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Part IV: Ghosts of the Past
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2016- 10:00 PM
A black rectangle of compact plastic, two white wheels on one side, corresponding to two transparent lenses on the reverse, showing reels of sleek black tape. A rectangular impression between the lenses sported a white sticker on which had been written, in neat black in in handwriting that was not that of the deceased Letitia Higgs (at least, not according to her grandson), 'JM RE: Wren Lake '93'.
"All that..." Tony muttered, turning the thing over in his hand, "For a VHS tape?"
"You were hoping for a philosopher's stone?" asked Anne, not turning from the road ahead of her, navigating the dark road with expert precision.
"It's just...the random deaths, and the whisper-talk and all the riddles, not to mention the absolute hell I've been put through over that stupid box, and..." he groaned, "I can't! And why '93? My aunt died a year later, why would Gran even have..."
He trailed off.
"There's only one way to find out, I suppose," Anne muttered, putting the car in park, "Watch it."
She unlocked the car, looking out the window at the imposing, darkened edifice of George Washington High, "Come on, you two."
"Breaking into the school...Never did this before," Jamie got out of the car, and asked, "Do you have a key?"
"Why would you want to?" asked Tony.
"Dad has a key," Anne said smoothly, reaching into one of the many little pockets on her plain gray greatcoat, "Several."
She retrieved a sizable keyring, "Sarah has her own set. I don't know what he thought we'd use them for. 'Just in case', he said."
"Funny how that works out."
"Hilarious," she turned the key in the lock, "Try not to scuff the floors, you know how he gets."
Jamie wiped her feet on the door mat, and walked in.
"If I remember right, we still have VHS players. I helped put them away once, so I think I know where they are."
"The A.V club has a whole set-up, doesn't it?"
"This school has an A.V. club?" asked Tony.
"Well, they did. Budget cuts."
"And there's no other VHS?" Tony asked, "Anywhere?"
"Well, there is one in the rec room at the convent, but I don't think it's wise for us to hang around there more than we must."
She hadn't said that it would be the Tribulation if she were found to have slipped away in the night. As it was, the fact that Eunice's disappearance would surely be noticed before her's was was enough to shake her.
"I agree. That would be a bad idea," replied Jamie as they continued walking.
"Your Grandma withdrew you after Terrence's death, right?"
"Yep," Tony had gotten gamer at repeating the story every time. By now, it was almost rote, "But not just because of the murder. She was crazy pissed that I told all those maniacs in the park who I was. I mean, it's not like I had much of a choice, but I digress."
"She wanted so badly that nobody knew who your aunt was?"
"Oh, she wanted people to remember Auntie Dara just fine! She just didn't want people to know we were kinfolk, or whatever. Once she realized other people knew and there was another killler..." he shrugged, "We were gonna leave town."
"That's..." Anne paused, "That's very strange."
"You don't have to tell me."
"You must've moved around a lot."
"Everywhere, never for any good reason I could find out," he readjusted his bag, looking at the tape inside it, "I swear, this thing better have coordinates to Atlantis."
"It better have the cure for cancer," Jamie remarked, shaking her head. This whole thing WAS ridiculous.
"How exactly did she expect nobody to find out...in Lakewood?"
"Don't ask me," Tony shrugged, "Gran never used her last name. She never even left the house, most of the time. And I've got my Dad's name, which is about the only thing he ever gave me, but that's a whole different sob story..."
He studied his reflection in a trophy case, "I look a bit you like her. You can see in pictures."
"There's a display dedicated to those murders on the third floor," said Anne quietly.
Tony shifted from heel-to-heel, "Hm..."
"Here we are," Anne paused outside the door labeled, A.V Stock, "Jamie, could you lend me some light? There must be fifty keys on this thing..."
"Sure." Jamie pulled out her flashlight and shined it on the keys.
It took some doing, but Anne was able to jimmy the right key in the lock.
"No riddles, huh?" asked Tony.
"Secular education must have its perks," Anne switched the light on, figuring there was less concern being spotted in a windowless room.
Cameras and T.V monitors cluttered the tiny space with little regard to order or even basic film rudiments.
"I guess this is what RadioShack must've been like."
