Not Quite Ghosts

 

Fritz said, “We might as well do a complete job.  The equipment to scan for hidden loudspeakers, microphones, and the like is still down in the van.  We can worry about that later if we need to.  I have this device in my backpack now, so let’s start with it.”

Fritz pulled out a gadget that looked like it belonged in a science fiction movie.

Craig asked, “What’s that thing?”

Fritz explained, “It’s our thermal imager.  Come here, Craig.  I’ll show you.  See how John shows up on the display?”

“Extremely blurry.  I can barely tell it supposed to be a man, much less that it’s John,” Craig said.

Fritz instructed, “We don’t use it to find the identity of a specific person, just to figure out if a person is there.  John, go through that door into the other room.”

Craig watched John leave, then looked at the display and said, “Cool!  This gadget sees through walls!”

“If the walls aren’t too thick or well-insulated,” Fritz said.  “You can come back now, John.”

John returned.

John noted, “Figuring out what Viperly was up to would have been a cinch if we had that thing back then.”

Fritz then did a thorough search of the house using the imager.  The bags of ice on the table behind the wall showed up dramatically because of the big temperature difference.  It could see cold areas as well as warm.  Fritz lectured on how he had planned on using the thermal imager to prove embedded thermoelectric cooler were in the walls.  Fritz sounded very disappointed it had merely been bags of ice on the other side of the wall, which they had found without his toy.

Throughout the house, Fritz did not find any images indicated the presence of any other person.  He even kept sweeping the floor and ceiling.  They even went to the basement and checked the tunnel.

After all this, Fritz said, “I expected to find somebody here.”

John said, “You mean to make sure we found evidence of ghosts?”

Fritz agreed, “Exactly.  I figured either Roy Smith or somebody he hired would show up to give us a good scare.”

John speculated, “The night is still young.  Somebody could show up later, after we’ve been here a few hours.  Let’s set up alarms on the obvious entrances.”

As Fritz dug in his backpack, he said, “A place like this could have secret passages that we’ll miss.”

“Perhaps,” John agreed, “but it’d be dumb of us if somebody can just waltz through the front door or up the tunnel to scare us without our detecting them.”

Fritz said, “I forgot the IR beams and radio transmitters.  Did you put them in the van, John?”

“I thought you did,” John said.

Craig remarked, “I don’t like that somebody could wander in on us.  We should go back to your house and get that stuff.”

John said, “Hey, if the ghost creator can use low tech like bags of ice, then we can use low tech too.”

John foraged around and found some thread, as well as various bottles and cans.  He set up trip strings coming out of the tunnel and in various other places.

Craig said, “Even with all the lights on, I don’t think I’d see that thread if I wasn’t expecting it.”

“I sometimes like the low tech approaches myself,” John said.

Fritz, known by his brother and friend as a technology fanatic, said, “I’ll only like this if it works.  Nobody could see the infrared beam.  Too bad I forgot it.  Hey, I heard something.”

All three were silent.  There was the faint hum of the fluorescent lights in the hallway.  Strong gusts of wind outside made a loose window rattle.  A dripping sound came from a bathroom.  Then, they heard a metallic rattling sound.  It was clearly not the sound of any of the bottle or cans from the trip strings, but sounded like a rattling chain.

John said, “It sounds like it came from that ventilation vent up in the ceiling.”

The sound then stopped.

Fritz found a sturdy chair.  He stood on that and removed the vent cover.

John asked, “Did you find a loudspeaker?”

Using a flashlight he had taken from his backpack, Fritz responded, “No.  Just a galvanized steel tube going up.  It seems to go up inside an interior wall, if I remember the floor plan correctly.”

The chain rattling sound came again.

Fritz, still standing on the chair under the vent, declared, “It is definitely coming from here.  Let’s trace where this goes.”

They ended up at the top floor of the mansion.

John said, “I think that vent tube goes up into the attic.  Let’s go up and check.”

Fritz grabbed his brother and said, “Hold it.  Let me scan first for anybody hiding up there.”

The other two waited as Fritz used the thermal imager again.

“I don’t detect anybody,” Fritz said.

Even as they said this, they heard the rattling chains again, now with the sound being from the attic.

John said, “The trap door to the attic is over this way.”

Craig asked, “How do you know that?”

Fritz said, “We’ve used it before.  We hid up in the attic from Viperly.  It didn’t work.  He found us.”

John held up an empty hand, but held as if it held a pistol.  He said, “We’re good guys.  If Fritz had detected somebody up there, we couldn’t take the Viperly approach to drawing them up.  Bang, bang, bang!  That’d scare anybody up there.  It sure scared me when Viperly did it to us!”

Fritz insisted, “If anybody was there, I’d have seen him in the thermal imager.  Let’s go look.”

