Pipeline (8 page)

They sat, and Brett, now in a crouching
position on the floor, continued.

“What I’m going to do is connect this audio
recorder to one of the outlets on the back of your television.” He
unzipped a brown leather carrying case, revealing what looked like
an old fashioned, double reeled, tape recorder, only this one
seemed more high tech, capable of tasks its predecessors would
fail. “An external microphone will be working alongside this
recorder. It will pick up any sounds that are not supposed to be
there, and the sounds, voices, whatever, will be recorded onto
these high-grade, metal tapes.”

He showcased everything for her like a
salesperson, even the laptop that would show results from the
recorder’s activity. It was just like a technician to speak in
terms she couldn’t understand. She didn’t care about the
particulars; she wanted this over and finished.

“We are going to keep the television and the
recorder on, and we will wait for the static to return, if it
does,” he said. He motioned to Dylan, who was setting up two
different tripods: one that held a digital video camera and another
that perched a 35 millimeter. Dylan then gave a quick glance to all
assembled and took his usual lead.

“Tracy, the first thing we are going to do is
look around to acquaint ourselves with the house and get a feel for
it. I am going to run a scan of the house with this.” He opened a
silver, metallic briefcase and retrieved an instrument that looked
strangely familiar to her. The paddle-like object, connected by
wire to a small, handheld meter, reminded her of the paddles used
to shock Mr. Richardson’s heart back to life, a pointless
endeavor.

“This,” Dylan continued, “is called an EMF
detector. It is used to track and locate energy sources. It will
detect fluctuations in electromagnetic fields, and if we get a
higher than normal reading, it indicates the presence of spiritual
activity at the location.”

“It’s a Ghost buster,” Sidney said, cutting
through the tech whiz jargon that he and Leah, who chuckled in
agreement, often ignored. Neither of them depended upon Science, or
its definitions, to conclude what they already knew. They possessed
a gift, the key of the door to the other realm, for reasons they
would never understand. They relied solely upon their eyes and
ears, and as a result, an invisible barrier silently divided the
small group.

“Are you hearing anything, Sidney?” Dylan
asked the question with a lingering, underlying hint of
sarcasm.

“Not yet,” he said, “but let’s get the party
started.”

Tracy led the three investigators on a quick
tour of the house, while Brett stayed behind, attending to the
television. They walked through the kitchen, the dining room, the
hallway, and then downstairs to the basement.

Leah’s eyes searched around her, waiting for
the slightest revelation of someone or something that shouldn’t
have been there. Then, Sidney spoke.

“You can speak to me if you’re here,” he
called out to the emptiness. “Anyone, if you choose to speak, I can
hear you.”

Tracy could hear the faint whistling sound of
the EMF meter in Dylan’s hand and wondered what it meant.

“Right now, it’s not picking up anything out
of the ordinary,” Dylan said, as they walked up from the basement
stairs. “But sometimes immediately following some sort of activity,
the source may lie dormant for a little while.”

“I started writing as fast I could when it
happened,” Tracy said. She handed him the notebook when they were
back in the living room where Brett stayed busy and silent.

“Good,” Dylan said. “I’d like to sit and go
over this, and maybe have more group discussion while we’re
waiting.” It was an odd turn of a phrase, Tracy thought, but there
it was. She agreed.

“I feel a draft,” Leah said, her voice
sounding an alert. “Do you have a naturally occurring draft in this
house?”

“No,” Tracy said. “I always keep the furnace
on seventy-five degrees this time of year.”

Dylan walked over to the thermostat which
showed a 72 in neon green digits.

“A decrease of temperature in a room often
indicates activity, Tracy,” he said. “But I want you to just stay
calm, and go on as though everything is normal. Understood?”

She nodded. They sat down and talked...and
waited.

* * * *

A red, Ford Taurus was parked a few yards
away from Tracy Kimball’s house on Maple Street, and its driver
watched in silence as the team unloaded the van. Dr. Susan Logan
sat safely away from view, watching through the windshield as the
young investigators assembled for their mission.

