Case Study: The Siren of Sunrise Trail [Part One]

It was the autumn of 1983.  A local farmer was on his tractor, pulling a big harvesting combine.  The sun was low in the sky, his eyes squinted against the light.  Suddenly, he caught something the harvester.  He’d say later, “Sounded like I hit something big.”

 

Turned out to be his son.

 

The farmer moved his family away, unable to handle the horrible memories of looking into the combine and seeing naught but a shredded pair of Osh-Kosh-B’gosh.  The lot stood vacant until it was bought by a housing development.  The ‘Sunrise Lakes Presidio’ was finished a few years ago and offered middle-class families a slice of the American dream-pie.  Unfortunately raising your kids in this wholesome environment has come with a price: your firstborn!

 

Since the first family moved in there have been two children who have died in tragic accidents and a third severely injured.  Ed first noticed the pattern with a well worded Google search and the GhostFacers hit the public library.  If I recall correctly Ed gestured with his pencil, Maggie took off her jacket in what seemed unnecessarily slow (some might say sultry) fashion and I began explaining the fine intricacies of the Dewy decimal system before Spruce pointed out that we could just use the computers.

 

He was right, of course, but I must admit that I found the expediency disappointing.  With the modern convenience of computers we finished our research in record time, enough to know what I’ve shared with you above.  After the initial boy in the combine there was one girl who drowned, one boy who fell from the rafters of an unfinished home and another boy was found deep in an abandoned well shaft.  He had been missing for two days before they found him almost dead.  They all seemed like accidents and the homeowners of the Presidio had, in fact, filed a class action lawsuit against the builder, claiming the development was unsafe.  But four kids?  All first-born?  In ‘accidents’? 

 

Ed and I were certain of one thing: something otherworldly, something preternatural was in play and before we packed up and left we felt we owed the Greater Appleton Area the benefit of one more good ‘Facing.

 

Our first task was to figure out what we were up against, and there were a number of possibilities.  Spruce suggested the housing development might’ve dug up an Indian burial ground, a classic trope still worth considering.  Indian land curses weren’t unheard of in Wisconsin, but  Ed and I were fairly certain it would be some sort of water spirit.  Maggie’s lower lip was pinned under her teeth and it as it came out of her mouth it gleamed in the pale light of our HQ.  “All these kids were outside of their house when these accidents occurred.  You think our ghost is luring them outside somehow?”

 

Ed decided we needed some recon.  He and Maggie were going to see if they could talk to the surviving kid while Spruce and I were to scout the surrounding woods.  I offered to escort Maggie, seeing as how Ed was wearing shoes that were far more suitable to walking through the woods but Ed seemed adamant about going with Maggie.  I’m sure he had his reasons.

 

Spruce and I tromped through the woods.  Winter was fast receding but our breath still hung in clouds about us as I peered intently about.   We didn’t find anything of note, but Spruce recorded some excellent footage of me moving aside branches and scanning things for an EMF signature, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. (Actually, Spruce reported noticing that the birds had stopped singing, remember?  -Ed.)

 

When we returned we rendezvoused with Ed and Maggie then debriefed at a nearby Bob Evans.  Maggie and Ed had initially posed as the victim’s classmates but the mother had pointed out that there was no possible way they could be given their obvious difference in ages from her son’s.  Maggie deftly replied that they were, in fact, teacher’s aides who had come to give the child his homework.  When the mother asked to see the homework Ed presented his copy of Tales of the Unanticipated Magazine, which led the mother to send them away, claiming they were a part of some kind of shenanigans.

 

They hit upon the strategy of throwing rocks at the kid’s window.  He opened it and Ed asked what he was doing way out in the woods.  His chilling reply: “I thought I heard something out there”.  He was about to elaborate but then his mother pulled him back into his room and told Ed and Maggie she had called the police.  They were already feeling the heat from our Morton House case, so they high-tailed it back to the drop point.

 

At Bob Evans, Ed brought his finger to his chin in a manner I’ve grown accustomed to.  It conveyed the general sense that he was thinking, internally analyzing the raw data and breaking it down into the requisite parts.  This is a skill I’ve always admired, one I find lacking in my own suite of skills; I’m action-oriented, think on my feet.  But Ed can take in information and figure out what to do next and in this case we all remained silent while he thought (until the waitress happened by and Spruce ordered a round of onion petals for the table).  He concluded we should head back to HQ and take a look at the footage Spruce had recorded in the woods.

