The Body Departed

“Yes!” he said, clapping. “Yes, let’s have some fun!”

34

I recognized the school secretary there, too, conferring with a small group of the Ghost Detectives directors and producers.

Had she arranged all of this? I suspected so. Ghost sightings, undoubtedly, had been on the rise in the church and school since my arrival. And perhaps my presence here had prompted more activity from Jacob as well.

Standing next to the secretary was the school principal, a tall, distinguished-looking lady drinking her own Starbucks coffee and looking very concerned—no doubt wondering what the hell she had agreed to.

I would have been concerned, too.

Interestingly, there were no mediums in the group. I would have thought ghost detecting involved a good medium, but what the hell did I know? I was just a spook. Anyway, with no medium in the group, I was able to flit among them sight unseen, with Jacob trailing behind like a ghostly duckling.

I worked my way over to the corner of the room, near the teacher’s desk, where the quartet of stars had isolated themselves away from the rest of the crew. The guy with the ponytail was adamantly arguing his point that he should investigate the nave. Turned out they all wanted to investigate the parish; in particular, they all appeared to want a close-up shot with a bloody Jesus Christ hanging over their shoulder. Ponytail smugly won out in the end by pulling rank. It seemed to me that the show was more about getting close-ups of its stars than about hunting ghosts. Big surprise.

Well, they were about to get a surprise. Perhaps the surprise of their lives.

Showtime.

35

It was midnight. The witching hour. Or, in this case, the haunting hour.

With cameras rolling, the secretary gave the crew—along with Jacob and me—a tour of the brightly lit school and cathedral. She gave a rundown of the many unexplainable sights and sounds the parishioners and students and teachers had all seen or heard, and by the end of the tour, I was damn well convinced the place was haunted.

Once the tour was done, the cast and crew created a sort of storyboard for how they wanted the show to flow. The plan was basic: the teams would split in two, with one group filming primarily in the cathedral and the other in the school and administrative offices. The teams might overlap, depending on what evidence was discovered or whether personal experiences needed to be confirmed or validated. Most of the ghost-hunting equipment would be used in the cathedral, since it was not only the most visually stunning room, but where most of the unexplainable sightings had occurred. The team investigating the administrative offices, where I had been spotted, and adjacent school and classrooms, where Jacob did most of his haunting, would be given limited equipment. Ponytail looked smug. He would be getting most of the camera time this episode, and it obviously pleased him.

At any rate, I approved of the game plan. Made sense to me. Of course, no one asked me.

And because I could, as the crew was preparing to split for this evening’s investigation, I leaned over and kissed the female star square on the lips.

Her eyes widened immediately. “Did someone just turn on the AC?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. Why?” asked the young director.

“I just got a cold blast of air in my face.”

That seemed to get everyone’s attention. The director came over and felt the air around her. I had stepped off to the side and watched the proceedings with some interest, and maybe a little humor. He had some of the others feel the air around her, then proclaimed, rather dramatically, that there was no cold breeze coming from anywhere.

“But look at my arm,” she said, pushing up her sleeve.

They all did. So did I. Her forearm, I saw, was covered in gooseflesh. The young director, no dummy, got a camera over to her ASAP. And as they filmed both of her arms, I walked straight through the director himself.

He convulsed and nearly doubled over. “Sweet Jesus! Something just went right through me.” He shoved up his own sleeve. “Look.”

We all looked. It, too, was covered in goose bumps. The same cameraman took some footage of the director’s mottled skin as well.

Ah, TV at its best.

A ripple of excitement was now spreading through the crew. I heard the murmurings: perhaps they were going to have a good show, after all.

Little did they know…

With the whole crew buzzing in anticipation, the investigation began. Cameras began rolling. Ponytail, who appeared to be the Ghost Detectives leader, looked each of his investigators directly in the eye and intoned ominously, “Let’s go black.”

Apparently, that meant to kill the lights. Which they all did. Last time I checked, ghosts didn’t stop existing or start existing because of the absence, or presence, of light. Hell, we derive much of our energy from lights—especially the light of the sun, which we sort of feed off of. So killing the lights was counterproductive, although it made for better TV. Then again, no one asked me. Typical.

As one team headed for the administrative office, Ponytail and a good-looking kid split off toward the cathedral, trailed by two cameramen.

And, of course, two ghosts.

36

Ponytail, who had the annoying habit of dramatically flipping his namesake over a shoulder whenever he turned his head, was extremely thin and sinewy and had skin so orange it looked nearly radioactive. The color probably looked good on camera, even if it scared small children in line at Baskin-Robbins.

Admittedly, I didn’t like him; in fact, I might have irrationally hated him.

Hey, ghosts are allowed to be irrational.

The other guy was okay. He was younger, humbler, and better looking. He also seemed to take this ghost-hunting business a little more seriously. He was also mildly sensitive, the closest thing they had to a medium. Every now and then, his eyes would drift over in my direction, linger, and then look away. He knew something was there, but he didn’t know what, and he also didn’t know if he could fully trust his extrasensory perceptions.

In this case, yes, he could very much trust them.

With Jacob already looking bored, I followed the two ghost detectives and their cameramen into the nave. And since nobody held the doors open for Jacob and me, we simply walked through them.

Once inside the main chapel, the cameramen swept their powerful lights over the pews and stage and podium. In the dark, everything looked appropriately creepy.

The two detectives separated to cover more of the chapel. Ponytail and his cameraman headed up to the stage, while the younger guy and his cameraman headed toward the rear pews.

I followed Ponytail.