She knew that Tracy Kimball was avoiding her
so she dragged the truth from Marcia Ross. Susan hated to play
dirty, but it usually got her what she wanted. She got the whole
story from Marcia, and now her interest peaked. Tracy had called
the paranormal research group from the university, and now Susan
felt the thrill of two birds in the palm of her hand, the
excitement of a daily double.

Two young men were busy at the back of the
van, while a young beauty, looking oddly familiar, pulled her long,
blond mane into a ponytail. Then, she saw
him
. He was older
now, a decade had passed through his life, and the chubby little
boy was now a hefty young man still immersed and captivated by the
dark talent that consumed him. She had searched years for Sidney
Pratt, and she’d heard he’d been part of this research group, but
she had no way of contacting him without being obvious.

The team moved fast into the house...why?
Susan waited. They had been inside for thirty minutes. She waited a
little longer. Forty-five minutes. Her nerves jittered at the
thought of knocking on the door. She drew a deep breath and opened
the car door; she was going inside.

* * * *

Tracy’s dining room table was far more
suitable to seat everyone, so they sat and conversed as they had
done at the university.

They discussed the notes she’d scribbled
earlier when the static interrupted, and Tracy repeated everything
in the finest of detail. Dylan wished he’d told her to keep a tape
recorder running. Again, he reassured her.

“We are going to be monitoring everything,
Tracy. We may even have to stay here with you until we get to the
bottom of this, if that’s not a problem for you.”

She hadn’t even entertained this possibility
until now. Her ranch-style abode was a three bedroom: one was hers,
one for guests the other was just an empty room she used as storage
space. She supposed she could accommodate four other people. Dylan
assured her that it might not come to that.

“Tracy,” Sidney said, “I want to talk more
about something we didn’t get much of a chance to delve into last
night. That would be the night your patient, Mr. Richardson, had
died, and he called you ‘princess’ shortly before that.”

“It was David’s nick name for me. No one,
except Marcia, would have known that.” She stressed this point even
further.

“Pet names, or nick names, are usually how
they communicate with us,” he said. “These names, when used, often
serve as signs, or verification of the spirit’s existence. Like I
told you about the shrink my parents brought me to years ago, I
called her by the name her dead fiancée had called her. That is
what
he
called her. He wanted her to know that it was real,
that he was real, and that I was no freak. My parents knew what had
happened, and they realized that the shrink became obsessed with
what I had said. That’s why they kept me away from her.”

“But, Mr. Richardson?”

“You have to understand,” he said, “we are
not bodies with souls, Tracy. We are souls with bodies.” He spoke
the last three words as though together, they formed some
miraculous and mystifying revelation.

“A soul is the energy that leaves our body at
the time of death,” Brett joined in, clarifying. “Where it goes is
anyone’s guess, but it’s free to roam, or it can go to a final
resting place, wherever that may be.”

This reminded her of the conversation she’d
had with Marcia.

“Where do you think the soul is, Tracy?”
Sidney asked. “Why do you think ancient texts always refer to
‘heart and soul’? We know where the heart is, but where is the
soul? I have a theory that the soul is actually the mind. Now, I
don’t mean the brain, but the mind, where the knowledge, and the
memories, and the experience are—the mind is the soul. That energy
becomes a spirit after death. It leaves our bodies when they cease
to exist, but it forever remains a constant. It is all that the
human knew in its lifetime, and everything it will encompass on a
higher plateau.”

Sidney’s theory remained undoubted, as the
interlude of silence fell hard upon the room. He leaned forward to
Tracy and explained his next theory.

“It’s also a fact that spirits can manipulate
energy to their advantages in many ways. One way is that they can
enter the shell of a living body just before its death, although,
its time is limited. I think that David’s spirit may have entered
Mr. Richardson’s body only minutes before he died, to speak to you,
Tracy. He uttered that one word that you would automatically
connect with him—princess.”

