Ravenwood

©2001 Justin Somma
All rights reserved.

"So you have a ghost problem?"

Dr. Donovan Hale sat in a hard-backed wooden chair at the sheriff's office in Clairbridge, Vermont. The sheriff, a portly local named Edward Langley, sat across from him. Langley's face was drawn taut with the stress of running what had essentially become a circus.

"Not a problem with ghosts, Dr. Hale," he replied in a thick, drawling accent. "It's the kids."

Hale pretended to take notes on the legal pad that he brought into the meeting, instead scribbling the outline of one of the abandoned buildings he had seen in Old Ravenwood earlier that day. As he doodled, Langley continued.

"Ever since that stupid witch movie came out a year ago, everybody and their grandson has been out here, trying to get into Old Ravenwood. I tell them it's a state park, but they don't listen! Stupid kids think I'm trying to cover up the 'secret ghosts.'"

Old Ravenwood was an abandoned colonial village in the middle of the woods outside of Clairbridge. It was rumored to have been haunted for nearly a century by the former inhabitants, most notoriously the ghost of a man named Riley Deacon, who was tried and executed for raping and removing the eyes of nearly a dozen women.

Until recently, only local ghost hunters and die-hard enthusiasts visited the site of the haunting, but popular culture had caught up with the ghost-hunting community. Now visiting merchants sold "Ravenwood Ghost" t-shirts on street corners.

"So you want me to go in print saying that there is nothing in Old Ravenwood or the rest of the valley?" Hale asked.

"I don't want you to lie, Dr. Hale," Langley replied. "I want you to survey the town, do your little ghost hocus-pocus, and let the world know that there's nothing abnormal about Old Ravenwood."

"Sheriff," Hale replied, an edge of frustration in his voice. "My team is a serious parapsychology analysis group."

Langley leaned back in his chair and gave Hale a knowing grin.

"I'm a real scientist," Hale continued after a brief pause. "My team can test the grounds or we can walk, it's your call."

"Ok, I'm sorry," Langley said in a patronizing tone. Hale's face flushed bright red with anger, but it was an anger that he had learned to suppress numerous times in the past. Langley's attitude toward the study of the paranormal was no different than that of the other skeptics who hired Hale's team to survey their supposedly haunted plots.

"I can give you electromagnetic," Hale said, his calm returning. "Video, audio, thermal, motion scans. You give us an honorarium for analysis, and I'll hand you all the readings you need to show the world just how boring this place really is."

Hale exited Langley's office and met with Fiona Keane, one of his interns, in the lobby of the Clairbridge police station. Fiona was a redheaded dynamo, a 21-year-old succubus with a look in her eyes of perpetual sexuality.

"Any luck, Dr. Hale?" Fiona asked as Hale donned his overcoat and pulled a cellular phone from within the recesses of his coat's pockets.

"We're going on-site tonight," Hale replied with a look of satisfaction.

Fiona clapped her hands together with glee and her face lit up with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. Hale handed her the cellular phone and she immediately punched in the numbers of the hotel suite at which they were staying.

"No shit," said Hale's other intern, Jeff Murdock, when he heard the news from the two upon their return to the hotel. He immediately ran over to the bed behind him and slung over his shoulder a black duffel bag that was resting atop it.

"We have a run of the grounds until dawn," Hale informed his interns, who were both brimming with excitement.

Unlike Fiona, Jeff was a true ghost hunter. Fiona was a undergraduate psychology major with a talent for getting good grades in her parapsychology courses. Hale approved her internship after seeing her at the top of each class she took in the field. But Jeff wasn't even in the psychology program. He studied creative writing, but his hobby of researching hauntings brought him and Dr. Hale in close contact before he finished his freshman year.

One of Jeff's favorite ghost stories was the legend of Old Ravenwood, and he knew nearly every aspect of the area. Before he had met Hale, Jeff had been thrown out of Ravenwood State Park three times by local officials. Each time he claimed to have encountered some minor haunts that resided within.

"Careful," Hale warned as Jeff bumped his duffel bag into a wall on his way out to the team's Chevy Blazer. "That's expensive gear you're throwing around."

