Scene Eleven

Tagging along with Doug and Jake into town. I figured that some fresh air couldn't hurt.

Jake pulls the side door to their van open and motions to the front seat. "You can ride shotgun, dude. No worries."

"Thanks." I climb into the cab and buckle up. It reeks of stale cigarettes and cheap fast food.

Doug swings in beside me and drops his notebook and pen on the floorboard between us.

Me: "Where are we off to?"

Doug: "I got a tip from a local on someone that grew up with McAllister's granddaughter."

"Yeah," Jake says from the back. "This guy's supposed to be a little out there in the deep end, you know."

The van rattles over the planks in the covered bridge. Jealousy and anger tug at my soul. He doesn't want us to go.

Doug: "Crazy or not, we've gotta follow every lead that we can on this story."

I shift in my seat as the van pulls onto the main two-lane road into town. "Crazy how?"

Jake laughs. "Rumors of buried treasures, underground catacombs, you name it."

Doug: "Meh. I might buy into the mass murders and stuff, but the buried treasure idea sounds a little too far off base."

I rub my right hand on my jeans. "I had a crazy experience earlier."

Doug: "Oh?"

Jake: "Spill it."

Will they think I'm just as looney? "I followed the smell of formaldehyde into McAllister's office."

Jake's rump slides forward. I feel his hands grab onto my headrest.

"When I went for the doorknob, my hand got covered in blood."

Jake: "Whoa."

Doug slows the van to a halt at an intersection. "Then what?"

"I tried to wipe it off on my pants, but it disappeared."

Jake: "Psychometry."

I turn my confused face toward him.

Jake: "You get imprints of the object's previous owners on contact. Pretty cool, actually."

Doug shrugs. "Could be that." He accelerates through the stop sign and makes another turn. "I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it was just a run-of-the-mill haunting yet."

Jake eases back into his seat. "We could always test it."

Doug: "True. Maybe we can hook up with the doc later and delve deeper into the matter then."

He turns onto a gravel driveway that disappears down over a steep hillside to our left.

Jake: "Holy shit, man! You didn't tell me we'd be going off-roading."

A battered double-wide trailer grows in the windshield. Tan siding. Missing shutters. Cinder block stairs lead to a dented white front door. A rusted-out Dodge flatbed sits on four blocks in the side yard. Rotten wooden bed. I didn't know you could squeeze that many shades of blue onto one truck.

Doug stops the van and stomps on the e-brake's clutch. "We're here." He grabs his notebook and pen and scurries out of the vehicle in an excited flurry. "Listen, guys. I need you to keep cool and don't piss him off."

Jake: "Who is this guy again?"

Doug: "Mike Simmons. He could be a complete waste of our time, or a goldmine of unrecorded information."

I ascent the wobbly stairs behind the pros.

Doug: "Either way, let me do the talking."

Jake: "Screw the ghosts. I want the loot, man."

Doug raps on the door. "Shut it, freckles."

I inch up beside Doug on the top step as he knocks once more.

He shifts his things to his left hand and goes for the doorknob. "Maybe he's out back or something."

My arms cross and my muscles clamp up. "I don't think --"

Too late. The white metal door whines open on weathered hinges. The black and brown muzzle of a huge dog pounces through the torn lower right corner in the screen door. It's snapping jaws force me off the step and sprawling onto my back in the damp grass.

"Damn it."

Jake's laughing so hard he's snorting. Moron.

Jake: "You gonna make it, Sean?"

I heave my soiled body off the lawn and file in behind him. "Yeah. Fine."

"You the investigators?" The old-timer's smoke-ridden voice spooks even Doug.

Doug: "Y-yes, sir. Summit Paranormal…

The old man cracks the door and swats his Rottweiler on the snout with something. "Git back, Mitzy!"

The overgrown pup whimpers and trots off into a sunlit corner.

"I'm Mike," he says, prying the door open. "Come on in and make yerselves at home." He waddles off toward a small round table at the back of the home. "Mi casa, es tu casa."

