The Unseen

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

They found it.

They sat in the marble hall with their cell phones, working their way down a county library list Eunetta had helpfully printed out for them. She had further narrowed their options by instructing them to start with the counties’ main libraries first—and some counties had only one. After a mere half hour of calls, they struck gold. In the town of Five Oaks, the library was very familiar with “the old Folger House,” and the librarian said that there were indeed clip files on the house and family.

Brendan was pacing the polished floor with the cell phone. “Yes. Yes. We’ll be there in an hour.”

He punched off with a whoop that echoed through the hall.

Five Oaks was under an hour away, in Moore County, a region known as the Sandhills.

They drove out of town on U.S. 1, and into the green maze. Within minutes there was not a building in sight, just the road and the walls of trees. It was not until the last buildings had disappeared that Brendan asked it.

“So how’d you know?”

Laurel looked over at him from the passenger seat.

“Under an hour. How’d you know it would be that close? Your source again?”

She half-shrugged, shook her head. “I just figured—work-study, student researchers… they weren’t going to take them that far.”

“Hmmm.” He narrowed his eyes and stared out at the road. “I think there’s something you aren’t telling me, Kemosabe.”

Laurel looked out the window at the—trees—and didn’t respond. It was not that she didn’t trust him, it was that she didn’t trust anyone. And yet here she was, driving into the vast green unknown with a total stranger, in search of—

A poltergeist.

The town was a fair distance off the freeway; they had to take several much smaller roads to get there.

“Freeways get built and these towns just die,” Brendan said somberly. In fact the entrance to the town was a surprisingly extensive cemetery, and that after they’d passed several miles of farms and churches with their smaller, private plots. A lot of dead, Laurel thought, and it’s right there on the surface, all the time.

According to the county Web site, the town of Five Oaks had a population of just under three thousand people, but driving through the almost-deserted streets, it was hard for Laurel to imagine where those three thousand people were keeping themselves. It was a quaintly pretty town, though, laid out roughly in a cross. There was a Main Street with old-timey shops, the requisite post office and barbershop and soda fountain, all with a certain Twilight Zone–meets-Mayberry feel.

Brendan had slowed the car and was staring out the windshield with a look of bemusement that matched what Laurel was feeling. “Can you say, ‘time capsule’?”

The town square was in the center, with four startlingly large churches grouped around a nice little park with various Civil War memorial statues and benches, and of course, the ever-present oaks, though there were considerably more than five of them.

The county courthouse was another solid block of marble, and it appeared from the signage that the sheriff’s department was contained in the building. The library was also on the square. Brendan parked (there was a spot right in front of the library building, a circumstance Laurel had only ever seen in the movies), and they walked up the broad gray-white steps to another set of glass-and-bronze-gated doors.

The library was small, but had the feel almost of a college library: a main room with high molded ceilings and long, scarred old wood tables with built-in lamps running down the center. The aisles of books were off to both sides.

A gray-haired and elegant librarian obviously closing in on retirement, if not already past, looked up from the front counter as they walked in. “You must be the Duke people who called.”

“That obvious, huh?” Brendan grinned at her.

“Just a bit,” the librarian answered, wryly. “So you want the clip files on the Folger family.”

“We’d love to look at the town newspapers, too, if you have them. We’re interested in 1965 in particular.” Laurel said.

“Of course. Right this way.” The librarian escorted them to the glassed-in Reference and Periodicals room and pointed them to the shelves of bound volumes of old town newspapers. “In the mid-seventies we started putting the paper on microfilm. Before then—well, the Courier wasn’t really big enough back then, and there’s something about the feel of an old paper, isn’t there?”

Laurel smiled at her. The librarian indicated a row of shelves. “1900 through 1975 are in those shelves. I’ll go pull the clip files for you.”

Brendan grabbed the Courier book for 1965 and he and Laurel sat at the long table to look at the newspapers. First, of course, they flipped to March 13, 1965. Side by side, they scanned the whole paper, and then the papers for the next several months, but there were neither reports of unusual goings-on at the Folger House, nor of any research investigation at the house in the few months after.

