The Stolen Ghosts Read online

  “Bon appétit!” cried Fowlis.

  The daughter grinned and the mother fainted.

  Chapter 8

  The doorbell rang at 4:15pm. Sarah ran to the entrance hall from the morning room sofa. She beat her father to the front door and hauled it open.

  A skinny man with a shock of tight red curls stood on the doorstep. He wore a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt tucked into grey combat trousers that Sarah guessed had once been black. A small suitcase stood upright by his feet, and a laptop bag hung from his shoulder. Freckles left a pale dusting across his nose.

  “I’m guessing you must be Miss McKenzie?” He looked up at Sarah. She tried to guess his height—he was shorter than her, and she was 5ft 8ins.

  “Yeah. You’re the paranormal investigator?”

  “I am!” The red-haired man broke into a wide smile and creases deepened around his eyes. “Most people call me a ghost buster, but that’s wrong as I don’t bust anything. I investigate.”

  “Tim, glad you could make it on such short notice.” Her dad moved to shake the investigator’s hand.

  “No problem. The moment you mentioned this place on the phone, I had to come up to see it for myself.”

  “Why?” asked Sarah.

  Tim stepped through the doorway, lugging his suitcase into the hall. The door swung shut behind him with a muffled thud.

  “I grew up just down the road from here. Small villages are always full of tall tales and legends and ghost stories, so I’ve heard a lot about this place. I always wanted to see inside but up until now, I never had any reason to visit.” Tim’s gaze travelled up the stairs.

  “So, you do think this place could be haunted?” asked Sarah.

  “Well, anywhere could be haunted, technically speaking. It’s just a question of finding out if it actually is, and if it is, who’s haunting it and why.”

  “Would you like to come this way, Tim? I’ll show you to the morning room. You can meet my wife,” said Dr McKenzie.

  “Ah, your wife is the sensitive member of the family?” asked Tim.

  “Well, we’ve both seen and heard things,” replied Sarah.

  “And what is your usual reaction?” Tim pulled a slim notebook from the back pocket of his jeans and flipped to a blank page.

  “I think it’s awesome.”

  “Should we do this in the morning room? It’ll be less draughty in there,” said Sarah’s dad.

  “We shall chat later, Miss McKenzie. I’ll need to speak to all witnesses anyway after I’ve done a preliminary sweep of the house,” said Tim.

  Sarah followed Tim and her father out of the hall. They found her mother in the morning room, where she sat on the sofa, a cream afghan draped around her shoulders and an interior design magazine open in her lap. Her mother looked up when they entered, a bright smile plastered to her face. She discarded the magazine and afghan so she could stand up and shake hands with Tim as they exchanged pleasantries.

  “Now, I should probably explain how this is going to work. I’ll do a sweep of the house in a moment, to get a feel for the place, test my equipment and see if I pick anything up,” said Tim. He sat on the chair opposite the sofa. “I want to do that first so I’m not biased by anything you say you’ve seen. Then I’ll need to speak to each of you in turn.”

  “Will you be here long? I’m not sure how long these sorts of investigations take,” said Dr McKenzie.

  “Possibly overnight, if that’s all right with you. I’ll set up motion sensors, infrared cameras, temperature gauges and recording devices. If there’s something here, we’re bound to catch it somehow. Meanwhile, I’ll try to make contact,” said Tim.

  “That all sounds very thorough. What will we all be doing while this is going on?” asked Dr McKenzie.

  “Well, you can just go about your business, but once I start with the nocturnal stuff, I’d imagine you’d be sleeping. If I know you’re in bed, then I won’t think it’s you if I hear footsteps.” Tim grinned, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  “How many of these investigations do you do a year? Ravinder mentioned you’re often quite busy,” said Dr McKenzie.

  “It’s actually pretty seasonal—we seem to get more calls in the autumn and winter. It’s almost like ghosts don’t like the summer. We’re actually doing some research into why that might be, and so far—”

  Mrs McKenzie gave a small cough.

