Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (top ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“What’s up, Mike?” Billy asked.

“My walkie shit the bed. You got your cell on you?”

“Yeah,” Billy said, pulling his phone out of his shirt pocket. He looked at the screen, then gave Mike a lopsided grin. “Except the battery’s dead. Sorry, bro. Where’s yours?”

Mike held up his own cell, screen black. “Mine went on the fritz almost as soon as we got in here. Sam said it had a short between the leads on the battery case, whatever that means. To me it means another damn six-hundred-dollar phone in the crapper.”

“Maybe you oughta not carry expensive cell phones around where ghosts are supposed to be. They don’t like the tech— Whoa!” Billy jumped and swung the camera back toward the showers. “I know sure as fuck those weren’t all on!” Where seconds before only one showerhead was trickling onto the tile floor, now dozens of streams of water poured from the communal pipes.

“Okay, that’s pretty weird. I’m gonna go in there and check it out,” Mike said.

“Take off all your electronics. I don’t want to listen to Sam if she has to fix your shit again,” Billy cautioned.

“Not that you’re worried about me getting electrocuted, you just don’t want to listen to Sam.”

“Mikey, I am way more afraid of the wrath of Samantha Chima than I am afraid of you getting electrocuted by a nine-volt radio battery. Now take off your gear before you go in there.” Mike did as he was told, stripping off his walkie, headlamp, and portable EMF detector. He handed his EVP recorder over to Billy, who slid it into his fanny pack, having already hooked one into his audio mixer.

“All right,” Mike said, facing the camera. “We’re in the locker room at Jackson High, and in just the few minutes we’ve been here, several of the showers have apparently turned themselves on. I say apparently because we certainly didn’t see anyone do it, and we didn’t do it, and as far as we know, we’re alone in here.”

“Mike, I think we might want to revisit that idea…” Billy said, pointing to a full-length mirror in a corner of the room. One of Mike’s glow sticks was lying at the base of the mirror, illuminating the surface. As the hot water in the showers raised the humidity in the room, the mirror had fogged over almost completely.

Except for the words “GET OUT” written in the fog by what looked like a finger.

“What the fuck?” Mike said.

“I don’t think we can say that on network TV, boss.”

“I don’t think I give a fuck. Did you do that?” Mike asked, turning a sharp glare at the cameraman.

“Dude, I’ve been right here next to you the whole time we been in here, and besides, I didn’t do that.” Billy pointed into the running showers. “So how the fuck am I gonna do that?” He pointed at the mirror.

“Give me my meter,” Mike said, holding out his hand.

“I don’t have it.”

“I just gave it to you,” Mike said.

“Nah, you put it on the bench next to your light.” Billy pointed to the bench, but there was no meter there. Mike’s walkie-talkie was there, his dead cell phone was there, his flashlight and wallet were lying right where he left them, but no EMF meter.

“Well, where the fuck is it now?” Mike demanded.

Billy scanned the room with his camera light, finally stopping at the entrance to the showers. “It’s in there,” he said, pointing into the showers.

“The fuck. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I’m getting my shit and we’re fucking leaving,” Mike said, sliding his dead cell phone into his pocket and stomping into the shower.

“Oowww, motherfucker! That shit is hot, goddammit!” Mike cursed as he stomped over to the EMF detector, lying in a puddle in the center of the shower room. “That was a five hundred dollar fucking EMF detector, too. Now it’s a piece of wet junk.” He reached down and grabbed the detector, steadying himself on one of the columns that dotted the room with showerheads sticking out of them. The second he touched the EMF detector with his hand still on the shower column and his feet soaked in a puddle on the dingy tiles, a bright blue spark leapt from his hand to the puddle of water, and Mike’s back arched, his mouth open in agony. The spark flashed into life like a lightning bolt trapped indoors, momentarily blinding Billy and throwing him backward to the floor. His head slammed into the hard tiles, and his camera went sliding across the smooth floor, coming to rest in a corner of lockers and sending crazy shadows across the room with its light.

“Mike?” Billy said from the floor. He lay there for a second, feeling his head to see if he was bleeding, then generally flexing and twisting to make sure he hadn’t injured anything seriously in the fall. After a few seconds of self-examination, he decided nothing was broken and stood up to get his camera. “Mike?” he called again. “Where you at, boss?” He picked up his camera, turned it over in his hands a few times looking it over in the dim light of the glow sticks and Mike’s headlamp, then put it back on his shoulder and pressed his eye to the viewfinder.

Billy panned the camera around the room, the onboard light and low-light filter bringing the room into sharp relief, if with a green tint to everything. He scanned the room once, then tilted the camera down and almost dropped it as the light illuminated Mike’s still form lying in the shower. Billy set the camera down gently onto the bench, aiming the light into the shower room, then ran across the room to his friend, stopping at the edge of the puddle Mike’s prone body lay in.

“Mike?” Billy asked, looking around for a dry spot in which to step into the room. Somewhere in the back