“So nothing about the rock showers or any Duke experiment taking place at the house,” Brendan frowned.

Someone cleared her throat behind them and the two of them turned. The librarian stood in the doorway of the Periodicals room, looking distressed.

“I’m very sorry to tell you this, but the clip files on the Folger family are empty.”

Brendan and Laurel exchanged a glance. “There’s nothing at all on the family?” Brendan said, perplexed.

“No, what I mean is—the files have been emptied.” The librarian crossed to the table to show them the manila folders she held in her hand. They were weathered and sprung—the creases of the folders sagging, as if the folders had once been stuffed with documents.

“When did this happen?” Brendan demanded, and Laurel elbowed him.

The librarian shook her head. “There’s no way of telling. Obviously it was never discovered, so we would have no idea how long ago it happened.” She hesitated, then added, “Unfortunately, it happens more often than you would think.”

“Who takes them?” Laurel asked.

The librarian looked rueful. “More often than not, the families themselves. Disappear the dysfunction, so to speak. Obviously it’s easy to do—you two could have walked out with anything you had a mind to, just now, while I was out of the room. I hope you can find what you’re looking for in the newspapers.”

“Do you know the house? I mean, where it is?” Laurel asked.

“I know it’s out Wyndham Road… about six miles out of town. Please let me know if there’s something else I can help you find.” She lifted her hands apologetically, then withdrew.

Brendan looked at Laurel. “So, our cleanup man—or crew—strikes again.”

They both looked around them at the shelves of bound volumes. They hardly had time to go through a whole century of newspapers.

“Police station,” Brendan said decisively. “Let’s find out if that police report was for real.”

The uniformed officer at the police station counter, whose nameplate read “P. Callaghan,” was far too young to know anything about an incident from 1965; in fact was quite possible that even his father had not been born at the time of the year in question. He was freckled and towheaded, if a twenty-something male could be called towheaded, and instantly, obviously smitten with Laurel.

Brendan gave Laurel a nudging sideways glance, and Laurel realized he probably thought she’d get further with the young officer. She was just able to stop herself from shooting Brendan a baleful look. Instead she forced a pleasant and innocent tone into her voice and leaned on the counter with what she hoped was an appealing expression.

“Um. Hi. We’re from Duke University. Dr. Cody and Dr. MacDonald. We’re doing some research into an incident that took place in town, oh, quite a while ago… 1965. We know that there was a police report filed and we’d like to see it.”

“Nineteen-sixty-five,” the young desk officer marveled, as if she were speaking of the Dark Ages.

“We know the date of the report, and we know this incident took place at the old Folger House.” She passed Officer Callaghan a Post-it note with MARCH 13, 1965 and FOLGER HOUSE printed on it, and smiled at him with her best dazzling Hollywood smile. He blushed from the base of his neck all the way up to his scalp, and she knew they were in.

“I’ll go on and check that for you, ma’am. Have to go downstairs for the files.”

“Thank you so much,” she fluttered, channeling some inner Southern belle.

The young officer shuffled toward the back stairs, so flustered he ran into his own desk on the way to the door.

“Cradle-robber,” Brendan said softly beside Laurel, as Officer Callaghan disappeared.

“‘Ma’am’?” she answered back, under her breath. She glanced around the office. There was a bulletin board with business cards for local establishments, a flyer with a forlorn photo of a lost dog, another flyer advertising a dance recital at the elementary school.

“I think we’ve fallen off the map, Mickey,” Brendan said, luckily under his breath, because at that moment Officer Callaghan appeared in the back doorway again. He was carrying a yellowed manila file.

“It was right there in the 1965 files,” the young officer said, sounding surprised. He extended the file across the counter. Laurel and Brendan nearly knocked heads reaching for it. Brendan opened it to reveal what they both instantly recognized as the same report they had already read, but without the blacked-out sections and with numerous accompanying photos.

Officer Callaghan stood solidly in front of them, apparently intending to read the report along with them.

