Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(26)

“And become vampires?” Betts asked. “As in the Savannah Vampire?”

The woman fell silent, thrown off her stride by the interruption. “Well, I don’t know. The Savannah Vampire is an entirely different legend, and—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Betts said. He turned to Gannon. “We can edit that down later.”

Gannon made a mental note to be sure Betts didn’t edit it out completely.

“On me in five.” The host’s features morphed once again into a smile as the cameras swiveled back in his direction. “And now,” he said as they once again started rolling, without bothering to thank Mrs. Fayette, “Dr. Moller will direct the extraordinary power of his equipment on the very place of the killing, at the very time it occurred, to detect and—with any luck—photograph the spiritual disturbance.”

Moller’s oscilloscope was now plugged in, a green sine wave lazily tracing across the screen. He picked up the silver dowsing wand in both hands, its high polish glittering in the lights. Slowly, with the two cameras following his every move, he walked in a circle around the area below the abraded beam. Meanwhile, the grandfather clock at the far end of the hall tolled out midnight.

A hush had fallen. Even Gannon, who was almost positive this was bullshit, felt a shiver creep down her spine. Between takes, the lighting had been progressively lowered and made indirect. It was a technique as old as nitrate film stock, but it was still effective. The setting was equally atmospheric, with ugly old Victorian furniture, cracked mirrors, and worn carpets. Both Grooms and Fayette were standing in the background, looking on. Fayette, obviously displeased at having been cut off so brusquely, had her phone out and appeared to be texting someone.

The twelve strokes of the clock echoed and faded away. Silence returned. Moller paced back and forth in the hallway like a sentry. After ten minutes he stopped, laid down the dowsing rod, and took up the slab of obsidian. He held it up and peered through it, looking this way and that, for what seemed an eternity. He finally put it back down on the velvet sheet.

“What is it?” Betts asked. “What have you found? Are you going to take photos?”

Moller did not respond. Instead, he said, “Take me to the room where the coachman cut his throat.”

“Right this way,” Grooms said. Moller took up the wand and obsidian while the assistants moved the lights. They all followed the proprietor down the hall, cameras still rolling, to a small bedroom at the far end of the attic. Inside, it was spare and close. Moller soon had his equipment set up, and the process resumed. Again he used the silver wand, walking slowly, hovering with special attention over the bed. And then he looked everywhere with the piece of obsidian. He allowed Gannon to take a brief shot through it, which made everything dark, blurry, and rather ghostlike. Moller’s got his shtick down pat, she thought.

Another fifteen minutes passed in silence as the cameras rolled. Gannon was eating up a hell of a lot of gigabytes, and it would be a pain to edit, but she couldn’t risk missing anything.

Finally, Moller stopped. With a long sigh, he turned toward the group.

Betts moved in. “Dr. Moller, we’re fascinated to hear what you found. Can you share it with us?”

Moller looked up. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?”

“This house is not haunted,” said Moller. “I detected absolutely no spiritual turbulence. There is nothing here.”

“How can that be?” cried the proprietor, his voice rising. “We have witnesses, scores of witnesses over the years, who have experienced the haunting!”

“Perhaps it’s the wrong evening?” Betts asked. “The spirits are, um, quiescent?”

“It doesn’t matter the evening,” said Moller gravely. “There’s nothing here. Even if the spirits don’t manifest themselves, the disturbance can be measured. My instruments measured no disturbance whatsoever. The spirits—if there ever were any—are long gone. This is merely an empty house—a tourist trap, perhaps, but nothing more.”

“Cut, cut!” Betts cried, turning on Moller furiously. “What the hell do you mean, Gerhard? This is the most haunted house in the whole damn town! What am I going to do with all this useless footage?”

Grooms, red-faced, nodded his agreement. “Maybe the problem isn’t with the house, but with all this hocus-pocus!” He gestured disdainfully at Moller’s equipment. “The ghosts are here—you just didn’t find them!”

At this, Moller threw him a withering look but said nothing. He moved back into the hallway and began to pack up his case. The now-superfluous historian, Daisy Fayette, tried to say something, but Betts waved her away as he would a housefly. “Get her out of here,” he said to one of the assistants.

“Now look here, Gerhard,” he said, turning back toward his ghost hunter and trying to modulate his voice. “We’ve gone to a lot of trouble and expense to set this up. This is the perfect haunted house. Couldn’t you, ah, be persuaded to try it again, and make the equipment work?”

Moller drew himself up and said, in an ice-cold voice, “The equipment did work.”

“For Chrissakes, Moller, you can make it work better!”

Moller stared at Betts. “What I do isn’t some circus sideshow. This is real. This is science.” He paused. “You will be glad to have that footage you just shot, Mr. Betts. Because if we do discover something elsewhere—and I expect we will—having found nothing here will make those discoveries all the more credible.”