Month: September 2023

Pain pulsed through Fleet’s head as he woke up. He wasn’t sure how awake he was because of the dark. As he laid there, the memory of his problems came back. Old straw and wood splinters jabbed into the skin of his backside. Waking up came faster.

He listened for any signs of his attacker. All he heard was the soft sound of the wind through the cracks in the barn walls. That reminded him that he was frozen to the bone.

Rolling over, he saw his flashlight on the floor on the other side of the wall of the animal pen. He needed to get the light and then get back to help.

Trying to stand, he realized two things. First, his wrists were still tied. The second: his pants were still down.

He reached down to grab his pants and pull them back on. He could only get them a little way over his knees before the angle of his bonds kept his hands from moving further. Nevermind, good enough, time to get out.

Standing didn’t work yet, and he wasn’t sure how to get out of the pen. Without a light, he couldn’t check for a latch of anything else helpful.

He stared at his light just out of reach. The space between the bottom slat of the pen and the next was wide enough, he could probably roll or crawl through. A minute later and he was dirty, splinter-filled, and out.

He grabbed the flashlight and a sense of hope flushed through his being. He showed it around the barn as best he could, looking for any threats. He couldn’t see all the places, but the ones he could see were enemy free.

Good, good, time to stand up. He rolled closer to the pen. Trying to maintain his grip on the light, he used the slats to gradually pull himself into a standing position. Hurray, progress!

Another quick look around showed him the path to the door. He headed to it.

As soon as he took a few steps, his pants fell to his ankles again. He stopped abruptly, almost falling over. This was going to be an issue.

He reached down to adjust his pants. Last time, the rope on his wrists kept him from pulling his pants all the way up just because he couldn’t hold them and twist his arms enough. This time, he had the added challenge of holding the flashlight.

Still, he got them just over the knees and decided it would be good enough. He needed to get out of the barn.

Holding the waistband of his sweatpants and the flashlight, he waddled as fast as he could to the door. He found that placing his feet as wide apart as possible added extra friction to prevent his pants from sliding. It slowed his progress but not as much as having his feet tangled in sweatpants.

Through the door, the sight of the van renewed his run. Waddling as fast as he could, he made it across the hard ground. The autumn wind wrapped itself around every uncovered part, stealing the heat from his body, what was left of it.

Nearing the van, his right foot caught on a weed, sending him down on the remains of the gravel. With his hands holding his pants, he couldn’t break his fall. He closed his eyes tightly, anticipating the collision with the ground.

His face skidded across the dirt and rocks, shredding skin. As he laid there, the pain in his shoulders flared, letting him know that they hit hard too. He let out a moan and rolled over.

The pain temporarily muted his terror. Still, he was almost to the van.

From the barn, he heard a sound. It was a grunt, the grunt of a huge animal.

The terror flooded back.

Rolling back over, tried to stand. He couldn’t hold his pants and use his hands to push up at the same time, so pushing himself up won. In a moment, he stood again and started toward the vehicle.

With one step, his trousers dropped again.

As close as he was, he decided to leave it. With all his concentration, he hopped the rest of the way to the van and around to the back.

With his hands tied together, he pounded on the door of the van. “Matt, let me in. It’s Fleet. Let me in. I’ve been attacked.”

He heard the shuffling as Matt moved from his monitoring station and toward the door. The van opened up and Matt’s very concerned face appeared. “What happened?”

“I got attacked. Some old guy. He tied me up and hit me. He pulled my pants down and said he was gonna do butt stuff.” The story rushed out of him.

“He tied you up?”

Fleet held up his hands. “Yeah, see?”

Matt looked at Fleet’s hands. They showed no signs of being tied.

Fleet saw it too. No ropes. No scarring from the rough fibers. No bruises.

Shock and confusion filled his face. “No really. There were ropes around my wrists. I couldn’t move. I don’t know.”

Matt started back to his station. “Ok, we’ll document it. Just pull your pants back on and get in.”

Beta Team

We sat at the bottom of the stairs trying to get ourselves straightened out. Being knocked down by the slamming trapdoor was bad enough. The memory of the piggy picnic was going to take some time.

The lights came on in the basement. They were just a couple of kerosene lamps, but it was a shock. We could see the whole place.

The farmer from the pig feast stood by a shelf near the stairs. He did something with one of the small boxes. At the far end, by the crates with the rifles, another man sat on the ground.

It took a moment, but I thought I recognized the second man as the one who shushed Danny before the, well, the incident. He seemed unconscious. His clothes looked like they were from the thirties just like the others.

As we watched, the young guy seemed to wake up. He slowly looked around, first just with his eyes and then by moving his whole head. When he got to the farmer, his face decided anger was the way to go.

He reached slowly toward his foot. I wondered why. Pistol in an ankle holster explained it.

The guy stood up, pointing his pistol at the farmer. He yelled, “Get your hands up where I can see them.”

The farmer raised his hands part way up, maybe shoulder height and a little to the side. As he did, he turned to look at the man. “Well, look who’s up. Now that you’re up, what do you plan to do about it?”

“I’m going out those stairs,” he said, pointing the gun our way. Motioning away from that line, he said to the farmer, “Get over there. I’m leaving and you aren’t going to stop me.”

The farmer started walking in the ordered direction. “You think you’re leaving? I don’t think you’ll get very far.”

“I’ll get far enough if I shoot you.”

