EXTRACT FOR
The Frightened Ghost
(Sean Brandywine)

In the lobby, we gathered around the monitors.  Sonya had seen most of what happened via the camera set up down there.  She gave me a puzzled look and asked, "Did something really touch you?"

"Yes.  Something cold."  For some reason, it seemed important to me to convince them that I was telling the truth.  Down in the basement, it was easy to be spooked but that didn't explain the cold fingers on my neck.  That was real.  "And we did hear that voice on the recorder," I had to add as verification.  "There's something down there."

Hal was shaking his head slowly.  Brett was fumbling with the coffee pot, trying to light the burner under it.  After almost dropping the pot, Sonya took it out of his hands and put it on the stove.  A moment later the flames were licking the bottom of it.

It was Sonya who elevated our surprise and shock to the next level when she said, "We have to go back down there."  We all stared at her.  "Well, if there really is a ghost..."

"Crap," I heard Brett mutter.  When it came to acting, he was good, but when it came to reality, he wasn't prepared to accept it.  I could understand his feeling.  I was scared too.  Calming down now that we were out of the basement, but still shaken.  Only Sonya seemed excited about this turn of events.

"Well, we have to," she added.  "The producer would want us to.  This could be a real breakthrough.  We may be able to get the proof that ghosts exist."

Put that way, she did make sense.  Now if I could only emotionally accept that.  She hadn't had a cold hand touch her.

She turned to Hal and added, "You do see that, don't you?"

Hal sighed and looked to the coffee pot wherein the liquid was not yet hot enough to drink.  "It would be good for the ratings..." he muttered.  Then, turning to me and Brett, he said, "You two up for it?  We need some more footage anyway."

I paused to see if Brett would offer objections.  But with all our eyes on him, his macho side exerted itself.  "I ain't scared of no ghost," he said.  The smile that accompanied that was a little less than sincere.

I nodded agreement, not trusting myself to try to speak.  A nagging part of my brain was trying to tell me that there was probably a rational explanation for what happened.  Another part, more emotional, told me to run like hell.

"Coffee break, then we resume shooting," Hal said.  For a while after that no one spoke.

Just as Hal was reaching for the coffee pot, Sonya gave out with a gasp.  We turned to find her pointing a finger at one of the monitors.  It was the one that showed the basement room.  I saw what might have been a movement in the corner of the display, but just a quick glimpse.

"Something moved across the screen," she said excitedly.

We all stared at the display but nothing was moving.  Just shadows and reflections of the camera's light.

"Really!" she insisted.  "Look, I'll playback the recording."

Then I remembered being told that the monitor's signals were recorded as well as displayed.  She pulled the keyboard closer to her and began typing.  The screen flickered then went black.  "I'm going back ten seconds," she informed.  When the image returned, it was the same as before.  The seconds ticked by very slowly and still nothing happened.  Then a shadow detached itself from the left side and moved across the screen to disappear on the right side.

The voice and the touch could have been faked.  There were three men down there with me, and Ed had proven adept at faking ghosts.  But there was no one down there now and no way Ed or anyone else could have made that shadow move.  Especially since it was more or less a human shape.

"Sonya, you trying to mess with us?" Brett asked.

"No way!  What you see is what you get."

I wouldn't have put it that way, since we were about to go back down there, but she was right.  Into the lion's den and all.

Hal was pouring a cup of coffee and I noticed his hand was shaking a little.  "Hell, I didn't know we were shooting reality TV," he said.  I don't think he meant it as a joke.

I had come to the conclusion that Hal was right when he told me there was no such creatures as ghosts.  But now...

Without trying to hide it, Brett took a flask out of his backpack and took a big hit from it.  That sneaky little devil had some stronger stuff and wasn't offering us any.  Not that I wanted strong drink, but at that point any kind of courage would have helped.  I remembered someone once saying, "It's poor courage you find at the bottom of a bottle."

I tried to lighten up the group by saying, "Do we get hazardous duty pay now?"

No one laughed.

Okay, it wasn't that funny anyway.

Just then a loud thunderclap rattled the windows.  Well, someone was laughing at us.

