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A great collection written by authors from all over the word.
By Thijs van Ebbenhorst Tengbergen on March 17, 2016
A very nice collection of genre stories by international authors, as good as any Best of the Year volume.
I especially liked the hard-boiled detective story cum vampires Bats Domino and the deeply strange Sea of the Dead and the matter-of-fact told ghost-buster story Third Night Charm.
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“Third Night Charm”
by Gene Stewart
Coming down the curved staircase meant hugging the wall to avoid both cracked stair boards and the rickety bannister. The ghost hunt’s leader, Karl Demerest, an older man with cancer, alimony, and a desperate gleam in his gaze, left a scrape in the grime on the wall with his shoulder. His military style sweater had dirt, balls of dust, and clumps of damp wall paper on it. He investigated hard, crawling everywhere.
Joining the trio at the ground floor rendezvous, he counted ducklings and frowned. “Where’s Compton? And that new girl he brought?”
Asking the question answered it in most of their minds. A smile made the rounds.
Karl crushed it. “Find them.”
A closet, most thought. He’d cuddled many an eager trainee in closets over the decade Compton had been with the group. His behavior would have gotten him thrown out long ago had it not been for his value to the group’s overall goals. His family’s connections in the region gained them permission to explore properties otherwise off-limits to ghost-hunting. His technical knack kept them supplied with work-bench knock-offs of cutting-edge equipment, often made better with useful innovations added.
Compton also drew spirits. With him along, activity spiked. Leave him home and exploring dilapidated houses and abandoned factories, asylums, hospitals, bars, hotels, or other businesses became tedious, dangerous endurance tests.
Suspicious that Compton sweetened the sites or rigged equipment to act up were expressed and checked. No one had found the slightest evidence supporting notions of cheating.
Compton even welcomed inspections of his machines, and accepted gladly the buddy system, which he called the spy system. Backup technicians operating the monitor board or debriefing the sensors was great, too, in his opinion.
His one foible passed unremarked beyond occasional good-natured teasing, or had before the ghost hunt in Fechte’s Mansion ended by their leader, Kurt, opening the house’s back door in time to spot Compton and the cute blonde girl naked and thrusting in the gazebo.
Running to the middle of the yard, Kurt pounded on the lattice surrounding the gazebo’s base and yelled Compton’s name until the man himself, fully clothed if still zipping and buttoning, stepped down from the gazebo to stop the noise.
“What?” Compton smiled, all innocence until he winked.
“You’re out of the group. This is ridiculous. I’ve had enough—“
“Never knew you had any. Are you speaking for the group all the sudden? Thought we voted.” Compton played to the others, who stood near the house’s back door watching this confrontation amusedly. “I don’t remember any vote. Just because you’re a dried-up old prude—“
“Who you calling old?”
“What do you care, as long as I do my job? Tell me that. What does it matter to you if I have a good time, too? We all work hard in our day jobs and this is our break from all that.”
“I’ve had it. You’re a distraction. Not to mention a liability if a property owner gets wind of your, your shenanigans.”
“Shenanigans? What if I told you Mary and I—“
“Get out of here. Seriously, or—“
“Or? Or what? Or you’ll what, call the cops? Report what? One of your ghost hunters was getting lucky? Having consensual sex with—
“With a girl young enough to be his daughter.”
“How old do you think I am? Bull shit, Karl, she’s of age, she’s in college like the rest of them, a sophomore for—“
“Look at yourself. Have you? Ever? I mean, take a good long look at what a joke you’ve become since you were in college. Remember way back then? Long time ago, and you’ve gotten no—“
“What I do makes your little group possible. If I leave, you have nothing, and you know it.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Compton turned to the group. “You people think all this is over. I’m starting my own group as of right this second. You’re all welcome. If you’d rather hang with him—“ He gestured rudely toward Karl, whose desperate expression had worsened to death’s head intensity. “If you’d rather see how long he can roll on empty inertia, no hard feelings. Come find me once you see reason.”
Compton and the blonde, now dressed and by his side, walked away holding hands.
At the yard’s edge, wrought-iron gate half open, Compton paused. He turned back. “I want all my stuff back. That includes the equipment I made and the cases too.”
He and the girl strolled from the old house as if on a carefree date, even swinging linked hands and skipping a few times, each tossing back their head in a laugh.
They appeared to vanish as dark between streetlights took them whole. They re-materialized at the next cone of pale light.
They were not seen after that.
#
Twenty years of them missing passed.
