

### Melody Jackson v. the Woman in White

It Happened on Lafayette Street

Season One – Episode One

Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program

Copyright 2015 BMB Johnson

Published by BMB Johnson in Association with Fregroldsworld Media at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

v.1.22a

Table of Contents

Dedication

About the Series

Acknowledgements

Prelude

Scene One

Scene Two

Scene Three

Scene Four

Scene Five

Scene Six

Scene Seven

Scene Eight

Scene Nine

Scene Ten

Scene Eleven

Scene Twelve

Scene Thirteen

About BMB Johnson

Other books by BMB Johnson

Connect with BMB Johnson

Dedication

For L., for all your love and support

And of course

A. – there couldn't be a series without you

About the Series

Dear Readers.

I present to you a brief discussion on the series: It Happened on Lafayette Street. **Melody Jackson v. the Woman in White** is but the first in a TEN PART SERIES. The series is structured like a television show, in which 'The Woman in White" is but the first episode of the first 'Season'. Instead of chapters, breaks are treated as scenes, sequels as episodes, and story arcs as Seasons. That said, there is also a 2nd Season planned (and at least one 'Spin-off' series in the works.

So, get yourself a hot beverage, climb into a comfy chair, and get your affairs in order because you are about to embark on a long, spooky journey which will go well beyond the pages of this book.

I hope you enjoy these books. Comments are always welcomed and appreciated. (Contact information located at the back of the book.)

As always, if the Bardo come a'knockin', hide behind the couch, peek carefully through the curtain and _always_ pretend you're not home.

BMB Johnson

November 15, 2016

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the City of Portland, as well certain locations which appear in this text: The Multnomah County Central Library, the Oregon Historical Society Museum, Al Amir Restaurant, and of course Lafayette Street itself, where my youthful mind spent a good deal of its processing time meandering.

The characters that populate this world are fictitious, within reason.

Not everything is presented as it is or as it was.

Prelude

The door to the boxlike structure flew open violently. Screams of terror filled the night. These events went unnoticed by the neighborhood save for the ever-vigilant eyes of three little boys who happened to be on patrol. These soldiers, the unheralded protectors of Lafayette Street; the night watchmen in a silent world.

Those in the neighborhood who noticed them called them simply "the boys". They had no names, no identities.

Until the events of what had been tagged _Operation Spine Shiver,_ the purview of the boys had been limited to minor infractions: Littering, noise disturbance, cars parked farther away than the regulation two inches from the curb. Such infractions would usually net the offender a small pink ticket noting the transgression and the penalty for repetition (if any). Now, however, they found themselves faced with an anomaly beyond their comprehension.

Plans were discussed, maps drawn out, messages encrypted. A small camera was installed. They waited. Intel indicated the event wouldn't happen again for another three days. Once they had their confirmation, they would address it with the General.
Scene One

"There it sat, a silent sentinel, boxy and unobtrusive -- a great impediment to any further thought of progress."

Melody retrieved the sheet of paper from the old Remington typewriter she had recently acquired from a local thrift shop. She looked the words over closely, batting at her lip thoughtfully with her pencil. She liked what she had written, but it didn't have quite the punch she was looking for.

It needs _Zing_! she thought. _And a tad less of the fuddy-duddy_.

Scathing documents to government officials, she decided, should have short, attention-grabbing, sentences. There should be many exclamation points!!! and lists of ideas demarcated by bullets.

She scanned the keys, and shook her head, unable to find one engraved with a centered dot to get the job done. "Did people not need their attentions grabbed in the forties?" Melody wondered. She sighed, and decided that if it came down to it, she would simply use a black marker and supply the bullets herself.

Satisfied, she reloaded the typing paper, spending more time than she would have liked getting the sheet aligned properly. While she loved old-timey machines and gadgets like this old clunker, she wondered how people kept from losing their minds with some of these manual steps.

"Mom," she shouted. "Hey Mom! MOM! Momomomom." The request for her mother's presence had become a chant to which she added a beat. By the time Lonnie Jackson arrived at her daughter's room, Melody was dancing to this newly created song, lost in the music.

"What is it?" Lonnie's face was red and sweaty, as though she had previously been engaged in something vigorous.

Melody stopped, looked up at her mother, and blinked almost audibly. "Huh?"

Lonnie said her words slowly, and loudly. "Why did you call me?"

"Oh," Melody said, looking around her room. "Sorry. I don't remember now. You should come sooner when I call you."

