American Vampire (Page 35)

The lighting could be adjusted, I could see. The young lady had had it as high as it would go. Again, I didn’t blame her. I reached over and turned it down low. No doubt Eddie – if Eddie was indeed watching me back in the control room – wondered why the hell I had done that. I wondered if he would believe me if I told him that it was to better see the ghost of Mr. Wharton.

Now with the room mostly in deep shadows, my senses sprang to life. Granted, it was still daytime, and I wouldn’t be fully alive and alert until the sun set, but the cool darkness in the back room was the next best thing and I was feeling a little better.

I headed deeper into the room. The air around me was electrified. Little squigglies of light danced before my eyes. These supercharged particles emanated a glow that only I could see and it gave the room added light. At least for me.

All of my senses told me that I was alone in the back room. I walked slowly down the center aisle. I felt my mind reaching out before me, searching for something both physical and non-physical.

I was getting a lot of feedback. I sensed strange energy around a lot of the artifacts, for instance. Some of these relics had been acquired over the years – not necessarily by the museum, but by others – through force or coercion. These artifacts had a lot of negative energy around them, a darkness that surrounded them. Cursed, perhaps. Other artifacts and pieces of art had a lot of bright energy buzzing around them, light particles that swarmed like bees around a beehive, and I realized these were aspects of the owners’ souls still attached to the artifacts. Perhaps forever attached.

Owner and art forever linked.

These were strange concepts that I was only now beginning to understand through my own strange second sight.

I soon found myself standing in the very aisle where the freezer box was located. There was still yellow police ‘caution tape’ around it. Although the police had gathered all the evidence they could early this morning, they could – and probably would – come back for a follow-up investigation, with the hope of acquiring additional evidence. Of course, the tape itself meant little to someone determined to tamper with the evidence. I wasn’t going to tamper with the evidence.

Instead, I just stood there, getting a feel for the place. A man had died here not too long ago and I idly wondered where his spirit had gone. Was he still here, roaming the museum with Mr. Wharton?

I didn’t know, but there was some strange energy around the ice box, and it very well could have been his spirit, but the energy was scattered and without much shape. I suspected the murdered security guard had gone on to wherever most spirits go on to.

It was then that I knew I was being watched, and not just by Eddie in the control room. Something had appeared behind me. Something that caused the hair on my neck to stand up.

I turned and was not very surprised to see a figure taking shape behind me. A human-shaped nexus gathered the surrounding light particles the way a black hole attracts all the heavenly bodies around it. Unlike a black hole, these light particles didn’t disappear into a dimension occupied by only Charlie Sheen and Mel Gibson. These light particles formed a shape I readily recognized.

Mr. Bernard Wharton.

And when the last of the particles morphed into the shape of a fedora sitting slightly askew on its head, the entity before me nodded. I did the only thing I could think of and nodded back. In the control room, Eddie was getting quite a show. What Eddie made of the show, I didn’t know or care.

And because I knew there wasn’t any sound being recorded, I felt free to speak. "You know who killed the guard, don’t you, Mr. Wharton?"

The figure before me didn’t react at first, but then finally nodded, almost reluctantly.

I was about to ask the rather pointed question of who had killed the guard, but now the ghost was moving, flitting down the hallway and into another, darker room. I assumed I was meant to follow him and so I did – into the same dark room.

I didn’t bother with the lights. I could see that we were in the shipping and receiving room. I knew this because there was a huge plastic bag filled with Styrofoam popcorn hovering over one of the tables, the shipping table, I presumed. There were computers, and crates and other random knickknacks. The room obviously doubled as a sort of storage room, too, with brooms and mops and cleaning supplies propped near the door.

Mr. Wharton led me deeper into the room to a work station off in the far corner. Random boxes were piled here, most of them opened and discarded. There were also packing supplies here and other boxes that appeared ready to be shipped.

He floated over to one of the boxes. I followed behind and looked down. The box was packed and taped, but the recipient hadn’t yet been filled out. Correction, there was a single letter on the box, an "M", followed by a squiggly line, as if the writer had lost heart.

Or been scared to death.

Mr. Wharton stood next to me. Some of his crackling energy reached out to me, attaching itself to me, and as it did so, something very strange started to happen.

Flashing images appeared in my thoughts. Images I had never seen before. Images that weren’t mine. Memories that weren’t mine

They were his images. His memories. Mr. Wharton’s.

I saw a flash of a security guard wearing gloves and working on an electrical panel. Perhaps the panel that powered the security cameras. I recognized the guard easily enough, especially since I had found him dead in the cold storage box.

The next flash. Now the guard was standing over this very box, writing something, when his head suddenly snapped around, eyes thoroughly spooked.

The next image was the same guard heading through the back room. He was following me, but he wasn’t really following me. He was following Mr. Wharton. And for good reason.

Every now and then Mr. Wharton would knock something over, and each sound would cause the guard to jump…and consequently to investigate further. Deeper into the bowels of the back room.

Toward, I saw, the cold storage freezer.

Something else fell over – a marble Buddha, I think – and the guard nearly jumped out of his skin. But he continued on, doggedly, perhaps driven by fascination, or perhaps driven by the sick realization that tonight wasn’t going according to plan. That someone was watching him. That someone knew what he was up to. Perhaps at any other time he would have turned away in fear. But not tonight. No, tonight – or rather, the night in question – he continued forward, inevitably, toward Mr. Wharton and the ice box.

Thad the security guard paused when he heard another noise. A noise that came from the ice box itself. A thumping, knocking sound. I even had a brief, flashing image of Mr. Wharton reaching down through the box and rapping something inside.