#
The local ghost hunter group shattered and scattered that night, when Compton left, most graduating to less juvenile pursuits as life took hold with the teeth of marriages, babies, responsibilities. A few joined other ghost hunting groups. It was a kind of addiction, they admitted. Thrill of the chase, despite catching so very little.
Karl Demerest left Compton’s equipment, packed neatly, on the man’s front porch the next morning. It was seen sitting there a week later so one of the group took possession of it, pending Compton’s return. Small town etiquette prevailed, along with honesty, in those days.
Karl shut himself away and died a few months later, any regrets kept to himself and never mentioned by those surviving him.
#
During the two decades of Compton’s absence most who’d known him, especially those who’d prowled old places in the dark with him, holding his instruments, trusting his backup, talked of him fondly, now and then speculating on what had happened to him, whether he’d eloped or if Demerest had jumped on him by accident or malice, and the cute blonde, had he married or dumped her, lost her to another? Such chat amused them over dinner or when a campfire or the passion for the latest investigation burned low.
“Maybe the girl was a ghost.”
“Nah, he brought her with him that night, remember?”
“No one knew her, did they?”
“She might have been a new transfer.”
“Anyone hear her talk? Ever? Maybe she was an exchange student, shy of the language.”
“I think she was a ghost, took him into the spirit world.”
That last became the running, mild joke about what had probably happened to Compton. It was a good way of dealing with doubt.
#
Compton’s return to their lives came when he appeared on their TV screens. He’d become the host and head ghost hunter for a cable show. He and four others, including the blonde, who’d married him, scampered all over various spooky locations seeking evidence of hants.
A buzz sparked through town. Excitement peaked when Compton announced on his show that he would bring his ghost hunting group to his home town. “I intend to finish the one unfinished investigation of my career.” This captured his old group’s imagination and earned them drinks or meals in local night spots in exchange for their increasingly-detailed reminiscences of the good old days, and what Compton was really like.
Compton did not breeze into town, he drove sedately. He arrived a week ahead of any scheduled events. Two days of prep and three nights of shooting were planned. Over the week his team came separately, as did the TV production crew. Compton and the blonde, whose name turned out to be Mary for those who’d forgotten, drove through town nodding, waving, and smiling at acquaintances and familiar faces in a three-year-old Jeep Patriot with 175,000+ miles on it.
“No limo?” wags asked. “No big SUV?”
“Where’s yer hummer?” one joker called, adding, “Oh, there she is,” making Compton laugh.
He and Mary stayed at the local Day’s Inn, ate at local diners and small restaurants, including fast food places, ordered pizza, and generally hung with the blue collar crowd. At the diner Compton was buttonholed by a local newspaper reporter and asked why he was eating there. “Love the chili here, best I’ve ever had. It’s better than I remembered it.” It was as good as a paid TV ad and the place tripled in business.
He also visited with old friends, sometimes meeting them, other times going to their places.
“We’re not rich, no. Never even been to Hollywood.” He laughed. “The production company’s part mine, part an investment syndicate out of Boston. We’re trying to do solid documenting of the paranormal. No scripts or hokey reaction shots, no fake cliff-hangers before every ad spot.” He sipped some beer. “We genuinely explore those places. We show what happens, even if it’s nothing.”
“What are you reading these days? Do you read up on ghosts? A lot of new ghost books out.” The reporter was young and obviously a fan.
Compton shook his head. “Nah. I’m reading Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon right now. He should win a Nobel. I try to keep business and down time separate. Clears the head, sharpens the senses.”
No one he and Mary talked with walked away disliking them. He met the mayor and police chief and regional sheriff, pleasing them all. The mayor liked the publicity and commerce, the cops liked the cooperative, inclusive attitude toward security.
No one anticipated what Compton would find at the old Fechte Mansion, although many joked he might have to deal with the angry ghost of his old team leader Karl Demerest. “Doubt he’s cooled down yet, being in hell and all,” went the joke.
Mary, who remembered that night well, doubted it. “We’re married. We eloped that night, in fact. If he’s still there in spirit, he could hardly object now.”
She blushed and said nothing when asked if she and Compton planned to re-enact the gazebo incident, as it was long since referred to. “It’s still there,” she was assured, in knowing tones. A local pop group had a local hit with a song called, “Rickety Old Gazebo”.
Compton reassembled as many of the old team as possible, Karl having died and one other having moved away. A cousin of the missing member filled in, keeping things in the family.
They joined his current team to become a force of eleven.
That first night of investigation, a festival atmosphere prevailed in town. Deputies kept gawkers back, the TV crew set up and worked professionally, and Compton kept the town crowd happy when he was free, and otherwise led the teams through the premises following as precisely as possible the original walk-through Karl had organized and directed.