"Jamie," said Anne, shining her own phone's light along the shelving, "please tell him to stop making me feel like a crone."
"There's a T.V here!" Tony indicated a boxy analog set on a trolly, "Think it's safe you use these plugs?"
"In general? Probably not. They haven't had the budget to replace the wiring since I was in middle school. But to plug the TV in? Sure, why not?""
She retrieved a dusty black rectangle from the shelf, "Haven't seen one of these in years."
"Every time we saw this, and the TV in class...we knew it would be a good day," Jamie smiled, thinking back to when she had been in school.
"That's very sweet," said Tony thinly, "Is the TV supposed to be burning like a stove?"
"Energy economics are a fairly recent innovation," Anne hooked the recorder up to the monitor, grimacing as she picked cobwebs out of the inputs, "Alright...the tape, please?"
"Uh-uh!" Tony held it up, "I'm putting this bun in the oven."
Anne blinked, "Whatever makes you happy."
"Do you think I should pee first?"
"Do you need to?"
"Well, no, but what if whatever's on the tape makes me need to..."
"Put the tape in the machine, Tony."
"Putting the tape in the machine."
The tape was put into the machine.
"It's on Channel 3, right?"
"Just a bit with the tuning..."
The screen was all black and white haze.
"Tell me the tape's been wiped!" Tony crossed his arms.
"No," Anne put her ear close to the recorder, "There's just nothing on the tape. Or at least not..."
A click, and an image flashed onto the screen.
"...that part," finished Anne, hastily shushed by Tony.
A man sat at a table in a sparsely decorated, dark room. The poor lighting made it as difficult to make out his features as the area around him, but it was clear he had blond hair. His hands were the smooth, delicate hands of a young man.
"Is it recording?" he asked.
There was no answer given, but someone must've been given some affirmative, because he promptly picked up again.
"My name is Jason Murray. I was St. George Prep, Class of '89. And I was at Wren Lake the day the Gypsy drowned."
Jamie was quiet as it started playing.
Murray...she had heard that name before.
"That is...we called him the gypsy. I understand now, it...it wasn't the proper thing to do."
A heavy sigh.
"His name was Danior Romansik. Tiny, swarthy boy. Very small for his age. He was from a poor family. St. George's had taken him in as a sort of project, to make the rest of us boys feel better about ourselves. I don't know about his parents, but I suppose he must've have one."
There was a silence.
"We picked on him, the way boys do. It was St. George's! It was a right of passage. Freshers would have to climb the statue of the dragon and stand on one foot, reciting the school song," a tiny, sad sing-song, "'Boys of St. George Preparatory/Ever fight for honor and glory...'"
He sighed, "Honor and glory..."
The tip skipped. When it returned to the man, he was mid-sentence.
"It was June, '88. I was 17, and was to be a senior. Drunk on youth and...my good looks. They called me the Argonaut, because that Jason was supposed to be a looker as well."
An indistinct voice asked a question.
"They? Yes, the others..." there was a pause, "I hope you know what they'd do to me if I they knew I named them?"
He sighed, lowering his head, "Of course. It...it doesn't matter anyway."
"I never heard about that," she whispered to Anne.
Where had she heard that name before?
The tape skipped again.
"...his idea,"
"Who's idea?" asked Tony, who was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, rapt as a kid. Anne looked at him reproachfully.
"Put the little gypsy boy in his place. Make him prove he belonged at St. George's. Trial by fire...sink or swim."
A long silence.
"He sank. I remember it even now...flailing in the water, the cries, the screams..."
Another skip.
"...thought it was very funny. He was laughing. Smith didn't think it was funny, no, he was all over protesting...the trouble we'd be in, they'd have our heads.
"I was the one who noticed when he went quiet. He just was there, on the water...until he wasn't."
A question had been asked.
"I dove in, to find the body. I'd had some lifeguard training. To...impress girls. I dove right to the bottom of that lake..."
A heavy, broken sigh, "There was nothing there. I will swear it till the day I die...his body was nowhere to be found."
"Smith...as in Fitz Smith?"
"Can you shut..."
"Shh!"
"We swore to keep it secret, after. The six of us. His idea. Nobody could connect us to it, if we all kept quiet. And soon his disappearance would be written off. Who would miss a tiny little gypsy boy anyway?"