Just where John had indicated, there was a door mounted in the ceiling with a thick cord hanging down.  Pulling on the cord opened the door.  A folded ladder was mounted inside the door.  They pulled that down and went up.  John and Fritz yanked out flashlights from Fritz’s backpack.

Fritz said, “I only brought two flashlights.”

Craig pulled out his keys for his Ford Focus.  On the keyring was a device barely bigger than two quarters.  He squeezed it and a beam of white light shot out.

“I have a white LED light with me,” Craig said.

“That’s neat,” Fritz admitted.  “I’ve got to get one of those.”

Up in the attic, there was some light other than from the three flashlights.

Craig pointed and asked, “What are those little lights?”

Fritz explained, “It’s light coming up from the room below.”

Peering at it, Craig said, “You’re right.  It’s from a bunch of little holes.”

“Those are bullet holes,” John said with certainty.

“How do you know what caused the holes?” Craig demanded

John said, “I told you Viperly shot at us when we hid up here.  Bang, bang, bang!  We surrendered, of course.”

Fritz said, “I don’t see why Roy Smith when changed this from a condemned, falling apart building to what it is now, he left those bullet holes.”

Everybody jumped when they heard the chains again.  It was loud now.  Even so, if it hadn’t rattled so close to them, they would not have found the cause.  Even then, it took the use of a screwdriver that Fritz had brought along in his backpack.

The galvanized steel ventilation tube they had been following was about six inches in diameter.  It looked like the kind used to vent a ceiling fan from a bathroom to the outside world.  The tube went through the roof to the outside air.  Fritz pulled the tube apart.  Mounted inside it was a chain.  The chain had some sheet metal strips attached to help it catch the wind.  Unless the sheet metal tube was pried apart, the chain could not be seen.

Fritz remarked, “This is a much lower technology explanation then I expected.  I figured at least electronics and a hidden speaker so the sounds could be made at will, not at the whim of the actual wind.”

John suggested, “I like this approach.  All that electronic sweeping gear that we still haven’t dragged in from the van would never have detected this mechanical device.  There’s nothing electronic in it.  Well, we’ve explained the reappearing blood stains, the rattling chain, and the images on the film.”

Fritz said, “Craig gets the credit for figuring out the film.  I didn’t think of that until he grabbed the boxes in the gift shop.”

John humbly stated, “It took me a little longer to figure out the film.  As you said at the pizza shop, brother, there are no ghosts here at all.”

Fritz agreed, “Of course not.  Ghosts do not exist, despite Christine’s fascination with them.”

John said, “I’d guess we weren’t supposed to figure this out.  As we spent the night here, around three am or so, somebody would come along to give us a good scare to really convince us the ghosts are real.”

Fritz said, “I think you’re right, but nobody has shown up yet.”

John said, “Given what we have found so far, is it worth the bother trying to capture anybody who does show up?”

Craig said, “While you two argue about that, I’d like to look at those bullet holes again, but from the other side.”

“Fine, let’s get out of this attic,” Fritz said.

They went back down.  They went over to the room under where the bullet holes had been visible in the attic.  The holes were visible from this side too.  However, since there was no light in the attic and it was night outside, the holes from this side appeared like little black spots.  A large rectangle on the ceiling had these black holes within it.  The color inside the rectangle was a dingy yellowish white.  There were also cracks and stains within the rectangle.  Outside the rectangle, the ceiling came down another half inch or so.  The rest of the ceiling was a pure flat white, without any stain or crack.

A large plaque on the wall directed the museum guests to look up at the bullet holes, which had been uncovered during the restoration.  Reading the long blurb on the plaque, Craig Peters was surprised to find it discussed the murdered Mr. Rodluck, the convicted murderer Viperly, and even Fritz and John Hardly.  It discussed the shootout when Viperly captured the Hardly Boys, the famous amateur high school detectives.

On another wall in a picture frame behind glass was a copy of a police report about the shootout.  The variable darkness of the letters and general look indicated it had come from a manual typewriter.  Even though he had never actually used a manual typewriter, and barely ever used an electric typewriter, but rather computers and word processors, Craig could still recognize the manual typewriter look.  Craig noticed the police report gave the specific location of the holes in the ceiling, but only gave the ballroom as the location for where Mr. Rodluck had been shot.  Somebody reading this would know where to uncover the ceiling bulletholes, but not where to put the blood spot.

Craig read the date on the police report.  His head swam.  He could feel his heart suddenly pound hard.  He blinked and read the date again.

Craig pointed at the report and asked Fritz, who was closest to him, “What year does that say?”

Fritz read aloud, “ Nineteen twenty-seven .”

John, who had been standing directly under the bullet holes gazing up at them, came over and started reading too.