Everyone agreed it was a great night. It produced a number of EVPs, some anomalous lights, a shadow person glimpsed peering around a doorframe, even an apport thrown at Mary, an old yellow Ticonderoga No. 2 school pencil. Whose teeth marks dented it remained unknown.
The second night, Compton’s new team alone tackled the place with their new equipment. Laser grids, sensor arrays, subsonic sound-net scanners, EMF wands, and other esoteric machines provided amazing new opportunities for spirits to make themselves known, or for ghosts to be caught doing the gazebo, as some joked. “Gonna get one mid ghostly thrust,” one crew member quipped, another immediately asking if he was carrying tissues to wipe up the ectoplasmic spurt.
Those following the show’s progress and getting to interact with Compton and his team mates, who had fans themselves among the townies, declared themselves well pleased.
No one anticipated what was looming.
#
“Third night’s a charm,” Compton declared, smiling into the camera. “I’m hoping we stir up a full-body apparition or achieve intelligent communication with a spirit.”
“So do your producers,” someone called, provoking laughter even from Compton, who nodded in agreement.
“That’d be great. It is a TV show so of course we’re always hoping for telegenic activity. I know it can get annoying, all the nothing we find, or the subtle, subjective EVPs.”
“What the hell’s that?” someone mocked, breathlessly, mimicking the hokey go-to-commercial break markers over-used by too many ghost hunt shows. Another joker yelled, “Stop. No running.”
“You could rediscover orbs.” This from the print reporter, looking young, shy, and sly.
Compton laughed, rolled his eyes. Being a pro, he took the opportunity to dump some factoids. “Genuine orbs are rare, give off their own light. The rest is dust and bugs and camera artifacts. Same with rods. Just bugs zipping past the lens too fast for the camera to resolve.”
“So, anyway.” He pointed at a camera, then to his nose, and the cameraman nodded and flashed a thumb’s up. “The first night both teams went in. The second night, my TV team went in. Tonight, I plan to go in alone.” He glanced at Mary and gave her a smile. “It’s not something I usually do but I want to experience this place, its energy, for myself.”
“Just so you come back out,” Mary said, loud enough to be heard by the microphones.
Laughter crackled through the crowd, some of it nervous.
#
Compton went in alone carrying a full spectrum still camera and a GoPro. When he wanted to comment, he would turn the hand-held cam toward his face and talk to the audience. Otherwise, it showed what he saw, which, in the dark mansion, was not much.
He had decided against an infrared camera on the grounds that it was one camera too many and he wanted the still to take shots of each room in hopes of capturing shadow people or spirits manifesting. While infrared worked well for spotting cats, rats, and other vermin, or marks where people had touched, or sat, it was of less use in spotting actual ghosts. For that, ultraviolet was better. “We’re not interested in cold or hot spots tonight.” He explained all this to the audience as he crept into the foyer, pausing at the base of the staircase for a 360° panorama.
A thump sounded. “Security, is everything clear? Am I alone in here?”
“Roger that, swept it just now. You’re on your own.”
Compton walked past the base of the staircase toward the kitchen, passing a parlor on his left. Something fluttered past the right edge of the frame and he stopped. The cam’s viewpoint swept up to show the empty stairs. “No one, nothing,” he muttered.
A blur of motion indicated him stooping and retrieving what fell.
“It’s a photograph of a little boy in a Hallowe’en skeleton outfit.” He held it before the camera. “Seems old. Curled at the edges, a little grimy.”
He poked around in the parlor, tried some EVP work using a small digital recorder, then went to the kitchen. A lack of activity sent him back to the stairs, which he climbed slowly, doing commentary about how weather, particularly humidity, or storms with lightning, affected hauntings.
“Underground rivers can do this, too, by producing electron flow, as oceans and waterfalls do with ozone. A haunting can be enhanced, or strengthened, by deposits of quartz nearby as well, which tend to hold piezoelectric charges. Any way a spirit field can condense energy helps the manifestations of what we call ghosts.”
A metallic chink stopped his rote monologue.
He took the last few stairs quickly and scanned the floor, finding a length of charm bracelet with a single charm on it just inside the doorway of a bedroom. It was the so-called round room, located in a rear tower.
“I saw the flash of this falling out of the corner of my eye.” Compton picked up the charm.
Most agree that was when his voice changed. “I, uh. This is. This is… interesting. Uh. I’m pretty sure I’ve… uh.”
He said no more and did little more than flash the charm on camera. It seemed to upset him, most agreed. Entering the round room, he began walking around its perimeter, doing timid EVP work by asking neutral, vague questions. “I’m here, uh. Are you?” and “We could talk, couldn’t we?”