Lonnie raised one eyebrow, but didn't say anything more. After a moment, she turned around and began down the hallway, her fists balled up at her sides.

"Wait," Melody shouted, jumping to her feet. "I remember what it was."

Lonnie returned, this time much more slowly. "Okay," she said. "This better not be some funny trick."

"It isn't," she said. "I promise. I just wanted to run an idea past you."

Lonnie walked into the center of Melody's bedroom, and sat down on the bed. She ironed out her pants with her hands, and then placed them face down on the bed as if for support.

"You do understand that I was down in the basement fixing the dryer."

The Jacksons always had a regrettable relationship with appliances. Clothes dryers, however, historically had been the most unfortunate. The belt in the current incarnation had a tendency to slip off the drum every ten loads or so. The fix was to remove the top, reach into the machine without falling into it and slip the belt back on the track.

Melody nodded. "Okay," she said, seemingly not making any connection between that act and her sudden need for her mother to listen to her idea.

"My point is," Lonnie said, speaking determinedly. "You could have come to me."

Melody continued to stare at her mother blankly.

"Because your idea is more portable than the dryer."

Melody placed her hand on top of her mother's. "You look tired, mom. You probably needed a break. So, anyway..."

Lonnie pulled her hand away. "Don't use that pop psychology garbage on me." She placed her own hand on top of her daughter's. "Just tell me your idea already." Lonnie leaned back on the bed and settled in. She really did need a break actually, and Melody's bed was soft and inviting. She wondered momentarily what her chances were of convincing her daughter to make one of those fancy drinks with the little umbrellas. She eventually decided this was about as likely as Melody coming downstairs with her idea.

"Comfy?"

Lonnie nodded. "Very," she said, and with a wave of her hand she added, "Proceed."

Melody, even by her own admission, tended to have some fairly wacky ideas at times. Most of these went unfulfilled, not because they necessarily weren't good ones, but because the girl tended to have more of them than she could possibly stay focused on.

"Pardon the cliché, but there simply aren't enough hours in the day," Melody would say if anyone noticed that one of her great intentions had suddenly slipped through the cracks.

As Melody gathered some documents for what appeared to be a full presentation of some sort, Lonnie looked around her daughter's bedroom. This project, for it truly was more project than room, was a multitude of several glorious ideas. Due to the room's small size, Melody was inspired to line all of her walls with shallow shelving and place her bed in the middle at such an angle as to maximize walking space. She had even come up with a complicated system of categorizing all of the containers which Lonnie didn't really understand. Most of the materials had already been purchased but either sat idle in the basement, or were stacked to the ceiling in the corner of the room.

"I hope it isn't that you've decided to move into the attic now that we've bought all of this stuff."

Melody sighed, loudly. "Don't be ridiculous," she said. She fumbled with the paper in her typewriter for a few minutes more, seemingly forgetting that her mother was waiting next to her.

Finally, unable to contain herself any further, Lonnie blurted out. "Well?!"

Melody jumped, and then spun around. "Oh, yeah," she said. "Why I summoned you."

Lonnie stopped her. "First of all, " she said. "You did NOT summon me. And even if you did, I..."

"It's just an expression, Mother," Melody interrupted.

Lonnie clacked her tongue against her teeth. "Really not liking the way you called me _mother_ , there."

Melody squinted at her in a way which seemed to say, _Maybe we don't need to drag this conversation out any longer than necessary._

"So," she said aloud. "Here's my idea." Melody clapped her hands together in a way she had seen football coaches do to rally the attention of the players. "You know that little building across the street, yes?"

Lonnie nodded. "The weather station," she said. "Yes, I'm quite aware of that. What about it?" Her eyes narrowed, warily.

"Weather station." Melody snorted. "If you believe that."

Lonnie shook her head with a knowing grin on her face. If there was one thing she knew about her daughter it was that the girl had a great imagination. There was no telling what sort of theory she had about the true origins of that particular structure. Lonnie, on the other hand, knew for a fact that it was a weather station.

"I distinctly remember signing the petition which allowed it to be built in the empty field, and one of the attendants even let me peek inside during a quarterly maintenance inspection. It's _not_ a weather station?"

Melody snorted again. "Doubtful."

Lonnie folder her arms. "Okay," she said. "This ought to be good."

"Anyway, that's not where I was going with this. What that building _is_ or _is not_ has no bearing on my idea."

