Ashes to Ashes (Experiment in Terror #8) (11 page)

The first room was nothing more
than your normal nurse’s office, though of high sanitary regard
with its gleaming floors and sink, tidy shelves, and two single
cots with tightly tucked in sheets. The walls were adorned with
drawings from what I assumed were the kids, though they looked a
million times better than any drawing I ever did. There were
charcoal and pastel portraits of Kelly, watercolors of forests, and
one portrait of a young boy holding onto a ragged teddy bear,
dressed in 1930s garb.

“
Every kid
here has talent,” Kelly said, catching my eye and then motioning us
forward. We stepped through the doorway and looked at our potential
dwellings as she flicked on the light. I guess I was expecting
something rotten and decrepit but it didn’t look bad at all. It was
a little sparse—the children’s drawings didn’t extend this far and
the walls were bare. There were four twin beds in a row, each
separated by a gauzy curtain that attached to a rod on the ceiling.
The beds looked like hotel beds—clean but not plush.

“
So this used
to be where the nurses slept back in the old days?” Dex
asked.

“
Half of this
floor was like this,” she said, patting the end of one of the beds.
“There were five hundred patients here, sometimes more, and at
least thirty nurses and administrators. Once people came to this
place as staff, they never left.”

“
Never?” I
asked.

She shook her head. “No. TB was
considered the White Plague, you know. They all thought it was
highly contagious, and until there was a cure, everyone was stuck.
I’m not sure if you noticed, but halfway down the road between here
and the town, there’s a small building on the side of the road.
It’s hidden by trees so you have to look for it. That used to be
the post office. The mail carriers would only come so close to the
building for fear of catching the disease.”

“
Jesus,” Dex
swore. “So if you took a job here, there was a good chance you
wouldn’t see your family for a long time.”

“
Not until the
50s when the cure was found and the hospital was closed,” she said
sadly. “It explains why so many of the nurses killed themselves.
Why so many of them…eventually went crazy.”

The skin at the back of my neck
puckered. Just great. Not only did we have the potential ghosts of
kids who died from TB but also their nurses who went crazy and
killed themselves. I started to have one of those “maybe this isn’t
a good idea, maybe we should pack up and go home, maybe I should
listen to my crazy dead grandmother in my dreams” kind of moments,
the ones that either mean nothing or make you regret not trusting
your gut.

But then again, if it
wasn’t for doing the more
interesting
option, I would have
never met Dex and would have never joined Experiment in Terror.
There was something to be said about moving forward in the face of
fear. I swallowed down my uneasiness and listened to
Kelly.

“
Nonetheless,”
she went on, “since the whole first floor was redone and the rest
of the nurses’ rooms were made into offices, Ms. Davenport kept
this as it is to try and keep the flavor of the past. Her words,
not mine. You’re more than welcome to stay here though. There’s a
bathroom with showers just next door. Sometimes when I’m too tired
after work to drive home, I sleep here.”

“
Anything
strange happen to you?” I asked.

Her eyes grew momentarily
large, focused on the door. “Just that.”

We all turned to see what she
was looking at. A small orange rubber ball came rolling into the
office, bouncing to a stop when it hit the doorframe. It was
followed by a few impish giggles that seemed to fade into the
air.

I felt an absolute chill
blanket me. I looked at Rebecca, my heart racing. “Did you see
that?”

She nodded, though to my
disappointment she didn’t look the least bit scared. “It’s a ball.
Probably one of the kids from here, am I right?”

Kelly smiled at her. “You’re
right. He’s from here. Except he’s not one of Oceanside’s students.
He was from Sea Crest. And he died in 1932.”

CHAPTER SIX

I looked over at Dex and almost
smiled. I mean, as creepy as this was, it was almost fun to see the
physical evidence of a ghost and especially in front of people who
could be described as skeptics. Though when I looked back at Kelly,
she was already smiling apologetically.