The farmer chuckled. “If you shoot me, boy, you better hit me square. If you don’t, I’m gonna mess you up.”

The sound of the pistol shot blasted through my ears, deafening me as it rang through the whole basement. At the same time, I watched the pistol eject its shell casing. The shiny brass casing tumbled through the air, hit the floor, bounced a few times, and rolled to a stop where it sat until it was kicked a little while ago.

The farmer spun with a bit of blood flying out of a chest wound. As he crumpled, his body fell onto the blood stain we found earlier. I watched as he collapsed, and all rigidness left his frame.

The young guy ran past us, starting up the stairs, then he stopped. He looked back at the body, up the stairs, and then back at the body. He furrowed his brow and pursed his lips, deep in thought. Then he made up his mind and went back to the body.

Grabbing the farmer’s shoulders, the guy flipped the farmer over and out of the pool of blood. Bracing himself, he pulled the body over to the stairs and then underneath.

The spectacle drew us in and all three of us moved around to see better.

The man settled the corpse under the stairs and reached past it to grab a tarp from the top of a box.

In a flash, the farmer opened his folding knife and ran it into the young guy, just under the ribs and upward.

The young guy made a gulping sound and collapsed on top of the farmer.

The farmer whispered, “Mess you up.” A smile took his lips. Then the farmer went limp again.

The lantern lights faded to dark.

From the top of the stairs, we heard a clicking sound. Danny and Sarah turned to look, shining their lights in that direction at the same time.

The trapdoor opened.

Alpha Team

I started by jumping out of my skin, figuratively anyway. Whatever slammed the door sounded solid enough, and somehow not. I turned and pointed my camera rig toward the second floor balcony.

Turning to check, I say Emily and Mike sitting where they had been in their corner. Mike stared at the balcony, a lost and frightened expression filling his face. Emily seemed to have curled more tightly as though trying to disappear inside him.

A bright light pulled me back to the balcony. It was the light we had been getting all night, that damned combine out there somewhere. Now was not the time to be dealing with that, but a little light might show us what was going on. I’m not sure we really wanted to see that.

The light died to be replaced with the sounds of a scuffle. Shoes scraped across a floor. Muffled grunts and groans came from upstairs. Something large slammed against one of the wooden doors. A couple more grunts came, then another slam.

The door flew open.

“You should have drugged him more,” complained a voice. It wasn’t a voice I heard before and it seemed to come from some man struggling to do something.

“Nevermind that, just get him to the rail before he wakes up anymore.” It was a different voice, a different man working just as hard.

I looked back at my sister and her guy. Mike had dropped his face into her shoulder and neither of them was looking at the balcony. It was hard to tell in the dark, but I was sure they were shaking.

Looking at my hands where they held my camera rig, I saw that I was shaking too.

I squeezed my eyes shut and thought, “I really need to calm down. None of this can hurt me. Just stay focused and keep the camera pointed the right way. Focus on the camera.”

I don’t know how much that helped, but I gripped the camera rig more tightly. The solidness of the metal pipes fought against the unreal nature of what I heard.

The lights came back, but not just upstairs, they came through all the windows. Someone’s headlights flooded the house from the driveway. I turned to see who it was, looking out the window to do so.

Outside, all was dark. There were no headlights, no cars but ours, no magic combines that could explain everything away.

A deep, roaring voice bellowed, “Help!”

Spinning back to the balcony, I saw three men fighting. One wore old style striped pajamas and a rope around his neck. He was a large man, struggling against two others, one in overalls and another in a police uniform. The big guy was giving his all, but was out numbered and it looked like his hands were tied behind him.

To my left, the front door burst open. The front door with no actual door in the opening. Some people ran in. I couldn’t see anybody, but I just knew that some people came in. They were in a hurry and full of action. They just weren’t there.

The flashes and bangs of gunfire filled the room. The sound filled my ears and me, like it had something extra to it. Those bangs were something else. They were memories.

Looking at the balcony, I watched bullets rip through the bodies of the two men, the one in overalls and the cop. They fell backwards, bits of spray erupting from the holes in their bodies. Other bullets blasted holes in the wallpaper and the plaster behind, adding little clouds of powder to the scene.

Then everything slowed.

My cinema professors would have approved. The two gunshot victims continued falling, just more slowly. The blood spray and the plaster dust blossomed gently in their previous directions.

The large man, without the other two attached, lost balance. His eyes and mouth widened as he realized his situation. He struggled, trying to find any way to hold on with his hand still behind his back.

Gravity won and he fell off the balcony.

Only to stop a couple feet from the floor.

The rope pulled. A sickly noise, like a chicken being cut up for cooking, resonated through the room. The sudden tension on the rope caused the balcony to shudder.

The body swayed in the headlights that weren’t headlights, at least not anymore. As it spun around, I saw his face more clearly. With its eyes wide open, he looked at me with his last bit of life like he wanted me to remember something.

Then his eyes faded to blankness like they weren’t really eyes at all.

He disappeared. The rope disappeared. The two men on the balcony disappeared. The headlights, nope, they were gone too.

That’s when I recognized the face of the hanged man. It flashed back into my head as bright as a silver screen. The man was Bud, the old farmer who showed us around earlier.

Nope, couldn’t be it. Bud was probably the adult son of the hanged man, or some other relative.

Then everything stopped. The house calmed down and everything was done for the night. I felt like the house had told us everything it had to say.