"Well, what's..."

Melody interrupted. "I'm so glad you asked that." She produced a long tube from under her desk out of which she retrieved a rolled-up, poster-sized piece of paper. She jumped over to her bed and laid out what was soon revealed to be a blueprint. She opened it as far as she could with what little space was afforded by her mother's lounging there.

"Okay," she said. "This is that lot. You see how I have removed that _weather station_ , as you call it."

Lonnie pointed at it. "As indicated by this dramatic looking mound of rubble here, I'm guessing."

"Yes," Melody said. "Quite. You see how this frees up another third of the lot."

"At least," Lonnie chided, "once you get the debris hauled away."

"Let's forget the debris for a moment."

"Melody," her mother said, seriously. "Please tell me this plan of yours doesn't involve any sort of Eco-terrorism on your part."

The girl chose to ignore her mother's comment and pressed on.

"Look, see how I've parceled this out into neat little sections."

Lonnie pulled the blueprint away so she could get a closer look. "A community garden?" She squinted, scrunching her lips and nodded to the side all in the same motion. It was a look which Melody had identified over the years as an indicator of mild approval.

"There's enough space for six small plots," she confirmed.

Lonnie slammed the blueprint down, almost excitedly. Melody thought for a moment by this action that her mother was going to jump to her feet, and proclaim, "This is the best idea since walnut butter!" Instead, she said, "I gotta tell you, I find this idea a tad shady."

Melody tilted her head in confusion.

Lonnie continued with her train of thought. "I mean it's a nice, environmental idea, which is probably where you're mostly going with this. But, Melody," she continued, "You hate to garden."

"I really don't," she said, folding up her arms.

"I believe the quote last time I asked you to help me pull weeds from around the tomatoes was, 'But it's filthy out there.'

Melody shook her head, disapprovingly. "First of all, pulling weeds isn't gardening. It's disgusting grunt work, and second of all I was five years old – and I believe there was a nasty looking worm giving me the evil eye."

Lonnie laughed, causing a scowl to appear on Melody's face. She didn't especially care to be laughed at, unless it was a fully sanctioned and approved Melody Jackson bit of humor. Especially not coupled with the dissent of an idea as brilliant as this one. However, before Melody could launch a complaint, her mother added the following, apparently only with the intention of making things worse.

"Maybe we could start a garden again in our own yard this year, and see if you like it."

Melody exploded. "THIS ISN'T LIKE GETTING A FISH TO SEE IF I COULD BE RESPONSIBLE ENOUGH FOR A PUPPY!" She took a deep breath, calmed herself and lowered her voice. She then repeated the statement as if doing so removed the stink of the outburst.

"I'm well aware of that," said Lonnie. "And not to poke it with a stick, but you don't see any puppies sniffing around that empty fish bowl, do you?"

Melody's face turned red, and she balled up her fists. She thought about storming out of the room in a display of anger, but she didn't think that would help her argument any. Deep down, there was a constant struggle to contain her anger, which over the last year had begun to gurgle from her slightly post-pubescent body, like the steady flow of volcanic magma. While she didn't want to act like a typical twelve year old, horribly there were times when she simply couldn't seem to help it. This frustrated her even more. Melody especially didn't want to suffer the comment, "Typical teen-age behavior!" She didn't think she could bare it.

Instead she fought to retain her initial composure, and this time won. "Anyway," she said, brushing off the shackles of the past conversation, "this is all beside the point. The idea of a community garden is not simply for us to grow a garden. The key word here is _community_."

Lonnie shook her head, and said something which would force Melody from the room finally in an uncontrollable rage. "But, sweety, you don't exactly like talking to the neighbors, either."

Scene Two

The kitchen, much like Melody's room, was in a state of disaster. It was a rehabilitation project of her mother's – the last room to be remodeled since the family took over the house from Bernie's parents.

Inconveniently for anyone who wanted to make a sandwich, the process had only just begun. Currently half of the orange and brown "chicken" wallpaper was spottily removed wherever it was already loose; some of the linoleum floor tiles had been pried up at several corners where Lonnie wanted to see what it looked like underneath; and nearly all of the cabinet doors had been completely removed, along with the face panels and handles of the drawers.

Melody's father Bernie, much to his chagrin, was currently in the process of prying open the silverware drawer with a screwdriver in the hopes of acquiring a knife for his jar of peanut butter.

