before. As if on cue, a man wearing the same three flannel shirts layered on top of each other waddled around the plane and waved toward the truck.
“That’s Andy,” the driver said. “He’ll be takin’ you all the way into Chicago.”
“I know who he is. He’s the same guy that flew me here.”
“Really? Then you should feel right at home.”
While he might not have felt right at home, he was already feeling the plummets and barrel rolls that had brought up everything in his stomach on the way into Canada. “Can’t we just fly on a jet?” he asked. “It’d be faster. And…uh…wouldn’t kill me.”
“Oh sure,” the driver replied as he pulled Gerald’s bag from behind the seat. “You got anything in there that you’d like to check through customs?”
“Point taken. I suppose that pilot knows how to fly into the States without hitting customs? Does he have smuggling compartments under the seats?”
Chuckling, the driver replied, “You watch a lot of movies, don’t you? We ain’t terrorists. Andy goes through customs like anyone else. Private planes get a little more slack on personal property, is all. You ain’t carrying any drugs or nothin’, are you?”
“No.”
“All right then. Wouldn’t want you making me look bad.”
Cole managed to catch the bag that was tossed at him before it knocked him in the teeth. After checking to make sure he had everything, he asked, “Does the pilot need a password to refrain from shoving a gun in my face?”
“Keep up that smart mouth and I’m sure he’ll think of something you’ll like even more. You have a good flight, now.”
Even though the driver settled behind his wheel and gunned his engine, Cole didn’t close his door right away. Instead, he extended a hand across the passenger seat and said, “I don’t think I thanked you for picking me up.”
“No. You didn’t.”
“Well…thanks. It’s been kind of a rough day.”
Smirking, the driver shook his hand with almost enough strength to snap it off. “Comes with the territory.”
Releasing his grip on Cole’s hand, the driver eased up on his brake just enough for the truck to roll slowly forward. Once the door had cleared Cole’s shoulder, it was pulled shut and locked with a few quick swats of the driver’s hand. Even after the truck picked up some speed and rumbled away from the airport, Cole was still standing in the spot where he’d been left. Slowly, he allowed some steam to drift from his mouth and straightened himself up. Since there was nowhere else to go, he hauled his things toward the plane.
“This extreme enough for you, dumbass?” he asked himself. As he got close to the plane and started tossing his things on board, he put on a smile and shouted to be heard over the propellers. “Any chance I could get you to swing past Seattle?”
The pilot grinned and replied, “Nope. But do me a favor and look around for some parachutes. The safety inspectors have really been busting my ass about that.”
Chapter 6
It was a cold day. Rain threatened to fall from gray clouds that rolled across a harsh autumn sky. A single, navy blue van moved along a dirt road and pulled off onto a trail that wasn’t much more than a set of crooked ruts in rocky soil. As soon as the van was far enough along the road for the driver to spot the collapsed remains of the old mansion, he sped up, the wheels spinning faster, kicking up a gritty mix of dust, gravel, and dead leaves. On the back of the van was the lettering MEG BRANCH 25.
Steve sat in the passenger seat and was tall enough for the top of his balding head to scrape the roof. His rounded face had yet to display anything less than a smile as he told more than enough jokes to fill the drive from Madison. “That’s the place,” he said. “Park anywhere you like.”
The driver was in his mid-thirties, but had enough youthful energy in his eyes to make him look at least five years younger. His dark brown hair was buzzed close to the scalp and his face was clean-shaven. Finding a parking spot wasn’t difficult, and the driver pulled to a stop just off the faded old road that led the rest of the way to the mansion. “You say this place is haunted?” he asked.
Steve nodded. “I sure do, Jarvis,” he replied, using the driver’s name in a way that seemed well-intentioned but obviously didn’t set well with the driver. “I could tell you plenty of stories from several other people, or I could tell you a few of my own.”
Jarvis leaned over the steering wheel to get a better look at the rubble in front of him. No matter how much squinting or straining he did, he could still only see the sagging remains of a three-story mansion. The roof was full of gaping holes. One half of the building had fallen down altogether. Even the fence surrounding the place was rusted and broken in several spots. “What’s anyone even doing out here?” Jarvis asked. “The place looks pretty run-down.”
“Oh, it is. The property is still held by the original family, and they’ve been thinking about restoring the entire mansion. It’s a big undertaking, so a lot of consultants have been coming and going to get a look for themselves. Some members of the family just want the land cleared off and sold, so it’s become sort of a tug-of-war.”
Nodding as he removed the keys from the ignition and pushed his door open, Jarvis said, “Okay, let’s have a look around.”
“Don’t you want to take any equipment with you?”
“This is just a walk-through,” Jarvis said. “Our closest tech crew is in Minneapolis. I’m going out to Milwaukee on other business, so I thought I’d take a look at the place rather than stick you at the back of a six month waiting period.”
“Oh. All right. Do you still want to hear the stories?”
“Just tell me about your own personal experiences,” Jarvis replied.
That was enough to get Steve going. He excitedly recounted stories ranging from feeling like he was being watched when poking around in dirty old rooms to sightings of glowing orbs in hallways. He capped it off by describing a shadowy figure lurking in a particular section of the house. When he tried to get a closer look, he heard screams coming from the basement.
For a seasoned member of the Midwestern Ectological Group, it was all pretty standard stuff. Jarvis nodded and reacted accordingly when Steve got worked up about something, but he didn’t share the other man’s enthusiasm. All too often, old run-down houses were thought to be haunted when they were simply old and run-down. Rotting beams creaked. Animals nested in basements and attics. Old pipes moaned under proper weather conditions. For those reasons, all MEG branches sent scouts to potential sites rather than waste the time and money it took to dispatch an entire team and its equipment for a full investigation. In fact, Jarvis had some business in Milwaukee, so he was forced to take the job that would normally be handed off to one of the MEG rookies. So far, he was confident that he wouldn’t be there too long.
“All right,” he said as he got to the front of the mansion, “show me the spots with the most activity.”
That brightened Steve’s face and he immediately launched into another story about screams and other sounds that came from under the floor. By the time he was through with the basics of that story, both men had their hard hats on and were walking through the sturdy, imposing front doorway.
As he listened, Jarvis examined the old mansion with the help of a flashlight that could have easily doubled for a nightstick. It looked as if a few cleaning crews had been there recently to gather up the rubble that had fallen when the main staircase collapsed. Dirt was thick upon the tiled floor, and broken furniture lay strewn along almost every wall. The upper portion of the staircase was propped up by wooden supports that were too squared and clean to be anything more than a month or two old. Most of the flooring at the top of the staircase was gone, leaving a