I didn’t believe it for a minute. It was time to get my two stars and get out before the house or whoever was in it, changed its mind.

Going against training, I turned off my cameras. The next part didn’t need to be recorded.

“Emily? Mike? I think it’s over. We need to get back to the van. Are you ok to walk back to the van?”

I think the normality of my voice shook them out of their fear funk. I was going to have to remember “fear funk” for use in a script or something later. Whatever it was, it combined with a great desire to leave. They stood quickly and, as fast as they could while still holding each other, they got out the door and headed toward the van where Matt monitored everything and dispensed the coffee.

As I stepped off the porch, I turned for one more look. Yep, it was just a desolate old house, neglected until decay tore it down. Soon, it and its memories would be bulldozed away and there would be nothing left beyond a few legal deeds and some small articles at the local Historical Society. The way things had been going in the state, the Historical Society and its small town would probably follow in the next fifty years or so. Not super duper at all.

The cold October wind made Fleet wish he had worn more than sweatpants and sweatshirt. Even with the hood up, it was freezing. Fortunately, he always prided himself on being fast, so a quick run to the barn to find Beta Team would take no time.

He only had a general idea of where to find the door, so he passed his flashlight across the wall of the barn. Since the others cleared the area earlier, the door was the only part without a wall of weeds growing out of the foundations. A quick tug and he was in.

The darkness made him aware of how much natural light there had been outside. He couldn’t see anything that his small flashlight didn’t hit directly. Somehow, that made the darkness feel more like fog, swirling around him and hiding things.

“Danny! Sarah! Max! Where are you guys? We’ve been trying to reach you,” he called out. He pointed his flashlight around while waiting for the response.

“Hey guys! Where are you? Are you still here?”

Still no answer.

His brain filled with images of Beta Team all unconscious somewhere in the barn. He couldn’t imagine them being in the barn and still not answering his call. Maybe they were kidnapped?

He decided he needed to search, at least a little, before reporting back to Matt. His light showed the slats of some kind of animal pens on the wall nearest him.

“You’re real nosey, ain’t you?” The gravelly whisper seemed to come from both sides as a damp breath on each ear.

Fleet jumped and turned, losing his grip on his flashlight and dropping it.

Someone punched him in the gut, coming in under the ribs and knocking all the air from him.

“Nosey like a woman,” the voice said. “I know what to do with a woman.” It sounded like a man’s voice, but with something missing, or just wrong. It carried a resonance as though passing through a long tube.

A large hand grabbed Fleet by the shoulder, spun him around, and shoved his chest into the top rail of the nearest pen. A fist slammed into the back of his head. Bright stars erupted into his eyes as the pain flooded his brain.

He felt a body press against his back, holding him against the rail. The man’s pelvis ground against Fleet’s rear. The stench of old sweat filled his nose.

Panic and dizziness joined together in Fleet’s brain as he realized how much trouble he was in. He shouted, “Help!”

Another fist to the skull stopped his noise.

Calloused hands pulled Fleet’s wrists together and wrapped them in some sort of grass rope. Fleet couldn’t see it, but felt the fiber dig into his skin as the bindings tightened.

A hand grabbed the waistband of his sweatpants and pushed them down. Most the way down his thigh, the hand let go to be replaced by the rough sole of a boot. The boot pushed them to his ankles, scraping his leg the whole way.

The panic reasserted itself. Fleet pushed back against the rail, trying to get away. The body slammed into him again, pushing him back.

A bright light arrived in the barn at the end with the hay door. Two lights. They seemed to be headlights of a car, but dim.

“You wait here till I get back,” said the voice.

The force of the pressing body pulled away, giving Fleet a moment of hope.

The large hands grabbed the sweatpants gathered around Fleet’s ankles and lifted. The force was enough to lever him over the top railing and into the animal pen. His head crashed into the barn floor.

Everything went dark.

Beta Team

I set my camera rig down so I could help the others push on the trap door. All three of us put our backs against it and pushed. At first, we only got about a half inch of movement. Then, it moved eight inches. Not enough to crawl through, but maybe we could see something.

The whole barn lit up. The whole barn except the basement we were stuck in. The light seemed like a mix of kerosene lanterns and car headlights.

We all looked out.

Danny said, “Maybe they can help us.”

The skinny, sweaty guy beside Danny, held a finger to his lips to shush him and then pointed toward the barn. He slowly turned his head to look out. Then he wasn’t there.

Danny and Sarah stared at the place he had been and then slowly turned to each other. Their eyes widened, but so did their grins. They were so excited by all this crap.

I wasn’t. I pressed myself against the stairs I sat on. It took a moment to realize I wasn’t breathing. Who the hell was that guy and where the hell did he come from? Screw that! Where the hell did he go?

Danny shook my shoulder and whispered, “Hey, get the camera.”

I moved on automatic pilot, but camera was a normal thing I could do. I grabbed my rig, put it in place, and adjusted so I could video whatever was going on in the lighted barn and not think about Mr. Disappear.

In the barn, some farmer in bib overalls talked to two guys in old fashioned suits. They stood in front of an old fashioned car. I was never an expert in those things, but it looked like a scene from a nineteen-thirties movie, you know, with gangsters and stuff.

The two guys in suits went to the back of the car, fought around getting something out of the trunk, and then brought another guy. The new dude stumbled and held his hands in front of him. It looked like his hands were tied together. As he got into the better light, his face showed signs of a serious beating. Blood spots splattered on his muscle shirt. His dark slacks looked torn, and he walked barefoot. Ah crap, this was going to get more like a gangster movie.