As Hale spoke, the ambient hissing of falling water stopped and Sean Ellison emerged from the suite's bathroom, a plain white towel wrapped around his soaked body. As he crossed the room to where his clothes were piled on a nightstand, Fiona took in the sight and practically held her breath. Sean winked in her direction. The two twentysomethings danced through a haze of casual sexuality that had become so commonplace that it no longer bothered Hale and Jeff.

Sean was not an academic like Fiona or Jeff. He worked in audiovisual retail and knew the inner workings of every piece of electronics that the team ported to its locations. Hale had recruited Sean when the university's audiovisual squad lost funding, forcing his team to seek off-campus assistance.

The team went about preparing their gear. Sean got dressed, Fiona eyed him up and down while packing spare video and audio tapes, and Jeff carried bags of cameras and batteries out to the Blazer. Hale fiddled with his laptop and was surprised when Sheriff Langley shuffled into the suite and approached him.

Langley wore his police-issue fur-lined coat. His service revolver rested comfortably at his belt.

"Going somewhere, Sheriff?" Hale asked.

"There's no way I'm lettin' you folks traipse around that park at night alone."

"I think we'll be fine," Hale replied. "Besides, revolvers don't work against ghosts."

Langley let out a forced guffaw. "Well hardy, har, har," he taunted. "It's not like we're paying you enough as it is."

"I don't mind the company," Hale said. "But there's going to be a lot of field activity out there. You accidentally trip a thermal sensor and they might as well rename your town 'Ghostville.' Don't get in the way."

"Well, shit," Langley said, his hand coming to rest on his thick black belt. "I wouldn't want to get in the way of your proton packs or nothin'."

"Very funny," Hale countered as he stood and picked up a box of equipment, shouldering past the sheriff as he went.

Hale drove the team's midnight-blue Blazer onto the grounds of Ravenwood State Park. Beside him sat Langley, who went on at length about infractions committed by trespassers in recent months. Except for the light cast by the truck's headlamps, there was nothing to see by, not even moonlight. Dark shadows and nightmarishly gnarled trees haunted the team's peripheral vision.

In the back seat of the Blazer, Jeff, Fiona, and Sean bounced in unison as the truck veered off the highway and onto a dirt path that led deep into the heart of the forest.

"This is Old Ravenwood Road," Langley said. "It was and remains the only way into and out of the old town. Most of the time, people park along the highway and hoof it to the town proper.

"If it were day, you could see the mess of beer bottles and graffiti these punks leave behind."

Hale parked the Blazer in a clearing beside a cluster of young oak trees and the team unloaded its gear. It was a five-minute hike to the spot at the edge of town where they planned to set up a base of operations.

Each person on the team, Langley included, carried a flashlight and a large duffel bag in which were digital cameras, film, EMF detectors, thermal scanners, video and audio equipment, and thermal imaging scopes that Sean had procured from an Amy/Navy catalog.

The town of Old Ravenwood, as it remained, was nothing but giant clearing filled with the 150-year-old shells of homes. Some of the shells boasted nearby pits that served as basements. Some offered larger walls that indicated a former second story. All were laced with ivy creepers and moss.

The desolation, combined with the contrasting light and darkness provided by the team's flashlights, gave Old Ravenwood a pronounced ambiance, and each person's breathing became shallow and uneven during the hike. It was as if an ethereal pallor had settled atop each member in the team as they passed the border of Old Ravenwood.

"We'll set up the field lab here," Hale said, pointing a finger at the base of a wooden wall that jutted up from the ground. With sighs of relief, the group lowered their bags to the ground, and work commenced to set up operations.

"Thermal scanners are set," Sean bragged to the rest of the group as he and Fiona returned to the makeshift laboratory near the border of Old Ravenwood. They carried with them an ancient gas lantern. "They should cover every temperature change in the area, including us. A/V is also online, and I've got each camera on a rotating swivel. We can control everything from your laptop, Dr. Hale."

"Lovely," Hale replied, booting up his computer. "What happens if we get an EMF reading?"

"EMF?" Langley asked, confused.

"Electromagnetic field," Jeff explained. "Theory is that ghosts are electrical in nature; EMF detectors can show us a disturbance."

"Actually," Hale countered,"we normally use EMF to disprove the presence of a ghost and expose whatever electronic trick is being used. In this case we're tracking for anything that will falsify thermal sensor readings. Unfortunately, all that shit out in the field will interfere with our EMF scan."