We returned to HQ and reviewed the tape.  Spruce ran it through a number of filters and EQ modifications.  He sat for what seemed like hours, making adjustments and watching the footage while he listened with his headphones on.  Suddenly he sat bolt upright in his chair.  Spruce pulled off his headphones and turned on the speakers.  ”Guys, check this out,” he said as replayed the footage, “I’ve isolated a really narrow bandwidth, one humans can’t even hear.”

Sure enough, although I was on-screen explaining what we were doing in the woods my words were inaudible.  What we could hear, however, gave me those familiar goosebumps.  A girl’s voice crackled in the Eagle’s Nest speakers, whispering: “Help me… help me!”

~ To Be Continued

Dino-Bitrons!!

 

I haven’t been able to blog for a few days, sorry everyone.  The day after Ed’s momentous decision to attend ComiCon we were all summarily picked up by the police (Note: the police had a warrant. -Ed.) (Another note: I didn’t write that, Maggie did. -Ed) (I think that might have been Maggie, Ed.  I’m going to ask Spruce if he can take away your mod privileges – Auth.) and detained.  Apparently we were wanted for Corbett’s murder and the Winchesters were our only witnesses considering they erased the tape that could’ve cleared our good name.  I didn’t need another reason to hate the Winchesters, dear reader, but I was given one when I was thrown into the men’s holding facility here in Appleton.

 

The stalls in the mens holding facility aren’t so much stalls as one big metal trough to relieve one’s self.  And there isn’t any bathroom so much as said trough bolted to yonder wall, in full view of all the miscreants, derelicts and n’er-do-wells.  It was humiliating.  I’ll say no more about it.

 

Fortunately for us one of the DNA analysts sneezed on a specimen slide and the charges were dropped on a technicality.  Having dodged a bit of a bullet, Ed has decided to move up the timetable on our departure.  Maggie expressed a desire to leave the state and be gone for some time, which led Ed into a bold new idea: a relocation for the GhostFacers to Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world!

 

“Think about it,” he said, “We’ll be right next door to the movers and shakers!  We got a pilot, we walk out the door, we hang a left, next door bang on it… and bam, here’s a pilot, here you go, thank you, pay us.”

 

“That sounds good,” said Spruce.

 

I brought up the subject of money.  There was an uncomfortable silence.  We still had some money left over from our sale of the Airstream and a fairly large number of collectable action figures and assorted memorabilia, including an original Millennium Falcon with the smuggling plates still attached (which fetched a fair amount).  I was sorry to part with it but considering I still have one in its factory packaging I considered it a small price to pay to follow our dreams.

 

Given the steady rise of the stock market it’s clear that the economy is expanding.  Reasoning that a rising tide raises all boats, I suggested that we join that elite class of economic heavyweights: the venture capitalists.

 

I happened to have an investor’s brochure for my cousin’s startup in my rucksack and presented it to the group.  My cousin is a very famous artist, an illustrator for a national brand of shoe polish that shall go nameless, and has developed a fantastic idea for a new line of action figures: Dino-Bitrons!  They’re dinosaurs… that turn into robots!!

 

I paused as the group took it in.  It took a while to take it in because the idea was so momentous.

 

Ed was the first to speak. “Did you say… Dino-Bits?”

 

“Dino-Bitrons,” I said.

 

“Why not… ‘Dinobots’?” asked Spruce, “That way it’d be like robots, but with ‘dino’ -”

 

“Transformers already did Dinobots,” I explained.

 

“Oh, they’re like Transformers?” observed Maggie.  I couldn’t help but notice that her lower eyelids were raised slightly, which is what happens to her otherwise porcelain countenance when something has piqued her intellect.  I did it back to show her she had found a sparring partner.  “I thought they were like…”

 

“Like dinosaurs that learn to be robots?” asked Ed.

 

“Yeah.”

 

I explained it further.  The Dino-Bitrons were an alien race of robots that crash landed on earth millions of years ago and developed a way to disguise themselves as dinosaurs.  So they walked the earth as dinosaurs but when threatened by the evil Dino-Naughts they would transform into robot form.  It’s all very simple and very clever but I spent the better part of an hour answering questions about various aspects of the proposal and navigating the Transformers wiki on my laptop to show my companions that Dino-Bitrons bared very little resemblance to the Transformer version.

 

Finally, they agreed.  We are to be the proud investors in MenCo®, my cousin’s startup novelty toy company and we are assured of the profits that will catapult us into the next phase of our careers.

 

Face on!