"What are you doing here?" Melody asked him, still enraged from her conversation with her mother.

Bernie braced himself, not wanting exactly to be the recipient of his daughter's bad mood, but not finding any quick escape from it. Melody was now blocking the only easily accessible door, and his stomach was growling at him in need of a snack.

"Well, good afternoon to you, too," he said, struggling with the lid of the massive peanut butter container. He stopped this effort and reached out a hand to her. "Hi," he said, in a lambent tone. "I'm Bernie Jackson, and probably to your constant and utter annoyance, I'll be playing the part of your father for the rest of your life."

Melody scowled at him and opened the fridge, probably too gruffly, as all of the jars in the door clanked together in an obvious effort of communal protectiveness. She almost stomped her foot on the ground, and then stopped. She knew that she was being ridiculous. She hated when her parents made her angry like this, but this frustration was directed mostly at herself for letting them get to her in the first place.

"I said hello to you after I changed into my sweatpants about a half hour ago, but you didn't say anything."

Melody didn't say anything this time, either.

"Deep in thought I guess."

"I was working on something."

"Some secret project, eh? One you seem rather reluctant to talk about. What is it, Petunia?" Bernie said, placing his arm around her shoulders in what Melody perceived was a sarcastic and pseudo-comforting way. "Decoding the language of hamsters? Cracking the nuclear launch codes?"

She brushed his arm aside and escaped through the door. In his efforts to make light of sticky situations, he usually only tended to succeed at making things worse.

"Oh, come on," Bernie called after her. "It's not going to be one of _those_ days, is it?"

Lonnie then entered the room, looking behind herself in the direction that Melody had breezed past. She then turned to her husband. "So what did _you_ say to her?"

"Nothing," he said. "Just being my charming self."

Lonnie smirked. "Well, that explains why she's even angrier than when I left her."

"I'M NOT ANGRY!" came a voice from the living room.

"Ears like a steel bat," Bernie said.

"THAT IS SO NOT THE PHRASE!" Melody returned.

"Don't worry," Lonnie said through the closed kitchen door. "It's just your father being himself."

"Thanks dear," he said, and kissed her on the nose.

Lonnie smiled at this, but it soon faded. "You got peanut butter all over me. How do you always manage that?"

"That," he said, "is for requiring me to use a tool to open the drawers in the first place."

Lonnie grabbed a paper towel from the spindle and cleaned herself up. "So," she said. "Did Melody tell you her latest idea?"

Bernie cleared his throat. "Our conversation didn't progress into the use of spoken language," he said.

Melody chose this moment to somberly push forward through the swinging kitchen door. Without saying a word, she grabbed a glass from the exposed cabinet, calmly blew off some dust from the outer edge, and tiptoed over to the sink to fill it. She drank the entire contents, placed the glass down the counter, and the turned to face her parents, sighing deeply.

"Let me just start out by saying," she said, delicately wiping a drop of water from the corner of her lip, "that I really can't explain what's going on with me..."

Both Bernie and Lonnie offered an explanation, which appeared to be the most obvious to them. "Hormones!" they said in unison.

Melody, still calm, took the time to breathe in deeply before continuing. "And while it is most likely an adjustment in the hormonal chemistry of my brain, due to my current age..."

Bernie turned to Lonnie. "It's like watching a PBS show."

Lonnie shushed him. "I want to hear this."

"I would just like to formally apologize for my earlier outburst, and would like to state, for the record, that while these reactions may be quite beyond my control I would hope that they will subside after a couple of days."

Bernie choked. "Couple of days."

Lonnie stabbed him in the back with her thumb.

He turned to his wife, and whispered. "But she's been this way since she was nine."

"In conclusion," Melody continued, showing no notice of her father's objections, though she seemed to look directly at him for the remainder of her presentation, "I would hope that we could all move past this with the maturity that is required of the situation."

Bernie applauded the speech, bowed, and called for cheese and refreshments.

Melody raised her hand in the air, calling for silence as though Caesar to release the lions. "Now," she said, "I will take my leave of you, as I'm bound for City Hall to make my case for the destruction of this supposed _weather station_ in favor of my proposal of the _Phineas J. Foghoot memorial, Lafayette Street Communal Garden_."

At this, Bernie closed one eye and widened the other. "Huh," he said. "Did something happen to Mr. Foghoot?"

Lonnie shrugged her shoulders. "I saw Donovan sleeping on him earlier. He might have some drool on him, but that's about it."