  “Yes. Right. Well, I’ve been doing this for the past six years, and I’ve done almost a hundred and eighty investigations. Everything will be fully documented, and you can review the electronic output yourself in the morning—it’s always good to get a second opinion, especially from a scientist such as yourself. Or perhaps you’d like to observe during the investigation?” asked Tim.

  “I would!” said Sarah.

  “Sarah, you need your sleep,” replied her mother.

  “If Miss McKenzie wants to assist then I’m happy for her to do so. I usually finish around 4 am—spiritual activity drops off in the hours immediately after dawn. I sometimes wonder if ghosts need to sleep too.” Tim tried another smile.

  Sarah grinned at him, and the corners of her mother’s mouth twitched upwards.

  “I don’t want Sarah taking part in this,” said Dr McKenzie.

  “Why not?”

  “You need your sleep, as your mother says. Tim, you’re the expert here so I’ll get out of your way as I have some work that needs doing. I’ll be in my office if you need me,” said Dr McKenzie.

  He shook Tim’s hand and left the room. Mrs McKenzie smiled at Tim.

  “I thought he might want to help out, but my husband hasn’t experienced any of the supernatural events for himself. I suspect he feels left out. But if Sarah wants to help—”

  “Then Sarah will be helping!” finished Sarah. She couldn’t let this stranger poke into the mystery without her.

  “Awesome, it’s good to have an assistant. And that’s pretty usual, Mrs McKenzie. What I call ‘normal’ people are often threatened when they’re around sensitives.” Tim flashed another of his humourless smiles.

  “Sensitives?” asked Sarah.

  “People sensitive to planes of existence beyond our own. If you show any kind of talent for detecting them, the people who can’t sometimes feel a bit left out.”

  “Dad’s a physicist. He’s dealing with multiple universes all of the time.” Sarah tried to remember some of the things he’d told her about the multiverse.

  “Scientists are the worst kind of sceptics, especially physicists. You’d think someone who spends all their time dealing with things that can’t be seen with the naked eye but which are theoretically possible would be open to the idea of ghosts,” said Tim. “Now, I should get started.”

  “Do you want me to show you the more active spots?” asked Sarah.

  “When I’m finished. If I know where they are, I might spend more time there, which will skew the data. It’s best I do my sweep with no prior knowledge.” Tim opened the suitcase and began unpacking electronic items of different shapes and sizes. Her mother’s eyes widened at the vast array of equipment as it appeared on the coffee table.

  “Is there anything I can do in the meantime?” asked Sarah.

  “If you could prepare some kind of floor plan for me, indicating areas of high, medium and low activity, that could be useful,” replied Tim.

  “I hesitate to ask, but is all of that necessary?” asked Mrs McKenzie. She pointed at the equipment.

  “Indeed it is. As you all seem to be comfortable in this room, I’m going to make this my information hub. It’s got a neutral atmosphere, so it’ll make a good control space.”

  Sarah stared at the suitcase, which didn’t seem large enough to accommodate so many things. Tim lifted his laptop out of the computer bag and fired it up. Sarah peeked over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of his desktop. A photograph filled the screen. In it, two men in old-fashioned suits stood shaking hands at some kind of fancy dinner. They looked ordinary enough
, but Sarah’s eye was drawn to the insubstantial figure behind them. She couldn’t make out any features, but what looked like a huge, familiar feather stuck out of a large hat.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Spirit photography. Fascinating branch of investigation. Most of it is completely fake; it’s just done using superimposition, or even PhotoShop nowadays, but you get the occasional image that baffles the experts. This one was taken at a political function in Manhattan in 1923.”

  Sarah stared at the figure and thought of the painting in the drawing room.

  “Do you do spirit photography?” asked Mrs McKenzie.

  “True spirit photography is a very specialised field, but I do take photos with an array of digital cameras—some are infrared, and others are thermal imaging. Occasionally something shows up.” Tim started plugging cables into the laptop.

