Finding the Way Back (24 page)

I just couldn’t keep my mind focused on the
task at hand. Maybe I was just really tired. I rested my head back
and closed my eyes for a second and relaxed. I slowly became aware
of the feeling that someone was watching me. I swiftly opened my
eyes. At first I thought my eyes were having a hard time focusing
but then I realized there was a shape in front of me that was
blurring my vision. I thought it was a woman by the curve of her
waist and hip and it was almost like I could see the movement of a
dress. I sat still and listened for some telltale sign that there
was really something there. Not wanting the entity to leave, I
tried not to move so I wouldn’t give away that I had noticed it.
After several seconds I knew it was something there, I could feel a
female presence. I tried to divine how I knew but I realized I
could feel her energy. The more I concentrated, the stronger the
connection grew. The camera might pick her up but I doubted it
since the image was black on black. It was more of a sensation than
real substance.

“You’re here in the room right now, aren’t
you?” I asked, slipping quietly forward on my chair. “I can see you
standing there and I can feel your energy. Are you my grandmother?
I know you aren’t here to hurt us. I don’t want you to think we did
the smudging to get rid of you.” I jumped up and moved swiftly to
the spot in the room she had been. But I could no longer feel a
presence. The room was definitely colder there but there was no
other trace of anything. “She’s gone but I can feel a cold spot. I
saw her right here, did you see her?”

“I thought I saw movement when you spoke but
I’m not sure,” Glen answered. He brought out a handheld thermometer
and moved toward me to scan the area. “Sixty-Two degrees,
definitely colder here than the rest of the room. Wait, now it’s
warming up again. Sixty-four, sixty-eight. Interesting.”

Standing still in the spot ‘she’ had occupied
I closed my eyes again and relaxed, trying to feel the room with
other senses rather than just my sight. Everything was still. I
could feel Glen in the room, but nothing more. Whoever had been
there was gone.

After several minutes of standing in the
spot, I heard footsteps coming up from the basement. My mother,
aunt and Emmett entered the kitchen noisily then came into the
living room where we were waiting. Dean and Connie must have heard
everyone congregating so they also came back down from
upstairs.

“Everything seems pretty quiet tonight,”
Emmett said. “Anyone have any experiences?”

“I thought I saw someone standing in this
room but otherwise the house seems very tranquil,” I said.

“I also thought I saw movement but I didn’t
see it as clearly as Laney. I was doing the EVP, so I hope we
caught something. The temperature reading definitely showed a lower
temperature.”

“Ok, that sounds like something. Let’s switch
places. How about Dean and Connie, you’re main level. Tess, Shelly
and I will be upstairs. Glen and Laney you’ll be in the basement,”
Emmett directed.

“Great,” I mumbled under my breath.

I dragged my feet on the way to the basement.
Just stop thinking about it, I told myself. Just do it. We began to
descend into the darkness with just our flashlights as I tried to
contain my dread. At least I had Glen with me. The air was even
thicker down here and I wondered if maybe we had mold. I reminded
myself to try to remove the boards over the windows and open them
tomorrow. Also, I should look for a dehumidifier. You’d think with
all this junk, there would be one down here. I’d never liked
basements and this one was even worse than most. I didn’t know how
I was ever going to find the nerve to spend the time necessary to
clean out all the rubbish down here.

Partway down the stairs, I gripped the
banister tightly, shining my light directly at each step. When I
reached the bottom of the stairway I could see Glen in the halo of
his flashlight. He was standing near the furnace shining his light
at his feet.

“This place gives me the creeps,” he
stated.

Grateful that he had shared this with me, I
replied, “Me too. I’m sure you’ve been in creepier places, though,
doing this for a hobby.”

“Yeah, one time we were invited inside an old
sanitarium. That was much worse in that there was only negative
energy there. Here, we’re not totally sure. Some is definitely
negative, but some isn’t. It’s funny though, not every place that
has ‘ghosts’ has negative energy. Sometimes we find a place with an
entity and it’s quite peaceful, others are like this basement.”