Melody cleared her throat. "Mr. Foghoot is fine, but now that I'm twelve, you must realize that my appreciation for stuffed animals will soon be dwindling, I just felt that my friend should be remembered in some way before being crated off to the attic." She turned and began to walk towards her bedroom.

"But what's all this business about _City Hall_?"

"She wants to talk to the government about her plan."

"Where even is that?"

"Where is what?"

"City Hall. Is that the mayor's office?"

"Yes," Lonnie said, her eyes narrowing. "It's where the mayor works. It's downtown." She shook her head.

"Oh," he said. "Like you knew that before your daughter told you."

Lonnie laughed. She leaned forward and rubbed her husband's shoulder. "I'm sure there's lots of people who are dumb about local politics."

"Laugh while you can," he told her. "My I.Q. test results come back Thursday. Then you'll see."

"I will, and I am and I won't," she said, chuckling under her breath.

"However," Bernie continued, "her explanation, like much of the time, leaves more questions than answers. Fr'instance, she's on her way to this City Hall right now?!"

"That's what she said. You're taking her, right?"

"No," Bernie said. "I just got home from work and I want to have a snack and watch television like every other local taxpayer."

"Well, there you go."

Melody emerged from the hallway, wearing a very smart, professional outfit, and carrying a small satchel.

Bernie looked at his daughter, and it suddenly felt to him as though it were the first time. " _When did she grow up_?" he whispered to his wife.

"Melody?"

" _She looks practically like an adult_."

"Girls mature faster than boys," Melody jumped in.

Bernie raised an eyebrow, and Melody pointed to her ear and mouthed the words "Steel bat."

He narrowed his eyes, and then nudged his wife with his elbow. Lonnie nodded back knowingly. He looked at her again, more discerningly this time. Melody was now almost as tall as he. She was beautiful with long, though slightly tangled brown hair. Small, rectangular-lensed glasses hid her dark blue eyes and added to her commanding appearance. The only betrayal of her true age, was a light sprinkling of pink spots dotted about her face.

"Well," Melody said. "I'm off."

"Okay," Bernie said. "Just make sure that you fill the tank on the way home." He threw her his set of keys.

"Funny, father," she said, throwing the keys back at him. "But like you, I'm not officially licensed to drive a car, so, also like you, I will take the bus. I have checked the Tri-Met website and found that I just need to hop on the #9 Powell bus, get off at SW 6th & Main, and then walk a short 0.1 mile southeast to Portland City Hall."

Bernie swallowed deeply. "First of all...You're taking the bus? By yourself?"

"Yes," she said. "For an independent young woman, such an act is not be beyond the realm of possibilities."

"Well, no, not at all, but..."

"I think what you're father is delicately trying to say is that there's no precedent set for you...taking the bus by yourself. That's all."

Melody didn't know what the big deal was. Sure she had had some fears of traveling on her own in the past, but she figured that since these obtrusive hormones were forcing her to become more independent that they would also logically just make these fears go away should she suddenly be faced with them. "It's the least they could do," Melody suddenly said out loud.

Bernie shrugged. "The least what could?"

Melody shook her head, scornfully. "Never mind," she said. "That should have been internal dialog."

"Starting to bleed over, is it?"

Melody brushed him off. "Well," she said. "I'm off." She bowed in a rather silly and awkward way, and then opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. She stood there for a few moments staring into the front yard, the sun beginning to wane. She wasn't sure which she was hoping for, her hormones to kick in to increase her sense of boldness, or for her parents to rush out and stop her. At the moment, while she would have been welcoming of the former, her heart was begging for the latter. She closed her eyes, and felt the small breeze on her face. Breathing deeply she took the first step down from the porch to the sidewalk.

Her journey to the bus stop, which was barely a block away, was slow and deliberate. In that time it occurred to her that her somewhat sheltered life, both self-imposed and also from being a home-schooler, might possibly have a downside. While she didn't care for the Pavlovian-style of modern schooling, something could be said for how it made anti-socialism seem functional. Melody didn't want to join a gang or anything, but it might be nice to be able to skip to the end of the block without becoming catatonic.

Lost in this contemplation, she spent nearly fifteen minutes to arrive at the covered stop on the busy street around the corner. Once there she found both her parents waiting for her.

"Hi there," said her father. "We weren't sure if you had any money with you. Also, did you take the scenic route or something?"