  “Who’s that?” asked Sarah. She pointed at the figure.

  “No one knows, but whoever it is shows up in various places across the ages. Someone even claimed they saw him in a shadow in the background of Casablanca but no one has even checked it out. I’m certainly not going to, I hate that film,” replied Tim.

  Tim hung a small black box on a strap around his neck. He pressed a switch on the side and it squealed into life. Sarah winced and her mother jumped at the sound. Tim grinned.

  “Sorry about that. This is my EMF meter—if you hold it anywhere near an electrical source, it goes off. It’s originally an electrician’s tool, but it picks up radiation that can indicate spirit activity.”

  “What do you intend to use it for?” asked Sarah.

  “Some people think ghosts are energy traces left behind when the body dies. This meter allows me to pick them up. They’re actually for detecting electromagnetic radiation from electrical goods but they’re a handy tool for us too,” replied Tim. “I just need to make sure lights aren’t on, and so on, so I don’t get a false reading. I normally use it when the occupants of a house have gone to bed but this place is big enough that I should be able to move around now without getting in your way.”

  Tim slipped different boxes and gizmos into the pockets of his combat trousers. Mrs McKenzie glanced at the television, her interest in the investigation already waning. Sarah noticed a clipboard on the table beside an assortment of wires. A typed chart was clipped to the front, with spaces for describing the room’s contents and its atmosphere, among other things.

  “Do you need any help right now?” asked Sarah.

  “Just the floor plan. I’ll come back and talk to you once I’ve swept the house. Make sure you stay here so I don’t pick up on your energies,” said Tim. He picked up the clipboard and flashed Sarah a grin then he swept out of the room in a cloud of cheap aftershave.

  * * *

  Fowlis sat on the window seat, watching the red-haired man fiddle with his magic boxes. He chuckled to see the 1923 photograph. It was the first time he’d seen it in fifty years. The photographer had managed to get his good side, even if photographing a cavalier ghost at a New York benefit gala wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind. His gaze returned to the red-haired man as he bared his teeth in another insincere smile. Fowlis grimaced.

  “Well, Brie, I shan’t be obliging that fellow with any data. He’s odious,” said Fowlis, speaking to the grey mouse hidden behind the curtain. She’d become quite the little companion.

  Brie wrinkled her nose.

  “Yes, quite. I don’t like him one bit either.”

  Fowlis melted into the wall. The panelling would lead him straight to Sarah’s father. Fowlis didn’t imagine the scientist would suffer the red-haired man’s company, which made his office the perfect spot to relax.

  Chapter 9

  Sarah made the last couple of folds in her origami dinosaur. She set it on the table and looked around for something else to do. It had taken her and her mother hours to decide on an accurate floor plan of the house. Mrs McKenzie decided to use it to work out the best layout for guest rooms for the intended B&B. Talk of colour swatches and design themes distracted her from talk of ghosts. Sarah wondered what Jamie would make of all of this. She longed to fetch her laptop from the library, but Tim had left explicit instructions not to wander around. Then again, she’d never get a signal in here anyway.

  “Mum, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course, darling.” Mrs McKenzie continued to pore over her pattern books.

  “What do you think Tim will do if he finds something?”

  Mrs McKenzie rested the pattern book in her lap and gazed at the wall. “I honestly don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

  Sarah thought of the figure in the spirit photograph again.

  Is that what I did? Did I take a photo of something in the library?

  The door opened and Tim walked into the room. Irritation settled in the frown lines around his eyes. He dropped his EMF meter into the open suitcase on the floor beside the table.

  “How did it go?” asked Sarah.

  “Are you sure that this isn’t just a really old building?” he asked.

  “Why? Didn’t you find anything?”

  “No obvious evidence, at any rate. It’s like the house is devoid of any spiritual activity at all. Not even the usual background chatter. It’s so odd.”

  “You looked everywhere?”

  “Everywhere except this room, and your dad’s office. I was expecting something a little more…spectacular.” Tim folded his arms.