I kept as close to Glen as I could without
actually being inside his clothes. My courage was in short supply
and I needed his strength to stay calm. We stood quiet for a while
but we didn’t hear anything other than our own breathing.

He took out his EVP recorder and started
asking the same types of questions as always. “Is there someone
here with us? Is there something you’d like to let us know?”

Letting my mind wander, I glanced around the
basement. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw someone
standing on the other side, but, turning my head quickly, saw that
it was only a shirt hanging on the clothesline. The flashlights
made weird shadows but I didn’t detect any movement or presence
like in the living room.

After about twenty minutes, Glen took a deep
breath. “Nothing much going on tonight. It was noisier the last
time we were here. More knocking and odd sounds like movement.”

“We can be grateful for small favors,” I said
glibly.

“Yeah. I think we can go up now,” Glen
said.

I didn’t need to be told twice and I headed
for the stairs. I wasn’t going up those steps second with just my
flashlight so I wanted to be sure I was in front. Even with Glen
behind me, I still felt as if someone was chasing me up the steps
and was breathless when I got to the top.

In my rush I shoved open the door quickly and
almost slammed it into my mother. She put a hand out to stop the
door. “We were just going to tell you to come up. Did something
happen?”

“No,” I answered sheepishly, moving to get
around her. I didn’t like having my back to the basement. “I just
really don’t like it down there.”

“I never have either,” she said. “It’s always
been a creepy place. Our father never wanted us to play down there.
Not that he had to worry. We never chose to be down there if we
didn’t have to.”

I walked over to the sink to get a drink of
water. Connie and Dean joined us as well, and we were all together
again.

“It seems really quiet tonight on the whole,”
Emmett said, leaning on the back of a chair. “Laney had one
experience so we’ll want to check for EVP’s during that time, but
we didn’t have any strange bumps or knocks like we have before. Do
we want to go on or should we call it a night?”

“I can be done,” I replied, putting my glass
down on the counter. I was exhausted. We had way too many late
nights lately and I just wanted to go to bed. The rest of the group
answered in agreement.

“If it’s okay with you, Laney, we thought we
would just leave all the equipment up for the night. Then if we
want to do this again tomorrow night or the next we don’t have to
set up again. We can move anything if it’s in your way,” Emmett
finished.

“I don’t have a problem with that. Most of
the equipment looks like it’s out of the direct walking paths so it
seems fine.”

“I’d like to come take a look at the evidence
over here later tomorrow afternoon,” Dean added. “I won’t get in
your way, but it would be easier than moving everything.”

I would have agreed to almost anything at
this point, I was so tired. Mom and Aunt Shelly kept asking
questions and extending the conversation way past what I would have
liked. Steering them out the front door was harder than expected,
and I knew the long Minnesota goodbye when I saw it. My mom and
aunt promised to text us when they got home and we finally shut the
door. Leaning against the front door, I reflected over the night’s
events. It felt like Emmett totally ignored me after our kiss. I
felt like such an idiot. What a shambles I always made of
things.

Going to bed sounded like heaven after the
long day. We had no real plan for what to do next so I wondered
what the next day would bring. I still had no idea how we were
going to solve this problem. It didn’t seem like the smudging had
done the whole job but things had been quieter.

Connie and I decided to sleep in our own
rooms since it had been pretty quiet the last several nights. We
both kept our doors open so we could shout out to one another if
something happened. I was so tired I was asleep almost before my
head hit the pillow. “Good night, Grandma,” I whispered then
drifted into a deep slumber.

Chapter
Twenty-Six

The next day, Connie and I sat down on the
sofa to make a plan. Connie opened her notebook and started a
list.

“I think we need to do some research on this
old house,” I said. “I don’t know if the historical society would
have anything relevant, but it’s a place to start. There’s also the
library. Sometimes they have old property records.”