The farmer grabbed a rope from one of the barn posts. The rope ran up to the loft where it attached to a pulley. A metal hook hung from the other end. The farmer ran the hook around the ropes holding the prisoner’s wrists. With a couple of quick tugs, the prisoner hung from his wrists with his feet a few inches from the ground.

The farmer reached into a pocket of his overalls and drew out a large folding knife. He stepped closer to the nearest pig pen and tapped the wood. In our basement, the knocking sound echoed loudly like gunshots.

The front feet, I think they’re called trotters, and the head of a huge boar reared up out of the pen.

And there was the grunting that people said they heard. It bounced around the whole barn and in my head. If there had been anything in my bowel at that time, it would have left and taken my soul with it.

Our eyes stuck, watching the show, this gangster movie replaying a true story in a dark, empty barn on a cold, October night.

The hanging prisoner seemed to grow more aware of his surroundings. He started to kick and sway, struggling against the ropes.

The farmer seemed to laugh, but we didn’t hear any of it.

I realized that was the other unnatural feature of this vignette. We heard the knocking on the pen and the grunt of the pig, but nothing else. Silence muffled all the sounds like someone had hit the mute button.

The farmer unfolded his knife, revealing its blade.

The prisoner flailed around even more.

The farmer nodded to the two suited men. They grabbed the prisoner and held him still.

Slowly and carefully, the farmer made a slice across the prisoner’s belly, shirt and all. The prisoner’s facial expression showed the absolute agony of the cut, but we were still in Charlie Chaplain mode and couldn’t hear a thing.

The farmer made a couple of more cuts, carefully digging in deeper. The prisoner’s head rolled in agony, making the face of someone screaming.

Finally, the farmer wiped his knife on the prisoner’s side, cleaning the blade on the man’s shirt. Folding the knife, the farmer put it back in his pocket.

I will never forget what happened next. No amount of therapy, no amount of drinking, no amount of anything will ever stop the nightmares or day mares or any other mares after seeing that. Nothing can wash that away.

The farmer reached his fingers into the man’s belly through the open wounds. Struggling a little, he pulled something out. Once out a little ways, the farmer readjusted his grip and pulled slowly but firmly.

He was pulling out the man’s small intestine.

The prisoner’s head fell backward and his mouth formed a howl I could see and feel even if I couldn’t hear it.

The farmer walked toward the pig pen, spinning the suspended prisoner as he did. With a little more pulling, there was enough intestine to reach all the way to the boar.

Then the sound came back. Not all of it. Just the sound of the pig eating the man’s innards while the man was still alive.

The pig pulled and chewed, smacking and grunting as it fed. With each tug, the man’s body swayed toward the boar and then fell back as the intestine broke loose from his insides. It just seemed to go on and on.

And we stared, enraptured. We couldn’t help ourselves and we couldn’t help that man.

Eventually, with one last pull, the man stopped resisting. His head and legs fell limp. Too much was gone and so was he.

The farmer lowered the body, unhooked its hands, and then hefted the body into the hog pen.

He offered to shake hands with the two men in suits.

They chose to give small waves instead. They got back into their car, started it, and backed out of the barn.

With the headlights gone, the rest of the lights vanished too.

The trapdoor that had given us that eight inches of livestock show, slammed closed, knocking us back down the stairs.

Alpha Team

I followed Emily and Mike through the dining room and into the kitchen. Mike stopped at the top of the stairs to the basement. He looked down into the darkness. A bright green light illuminated the basement and his face, and then went away, flickering.

“The REM pod light is really going off,” he said. With his hand braced against the wall, he started down the steps.

Emily followed him, with me behind. The stairs were only wide enough for one of us at a time, so I couldn’t get good video of their faces. Still, their silhouettes against the green lighted basement walls came in flashes and were super duper, if I had been making a horror movie. But I wasn’t making a horror movie, I hoped.

With all of us down in the cramped space, I backed into the corner along the stair wall so I could try to get everything else in frame.

Mike stood against the wall where the shelves used to be. Emily stood closer to the stairs just because that was all the space available. Our little REM pod stood on three tiny legs in the corner opposite from me. The light on the top flashed.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with it?” Emily asked.

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “Maybe we just need to adjust its sensitivity. Before we mess with it, though, we should probably try an EVP to see if anybody’s here.”

I saw Emily turn her head to look at him. There wasn’t enough light to see her expression, but it kind of felt like she didn’t want anybody to be there.

She took a deep breath, let it out and started. Holding up her recorder, she asked, “Is there anyone here? Do you want to tell us something?”

The rate of the flashing increased.

“Good, good,” Mike said, staring at the REM pod. “Keep going.” He made a forwarding motion with his hand, directed at Emily.

She swallowed loudly, at least loud enough I heard it. “Do you have anything to do with John or Mary Rumpe?”

A red light joined the green one and the REM pod began beeping.

With flashing lights, it was difficult to tell, but it looked like Emily may have started shaking a little. I saw it in her hands mostly, but maybe her shoulders as well.

Her voice called out, “Do you know where we can find them? John and Mary, I mean.”

The beep turned into a constant stream.

“Mike,” she said. “I think something is holding my foot.”

“What?”

“I said, I think something is holding my foot. I can’t move my foot like something is holding it down.”