"I had to work my way up to it." She shook her head. "Why didn't I see you pass by me?"

"We walked the other way around," said Lonnie. "We didn't want to discourage you."'

"Also, I looked it up, and City Hall actually closed about twenty minutes ago." Bernie shrugged. "It's not like the government burns the midnight oil, I guess."

Melody slumped, and more or less gave the impression of a melted candle. However, this was mostly just for show, as she was quite relieved by this news.

A bus approached, and slowed to a stop despite Bernie waving at it.

The door opened, and the man leaning forward stared at them expectantly.

"Sorry," Bernie said. "We don't actually need a bus today."

The driver shouted at them. "This isn't a homeless camp," he roared. "If you don't need a bus, please vacate the bus stop area."

"I waved at you," Bernie said, sheepishly.

The bus driver sat with his door open for a few more seconds as if deciding whether or not to continue berating the trio. Finally, he shook his head, closed the door and resumed his route.

Bernie turned to his wife, a flash of anger on his face.. "I waved at him. You saw me do that, right? It's the universal sign that we don't want the bus to stop."

Lonnie shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you," she said. "That wasn't _your_ driver, was it?"

"No," Bernie sighed. "Thankfully." He then turned to his daughter. "Well, child. I think it's about time..."

Melody, however, seemed lost in thought, and was not reachable at the moment. It took a tap on her shoulder by her father to rouse her back to reality.

"Nickel for your thoughts, four cents added for inflation." He smiled but quickly stopped, realizing how corny he must have just sounded. "Although, it better not be what I think you're thinking."

Melody smiled at her father, broadly. Gone was the idea for a communal garden. Gone now was the plan to bulldoze the _weather station_. Her mind was on to expansion. The bus driver, while unnecessarily grouchy -- perhaps he had some hormonal changes of his own swelling in his brain -- had given her a great new project idea.

"Picture it," she said. "Phineas J. Foghoot's Commemorative Homeless Shelter and Rehabilitation Center."
Scene Three

Melody had been in her room for hours, clacking away on her manual typewriter like a hen pecking at the ground for seed. Every minute or so, there would be a loud _ding_! followed by a clatter and a _thump_! as she manually returned the carriage to the beginning position.

"Is it horrible," Bernie began, sitting in his favorite chair in front of the television set, "that I really don't want a homeless camp across the street from us?"

Lonnie, who was knitting, didn't look up at her husband. "No," she said. "Well, kinda, I suppose. I mean it would be nice to do something for the homeless. It's just that that little building isn't big enough to..."

"That's right!" Bernie shouted, jumping to his feet. "We don't have the facilities! What is she thinking. You just can't put in camp-sized facilities into a small neighborhood! There's zoning laws to consider, and..."

"Settle down, Bernie," Lonnie said, swapping out her knitting for a darning egg. "On an unrelated subject, that girl does own a pair of shoes, right?" She held a twisted, once-white sock up to the light, exposing several holes.

Melody suddenly emerged from the hallway, a handful of papers in her hand. "What I am thinking is turning this _weather station_ or whatever it purports to be..."

"It _IS_ a weather station," Lonnie said, with an annoyed tone. "I've seen inside it with my own eyes. It's full of gauges, and computery things. I've told you that."

"Anyway, this _well-disguised 'weather station'_ of course needs to be demolished, as in my previously proposed plan. I have edited the blueprint to expand the building in the back to a two-story home where people with no income can stay to get back on their feet."

"Huh?" Bernie looked at his wife with squinting eyes. "How did you get a look in there?"

"You know," Lonnie said. "The guy that comes around every couple of months to check the sensors."

Bernie raised an eyebrow. "The guy?!"

Melody cleared her throat. "Stay focused, you two," she said. "I'm sure mom isn't having an affair with the fake weather station checker."

"This is all very well intentioned, dear," her mother continued, looking over Melody's map, "but there are zoning issues, and all kinds of things to be..."

"Details," Melody said. "Minor details. I'm sure that the mayor and I can hammer this out tomorrow morning."

Bernie choked. "Tomorrow morning? You're going to try for the bus again?"

"Actually," she said. "It turns out, my hormones were unsuccessful in increasing my bravery sufficiently." She turned to Lonnie. "So, Mother, I'm going to need you to take me."

"I have to take your Nana to the doctor for her checkup tomorrow," Lonnie said. "Maybe your father can turn in his 'take your daughter to work day' coupon he never used. Your site is downtown at the moment, right?"

