

“Is there someone in this room besides us?” Jen raised her voice. “We want to find you. We know that you’re lost.”

“Can you give us a sign?” Mark asked. “Let us know if you’re here with us.”

The bedroom door suddenly slammed shut!

Jen and Mark spun toward it. The beam of Jen’s flashlight danced crazily across the bedroom wall. Mark walked quickly to the door. He turned the knob, then pulled with all his might.

The knob turned easily. But the door wouldn’t open.

“We’re trapped,” Jen said. “We’re trapped inside.”

“Well,” Mark said. “Let’s look at it this way: we asked for a sign. Looks like we got one.”

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right,” Jen said. She took a deep breath. Then another one.

“Are you trying to communicate with us?” she asked. “Is there something you want us to know? Are you trapped somewhere, too? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”

Whoosh! Crash! BANG!

As if to answer Jen’s question, the room went wild. The window shades crashed down. Desk and dresser drawers shot open, then banged closed. The closet door flew back, then slammed shut. Over and over and over.

“What happened to you? Can you tell us?” Jen cried. “This was your room, right? Did you get lost by the lake?”

“You have to help us,” Mark said. “We’ve only got tonight. After that, we’ll have to go away.
We want to find you.
But first you have to let us out of this room.”

The room fell silent. Jen held her breath. Then she felt Mark’s fingers wrap around her arm.

“Look, Jen,” he whispered.

The door to the room was slowly swinging open.

“Okay, everybody,” Jason said the next day. The team was in the TAPS office conference room. “Let’s go over the evidence we collected.”

“I wish we could have more time!” Lyssa exclaimed. “I feel like we only just got started.”

“I always feel that way,” Mark said.

Mike poked his twin in the ribs. “That’s because you’re always behind.”

“I’m sure we all wish we had more time on this one,” Grant spoke up. “Still, I think we made some progress. We now have some pretty good reasons to believe that Charlie really did see and hear something.”

“Even if her parents don’t believe it,” Lyssa muttered.

“They might change their minds when they hear
this,
” Jen said. “Hold on a sec.”

She tapped at her laptop keyboard. A moment later, a strange hissing sound filled the conference room.

“That’s the sound we heard at the willow tree,” Mike said at once. “I’d recognize it anywhere. That was one seriously spooky sound.”

Jen held up a hand for silence.

“I’m Lyssa and this is Mike,”
Lyssa’s voice came on.
“We want to find you. Please. If you can hear my voice, give us a sign.”

On the playback, they could hear the way the wind came up
so suddenly. The strange hissing and whispering from the willow tree got louder and louder. Then, over the noise of the tree, they heard something new.

“Did you hear that? What was that?” Mike exclaimed.

“It sounded like a voice,” Mark replied.

“Did anybody catch what it said?” Mike asked. “It was kind of hard to make out.”

“Jen, play it again, please,” Grant said.

Jen tapped the keyboard again, and the sound cut out. She continued to type in commands. A moment later, it came back on.

Lyssa leaned forward, straining to listen. She and Mike didn’t hear a voice last night. But maybe they caught an EVP—a sound the recorder could pick up but a human ear couldn’t.

“… lake…”
She thought she could make out the words now.
“Lake… find…”

Then there was just the sound of the wind twisting the branches of the willow tree.

“That’s it,” Jen said. She killed the sound.

“Did anybody else hear the word
lake
?” Lyssa asked.

“Either
lake
or
rake,
” Mark said. “I couldn’t quite tell.”

“
Lake
makes more sense,” Lyssa said. “Mike and I were standing right on the shore of the lake at the time.”

“It would also fit with what Jen and I experienced in Charlie’s room,” Mark said.

“And don’t forget the boy appears to Charlie down by the lake,” Jen added. “I think something happened there.”

“Like what?” Lyssa asked.

“Well, when Mark and I were locked in Charlie’s bedroom, we felt trapped. So I’ve been wondering if maybe somehow the boy got himself trapped.” Jen looked at the others. “Does that make sense to anyone else?”

“Actually, it does,” Grant said. “Mark, tell them what you found.”

“I did some research when Mike and I got home last night,” Mark explained. He slid a piece of paper into the center of the conference room table. On it was a picture of a boy.

“This is Ben Bristow,” Mark said. “His family lived in the Hazelton house in the late 1980s. At the time this picture was taken, Ben was five years old. The same age he was when he went missing.”

“Five,” Lyssa murmured. “So young.”

“Nobody knows quite what happened to him,” Mark continued. “He simply disappeared one night. Right in the middle of a big storm.