Doug and Jake follow Mike's hunched form into the dank hollow of the trailer.

Mike: "Don't mind her. All bark and little bite."

Our host cracks the door to his scarred fridge. Its pale light illuminates swaths of crumb-littered countertops. "You fellas want a beer?"

Doug: "No, thanks."

Jake: "I could use a--"

Doug's glare makes him rethink the offer.

Jake: "Eh, I'm fine."

Mike fumbles around with the contents in his fridge. "How about you, short timer? Old Milwaukee. None o' that fancy shit in here, I'm afraid."

"I'm good."

Mike: "Suit yourselves. I can't get into this story without one." (He drops two cans on the round table.) "I need one to wash the other down."

Doug flips his Steno to a fresh page and clicks open his pen. "About that, Mike. What can you tell us about the McAllister estate?"

The dingy old man plops in a faux wooden chair and scratches the stubble on his neck. "The House in the Hollow? Oh, I could tell ya plenty. Don't wanna keep ya here all day."

Doug: "You'd mentioned that you had been in that house growing up. Can you tell us more?"

Mike's first can pops with a long hiss. "Well, when I was a youngster, I was friends with Abagail Martin."

Jake: "The granddaughter of Henry McAllister."

Mike: "Yup." (He takes a swig of his beer.) "Abby was a sweetheart. I always loved going to her place to play 'cause it was so humongous."

Doug: "That hasn't changed."

Mike chuckles. "No, I'd bet it hasn't." His worn brown stare falls into his mind's dusty memories. "At any rate, Abby and me were pretty close as kids. One of our favorite games to play in that old house was hide and seek."

I pull my wandering eyes from the Marine Corps memorabilia hanging on the wall behind him. "I bet that was fun."

Mike downs another long gulp. "The best! I have to admit it, though. There was always an eerie feeling I got in that place. A kind of dark, heavy sadness."

His eyes lock with mine. He's seen it, too.

Mike: "Well, one day, Abby and me was playin' our game and we wandered down into the basement." (He belches and taps a cigarette out of the crumpled pack on the sill of the bay window.) "All right if I light up?"

Doug: "It's your house."

Mike strikes the end of his tobacco with a lighter and draws in a deep chest full of his smoldering death.

Jake: "What happened in the basement?"

Mike: "I went looking for Abby down there. I heard her giggles trail off down the steps. I'd almost made it to the bottom stair when her old man shouted down behind me: "Get out of there! You don't ever go down there – ever!"

Doug looks up from his frantic scribbling. "And, why do you think that was? The pool?"

Mike releases a cloud of smoke into the light over the table. "Sure, the pool was dangerous for an unattended kid, but I think he was hiding more."

Jake: "The catacombs."

Mike nods. "Yup. I've always been of the mind that Old Man Martin was hiding something down there someplace."

Doug: "Do you believe that the entrance to these catacombs is in the basement of the mansion?"

Mike: "I've never seen them or any doorway to 'em, but if there was an entrance, it'd be down there."

Jake props his head on his hand. "Hold on. You've never seen them? How do you know they even exist?"

Mike exhales another calm puff of spent cigarette. "Abby."

A wave of sobering realization crashes into me. Oh, damn.

Mike: "She told me detailed stories about how she went into them. She told me that they were in the basement. (Exhales more smoke.) Said that it was cold and dark in there. No lights. By the dripping water, she figured that they went back a ways."

Jake: "Did she mention where the door was to them?"

Mike: "Never did. Her best guess is that her Pap used them to hide a part of his fortune."

Doug: "That's where the buried treasure theory comes in."

Jake's on the edge of his seat now. "What kind of treasure?"

Mike: "McAllister was said to have inherited a small fortune from royalty or something."

Doug: "What makes you think that's true?"

Grumbles give away the old man's agitation. "You ever been in the attic of that place?"

The three of us exchange empty stares.

Doug: "Not as of yet, no."

Mike: "When you do, take a look around. You'll see all of the proof that you'll need."