"Not to worry," Sean reassured him. "You can shut down anything within interference range from your laptop right here, should the need arise. Just turn it back on when you're through."

He smiled and loaded a roll of infrared film into his camera.

"Radios as well?" Fiona asked. As she spoke she fingered the portable field radio at her belt. Each member of the team wore one.

"That's the scary part," Jeff said, his eyes lighting up at the prospect of frightening his associate. "You have to turn off your radio, too. No talking with us the entire time."

"Cut the shit, Jeff," Hale growled. "Sean, you're running the EMF when we need to take a reading. Let's get it ready."

Sean strolled past Fiona, slapping her butt as he went, and began to unpack the EMF detector from one of the duffel bags.

"So what now?" Langley asked. The others began to relax among the rocks and bags that lined the area.

"We sit just here and wait for something to happen," Hale concluded.

"Thermals are way down at the village square."

Sean spoke in an excited voice as he stared at the screen of Hale's laptop. On the monitor, a black hole hovered over the blue background of the thermal map of Old Ravenwood. A digital reading of 30 degrees Fahrenheit appeared next to the anomaly. That was 20 degrees lower than the ambient temperature.

"It's in area B-4," Hale announced, watching the screen over Sean's shoulder. "Sean, get out there with the EMF. Jeff, get me something on video while Sean's getting into position."

"I'll go out there too," Langley said as he struggled to his feet. "I want to see this."

Hale glanced over at Sean as he powered up the EMF detector, which immediately recorded the bevy of electronics that surrounded it.

The thermal readings onscreen dropped to 25 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Keep your radios on," Hale warned Sean and Langley as they turned on their flashlights and began walking into the heart of the abandoned village. "B-4 is about 250 yards northeast; just make sure you turn everything off when you're ready to take a reading."

Sean nodded and eagerly disappeared into the night, Langley in tow. After they left the light of the lab, Hale and the others could see only their flashlight beams fading slowly away.

"Do you see anything?" Hale asked over his field radio as Fiona and Jeff watched Langley and Sean on the laptop screen. In the corner of the monitor, an infrared video image showed the pair walking into a field at the center of the town. They appeared as two red blotches on the corresponding thermal map, advancing toward a black spot that steadily grew in size.

They were within 50 yards of the anomaly.

"I think I see something," a voice replied over the radio. There was interference in the transmission.

"Sheriff?" Hale asked.

"Yeah," he replied. "I think it's a face, off in the woods."

"Sean, come back," Jeff spoke into his radio.

"Yeah, Jeff?" Sean's voice replaced Langley's on the other end of the line.

"Do you see anything?"

"I think so, but it's just three-dot syndrome."

There was silence for a minute over the radio. Hale shrugged and gestured Jeff to explain.

"Sheriff," Jeff lectured. "Three-dot syndrome is a psychological trick. People who see three dots of light or darkness in a patterned grouping instinctively see a face. It's like a Rorschach inkblot test."

He paused for a moment, thought through his next line, and continued speaking. "Don't worry about seeing anything, Old Ravenwood's activity is primarily poltergeists, not apparitions. Give us a call if something knocks off your hat or punches Sean in the face."

"Copy that," Langley replied.

"Screw you, Jeff," Sean joked.

"What about Mr. Deacon?" Hale said to Jeff after severing the radio connection.

"The rapist?" Jeff said. "He's an elemental, theoretically, but in my opinion we have a better chance of finding Dracula."

"What's an elemental?" Fiona asked, tearing her eyes away from the laptop display.

"It's another type of ghost," Hale said.

"Nobody's really seen one," Jeff told her. "Presumably they combine aspects of visual apparition hauntings and physical poltergeist hauntings, but like I said, nobody's ever seen one, except people who are obviously attempting a hoax. They are usually associated with particularly malevolent energies that result from massive distress at the time of death. Riley Deacon was accused of rape and murdered by the townspeople."

"Oh," Fiona said quietly. "Did anybody say they saw Deacon?"

"No," Hale offered. "Not even as a hoax. Dr. Rosenberg at Cal Tech told me once that elemental energies are the ones normally found in cases of possess..."