Laurel looked up at him. “Excuse me, officer, but weren’t there others?”

“Others, ma’am?” he blinked at her sleepily.

“Other incidents. Other reports. That’s all that’s in the file?”

“That’s all that’s in the file.”

She smiled at him appealingly. “Is there any way of checking—about other incidents at that same house, the Folger House?”

The young officer looked from her to Brendan. “Uh…”

“Just for that year,” Laurel said, aware that she was simpering. “In fact, even within a month or so. It would help so much.”

“Yes, ma’am. Let me check that for you.” The young officer backed out again.

“You’re scary good at this Mata Hari stuff,” Brendan mumbled. She kicked him under the counter. He grinned.

They bent together and read the file. It was much easier to visualize what had happened with the names restored, and especially with the black-and-white photos of the house included in the file.

The Folger House was actually quite an extensive estate. The first photos were of a large circular gravel drive flanked by two tall stone gateposts, atop which statues of sleek, graceful dogs sat at permanent attention. Beyond the gateposts a dirt road wound into pine woods with no visible neighbors on either side.

The gravel circle led to a large turn-of-the-century house. There was something off about it, though Laurel couldn’t at first see what it was. It was two stories, with a large sleeping porch over the main porch, a brick exterior with white Southern columns and tall shuttered windows. There seemed to be other pieces of houses crowded close to it, but it was impossible to tell from the first photos.

The grounds were surrounded by walls of towering long-needled pines and included extensive gardens.

Laurel looked away from the first photos and read the unredacted report:

There were several photos attached. There were indeed hundreds of rocks scattered on the narrow back stairs of the servants’ house.

Brendan flipped to the next photo. In that one they could see the servants’ house was actually attached to the main house by an enclosed corridor, three or four rooms long. It was an odd, awkward design, and Laurel realized that even though she hadn’t been able to see it from the initial photographs, the oddness of it still registered in front views of the house.

The report continued:

There were photos of the kitchen, and the damage was minor, but still unnerving. Brendan and Laurel looked through close-ups of pieces of a smashed glass plate, and several close-ups of the broken sugar bowl, with small heaps of sugar around it.

That was as far as the page of the report that Brendan had found in the basement files had gone, and both Laurel and Brendan eagerly reached for the second page.

But there was nothing more to the report, only a handwritten note on the next page that read:

They stared down at the page for a moment, then Brendan said under his breath, “Holy shit, Mickey. It really happened. There really was a poltergeist manifestation. This is what Leish was looking into.”

Laurel had a fluttery feeling in her stomach.

There was the sound of someone clearing his throat.

Laurel and Brendan looked up from the file. The freckled young officer was standing in the doorway of the stairs.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, rather formally. “There are no other files in regards to the house. At least, nothing labeled ‘Folger.’”

Brendan glanced down at the folder in front of them “This is all there is?” he asked, wistfully.

“Yessir.”

Brendan looked at the top sheet of the report again. “This Sergeant Cutler and Officer Sorrenti. I don’t suppose they’re still with the department.”

“No sir. Both passed on, now.”

“Do you know anything about the Folger House?” Laurel asked, on a hunch.

“Know where it is.”

“Does anyone live there now?” Laurel asked, trying not to sound too eager.

“Aww, no. Not for years. Supposed to be haunted.” The young officer chuckled, a hollow sound, like whistling in the dark.

Brendan and Laurel looked at each other. Laurel took a breath, then took her best shot at another charming smile. “So how might we find out more about the house?”

The officer blushed to his roots and said, “Real-estate agency? Four doors down from the train depot?”

Brendan looked at Laurel, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes, of course, you’re completely right,” she beamed at the kid, and he blushed crimson again. “Do you think we could get a copy of this report?”

“Heartbreaker. Jezebel,” Brendan observed, sotto, as they walked out, photocopied report in hand.

“Shut up,” she mumbled.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, straightfaced.

She held her smile all the way to the car. When he opened the car door for her, she kicked him.

“So sorry,” she said, and slid into the seat.