"There's no such thing as ghosts," I was silently telling myself as we descended the stairs.  "And if there is, they can't hurt you."  Then I remembered the two dead bodies we had found and suddenly my words didn't sound so encouraging.

At the bottom it was a short walk to the operating room.  Ed was behind the two of us, shooting video that might well show our deaths if this was a malevolent spirit.  Hal was right behind him.  Sonya had wanted to come also, but Hal overrode her, telling her that someone had to stay by the monitors.  She grumbled something under her breath and sat down.

Brett was talking to the camera.  "We're going back into that operating room where we picked up that voice and Holly was touched by something.  We'll see if we can make contact with whoever is there."

Or whatever, I thought.  Then I stopped in my tracks.  That feeling of something present in there suddenly became almost overwhelming.  "It's there," I said.

"The presence?" Brett asked.

"Yes.  There is something there.  I can feel it, can't you?"

I guessed that was the wrong thing to say by the look Brett gave me.  He was the leader of our team, but I was implying that he couldn't sense a simple ghost if it was standing in front of him.  And bit him.

We were inside that room now and the feeling was stronger.  Damn, but I wanted to run out of there!  I don't know what prevented me from doing that unless it was pure fear that froze me in place.

Brett was about to go into his talking to the ghost routine with the voice recorder held high when the shit really hit the fan.  Tons of it.

A figure took form in the center of the room, not more than six feet from where Brett stood.  He was looking at the recorder and didn't see it.  But I did!  "Look!" I shouted.

Brett stopped talking and gave me a warning look.  I was not supposed to interrupt his lines.  But was a man standing there where no one had been a moment before.

"It's a man," I explained breathlessly.  "An old man."

Brett looked to where I was pointing but apparently saw nothing to judge by his face.

The damned ghost was looking right at me!  He could see me!

If ever there was a time for my knees to shake and my blood run cold, that was it.  Maybe even fainting time.  But I did neither.  The man didn't look all that frightening, and somehow I didn't feel he wanted to do any harm.  Illogical as that was, that was what I felt.

He took a step towards me.  Instead of shrieking and fainting, I calmly said, "Hello."

For what seemed a long time, but was probably just a few seconds, Brett stared at me.  But I wasn't looking at him.  In my head, I heard a voice.  It was the same voice we had heard on the recorder, an old man.  Which matched the image before me.  It said, "Beware."  But I didn't get the feeling that it was threatening me.  He wanted to warn me of something else.  Another ghost?

Or maybe this was an old patient of the asylum and he was simply saying that we should beware of the place.

"What should I beware of?" I asked.

Brett was jerking his gaze between me and the spot where I was looking.  I guess he was wondering if I were trying to steal his scene.  But, being half way professional, he went along with the flow.

"What are you seeing?"

"An old man.  He's wearing a suit.  Red tie.  Neatly trimmed beard.  Blue eyes."

Brett's eyes grew wide.  If I were faking all this, he was going to have a talk with me later.

"What is your name?" I asked.  The voice in my head said, "Thank God that you hear me.  I have been trying to talk to someone."

"You can talk to me."

"I have to warn you.  All of you.  All of the humans."

"Warn us about what?"

A tiny part of my mind was telling me that this probably looked very suspicious to the others, but I didn't care.  Unless I had gone totally insane, I was really talking to a ghost!  I was not about to tell him that he didn't exist.

"It is hard to stay here," he said.  "So hard.  But I have to."

"What do you want to warn us about?" I repeated.

"They are coming.  The monsters."

"What is your name?" I tried again.

"Albert.  I have so much to tell you.  And you must listen."  He sounded desperate to impart some kind of message.

"What monsters?" I asked, not caring how that looked to the others.

"Monsters.  Beasts.  They destroy."

"Destroy what?"

"Us.  All of us.  Now they will destroy you."

His voice seemed to be growing fainter.  So did his image.

"Wait!" I called out.  "Don't go."

"I will try to come back," was his last words.  Then he was gone.

Only then did my calm desert me and my knees grew weak.  I started to shake.  It would have been a good time to dramatically faint into Brett's arms, but my only thought was to hope that either Ed or Sonya had something on video to show I wasn't making this all up.