"We're on the spot," Sean's voice came over the radio, cutting the lecture short. Interference obscured the transmission to near inaudibility. "It's fucking cold over here."

"Jesus," Langley's voice followed Sean's. His voice was distant, detached. "What the hell is going on?"

"Take a reading," Hale told Sean over the radio, ignoring Langley's fear-filled observation. "Remember to turn everything off, but turn everything on immediately after you're done."

Hale's voice shook as he spoke. Fiona shivered in an unnatural breeze. Jeff turned a shade paler than normal. An air of malevolence swept over them, poisoning their brains with a heavy dose of fear. The fire in the team's gas lantern danced in the night like a twisted marionette.

On the infrared video image, they watched as Sean and Langley shut off their radios and their lights. A moment later, Jeff reached down and hit a key on the laptop to power down the cameras. The image went blank. Hale was about to shut down the thermal map when additional readings appeared.

Fiona gasped in horror and fell away from the laptop, nearly slipping on a slick patch of lichen behind her. In a ring around Sean and Langley's position, temperature anomalies appeared at less than 20 yards distance. All were as cold as the first. Hale tried to breathe, but found that his throat was locked in fright.

The readings began to move. Hale instinctively pressed the "talk" button on his radio. He held it up to his lips, but could not find the words to speak.

In perfect formation the black spots of cold on the thermal map began to tighten their circle around Sean and Langley.

"Sean?" Jeff said into his radio, his voice laced with fear. "Sean, we have more readings, get back to base."

No reply.

The black spots closed in. Less than 10 yards away.

"Shit, their radios are off!" Jeff shouted.

"Sean!" Fiona screamed into the chill autumn air. "Sean, come back to the lab!"

"Sheriff Langley!" Jeff shouted, following her lead.

As they shouted, Hale watched the circle of darkness converge on the spot where Sean and Langley stood. Their red dots still burned as the thermal sensors picked up their body heat.

And then, as quickly as they appeared, all the cold spots on the thermal map were gone.

"Oh shit," Fiona gasped. "What was that?"

Hale had calmed noticeably since the readings appeared, and turned to face his two interns.

"They're two and a half football fields away from us," he chided. "It would be very easy for them not to hear our yelling."

"They could still be taking readings," Jeff added, more to ease his own fright than the fright of his teammates. "We'll wait a few minutes. It will be all right."

"They're probably picking up the thermal scanners on the EMF," Hale said to Jeff. "Turn the cameras back on and find out what they're up to."

"It's not working," Jeff groaned after a moment of typing. "Sean knows this stuff better than I do."

Hale cursed silently and reached for a flashlight that lay on the floor. "Keep trying, Jeff," he ordered. "I'm going onsite to find them."

Fiona was about to intrude, but Hale stopped her and wagged a finger in her direction.

"They're fine, Fiona," he reassured her. "The situation is just a little tense. We got some weird readings and we overreacted. I'm just going to go out there and tell them to turn their stuff back on. I'll be fine."

With that, he nodded to Jeff, spun on his heels, and left the pair at the lab behind him.

Once he was alone, the fear returned. Hale's rationality was driven away in an instant as he walked by the light of his flashlight over dirt paths that had not been used for more than a century. The journey took him between decrepit buildings that had been rotted out longer than he had been alive.

As he walked, his eyes continued to play tricks on him. Every shadow was an apparition reaching out to envelop him. Every ray of light revealed a new rock, tree, or bramble that for a moment resembled a corpse or demonic sigil.

The path eventually took him to the center of the village, a large clearing between the rows of huts that lined the area.

"Sean!" He screamed into the empty night. "Langley!"

There was no response. Something was wrong.

"Jeff?" Hale nervously asked into the radio. "Did you get the cameras back up?"

Jeff's reply was heavily degraded by static. "Say again, Dr. Hale," he called into the radio. "Your signal is breaking up."

"Fuck," Hale muttered, stamping a nervous foot on the ground.

"I don't see anything," he babbled into the radio. "I'm going to get the hell out of here. We can wait back by you for Sean."

"I didn't pick that up," Jeff replied. "You're going where with Sean?"

"Fuck!" Hale screamed, and his breath came out in a ghostly haze.

It was getting very cold.

