Bettina stared out the car window, up at the imposing Victorian mansion with the moon rising behind it. Someone had made the unfortunate mistake of painting it black. It looked like something out a children’s Halloween storybook. Shutters hung at haphazard angles, waiting for a strong wind to catch hold and send them flying. The idea of walking across the compromised structure of the slumped porch made her blood run cold, but her friends Amanda and Charity were testing her new resolve not to live in fear, and she would see it through.
As the new girl in Glennbluffs, a small tourist town on the Mississippi side of Iowa, she was happy to have made friends so easily and she didn’t want to let them down. She hoped this was going to be the first of many new experiences for her. In California, fun on a Friday night never included a ghost hunt unless you were watching it on TV.
Charity knocked on the glass. “Bettina, get your skinny ass out of the car.”
Despite the fact they were all on a collision course with their thirties, Bettina’s friend looked like a pinup, roller-derby chick with a thing for Rainbow Brite. For today’s ensemble, she had dyed her hair electric blue and tied it up with a red bandana that matched her cherry bomb lipstick, à la Rosie the Riveter. Charity dressed as though unconcerned with the nip in the air that came with autumn. The sleeves of her chambray button-down were rolled up and she had belted her denim shorts with a skinny red belt. She finished the look with high-heeled tennis shoes that looked like crayons threw up.
As ordered, Bettina got out of the car. Her colorful friend pranced over to the van parked ahead of her own silver Prius.
Charity reminded Bettina of home, which is probably why Bettina had gravitated to her for friendship and the reason Bettina put up with her crass way of ordering her around. Outsiders in a small town stuck together.
Amanda poked her dark head out from between open doors at the back of her van. Bettina’s conservative friend stood out with her stark devotion to wearing all black and her severely layered hairstyle. Amanda was a local—or had been. She didn’t have to be an outsider. But she’d gone to the big city for beauty school and came back to her town with a decidedly modern attitude that many of the old timers resented. She hadn’t told Bettina why she’d come back but that was okay. Bettina hadn’t shared that she was hiding from her ex-husband.
“Glad you’re here,” Amanda said. “You can help me with some of this stuff.”
Amanda hopped down from the back, then lugged out two black cases on rollers. She shoved the largest case towards Charity before taking up a massive coiled extension cord that ran back to something inside the van.
“What’s this all for?” Bettina asked as she scurried over to help.
She grabbed the remaining rectangular hard case and began pushing it up the sidewalk towards the house. With each step, she resisted the urge to scan every bush or tree up and down the street for danger. There was safety in numbers.
“Computer monitors, video cameras, hand held audio recorder….”
Bettina cut Amanda off. “Do we really need all of this?”
“Duh.”
“Of course.” The two women answered over each other.
Charity used her box on wheels like a surfboard, shoving off with one foot and balancing her stomach on top as she glided past Amanda and Bettina. The front wheels hit the bottom wooden step, sending Charity lurching forward. She planted her feet on the ground and grabbed the edge of the box to keep from falling off.
“Stop clowning. It’s time to get some work done,” Amanda grumbled as she marched up the wood stairs. Each board groaned in protest as she went.
Bettina stared warily at the steps, watching intently as Charity lumbered up dragging her box after her. If rickety wood planks could stand her friends’ abuse, they could stand her meager weight. Gingerly she placed one foot on the step and then another. When the board held, she dared herself to try the next step and then the next until she found herself next to her friends at the top.
Charity’s eyebrow rose in question. “Afraid the steps are gonna bite you?”
Bettina shrugged. “More like cave in.”
“Come on,” Amanda said. She had unclipped a large ring of keys from the handle of Charity’s equipment case and used them to open the door. “We need to get set up.”
Amanda walked inside, trailing the cord after her without waiting to see if they would follow. Charity winked and went in, leaving Bettina standing there alone. Bettina couldn’t bring herself to go into the darkness beyond the door as her friends so easily did. She shifted her weight back and forth, causing the porch to let out an ominous moan like a distressed whale. It was incentive enough to propel her feet through the door, dragging the rolling case after her.
“Amanda? Charity?” Consumed in her own fear, she hadn’t watched which direction they’d gone. From the corner of her eye, Bettina caught a glimpse of movement on her right. She turned to find a carved wooden banister and wide staircase looming before her, illuminated by the moonlight through the open door as if this path had been marked just for her.
There was a tap on Bettina’s shoulder.
“What are you looking at?” Amanda asked.
Bettina whipped around and lost her balance in the process. She steadied herself on the rolling case. “It was nothing. Just thought I saw something.”
“Don’t be so antsy. You’re probably not going to see much until we review our footage later. Come help us get set up in the dining room.” Amanda held out a flashlight, which Bettina took gladly and then took over Bettina’s case, leading her away from the stairs.
They passed through what Bettina assumed might have been either the living room or the formal parlor. Floral wallpaper hung on the walls, partially scraped off in places and in others hanging in limp sheets as though the glue had given up the ghost. Heavy velvet drapes sagged, blocking out the ambient streetlight. Furniture sat stacked back in a corner, covered with a sheet that had yellowed with age.
The second parlor had a different color palette than the first, or so it seemed in the dim glow of the little light she carried. In the darkness, it was difficult to tell. It might have been the lack of dust-covered furniture or the atmosphere itself that gave the perception.
In the dining room, a rickety folding table had been set up or left behind by someone. A single portable work lamp stood sentinel over it, shining down on the equipment Charity had already made a dent in unpacking. Equipment she had no name for, along with the promised cameras and tape recorders, littered the makeshift station. She couldn’t imagine what was left in this last smaller case. Amanda flipped it up onto the table and pulled out three flashlights and the largest laptop Bettina had ever seen.
“What is that for?” Bettina asked.
Flipping the monstrosity open, Amanda didn’t look up as she started the process of logging in. “I brought it in case there was any footage we want to check right away. If you think you hear something or see something we can download it and watch it on the full screen.”
They seemed to take this so seriously. Bettina considered the money they must have invested in equipment and then her gaze landed on the power cord that led back outside to the van. Dang, they even had their own generator. Bettina reached up, twisted her hair into a ponytail in a nervous gesture, and then released it as she rocked from one foot to the other, suppressing the urge to flee. This was just a lark, she told herself—at least it was for her. They wouldn’t find anything. She didn’t believe in this sort of thing. That’s why it was safe to come out with the girls. It was a harmless adventure.
Amanda looked up at her from the laptop, her eyes narrowed. “You remember what we talked about right? You gonna make it?”
Bettina nodded, but she felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “No freaking out. It corrupts the evidence. I can hold it together. I promise.”
Already lost in her work, Amanda nodded her acceptance of the answer.
Bettina had spoken honestly. She could hold her tongue, had done so before in more dire circumstances. Certainly a little fright wouldn’t make her scream, but her friends didn’t know that about her, and she was keen to keep it that way.