Chapter 4

The group sat around in silence as Ella rifled through her notebook. The sun had sank entirely below the horizon and the first glimpse of night could be seen in the sky. Since Ella's story had ceased, they all became acutely aware of the vastness of the place and, more startling, how completely empty it was. The only thing that broke up the deafening silence was the soft rustling of leaves in the gentle summer breeze.

As they watched the deep orange of the sunset blend with the night, there was a sense that the evening was almost too nice for them to be there, sitting amongst all the desolate gray colors of the tombstones. However, Ella wasn't bothered by the lack of ambiance in the slightest. Taking another sip of coffee, she placed the recorder in the center of their haphazard circle and looked up to make a dramatically serious look at Scott and Nell, who sat across from her.

"Alright, I figured that I'd be the one doing most of these but I'll lay out the basics so you guys can take some too." She instructed. "Basically I'm going to have the recorder going and ask some questions out loud to any spirits that might hear it. I'll leave a ten second pause after every question. I have a list of basic questions to ask and some ones to avoid."

"Why are we avoiding some?" Nell asked.

"Because some things might provoke the ghosts or make them upset and they won't respond then." She answered.

"Ok, guess that makes sense. What are we avoiding?"

"Anything about how they died, anything insulting to them, or any kind of challenge."

"Got it. Why don't you just start one then." Mac suggested.

"Ok, just remember to stay quiet and if anything like a bird or a car makes noise I'll say that on the recorder so I don't mistake it for anything else." They agreed and she pressed the record button.

"Hello....Is there anyone here?.......What's your name?" She waited, glancing up at the space in the middle of them as though something might suddenly manifest itself there. "You can answer me, this recorder might pick up your voice.....Can you hear me?..paper..." she added as she had nudged a sheet in her stack.

She hit the button again to end the recording. "Ok, now lets see if we picked up anything." She rewound the player and and started the recording. 'Hello....' her voice played back 'Is anyone there?....' There was a low muffled static that ran throughout the whole recording, undoubtedly caused by the cheapness of the recording device. It didn't mean anything, but somehow it seemed to make the silences between her questions sound eerie. It added an anxiety to listening, a thought that something might break the static. There was a scraping sound, '..paper...' it finished and then the click that signaled the end of the recording.

"Well that was, uh...interesting." Scott said, breaking the silence.

"You have to do it more than once." Ella insisted. "I'll try one more time for now and then we can walk around to other sites."

She set the recorder back on the ground and pressed record. "My name's Ella, I want to talk to you....Do you know where we are?.....How old are you?...."

"--Just say something if someone's there..." Mac interrupted.

Ella glanced at him with a look of mild disapproval but she lacked the full contempt to end the recording. "Are you alone?...." she continued. A bird chirped nearby. "..bird..." Ella added before ending the recording.

"Hope you didn't talk over a response." She said to Mac pointedly, rewinding the recording and playing it back. 'My name's Ella, I want to talk to you...' there was a high murmur on the recording and Ella quickly paused it and stared at the device in surprise.

"Did you hear that?" She asked the rest of them who looked almost equally surprised. She wound the tape back and grabbed some earphones from her bag. She plugged them into the player to hear it better and listened to the first part again.

The group watched her as she looked inquisitively into the distance.

"It sounds like it's saying 'I'm Kay' or 'I'm Kate'" she said handing it over to Mac. "Listen."

Mac put the headphones on and played the part again. "It could be 'I'm Jay' too." He said.

"Yeah I guess, but it's high pitched, like it's a younger girl." Ella countered.

"Let me hear." Scott insisted. Mac handed the player over to him.

He listened with intense focus painted on his face, "It could be anything." He said when it finished.

"Like what?" Ella asked. "You have to admit it sounds kind of like a voice."

"Just unplug the headphones and play the rest of it." Nell interrupted, not wanting to hear another pointless debate.

Ella pulled out the earphone plug and and turned up the volume. She let it play and they all heard the indistinguishable muttering again. The tape played on, 'Do you know where we are?...' Static and silence. 'How old are you?...' Nothing. Then Mac's interruption, still nothing but static followed. 'Are you alone?...bir--' a loud, deep hissing cut off Ella's note.

The recording clicked off and Ella sat staring at it, aghast.