“Maybe there are some books that were
published locally that detail legends or scandals in the
area—murders, crimes, that sort of thing. Not to mention quite a
few online websites dedicated to historical research,” Connie said,
adding it to her list.

“Good idea, then we could go next door, too.
Louise was real nice and we could meet her mother. I’d say she’s
about sixty-five so her mother would have to be about eighty-five
or so. If she’s lived next door all these years she should have
wonderful gossip and stories.”

“Do you think our mothers would have old
papers, maybe scrapbooks or something?” Connie asked.

“I’ve never seen anything but put it down on
the list to ask,” I answered. “We really need to look over the book
shelves in the study. There has to be photos and stuff
somewhere.”

“The more boxes we clear out the more likely
we are to find mementos and things.”

“Maybe we could send out our mothers to do
the historical search stuff at the courthouse and library. There
are just too many things to get done by ourselves. They love to be
involved and that would be a good tactic to keep them busy and out
of the way. I would hate to have one of them hurt their back
lifting a heavy box or fall or something.”

“Good idea,” Connie said. “You can visit next
door first and I could work on cleaning things out.”

“Oh, no you don’t. I’m not going over there
by myself. If I go next door, you’re coming with me.”

We decided that Connie would call her mom and
ask if they would do the historical work while I called Louise next
door to see if they would be available to see us today. A few phone
calls later, everything was arranged. Our moms were excited to do
the historical legwork, and Louise said we could come over after
two o’clock. Anything earlier than that wouldn’t work because Ruth
watched her morning shows every day and didn’t like to be
interrupted to miss them.

With nothing else to occupy us until the
afternoon we thought we would work on more clearing. We decided to
go back and try to finish the master bedroom. We still had boxes in
front of the second closet door and more along the wall next to the
windows.

“Tonight I need to get out my computer and
camera. We can take photos and start cataloging items. We should
ask our mothers if they want anything, then we can put the things
they don’t want in boxes to be ready to ship,” Connie said.

“Good idea. We want to start getting rid of
things so we can make more room,” I answered.

“I set up a special Pay Pal account also, so
it isn’t confused with the items I’ve sold in the past. I’m not
sure what the tax situation will be. We’ll have to talk to an
accountant.”

I started opening another box. We had
abandoned writing each item down as we opened boxes the last time
we were in the room. We didn’t want to take every item out and
repack. If it looked like it was mostly stuff we would sell we just
put the whole box in the hall. We could sort through it after we
brought it downstairs. That way we would only have to touch each
item once as we took it out, recorded it and boxed it for
shipping.

Pretty soon most of the boxes from the room
were in the hall ready to be taken downstairs. Moving the last one
from in front of the second closet, I pulled the door all the way
open.

This closet was much smaller than the last.
It was just one bar across with hanging clothes on it and a shelf
above. Men’s suits, slacks, and shirts hung all according to color
and item. It was obsessively neat. On the shelf were several hats,
from an age when men wore fedoras regularly. Ties were hanging from
a twirling rack attached to the wall. Two pairs of dress shoes, one
ancient pair of tennis shoes and a pair of loafers completed the
ensemble. Everything appeared to be dated from the same time period
as our grandmother’s closet. Nothing newer from recent years. It
was like he’d never used the closet again after his wife died.

“What do we do with these?” I asked. “Just
throw them?”

“I would love to take that herring-bone
jacket and make a bag out of it,” Connie said. “The rest we could
donate to a high school drama club or local theater. They would
make great costumes. That is if Mom and Aunt Tess don’t want any of
it.”

“Great idea! You have the most creative
ideas. I would love to learn to do things like that. Let’s leave it
all here for now until our moms look at it.”

Earlier, Connie and I had both resisted going
through the dressers that were in the room. Initially, for some
reason, it had felt like an invasion of privacy, but I was getting
over that now and I found my curiosity piqued.