“I’ll take a look.” Mike started to turn her direction but stopped, almost falling. “Hold on, I’m caught on something.”

He turned on his flashlight and pointed it to his foot.

I tried to focus the camera on his light.

A hand from the ground had looped over his shoe, pulling it tight to the dirt floor.

We all froze, standing in the flashing red and green lights, with the shriek of the REM pod’s buzzer filling the small hole we were in.

Emily’s whole body shook and she was making short, fast breaths, hyperventilating.

I instinctively pressed further against the wall behind me.

Mike screamed with absolute terror, drowning out the REM pod and all other sounds.

All across the basement floor, boney hands erupted from the soil, reaching upward and grasping, skeletal fingers flailing.

Danny pulled hard and ripped his foot free. He continued his turn toward Emily and ran into her like he was trying to tackle her. He hit her hard enough to free her from the things holding her down. He half dragged and half carried her to the stairs and up.

I had a great camera angle on the whole thing as I watched them make it to the kitchen above, taking Mike’s flashlight with him.

A field of waving hands covered the floor, illuminated by the alternating red and green flashes. That’s when I felt the other hands, the ones coming from the walls. The walls where I was standing. The fingers that scratched at my clothes all up and down my body.

Some animalistic urge launched me forward and up the stairs, stumbling over them but not stopping. I burst into the kitchen and across toward the back door. Spinning, I pressed my back against the solidness of the door frame and held my camera rig toward the basement like some sort of protective talisman.

My heart pounded so loud I couldn’t hear my labored breathing, mouth hung open to let the air in and out faster. I blinked a couple of times, but never took my eyes off the red and green lights flickering just through that door to the pit.

The cool air from the outside door opening started to ground me. I was safe. I was going to be safe. Things would be ok. It was going to be fine.

The sound of the REM pod died off. Then the red flashes stopped. Slowly, the green light faded as well. Then, darkness. It felt like it was over.

Something in the back of my head reminded me, it could all start over again.

Time to be a cinematographer and find my subjects. Where were Emily and Mike?

Now that I wasn’t completely focused on the basement and its, I chose to call them issues, I saw more of my surroundings. The light from Mike’s flashlight came from the dining room.

Cautiously, I walked toward the dining room door. I didn’t completely take my attention from the basement door, but I tried not to think about why.

Mike sat in the corner of the dining room, not far from the front door. His arms wrapped around Emily who sat on his lap. His eyes stared into space, obviously in shock. Emily’s body trembled as she cried, her head curled down and against Mike’s chest.

This split me in two. Obviously I wanted to do what was best for my sister, and that did not involve filming her moment of emotional vulnerability. On the other hand, all my movie making classes told me that this is what an audience wanted to see. Well, we didn’t really have an audience, so they didn’t get a vote.

To compromise a little, I panned my camera across the two of them as part of a sweep of the entire room. There was nothing outside the front windows or door. The REM pod in the parlor sat quietly in the dark. The flash of distant combine lights lit up the upstairs balcony.

On the second floor, a wood door slammed… really far away.

Mike took off way too fast. It took a moment for Emily and me to realize that he was gone, then we had to catch up. He was already headed up the porch steps by the time we got around the corner. When we got in, and let our eyes adjust to the dark, we found him standing in the door between the dining room and the parlor.

Once I got the cameras aligned, I saw that he was just on the dining room side of the door, but just barely. He might as well have been a statue, as still as he was, just standing there and staring into the parlor where we thought the sound came from.

Emily caught up to him and stood beside him. She put her left hand on his shoulder, still holding her recorder in her other hand.

My filmmaker instincts told me the shot would be better if I got into the parlor so I could turn back to see their faces. Some other instinct told me I didn’t need to disturb the two of them just to try to get past them through the door. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to be in the parlor.

Emily whispered, “What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” Mike answered. “We have cameras and recorders in the room.”

“Should we try to talk to it?”

Even in the dark, I could see Mike shrug.

Emily dropped her hands to her sides, shook off her tension a little, and took about a quarter step forward. “Hello?” she said into the room. “Is someone here with us? Would you like to communicate with us?”

We waited with shallow breath for an answer.

“Are you hurt? Are you in danger?”

Again, the wait.

Then, a slight chirp, an electronic chirp.

Mike whispered to Emily, “Was that the REM pod?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. In a louder voice, she called into the room. “Was that you that caused the device to chirp? If you move close to it, it will give off a sound and some lights, but it won’t hurt you. It will only let us know that you are here.”

A bright flash of light filled the dining room. It seemed to come from the second floor. It caused my cameras to flicker. Me too.

“What was that?” I asked.

Mike looked around. “It was almost like headlights coming through the windows, but only the upstairs ones.”

Emily looked at the banister from the second floor landing. “How would we get headlights just up there?”

I turned the cameras to follow as Mike walked over to the front windows of the dining room. “There’s nobody in the driveway but us. Matt knows not to turn on any lights.” Mike pulled a walkie-talkie from his vest. “Hey, Matt, this is Mike.”

A moment later, Matt’s voice came through. “This is Matt. What’s up?”

“We just saw some lights like headlights, but only on the second floor. Did you see anything out there?”

Another brief pause before, “No, I didn’t see anything. Fleet didn’t see anything either. Did you say only the second floor?”

“Right, it looked like it came in through the second floor windows on the north side, but not the first floor.”