"Yes, but...." Bernie sat down again and slumped dramatically. "There's really nothing for a twelve year old to do, there, other than make coffee." He almost added, 'and that's my job', but stopped himself.

"That's okay," Melody said, brightly. "I can just sit in a corner and read until City Hall opens. You won't even know I'm there."

"Oh," Bernie said, under his breath. "I'll know."

"So, it's settled then," Lonnie said. "Now," she continued, dramatically tossing her darning egg into a wicker basket near her feet, "what does everyone want for dinner tonight? Hot dogs?"

"You mean, fake dogs, right?" Melody looked at her mother, cautiously.

"Melody," Lonnie said. "For goodness sake do I have to say that every time. We're ALL vegetarians. I'm not just going to throw some meat secretly into our diets to _mix things up_."

Lonnie stood up, but before she departed for the kitchen, she leaned forward to Melody's ear. "While we all appreciate your giving nature and this desire to create gardens one second, and then help the homeless the next, I've got to wonder why this sudden interest in a building that has existed since before you were born, and which you didn't seem to give a fig about before this morning. Not that I'm a skeptical person, mind you."

"No one gives figs anymore, Mother," she said, sullenly.

"Well, there has to be some reason behind this." She gave her daughter a good, sharp glare and headed for the kitchen. Once the door began to swing she called out. "I'LL FIND OUT...ONE OF THESE DAYS...YOU KNOW!"

Melody rolled her eyes, and looked towards the television set. She sighed, dramatically. "There might be one thing."

With that subtle glance, suddenly Melody had her father's attention. His eyes radiated up at her like miniature Suns. They patiently waited for her to crack and spill her information as though she were some inferiorly designed Piñata.

"What?" Bernie raised his eyebrows. "You have something you want to tell me, I can sense these things. Is the TV broken? Did the cable go out?"

Melody didn't say anything at first. She grimaced, and shuffled her feet. "Your precious idiot box is fine, Dad." She produced two shiny disks from her satchel. "Anyway," she said. "As long as you aren't in the middle of something."

Bernie's shoulders slumped as he eyed his daughter, cautiously. One of Melody's favorite type of activities was creating what she liked to call "the short film". These unfortunately almost always turned out to be anything but: Unedited stream-of-consciousness outtakes, or what Melody called "the dailies". She would play these for anyone whom she could sucker into watching.

Bernie however was in no mood, and assumed them diversionary. "Whatchu got there, Darlin'?"

"Don't worry," Melody said. "It's not one of my film projects you like so much, _I said sarcastically_. It's the security footage of that building across the street."

Lonnie emerged from the swinging kitchen door. "What was that? Please, Melody, don't tell me you've been filming that place just because you get some weird vibe from it. There's nothing conspiratorial going on over there."

"So you say," Melody said, pushing a disk into the slot of the video player. "And, no, it wasn't me filming it. The boys brought this to my attention."

The _boys_ were a group of semi-anonymous male children who roamed Lafayette Street. Their normal attire was combat gear and the occasional twig attached to their helmet. Constantly playing at war -- like most boys, Melody assumed -- they were omnipresent and aware of all of the goings on in the neighborhood. It had taken great effort on her part to become allied with them and gain their confidence. So successful was she in this endeavor that the boys actually began referring to her as _the General_.

"The boys?" Bernie always seemed completely ignorant of the presence of these children, no matter how many times Melody mentioned them.

"Yep," Melody confirmed without further explanation. "I think they may have dug a bunker near this _weather station_ , and may even be able to access it via tunnels from their backyards for all I know."

"Bunker?" Lonnie appeared worried. "You're starting to talk like them now, Melody. There's something seriously wrong with those boys. And their parents aren't much better."

"It's the only way to gain their confidence," she said. "Besides. It's better to have them on your side than against it."

Bernie raised his hands, giving up. The boys were starting to sound familiar, but he still wasn't sure about who they were or what they stood for. Apparently, though, they were some kind of primitive barbarian horde who wandered about digging holes. "Do you think these are the same people who have been knocking over garbage cans?"

"No, Dad," Melody said. "That was probably a dog."

Bernie shrugged his shoulders. "You said something about a video?"

Melody said, "Oh yes." She then changed the channel and pushed play on the machine.