“
I don’t
really see much,” she said, as though she knew what I was thinking.
Maybe she did. “Just here and there. Nothing terrifying, nothing
that makes me want to quit my job. Sometimes I get creeped out,
especially if I’m here alone. Sometimes things happen that I can’t
explain. But for the most part, I don’t feel any…animosity here.
Maybe Brenna will tell you differently, but aside from the
never-ending ball game that Elliot plays with his friends, I don’t
ever feel uneasy.”

“
Elliot?” Dex
asked as he walked over to the rubber ball. He picked it up in his
hands, looking it over and then smelled it, as if that would tell
him something.

“
He’s
one of the ghosts that Brenna sees. Brenna McIntosh. Some other
people report seeing him, too. That drawing in my office of the
young boy with the teddy bear? One of the students, Jody Robinson,
she drew that. She sees him. I just see glimpses, I get a feeling.
But I don’t actually
see
him.”

“
So you mainly
stick to the first floor?” Rebecca asked. “Do you ever go
upstairs?”

Kelly shook her head
rather vehemently. “This is about all that I can handle. I can
handle Elliot. I can handle the fact that he apparently has other
friends, friends I never see evidence of and I’m happy to keep it
that way. But when you go upstairs, things change. Only Brenna goes
up there, and Carl, our custodian. I can’t even get halfway up the
staircase before I start feeling dizzy.
No one
goes
upstairs.”

“
Well,
it’s fairly safe to say that
we’ll
be going up there,” Rebecca
said. “Can you tell me—us – about—what we could
expect?”

Kelly rubbed her hands up and
down her arms as if she were cold. “I think I should keep showing
you around.” She walked out of the room as Dex came around to me
and held out the ball.

“
Touch it,” he
said.

I grimaced, pushing his arm
away. “No. That’s a dead kid’s toy.”

“
But you’re so
good with balls.”

“
Shut
up.”

He put the ball on top of the
first bed and we hurried after the two of them. Kelly led us back
the way we came and down toward the classrooms. Almost all the
doors were closed so we just read the signs on them as we walked
past. Mrs. Collins. Mrs. Keats. Mr. Murphy. Ms. Ross. There were
about fifteen rooms in total and the last ones we’d come across as
we went further into the west wing were all the artistic
electives.

“
We’re an arts
school,” Kelly explained, “but we still believe in having a proper,
well-rounded education. Most of the teachers here just teach the
basics for each grade—math, English, science, history. But two
hours of every day the kids get to take art classes, and that’s
where the teaching becomes more specialized. Like Brenna,
here.”

We came to a stop outside an
open door and peered inside. The room was covered in paintings with
paint splattered stools and stacks of easels in the corner. At a
large desk was a woman asleep, dark brown hair pooled all around
her.

Kelly cleared her throat. “Like
Brenna here,” she said a bit louder, but even then her voice was
quiet as a mouse.

“
Brenna!” Dex
yelled.

I smacked him on the chest as
the woman jumped up from her sleep, her hair all in her face.
“What? What?”

“
You’re a
jerk,” I told him.

He shrugged. “Got the job done,
didn’t I? Don’t say I’m not a man of results.”

Kelly waved at Brenna who was
trying to clear her messy desk and appear like someone who hadn’t
just fallen asleep on the job. “Hey, Brenna, sorry to wake you. The
ghost hunters are here.”

Brenna got out of her chair and
smiled at us. “Hi,” she said exuberantly. For some reason I was
expecting Brenna to look like a meek and put-upon person but that
wasn’t the case. She was young-looking, maybe just a few years
older than me, with wavy brown hair and an apple-cheeked glow about
her. “I’m Brenna McIntosh.”

“
I’ll leave
you guys with her now,” Kelly said politely before walking off down
the hall like a wisp of a person.

“
Can I tell
you how happy I am to meet you?” Brenna said as she came around the
desk. Dressed in boot-cut jeans and a black tunic, she seemed even
more personable. She stopped in front of me and pulled me into a
hug. “Sorry, I’m a hugger,” she said to my back while I was brought
forward into a cloud of strawberry perfume.

“
That’s okay,”
I told her, getting my bearings as soon as she released me. “I
guess you watch the show?”