“The newspaper stories I read said his mom went into his room. She knew he was afraid of thunder and lightning. But when she got there, Ben was gone. They started to search for him right away. But the storm made searching nearly impossible.

“It turns out the storm was famous around here. It was a really big hurricane. It shut down power all up and down the East Coast. Emergency crews in the area were out around the clock. They responded to the Bristows’ call for help, of course. But no trace of Ben was ever found.”

“Did they search the lake?” Lyssa asked.

“The reports don’t say,” Mark answered. “But they must have.”

“The water would be pretty churned up because of the storm,” Grant put in. “Lots of debris could make it difficult to see underwater. Maybe they just plain missed something.”

Jason consulted his case notes. “
I’m here. Find me.
That’s what Charlie claimed the boy’s voice said.”

“But how do you get trapped in a lake?” Mike asked. “There’s nothing down there. No boat dock. Nothing.”

“But there is,” Lyssa said. “There’s the willow tree.”

“Just what I was thinking.” Grant nodded.

“So what do we tell the Hazeltons?” Mark asked.

“We give them the results of our investigation,” Jason said simply. “We let them listen to the evidence and make up their own minds.”

“Once Mr. Hazelton hears the EVP, my guess is he’s going to want to get to the bottom of this himself,” Grant added. “Even though he doesn’t believe in ghosts.”

“Hey, check it out,” Grant said a few weeks later. He came into the office with the day’s stack of mail. “There’s a letter here from Charlie Hazelton.”

“What does it say?” Lyssa asked.

Grant opened the envelope and pulled out a couple of sheets of paper. He perched on the edge of his desk to read while the rest of the team gathered around.

“Dear Jason, Grant, Lyssa, Jen, Mike, and Mark,”
Grant read.
“Thank you for coming to our house. Thank you for believing me when nobody else would. Though Mom and Dad do, too, now. Sort of.

“After you guys came back and made your report, my dad hired some guys. They explored the whole lake.”

Grant looked up from the letter and grinned. “I told you so.”

“Keep reading, smart guy,” Jason said.

“I bet you can guess what finally happened,”
Grant continued to read.
“They found Ben Bristow.”

“Oh, wow,” Lyssa said. “This is incredible.”

“He was underneath the willow tree. Trapped beneath some branches and a really big root. There was a lot of mud. Maybe that’s why he didn’t get found the first time. I don’t know.”

Grant switched to a new page.

“I’m getting used to living in the country. It’s not so bad, I guess. And I’ve finally persuaded my parents to let me go down to the lake whenever I want,”
Grant read on.
“But now that we found the
bones, I don’t see the boy anymore. And Roscoe’s stopped howling. Big plus. Dad says it’s all for the best. He says we should stop thinking about it—just put it all behind us. But I want to remember. At least for a while.

“Not how Ben Bristow died, of course. But what happened later. I want to remember that we helped to find him. Can you get a degree in helping ghosts? If so, please let me know. Dad says it’s never too early to start thinking about college.

“Sincerely, Charlie Hazelton.”

“
N
o!”

With a cry of panic, Angie Larson sat straight up in bed. She pressed one hand to her chest. She could feel her heart pounding. It felt as if it were trying to slam its way right out of her body.

A dream. It’s just a dream,
she thought. Another one. She had them every night. They were always different, yet always the same. Every night, Angie woke up terrified.

But that wasn’t the worst part. Even worse was what happened when Angie woke up. Her dreams, her
nightmares,
came true. Whatever happened in her dream happened again in real life. Angie couldn’t stop it from happening no matter how hard she tried.

The dreams came true. Always. Every single time.

She had the first dream just a few nights after she moved into this house. Angie was taking care of the house for her friend Ellen while she was away. Angie was supposed to live here for a year. Ellen really needed her to keep an eye on everything, so Angie
had
to stay.

But after that first dream, Angie wished she could change her mind. She wished she could escape. In the dream, weird things happened
inside the house.
Angie walked into the living room and a window shade rolled up—all by itself. Next she was in the bathroom, and the water in the sink turned on, even though she hadn’t touched it.

The dream had definitely creeped Angie out. But after she woke up, she told herself she was making too much out of it. Until she walked into the living room and the shade rolled up. Until she went into the bathroom and the water turned on all by itself. That’s when Angie realized her dream was coming true.

Tonight will be different,
Angie told herself.
I’ll do what the sleep doctor told me to do.

He’d said that when she had a dream, she had to write it down before she forgot it. Then she was supposed to turn on all the lights and watch TV—or do jumping jacks or sing a silly song. She could do anything,
except
what she had done in the dream.