"What the hell was that?" Mac started.

"It was louder than you." Nell said, still puzzled.

"Uh..." Ella didn't know what to think. She played the end back and they all heard the same loud sound half over Ella's voice. "I don't know but it sounds kind of angry." She answered.

"Should we take another one?" Nell suggested.

"No, we have all night and it wasn't very clear anyway." Ella answered. "Let's check out the haunted stairs. We have to be there right after dusk to see that ghost."

Ella sipped the last of the coffee in the thermos lid and collected her notebook and recorder before placing the container in her backpack side pocket and leaning the bag back on the grass.

"We can just bring a couple things and leave the rest here, I mean the front gate is locked and we're the only ones in this place." She explained.

"You mean," Mac paused in mock drama, "the only living ones."

Ella rolled her eyes, "Yeah, sure, just take it a bit more seriously." She added, "We could actually find something you know."

* * * *

They made their way across the dimming graveyard, up two small hills and to the right where Ella stopped and pointed at a set of stairs that lead up a mound to a set of graves surrounded by a very short stone wall, maybe 4 inches in height. It appeared to be a collection of graves from the same family.

"This is where some people saw the ghost, sitting on these stairs, in a white dress. Some people say she's crying, others that she's just guarding the stairs."

"Yeah that's that famous photograph. The one of her sitting on the stairs." Mac added. The others looked at him inquisitively. "What? It's like one of the best examples of spirit photography." He defended.

"Yeah, that's right. It was taken before digital editing too." Ella agreed. "You do some research yourself?"

"I have a bit of an interest in these things, too." He admitted.

Ella turned her back on her friends and her eyes scanned over the stairs and the graves behind it. She turned back to Mac.

"Okay, why don't you start filming me and I'll explain some more of the story. Maybe we can get something on video."

Mac nodded and pulled the digital camera out of his jean pocket. The lense opened and he pointed it up at Ella who stood to the left of the stairs. He made sure to include both her and the stairs in the frame. The others stood back, not fans of the limelight like Ella was, even if this was just a pointless video that nobody but them would see.

Ella took a breath and Mac motioned for her to start. "Here, right behind me, we see the legendary spirit steps where a translucent lady in white has been reportedly seen on multiple occasions." She motioned toward the steps and took a few steps backwards.

"As the story goes, she can only be seen either around sunrise or shortly after sunset. You can see that here the sun has just gone down and there's only a little light left. Before it gets entirely dark out here, I'm going to attempt to make contact and maybe catch something on video." She turned her back to the camera and faced the stairs, speaking in an abnormally loud voice so the camera would pick it up. "Hello....Is there someone there?" She glanced back and smiled awkwardly at the camera. "What's your name?..." She waited a bit, then resumed her normal position in front of the camera.

"Well maybe something will show up, but there's nothing I can see here now so we'll have to take a look back at the tape." She motioned to Mac to cut the video.

When Ella and Mac had finished, they all huddled around the camera screen and watched the playback carefully. Everyone kept their eyes glued to the stairs in the video, but it appeared to be empty. Halfway through, a leaf blew down the steps and a few of them started before they realized it was nothing. The video ended and they all looked a bit disappointed, that is, everyone but Scott. He looked at Ella rather smugly.

She scowled and took the camera from Mac. Stepping back to get a wide view of the stairs, she snapped about ten pictures in quick succession. She flipped through them as Scott watched over her shoulder.

"Still nothing." Scott said with a smile looking at Ella. Instead of looking disappointed as he expected, however, she had a confused look on her face. She looked back down at the screen and flipped back and forth between a couple pictures.

"What is it?" Nell asked, noticing the worried look of her friend.

"Look." She said, flipping over the camera so the screen side was facing them.

"I don't see anything." Nell insisted.

"Not on the stairs." she pointed to the upper right corner. Small, in the background on a distant hill there was a silhouette that very much resembled that of a person. Nell's eyes got a bit wide.

"Calm down," Mac said grabbing the camera to see for himself, "That could be a tree or a smudge or something."

"Yeah except for this," Ella flipped from that picture to the next one. Everything about it was exactly the same, same positioning of the stairs, same lighting, the only thing that was different was the figure. In this picture, it had vanished.