“
All the
time,” she said proudly. She looked over at Dex. “And you, I loved
you in the Sasquatch episode, well at least the parts of it that
you were allowed to air. But poor Twatwaffle.”

He stuck out his lower lip in
mock sympathy then sighed. “Yes. Thank god all good llamas go to
heaven.”

She didn’t seem to catch on—or
she didn’t mind—his sarcasm because she went onto Rebecca next.
“And you must be the new manager. You’re doing a great job.”

I could have sworn Rebecca
blushed at that. “Thank you.”

“
Brenna,” Dex
began, “do you mind if we talk to you on camera? Is this a good
time?”

“
No problem,”
she said. “I’ve been preparing for this. It’s too bad I fell
asleep, I probably ruined my Hollywood face.” She burst into a
flurry of giggles.

“
You look
great,” I reassured her as Dex touched my shoulder and let me know
he was running out to the car.

“
So are you
sure you’re okay with us filming right here today?” Rebecca
prodded, ever mindful of a lawsuit. When Brenna nodded she went on,
“Even with the kids and everything?”

“
Oh,” she
said, “well I guess you shouldn’t really film the kids. I mean,
interview them and such. I think we would need permission for that.
On camera, of course. Off camera I think it’s fine.”

“
But doesn’t
the school care if the school—or their kids—are being featured in a
ghost hunting show? That’s bound to scare a lot of the parents,
isn’t it?” I asked. I know I’d be concerned.

She leaned forward, her hair
swinging in her face. “Davenport doesn’t care. She’s been wanting
to build a brand new school since the other one burnt down. As far
as she’s concerned, she doesn’t care if parents get scared. It will
only make them want a better school, the one she thinks we
deserve.”

“
And what do
you think?” Rebecca asked.

Brenna’s eyes darted around the
room. “I’d have to agree. I need this job though and I can’t chance
getting hired elsewhere. If we could move, I would be a lot
happier.”

At least it explained why they
were so willing to go on camera. Still, with that amount of
determination and attention, a part of me wondered if the whole
thing wasn’t exaggerated a little. Perhaps the little boy and his
bouncing ball were a fake, perhaps we’d already been lied to.
Perhaps there were no ghosts, just a faculty who really wanted a
new school.

I looked quickly at Rebecca and
I could see from the skeptical raise to her forehead that she was
thinking the same thing. It was better to start treating this
episode with a side of caution.

It wasn’t long before Dex came
trotting back into the room with his camera in hand. His eyes were
dancing, his body buzzing with adrenaline. “Get this,” he said,
raising his camera up and flipping the viewfinder around for us to
see. He pressed play, and as our four heads all converged around
the screen, we watched as he filmed the ground, a paper plane lying
at his feet. He picked it up and then aimed the camera up to the
roof of the building. Within seconds, another paper plane came
sailing down, barely visible against the foggy sky before it
drifted lazily on an air current.

“
There were
only two planes,” he said, placing the camera down and pulling one
of the paper planes out of his pocket, rubbing it between his
fingers. “But still, I think that’s got to count for something.” He
looked at Brenna. “Does anyone have access to the roof?”

She didn’t look shocked. “Just
the custodian. I can get the keys. It’s locked for safety
reasons.”

“
So then it
had to be a ghost,” he said.

“
Unless the
custodian’s taken up a new hobby,” Rebecca said, though I knew what
she was thinking. Davenport herself or even Kelly could be up on
the roof, tossing paper planes over the side, knowing they’d
provide a pretty good show. “Brenna was just telling us that Ms.
Davenport doesn’t mind if the school is featured on the show
because they’re hoping the parents will want to move their kids
into a newer school.” She stared hard at Dex, trying to pass on the
message without saying anything more.

“
Oh,” he said.
He looked at Brenna. “Tell me, sweetcheeks, you wouldn’t happen to
be pulling our leg about the whole ghost shit in order to get a new
school, now would ya?” Leave it to Dex to be so direct. I knew for
a fact that his bullshitting tolerance was pretty damn
low.