“Hold on.”

We assumed Matt was going to check on something, or send his helper, Fleet, to check on it. They were pretty useful out in their van. Matt, in particular, really knew his stuff. I learned a lot from him, a few things that saved me in some of my classes.

Matt came back. “I don’t know if this is the cause, but it’s an idea. It’s still harvest season, so some farmers may still be out on their combines, even in the dark. If we got one over the hill, the high-placed lights on the cab might shine upwards every time they get to this end of their field. If that’s the case, you might see the lights a few more times. Aftera couple more passes they will move on a bit and should stop showing up in the house. That’s one theory, anyway.”

A possible explanation reduced the tension in the room. I saw it in the slightly loosened postures of my two stars. I felt it in the tug of my camera rig on my shoulders.

Mike turned back to the parlor, with Emily following.

Mike pointed to the REM pod. “Are we getting anything else?”

‘Let’s try again.” Emily took a deep breath so she could project into the room and maybe the other realm, as though the deceased were hard of hearing. “Is there anything you want to tell us? Is there some way we can help you? We can use the device on the floor to help communicate.”

Again, just the slight rush of the wind through the house as we waited for signs.

A floorboard creaked, somewhere in the parlor.

Emily and Mike jumped a little, and I got it on video, assuming my little jump didn’t distort it.

“If you can move toward the device on the floor, we can use it to talk with you. Can you do that?”

Another slight creaking sound came from the parlor floorboards.

Then, one from the balcony.

We all turned to look up.

Mike flashed his light from side to side along the bannister, looking for anything that may have caused the noise. The light passing through the balusters caused flickering images on the decrepit wallpaper on the other side. It definitely added atmosphere to the scene, but didn’t help us see anything.

I always considered it my job to get the video and otherwise stay out of things. My investigators did the investigating and I made it look good, however, there were exceptions. In this case, I thought Mike seemed a little too excited and wasn’t thinking as clearly as he should. The time for intervention arrived.

“Guys,” I said, “the temperature has been dropping since the sun went down. With that kind of change, I’m sure this old place is going to make lots of those kinds of noises.”

“What?” Mike said as he turned to look at me. He seemed a little dazed and I was glad he didn’t turn his flashlight straight into the camera. “Huh? Oh, yeah, the temperature. An old place like this has no defense against thermal variations.”

He looked back toward the balcony, turned off his lights, and returned to the parlor door.

Mike’s change of demeanor worried me a little. He was the engineer; he should have been thinking about temperature changes. At the same time, I knew he and Emily had argued about the paranormal investigation thing and it was putting a lot of strain on the relationship. This was a sort of last chance to show that it was worthwhile or he was going to have to give it up, or give her up. He was a decent enough dude, but I had to side with my sister on this one.

Emily walked into the parlor, which required that I follow to the door to keep her in frame. She walked to the bedroom door and stopped beside it. There, she talked to the dead again.

“Were you attacked in this place? Did they hurt you here and take you away?”

Another quiet moment interrupted by a brief chirp on the REM pod.

This encouraged Emily. She pulled out her notebook and used a small light to read from it. “Are you Mary Rumpe? Did they hurt you and your husband John?”

A slightly longer chirp that time.

Beside me, I could feel Mike shuffling slightly. He was getting excited again. Some time ago, he and Emily decided that she would be the only one to talk during the EVP sessions unless she wasn’t there. This kept them from talking over each other. It also seemed that she asked better questions and could keep her excitement contained.

“Did they take you at the same time?”

The documents from the Historical Society said that John disappeared about a month before Mary. There was gossip and a local sheriff’s deputy claimed John abandoned his wife. Then the month passed and Mary went missing too. The same deputy said he thought she either ran off with a new man, or got word from her husband in his new place and went to be with him. Her uncle showing up to investigate changed some people’s speculation. When the deputy was killed by federal agents while trying to kill the uncle, a lot more stories got heard. Unfortunately, none of the stories came with evidence.

No sounds.

We got another flash of alleged combine lights from the second floor windows.

“If you’re Mary, did they take you after they took your husband?”

We all stood, awaiting a reply.

The REM pod flashed its bright green LED and shrieked for the briefest moment.

Mike and Emily stared at the device for a moment before staring at each other.

Emily quickly shook her head a couple of times, smoothed down her clothes, or at least tried, and cleared her throat. “Are you Mary Rumpe?”

We stood with our eyes glued to the REM pod.

Nothing.

She tried again. “Are you John Rumpe?”

Again, not a peep.

“What do you think?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think we got enough data to make any assumptions.” As an accountant, Emily liked data.

“Did you see anything pass by the REM pod when it went off? Like a wet leaf blowing by or something?”

Emily just shook her head no.

They looked to me. “I didn’t see anything. If there was something, it should show up on the videos.”

On a paranormal investigation, the brief pauses when we tried to figure out what to do or say next seemed to take on more gravity. If you stood in the dark, or near dark, with your brain tuned in to find anything that could possibly hint at unnatural things, the quiet gave your brain time to process all the normal little noises and feelings you ignored until then. Gradually, you filled up with a quiet tension, like your primitive ancestors sensing the approach of a predator under the shadows of the bushes.

“Hey guys,” came the voice.

We all jumped. It took a moment to realize that Matt’s voice came from the walkie-talkie. We followed that with nervous, uncomfortable laughs for a second.