John snorted and laughed, “I never read the police report before.  It’s got a few errors.  It doesn’t give us much credit.”

“At least it has our names in it.  That’s more credit then we usually get on our cases,” Fritz said.

Craig took a couple steps away from his two friends, then in a shaky voice asked, “What year do you think it is now?”

“Two thousand and four,” John answered immediately.

Craig gazed up at the exposed old part of the ceiling where the bullet holes were.  That part of the ceiling looked truly ancient.  Craig then visibly relaxed.

Craig chuckled and said, “You two set me up but good!  Wow, what a well done trick!  This plaque and police report are very convincing!”

John said with great sincerity, “We didn’t have anything to do with these.  I didn’t even read this police report until tonight.  It’s amusing.”

Craig asked nervously, “Did you have a grandfather or something that was also an amateur detective when in high school?”

John said, “I don’t think so.  I never really looked into it.  Fritz is the one who keeps track of family tree stuff.  You know, those bullet holes don’t look nearly as scary from down here as they did when we were in the attic with Viperly shooting up at us.  I don’t think many people would even realize they were there if it weren’t for that sign.  That, and the holes are obviously in an exposed section of much older ceiling.  Hard to miss that big rectangle.”

Craig protested, “It couldn’t have happened to you!  If that police report was true, that’d make it...let’s see...seventy-seven years ago!”

John said, "For all our many cases during those last eventful seventy-seven years, I was never as scared as when trapped up there with Viperly shooting up at us."

Craig looked again at the metal plaque and police report telling the old story.

Craig then said, "Curious.  It doesn't say anything about you two dying."

"Dying?" John asked in surprise.

Fritz put in, "We weren't even hit, Craig.  We shouted down that we surrendered.  Viperly took us at our word.  We did what we said and surrendered."

John added, "I still thought he was going to kill us.  He might have too, but the police showed up.  It was a huge crowd of them.  It was like the entire U.S. Army came to our rescue.  Other than a few minor bruises, we weren't even hurt.  It certainly was a frightening experience, though."

Fritz asked directly, “Why did you ask about us dying, Craig?”

Rather than looking at his two friends, Craig turned away from them.  He walked over to a window.  Since they were on the top floor of the large mansion and it was built on a large hill, it gave an impressive view.  It was night and the moon was nearly full.  Rather than darkness on the ground, there were many lights.  Lights of cars crawled along on the interstate highway.  There were business buildings still lit up, many eight or more stories tall.  In the distance, he could see the lights of a large shopping mall.  In the residential areas, streetlights followed roads.  Many of the houses had lights on.

Craig said, "If you looked out of this window at night in nineteen twenty-seven , it would have looked very different than it does now in the twenty-first century."

John shrugged and said, "I don't remember looking out.."

Fritz came over by Craig.  Fritz gazed out too and then remarked, "I looked out back then.  That school building over there was around back then, but half the size it is now.  There were already a few houses in that residential area over there.  Perhaps some of those houses are the same.  That interstate highway wasn’t there, of course, but there was a two-lane road in the same spot.  Over where that shopping mall is was all just farms,"

Still staring out the window, Craig muttered, "To think I used to believe only stupid people believed in ghosts."

Fritz put a hand on Craig's shoulder.  Craig jumped as he felt it.  There was no doubt Fritz felt solid.

Fritz said, "It feels like a veil has just been ripped away.”

“I feel that too,” John agreed.  “It is not a pleasant feeling.  Kind of like having duct tape on your skin that was yanked off.  All inside the head, though.”

Fritz announced, “We didn't die in that shootout in 1927.  All the bullets missed us, as we told you.”

"You might be wrong.  You might not realize you are ghosts," Craig said.

Fritz declared, "We’re not ghosts."

Craig turned from the window to stare at his two friends.  He angrily snapped, “How dim do you think I am at putting together clues?  You two are supposed to be amateur detectives still in high school.  Oh, my goodness!  How could I not realize this until now?  You two are still in high school!  That’s impossible!”

John said, “Sure, we’re still in high school.  In about a month, Fritz and I are starting our Senior year.  We told you that back at the pizza restaurant.  What’s strange about that?”

Craig shuddered, then resolutely said, “You were also in your Senior year of high school when I was in my Senior year of high school.  I am about to enter my Senior year of college, but you tell me that you are about to start your Senior year of high school again!”

John said, "We were in our Sophomore year when this shootout happened at this Mansion on the Mound.  We didn't start repeating the same year of high school until a couple years later."

Craig asked with some surprise, "You aged after the shootout here?"

John said, "Certainly.  I was fifteen back then, and Fritz was sixteen.  Only later did our ages freeze after we became seventeen and eighteen."

"Then what happened here couldn’t be what made you two ghosts," Craig concluded.

 

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.