Tracy heaved, and tears welled in her eyes.
She never dreamed that she would ever have to think about David in
this way, in the context of someone who no longer was. Six months
ago, they were planning their wedding, and now she about to show
four ghost hunters where his spirit had lingered not twenty-four
hours ago.

Her world had become a bittersweet nightmare
in a matter of only three days, and her crying eyes pleaded in
distress to the four faces that tried to comfort her. The most
disturbing thoughts invaded her mind like an angry army crashing
the walls of a fortress.

What if David didn’t know he was dead? What
if he was afraid and alone? The worst of paranoia squeezed a
tightened grip around her: what if he couldn’t rest because some
malevolent entity that still lingered in this world was tormenting
him? Was that the other voice she’d heard? Was he crying out for
help?

She dried her eyes with two open palms that
fell down her face in a wiping motion. She took another deep
breath, rose from the table, and walked toward the kitchen.

“Here,” she said, as the four followed. “This
is where he stood, right there.” She pointed to the open archway
that divided the kitchen from the living room. She stood in the
same spot behind the kitchen chair where he stood, a faded
existence unacknowledged by the light of the world.

It took minutes to recreate the events that
led her to flee the house the night before, and then her cell phone
rang. She reached for the phone she’d left on the table.

“Wait, Tracy,” Dylan stopped her, pointing to
the cell. “Did those strange calls come from this phone?”

She shook her head and pointed, indicating
the land line as the culprit. She looked at the window on her cell:
it was Marcia. She flipped up the top of the phone.

“Marcia, can I call you back--”

Marcia’s voice, urgent and angered,
interrupted.

“She knows, Tracy. She made me tell her
everything.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“Susan Logan, the sneaky bitch, that’s
who!”

Tracy started to speak, and again, Marcia cut
her off.

“She called me aside at the hospital today.
She said she heard reports that you’ve been drinking, and that
you’ve been distracted and absent minded while on duty. She made me
tell her everything that is going on, or she was going straight to
Kemp with what she heard. She knows.”

“She has no right—”

“She said that she could still consider you a
patient, since you never actually finished the sessions,” Marcia
said. “I’m sorry, Tracy, I didn’t know what else to do. I asked her
not to tell anyone—”

“It’s all right, Marcia. It’s not your
fault.”

“Tracy, I think she may be on her way
over.”

“Great,” she said, her sarcasm undisguised as
she looked at four anxious faces.

“Uh oh, you mean, everyone is there, right
now?”

“Yep.”

“Damn,” Marcia said, in her famous tone that
said the shit was about to hit the fan. Tracy promised to call her
back then flipped the cell phone shut.

“We may be expecting company,” she said. The
words barely left her lips when the doorbell rang.

* * * *

She wasted no time opening the door and
greeting Susan Logan with a sneer of contempt. Susan stood in the
doorway, tilting her head in a sympathetic gesture used mostly
between old friends.

“Tracy, please let me in. I’m very concerned
about you,” she said. “We all have been.” A brief and silent pause
passed while Tracy held the door open, allowing the brisk October
air to sweep through the house.

The team all stared at each other, except
Sidney, who at the sound of that familiar voice, rose from the
chair in curiosity. He couldn’t see her; Tracy was blocking the
view between himself and the newly arrived guest.

“You’ve been so concerned about me that you
decided to coerce Marcia into telling you what? That I’m a drunk,
or that I’m a lousy nurse lately, or that I’m holed up here, crazed
and consulting ghost hunters? What? What is it that you want with
me?”

“It’s not you she wants, Tracy,” Sidney said,
breaking the mounting tension of a cauldron about to boil. “It’s
me.”

He had recognized her voice after all, and as
Tracy stepped away in surprise, he could see that he was right.

Dr. Susan Logan entered and stood before him,
face to face, for the first time since the last time he sat in her
office. She looked no different in the years that had passed. She
had the same rich, blond hair, and the same girlish charm still
oozed from her.