Then something began to broadcast over Hale's radio. It was the sound of heavy breathing, a deeply rasping series of breaths—and the signal was crystal clear.

"I'm going to rape the girl," a voice whispered in a guttural accent between the breaths. Hale's eyebrows knotted as he listened. The voice was familiar, but he could not place it.

Despite the heavy breathing that dominated the airwaves, Hale held down the "talk" button and screamed into the receiver.

"Whoever the fuck is playing around better cut that shit out right now! Is that you Jeff? Sean?"

Then the voice returned.

"Turn around," it commanded.

Hale whirled around as fast as his reflexes permitted and shone the flashlight directly on the form of Sheriff Edward Langley. Langley's body was prostrate on the ground, his arms and legs stretched out into the shape of a cross. Both eyes had been removed, replaced by splashes of gore that turned his face a deep crimson.

Hale nearly screamed in fear, the surrounding air clouded by his exhaled breath. He managed to regain control of himself for a brief moment, and he reached toward to corpse to draw Langley's unused revolver from its holster.

Though it took all of his remaining willpower to stay in the clearing, Hale swung the flashlight in circles, looking in desperation for Sean's body. He found it far off, position akin to Langley's, though he could not tell from the distance whether or not Sean's eyes had been mistreated in the same manner.

That was all Hale could stomach. He turned and shone the light down a path to run, but stopped short at the sound of Sean's voice.

"We need to talk, Hale."

Hale whirled around, wild eyed with fright, and came face-to-face with Sean Ellison. A look of disbelief grew over Hale's haggard features.

"How?" he muttered repeatedly, slowly backing away from Sean. His hands went numb, revolver and flashlight falling to the ground.

Dr. Donovan Hale turned from Sean and sprinted back toward the lab with all speed his legs could muster.

Hale sprinted through the dirt-covered streets of Old Ravenwood toward the site of the lab. In the distance, he saw the orange glow of the lantern, and the heard the hum of batteries and computers.

"Run!" he screamed in the direction of the lab. "Get to the car!"

Hale was about to continue when he tripped over something and fell to the ground, hard. Behind him, Hale heard a groan of pain, and he turned to see what he tripped over..

"It was Deacon..." a voice groaned. Hale realized that it was Jeff's voice, though it was distorted in pain.

"Jeff?" Hale asked, his voice cracking as tears streamed down his face.

"Riley Deacon," Jeff continued as Hale ran his hands over Jeff's face. The young man was covered in blood. "Sean called himself...Deacon, when he took Fiona, when he killed me."

I'm going to rape the girl. That's what the voice said. It was Sean's voice on the radio back in the clearing.

"Hang on, Jeff," Hale reassured the student through his desperation. "I'm going to get help."

Before Jeff could offer another word, Hale was running toward the lab again, screaming "I'm going to get help!" and kicking up a cloud of dust in his wake.

When he arrived at the circle of wicked orange gaslight that illuminated the lab site, Hale nearly fell back in horror. Fiona was curled into a fetal position amid the electronics at the center of the lab. She was naked, her body covered in scars and welts. At the sound of Hale's footsteps she turned to face him, and Hale saw that her eyes had been removed, just like Langley's. Tears of blood ran down her face.

She immediately covered her eyes with blood-soaked hands when she realized that she could not see Hale approaching, and she let out an inhuman wail. It was a thousand litanies of agony compressed into one long, shrill note.

Hale's face crumbled with shock, and he fell to his knees, weeping shamelessly. A wave of hopelessness swept away his desire to act.

Footsteps echoed in the night behind Hale, but he did not turn. He could not bring himself to face what he knew was behind him. Leaves and twigs crunched underfoot as doom approached.

He glanced up to the monitor of his laptop and saw the thermal display. He saw, off in the field, Sheriff Langley's body slowly fading from red to deep blue. He saw a red dot for Jeff in the streets of the town. He saw Fiona and himself at the lab, red dots still glowing brightly. And he saw a black dot approaching from behind.

Sean.

But not really Sean. Riley Deacon. The rapist. The elemental.

There was nothing left to be done. No foolish scampering through the woods like a lost child, helplessly extending his life by a few scant minutes. All was lost.

Dr. Donovan Hale just kneeled before the weeping, disfigured form of Fiona and waited for the night to take him.

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