The tape skipped again.
"...wanted to forget it ever happened. There were bigger things in store. Business, politics...I had my own plans."
There was a long, labored silence.
"Devlin was the boldest about it. The most brazen. He had already graduated, with..."
The tape skipped.
"And he had a...a girl. They were living together. Pissed the hell out of his parents, but I'm sure that appealed to him."
A short silence. Another question was asked.
"I won't repeat that story. It's public record. And I know nothing that wasn't in the papers."
For the first time, the questioner's voice could be heard, however faintly, "Nothing?"
A long silence.
"...she was pregnant. Devlin's girl. Victoria was her name. She'd told me the week before."
A soft question.
"Who do you think I am? No, Devlin was a charming pig and creep, but he was my friend and..."
When Murray next spoke, his voice was tiny and choked by tears, "There was no reason for her to die too. That's what I don't understand. It's why...when they said it was some...some domestic explosion, I wanted to believe it..."
"The others didn't?"
"Some did. But..."
Skip.
"...the seaweed. How do you explain the seaweed?"
"Seaweed?" the questioner sounded truly interested for the first time.
"Whatever you call it when it's from a lake. Green plant that grows at the bottom. They found a whole wad of it, stuffed down Devlin's throat."
"It's not in the autopsy..."
"It isn't. But I was there. I saw. And I saw those same weeds on the bottom of that lake. And I knew."
He nodded, "God help me, I knew."
The tape cut out.
Jamie leaned back, eyes widened. Was that what this was about? A kid who supposedly drowned out for revenge?
"I'm confused," said Tony.
"Welcome to the club," Anne took the tape out.
"That's it?"
"That's it," she studied the label, "So J.M is Jason Murray, '93 must've been when this interview was recorded...Wren Lake..."
"Is where the boy drowned," said Tony, "The...gypsy or whatever," he got to his feet, "A lot of...the end was missing."
"Someone's edited the tape," she nodded, "You can tell, names were removed."
"Not all of them! The...the guy that died. Devlin. And...Smith, whoever he is."
"Fitz Ulick Kasper Smith, most likely."
Tony frowned, "Like...the kid that died at the park?"
"His father. He would've been at St. George's around that time. But this business with the boy who drowned, and...and the body never being found..."
"It's like Brandon James," Tony said softly, "They never found him either."
"Wait a minute," Jamie snapped her fingers, "I knew I recognized that last name. Wasn't Audrey's girlfriend Rachel Murray? Is Jason her Dad?"
Anne pressed her mouth shut, "I had...thought that when watching. Somehow it makes all the sense in the world and none at all."
She turned to Jamie, "Rachel was a student of mine, she...was in my homeroom."
She didn't add that it was only for all of two months before she died. It went without saying.
"Her parents would come to the Parent-Teacher nights and things like that. Her mother's something of a..." her mouth quirked, "Forceful presence. I never took much note of the father, but that he went to St. George's I have no doubt. Most men who marry St. Mary's girls did."
"Maybe we should pay him a visit. See if he can explain it more."
"What?" prompted Tony, "Just knock on his door and ask 'Hey, about that ghost kid from thirty years ago..."
"There's another thing," said Anne, "Whoever made this tape must have made it for a reason."
"That wasn't my Gran asking the questions," said Tony, "Nuh-uh. Why would she have? It'd be a year until my aunt died and she had an excuse to go crazy."
"But why did she want it? And why sit on it? This...this tape implicates a bunch of high school boys in a heinous crime!"
"And kinda sorta turns into Ghost Adventures by the end."
"Well we have to do something," Jamie crossed her arms. It made no sense, "Your Aunt went to this school. She probably wouldn't have even met any of these guys, right?"
"The hell do I know?" asked Tony, "I never knew her and Gran never talked about her and..."
"I think you have a point," Anne turned to Jamie, "Mr. Murray is our best bet."
"It's the middle of the night," said Tony, "Why would he speak to us?"
Anne pursed her lips, "There's also the fact that I don't know where to find him. He and his wife separated not long after Rachel died. She kept the house. I'm not sure if he's even still in town."
"Would she know where to find him?"