Mike keyed the walkie-talkie. “Yeah, Matt, what have you got?”

“The cameras in the basement are showing the light on the REM pod down there flashing wildly. I’m not picking up any audio, so I can’t hear beeping. Still, you may want to check it out.”

“Great, we’ll head that way.” Mike put the walkie-talkie back in its pocket. ‘What do you think? Should we head down?”

“Yeah,” said Emily, “I think we’ve got all we can from here.”

I backed up a couple of paces so they could go toward the kitchen and the basement while I kept them in frame. I followed behind by a couple of paces.

As I got closer to the kitchen door, I saw another flash of those combine lights on the second floor.

Beta Team

Danny and Sarah pointed their headlamps into the hole in the floor. The light showed the wood stairs and a concrete floor, but only the wall next to the stairs. Any other walls were too far away.

“What do we do?” Sarah asked, with an obvious twinge of excitement on her voice.

“I think we have to check it out,” replied Danny, just as excited. He looked over the stairs more thoroughly, swinging his light from side to side on each step. “I’ll go down first to see if the old stairs will hold up. I’m going to go down along the side; maybe the supports will be stronger near the wall.”

I moved closer to the exterior wall of the barn so I could record him better.

He put his first foot carefully on the top step. Pausing to see if it held, he slowly lowered his weight down. Again, he paused. Still no problems. With his hands out to either side for balance, he picked up his trailing foot from the floor of the barn and moved it gently to the second step. As he shifted his weight, the stairs didn’t even creak.

He continued that pattern until he was all the way down. “I made it. Let me look around a minute to make sure it’s safe.”

From up top, I watched as he took a few steps, changing direction but not getting far from the bottom of the stairs. I couldn’t see what he saw, but only him. Sarah’s light never left him. After a moment, he came back to the base and called up, “I think it’s good. Come on down.”

Sarah went down a little more quickly than Danny, but still kept to the wall. As soon as she reached the floor, the two started meandering into the room.

“Hey!” I called, “Can I get some light on the stairs until I’m down?”

“Sorry.” Sarah pointed her headlamp toward the stairs so I could see where I was going. As soon as I hit the floor, she was back to searching.

I could have dug my own flashlight out of my pocket, but it might have interfered with the video and those two were supposed to watch out for me a little.

Watching their exploration, it looked like the room was pretty big, maybe twelve feet across and fifteen or a little more long. Wood shelves lined the longer walls and held cardboard and wood boxes. More boxes and some long wooden crates sat in a stack on the far wall. Dust and spiderwebs covered everything.

Danny let out a long, low whistle. “I think one of our farmers may have been up to something they shouldn’t have been.”

Sarah ran over to the pile of crates at the end of the room. “What do you suppose are in these?”

Danny joined her and I followed to keep them close by.

The long crates were about four feet long, each with a hinged lid and a latch. Thick, rusty padlocks hung from some of the latches, but not on the top crate.

Danny reached out carefully to the top box and swung its latch up out of the way. The metal made the slight squeaking sound of old rust as it moved. With that done, he tugged on the side of the lid to swing it open. It rose stiffly, but then fell back, crashing into the crate behind it and sending up a cloud of dust.

When the dust cleared enough, we could see the contents. Some sort of rotted, canvas-like cloth covered the real product: bolt-action rifles. From previous encounters, I knew none of us had any kind of expertise in firearms, so there was no telling what kind they were or whether they were any good. But, based on standard Internet trash talk, I figured a crate of antique guns, maybe from the nineteen-thirties, were probably worth a lot of money. The Historical Society was going to be very happy with this discovery.

“I think there’s ten in this box,” said Danny. He learned back and moved his headlamp around to get a count of the other boxes. “I count about seven crates, so that’s seventy of these guns just here. Who knows what’s in those other boxes.”

Again, I knew enough Internet geeks to cringe on their behalf at the description of these weapons as “guns”. It didn’t matter that, to the average person, the word had this specific meaning. I really needed to stay off Internet forums and get some real friends.

Sarah had already moved on to one of the smaller boxes. “The lid is nailed shut on this one.”

Danny looked it over, brushing the dust off.

The wood of this crate was much thinner than the others, which made sense for something smaller. There were also spaces between the individual boards, like you find in those old fruit crates they used to sell oranges in.

Danny tried to lift it, which he did easily, but as he did, the contents made the sound of glass clinking. He tilted the box to the other side and got the sound again. “I think these are bottles.”

“Do they feel full?” Sarah asked.

“Oh, yeah, for sure.”

Danny sat the box back where he got it. “Do you know what this means? There’s a good chance this room has been closed since Prohibition. That Jacob Rumpe guy may have been tied up with organized crime. That may be why he disappeared.” Again, the sense of excitement kept rising in his voice.

I tried to move so I could see both of their expressions. They faced each other, with their headlamps straight ahead, so there was plenty of light for the shot.

Their eyes had widened and their smiles broadened. They would be journaling and talking about this for the rest of their lives. I, on the other hand, was likely to only bring it up after a couple too many beers when hanging out at the bar. Still, it was a neat find, just not paranormal.

I decided I needed to disrupt their excitement so we could continue the investigation. “If that’s in this pile, I wonder what other stuff is in here?”

That did it. Their excitement redirected to the rest of the room.

Somehow they remained synchronized and both headed to the shelf on the wall opposite the stairs. As they did so, one of them kicked something that skittered across the floor with a high-pitched metallic sound.