Compton moved slowly until he came to the closet door. He commented about it being cut to match the curve of the room. “They don’t do work like this anymore.” He paused, seemingly out-of-breath. “It’s like the Oval Office in the White House or Jefferson’s estate, Monticello.” He scanned the door top to bottom.
As the camera showed the bottom of the door something slipped partway out from under it.
Compton gasped and stepped away, at once stepping back toward it and bending to see what it was. He pulled it and it seemed to resist, then came out, and he held it for the camera to see. It was a photograph of a young woman. “You,” he whispered.
He grasped the handle and opened the door, calling out, “Show yourself,” and at once yelling in surprise and falling back.
In the closet a young man stood. He wore a black hoodie, black jeans, and black sneakers. His face, hidden in shadow, showed only glaring eyes. Something gleamed in his right hand.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Looking for my Daddy.” The voice was deep, a teenager’s smoker voice, rough and snarling.
“Securi—“
“Wouldn’t do that, Dad. Not unless you want everyone to know.”
“Know?”
“The little boy trick-or-treating is me, Da. The charm, you should recognize that.”
Compton held the charm up again, letting it dangle in the camera’s frame for a moment before the camera lowers to face the floor. The rest is audio only.
“Yes. I remember it. I gave it to her.”
“Do you remember her name, even? Or was she just another little ghost hunt fuck-bunny to help you spurt some ectoplasm? Aren’t those your terms? Say her name.”
That last yelled, angry.
Compton cleared his throat. “Maria.”
“MONICA.”
“Monica, yes. Monica. I misspoke.”
“She died, you know. Cancer. Spoke about you, followed your career even before you went national.”
“I didn’t know. Why didn’t she—“
“Why would she have let you know? You didn’t give a fuck. Or maybe a fuck, a single quick dirty little closet fuck, was all you had to give.”
A pause, then Compton said, “Put that down. It’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Now you can be a ghost, too. Unseen, unheard, invisible. Kept in the shadows. See how you like it.”
A small click was heard. Given the explosive sound of a gun going off roaring an instant later, the click was likely the gun’s hammer being pulled back.
The camera dropped, bounced once, and showed a nearby baseboard. A shadow crossed this baseboard.
Security by that time was sent in by producers, who had given Compton the benefit of the doubt, in consideration of how rapt the video held the gathered townsfolk.
“This is great TV,” one was heard to say.
“Which room, which room?” Security was running all over the house.
“Upstairs, round room, you face it when you hit the top of the stairs.”
“Got the camera.”
The picture moves, blurring and spinning. It is then turned off, going black.
Further communication was through security walkie-talkies.
“Is he all right?”
“Nothing here, boss. Just the camera.”
“Check the closet.”
“It’s hanging open. Empty.”
“Under the bed, check everywhere.”
After a pause: “Nope, he’s not here.”
#
As it turned out, the episode never aired.
Compton was never seen again. No sign of the kid in the hoodie was ever found.
There was no blood at the scene.
Many put it down to a bizarre publicity stunt but for what? No one could ever answer that question.
Mary, despondent, filed for divorce and his death certificate the same day, seven years later. Both were granted in due course, so she inherited his estate, which was not much by then.
Internet whispers accused her of murder, collusion, or worse, but she ignored them. Without substance, gossip remained the pastime of idiots.
The Fechte Mansion remains standing, crumbling worse than ever. Local kids sneak in, risking broken bones and hard falls to scare themselves with self-induced shadows and misperceived sounds. They swear they sometimes hear a bracelet drop, or a quiet click of a gun being cocked. They swear there are several shadow people there who often pass by windows or block beams from flashlights. They swear the place is haunted.
It is like many an abandoned, dilapidated place in many a town or city, shadowy and alone, a place ghosts might well be stuck, unseen, unheard, ignored by the rest of us most of the time.
#
Three years after Compton vanished so dramatically his widow, Mary, while enjoying a book and cup of Darjeeling in the bay window of her house, jumped when, into the gutter of her book, between pages 100 and 101, a length of charm bracelet bearing a single charm fell.
It fell out of the air, an apport.
Cold all over, she flushed with warmth as she picked it up to examine it. A half-inch high die-cast sculpture of the bust of a man’s head reminded her of Compton, her lost husband. She had to get a magnifying glass to read the inscription on the bottom.
“I’m sorry and I am always near.”
She wore it on a chain around her neck from then on.
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appeared in Stories of Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror, edited by Robert N. Stephenson, Altair Press