  Sarah looked at her mother for support, but Mrs McKenzie had lost interest in the conversation and returned her attention to the pattern books.

  “We did you a floor plan.” Sarah pointed to the plan.

  “I’m not sure how much good it will do. I’d normally have expected to pick up at least something out of the ordinary but literally nothing has registered on any of the equipment. Even a draught or faulty wiring would have given some sort of results, but I didn’t pick up anything at all. I’m not sure there’s anything I can do if you don’t have any spiritual activity.”

  Mrs McKenzie looked up, and fixed Tim with a piercing look. “You have been here for less than three hours and you’ve taken a cursory look around our home—how dare you suggest that we have somehow misled or deceived you?”

  Tim stared at her, his mouth working up and down but unable to form words.

  “The way that I see it, you have two choices. You can leave, which I am sure will please my husband but will not resolve the situation for me. Alternatively, you can stay, and listen to what we have to tell you. My daughter and I compiled the floor plan as you requested, and we will be more than happy to brief you on the events we have witnessed so far. If you feel our case is beneath you, then I bid you good evening.”

  Sarah shivered, wondering if the drop in temperature was the return of the ghost, or her mother’s temper.

  “I didn’t say you’d made anything up; I just said I didn’t find any evidence at all.”

  “On TV they do their preliminary sweep before their full investigation, and they always say that you never know what you’ve picked up until you look at it properly,” said Sarah.

  “That’s TV though. I would have expected at least some immediate EMF readings, and the thermometer didn’t budge an inch. I can check the recordings to see if we got any EVPs, and maybe the cameras picked something up, but I’m not hopeful.”

  “Perhaps this case isn’t progressing the way that they normally do for you—I don’t know, I’m not an expert. But you are, and I’m trusting you to help us somehow,” said Mrs McKenzie.

  “We could tell you what we’ve experienced first-hand, and then you can make up your mind if you want to go ahead with the full investigation. At least you’ve got baseline readings for all of the rooms now,” said Sarah.

  “That’s true. I think you’ll be good at this.” Tim smiled at Sarah then sat down. “Okay, hit me with it. Where was the first disturbance?”

  Sarah and her mother spent the next hou
r telling Tim about their experiences. Mrs McKenzie held herself together well, and Sarah assumed that the quiet evening had allowed her to put some distance between herself and what she’d seen. Tim scratched his head at the idea of a ghost serving breakfast, and made frantic notes when Sarah related her experiences in the library. She even fetched her laptop to show him the photos of the library.

  “You didn’t tell me about that!” Mrs McKenzie wrung her hands when Sarah finished.

  “I didn’t want to worry you any more than you already were,” replied Sarah.

  “Well I have to say, I didn’t experience anything on my preliminary sweep, but looking at my notes, it seems like you have periods of inactivity between disturbances, which might explain it,” said Tim. “And this photo you took in the library…it’s pretty damning. Are you okay with me proceeding with my nocturnal investigation?”

  Mrs McKenzie nodded.

  “Great. Well, it’s 11pm now, so I should make sure everything’s set up.”

  “Excellent. I shall inform my husband, and we’ll all go to bed. You know where the kitchen is if you get hungry, and you’ve seen the bathrooms, and the downstairs lavatory. Please wake us if you need anything,” said Mrs McKenzie.

  She motioned for Sarah to follow her out of the room. Sarah sighed—she wanted to help with the investigation if she could. Instead, she picked up her laptop and followed her mother into the hall. They met up with her father in the entrance hall.

  “Has he found anything yet?”

  “He didn’t find anything on his preliminary sweep, but he thinks it might just be quiet in between episodes,” said Sarah.

  “Indeed. Well hopefully his evening will be quiet too, and then we can all get on with what we came here to do.”

  Sarah nodded, but without conviction. There was at least one ghost in the house. She’d seen the painting, heard the footsteps, and had even been served breakfast by someone she couldn’t see. Even if Tim didn’t find anything, she knew she would, if she kept looking.