“Stop.” Danny said. “Did you hear that? Did you hear where it went?”

They both began scanning the floor with their headlamps.

“I think it went this way,” said Sarah. She focused her light just ahead of her feet and walked slowly in the direction the thought was correct.

Danny assumed the same posture and walked in a line that would intersect hers. They shuffled slowly, not wanting to miss anything, and not wanting to kick anything else. After a few minutes, they caught up and something shined from the floor.

Sarah reached down for the object. “I think it’s one of those bullet shells, like the things that come out of the side of the gun after someone shoots.” She turned it over in her fingers a couple of times and then offered it to Danny.

Danny gave it a similar inspection. “I think you’re right; it does look like the remains of a bullet. I wonder who was shooting down here. Do you think maybe this was the bullet that killed Jacob Rumpe?”

Excitement filled their expressions again. Some day their faces were going to stick like that.

But Danny still had questions. “Did you notice the floor where you picked this up? I thought it looked darker than the rest of the floor.”

“How could you tell with all the dust?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know, it was just something that stood out.” He handed the shell casing back to Sarah and then knelt down on the floor. Supporting himself on one hand, he used the other to brush dust, dirt, and cobwebs from the place where she found the metal.

That part did seem darker, so he expanded his hand sweeping to reach the wider area, going until he reached the lighter color of the rest of the floor. After a few minutes, he concluded that he had uncovered all there was to uncover. He stood up and adjusted his headlamp to cover the entire area.

The dark area appeared to be a stain. The stain covered an unusual pattern. It wasn’t the circle or oval of a spill. It wasn’t the trail of something spilled in transit. Instead, it looked like the silhouette of a person, or most of a person, including a head, torso, a couple of crumpled arms, and the top part of legs. The stain stood as a rust color against the gray of the concrete.

Danny stepped away from the stain. “Oh, wow,” he said.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. The likely contraband in the crates suggested criminal activity, probably organized crime. That missing farmer was probably associated with it. A spent shell casing in a basement said someone had a reason to fire a gun down here. Now, it looked like someone probably bled out. Even without the idea of hauntings, this was enough to make me want to leave.

Sarah stared at the spot on the floor, first stepping back, and then stepping forward again. “We should do an EVP session.”

Danny’s eyes never moved from the stain. “Yeah, you’re right. We should do a session.”

She raised her hand, holding out her recorder. “Is someone here? Does anyone want to speak with us?”

We waited for the response.

And waited some more.

I wasn’t sure I wanted a response, but I knew what it meant for the love birds.

She tried again. “Jacob Rumpe, is this where you died? Is that your blood on the floor? Is this from the bullet that killed you?” She held up the casing.

Still nothing.

As I kept their faces in frame, I noticed a change in their expressions. It was subtle and difficult to describe. Their usual excitement held something else now. Apprehension? Fear? I wasn’t sure, but I had the impression that an actual possible death was a little too real. They had always seemed very childlike in their investigations, as though it was a make-believe game of some sort. A real death may have been too grown-up for their tastes.

“Should we keep trying?” she asked.

Danny seemed to think for a moment. “I don’t know. The recorder may have picked up something we couldn’t hear. I think we should get more equipment from Matt and set it up down here while we look in the rest of the barn.”

A sudden sound from behind me crawled up my spine and into the primitive parts of my brain. Sarah and Danny both turned to look toward the source of the sound.

“Did you hear that?” Danny whispered.

“Yes,” Sarah answered.

“Me too.” I wasn’t staying out of that conversation.

They walked past me toward the source, and I fell in behind them to record.

The sound seemed like a whisper, like someone trying to get our attention but not the attention of anyone else. Worse, it seemed to come from under the stairs, the same stairs we needed to climb out of this pit.

Danny called out, “Is anybody there?”

No response came.

He looked at Sarah for guidance, but she shook her head slightly. She had no ideas either. I was glad they didn’t ask me.

Danny took another step toward the stairs. “Maybe we can help you. Can you talk to us?”

The trapdoor to the basement slammed shut.

The sound echoed through the room, leaving us standing there.

Tech Team

Matt finished talking to the Alpha Team about the REM pot in the basement. He moved to set his walkie-talkie into its chagrin base and changed his mind.

“Matt to Beta Team. Matt to Beta Team.”

He waited for a response.

He checked the frequency settings and volume control before trying again. “Matt to Beta Team. I’m checking in with you. Is everything ok?”

Still no response.

He turned to his runner, Fleet, who sat at the back of the van with the dog. “Remind me to check their walkie-talkies when they get back.”

Setting his walkie-talkie back on its stand, he reached for his cell phone. A quick glance showed enough bars to get started. He thumbed through the contacts to find Danny. He pressed “dial” and waited. Straight to voicemail. The same happened on his calls to Sarah and Max.

He turned to his assistant again. “Hey, Fleet. I can’t reach anybody on Beta Team, walkie or cell. Must be some serious interference over there. Run on over and check on them, ok?”

“By myself?”

“Dude, you’re like twenty-years-old. They used to draft guys younger than you for war. Grab a flashlight and head on over. Just see that they’re ok and come on back. If they aren’t ok, find out what they need and then come back so we can call an ambulance or something.”

The assistant pushed the back door open and hopped out. Feeling the cold October air, he pulled his hood up. Then, grabbing a spare light from a box, he closed the van door and headed toward the barn.