A New Hope

 

Day dawned, bathed in golden sunlight but for me, Harry Spengler, it was cold and grey.  The Winchester brothers erased our pilot episode and now Ed and I have to start from scratch.

 

We had them over to watch it and offer whatever advice they thought they could.  We graciously accepted their feedback of course but after they left we discovered they had left some sort of magnet device which had polarized our hard drives and erased all our data entirely.  Months of work went down the drain, hours of quality footage of our battle with the ghost of Morton House that the world would never get to see.  I took it in my usual stoic manner, gritting my teeth and offering nothing in the way of invectives.  I steeled myself for the inevitable wave of grief and sorrow that would overcome my fellow GhostFacers and did my best to assure everyone that we would ‘Face on.  We would stay razor and focus in on our mission.

 

Ed took it pretty hard.  He drank a Monster energy beverage and began boxing the inflatable Boba Fett boxing bop bag we keep in headquarters for just such an occasion.  He became winded after blowing it up for the sixth time and I advised him to rest.  “Rest hell!  I’ll rest when I’m dead.”  I should’ve expected this kind of response from Ed.  When the going gets tough the tough get going and judging by the size of the energy beverage and the repeated poundings of the aforementioned bop bag he’d be going for a while.  I left him alone.

 

Maggie seemed to be taking the whole thing pretty hard.  She seemed distant, so I put my hand on her lower back as if to say, “There, there, my pretty kitten.  Everything will be alright”.  She quickly rearranged my arm so that it was pinned to my back and whispered in my ear that she wasn’t in the mood.  I told her that it was okay, that I understood, and that she could talk to me whenever she was ready.  Did a charged moment take place between us?  Did the electricity generated by the frantic events in the Morton House send sparks between her and I as she pressed her delicate frame into my rugged physique?  I cannot say, dear reader.

 

Spruce set up a traditional funeral pyre for Corbett, but seeing as how his body was still being held at the morgue an economy of scale dictated that it be built of a simple shoebox and some old hamster litter I still had lying around from my days as a budding nueroxenobiologist.  We lit it afire at 3:23 am, the time of Corbett’s death.  Spruce chanted an old Native American spiritual passed down on his father’s side and Ed offered a brief but stirring eulogy.  Maggie said a few words as well, pausing every so often to brush a stray lock of hair from her face while her eyes filled with the silver of moonlight and the red embers of the funeral pyre.

 

We retired that night grimly determined not to quit, not to let the Winchesters get the better of us.  They were clearly motivated by envy, jealousy, covetousness, resentment, bitterness, and discontent.  I quipped to my fellows: “Perhaps those ‘hunters’ should try hunting monsters of the green-eyed variety!”.  We all chortled except for Maggie, who seemed to focus mainly on a faint titter.

 

As I drifted off to sleep I got a call from Ed on the Spider-Man walkie-talkies we keep under our pillows since we saw the same thing done in Big so many years ago.  He wanted to share with me a grand vision for what he called “the ‘Facer movement”: we would go to ComiCon.

 

“The ComiCon?” I asked incredulously.

 

“Yeah, is there another one?” he asked.

 

“There’s one in New Jersey.”

 

“Is the one in New Jersey the one with like all the fans and the press and trailers?”

 

“No, that’s the one in San Diego.”

 

“Then listen to me Harry.  Harry?  We’re going… to San Francisco!”

 

“San Diego.”

 

“Whatever Harry, listen buddy: we’re going… to ComiCon!”

 

My head reeled.  I took a hit off my inhaler.  Brilliant.  Ed and I spoke for hours, trying to get the walkie-talkies to work properly.  When he called my cellphone we mapped out the plan: we’d make our entrance at ComiCon to announce our new web series, fans would fall from their seats in eager anticipation, lines would begin to form, posters would be handed out and throngs would gather.  It would be the greatest day in our lives, the manifestation of all our ambition.  I drifted off to sleep thinking of the multitudes calling my name, but then that led me to thinking about that one time on Babylon 5 in the episode “The Geometry of Shadows” when Londo Mollari receives a prophecy from the Technomage Elric, claiming that in the future he will hear the “sounds of billions of people calling your name.” 

 

Londo, whose ambition knows no bounds, asks: “My followers?” 

 

Elric replies, “Your victims.”

 

I always liked that show… Ed thought it stepped on Trek’s toes but I always thought they explored different themes.  I fell asleep thinking about Lyta Alexander and Deanna Troi in that turquoise mini-skirt with with the high black boots.  Nothing sexual of course, just having a pleasant conversation without actually having to talk.  I’ve always wondered what that was like.