The video quality was rough, and also in black and white. Bernie needed to lean forward and strain his eyes to make out any familiar shapes.

"Oh, I see," Bernie said. "You hired a convenience store to spy on this thing."

Melody shushed him. "It's a little grainy because it's filmed in night-vision." She began to fast forward. "There's a spot here I wanted to show you. Right about...here, at approximately two-thirty-seven in the morning."

Bernie and Lonnie leaned in closer to the screen. There was a wavering of the doorknob, as if by an impact, and then suddenly the door itself began to open. Melody paused the screen here for a moment.

"Keep in mind," she said, "that I've reviewed hours of footage, and no one has entered this building for days and days. There's only one door, and it has to be a _very_ small room."

She unpaused the film, and the Jacksons watched in shock as a woman in white emerged in the doorway. The woman looked around as though confused, and walked daintily down the steps and past the camera.

"Also note," Melody continued. "She never returns to the building, however, six days later, at exactly the same time of day this same almost exact scene plays out again."

Lonnie began to click in her throat. "Turn it back," she said.

Bernie seemed skeptical. "Not that I don't believe the ravings of some unknown security camera owned by some odd boys who wander the neighborhood. But did you consider they might be hoaxing this, setting you up to look like a chump?"

"I considered it," Melody said. "Then I discounted it. First of all, the boys don't have any humorous bones in their bodies. Also they seem to live by a strict code of justice which wouldn't allow for pranking for the sake of it." She rewound the video at her mothers request. "Besides," she said. "There are no gaps in the film. It's low quality, but each disk runs for twelve hours continuously. This is no hoax."

"But maybe...," Bernie began, but was quickly cut off my his daughter.

"Nope!"

"Between disks...!"

"You really think those boys are going to talk some classy woman into sitting in a cramped room for twelve hours just to make me look silly in front of you two?"

"Maybe for your Internet connections?"

"I, sir, am no Internet connection." Melody was so greatly offended by the inference that she struggled to keep herself from storming from the room. The Internet was for research only, not for posting videos about possible ghosts caught on film, blabbing about what one was having for breakfast or other such mindless pap.

Bernie laughed. "That's almost word for word entirely what the Internet is. I mean you left out sharing cute cat pictures..."

Melody's face turned red. Whenever she was angered or otherwise highly emotional, she tended to speak her thoughts aloud rather than keep them contained.

She let out a strangled growl of frustration. "Ignore the thoughts that should stay in my head."

"Sorry," Bernie said. "Like I can tell them apart."

Melody pushed play and the the film ran again.

"I just wish we could see her face more clearly," Lonnie said squinting at the screen and sitting as close to it as possible. "Then maybe we could I.D. her in some way." She turned to Melody. "How good is your video camera?"

Melody placed her hands on her hips. "Why?"

"Well, you said this happens every six days at the exact time."

"I _postulated_ that it happens every six days. I don't think there's enough data to say if that's a fact or not."

"Yeah, whatever," Lonnie said, not really listening. "Let's see if there's a good view of that doorway from the front window." She stepped between the big, unused comfy chairs and the curtains, and squatted down at the level of the windowsill. She grunted and made "hmm" sounds as she scooted along the three windows attempting to find a sweet spot. "Honey," she said, finally. "How do you feel about propping your camera outside on the porch?"

"I don't," Melody said, with a grimace. "You know it only has about a thirty minute battery life, not to mention it's highly intolerant of dew conditions and theft by passersby. Also, it has no night vision. You'd need a search light sitting next to it to be able to see anything, and that wouldn't be suspicious at all."

Lonnie mumbled to herself and continued to look for a location along the window.

Bernie scratched his head. "I'm still not sure why you wanted to go to such great lengths to get that building torn down. I'm assuming, of course, this is why the plan for the garden and the homeless shelter."

Melody scrunched up her face.

Bernie just stared at her, expressionlessly for a few more moments.

"What?"

"What's the real reason?" he said.

"I just showed you the video."

"It's a little weird," he said. "I'll give you that. And it's obviously gotten your mother a little excited."

Lonnie emitted a muffled _hummina_ , but this seemed to be more related to her own task then at any attempt to communicate with the two of them.

"But it's not enough to work out a plan to get this little weather station..."

"...If that's what it is...," Melody added quickly.

"Yes, you don't need to keep saying that," her father told her. "To get this place removed from the face of the earth."

Melody stared at her father for quite a while as if trying to decide if she should elaborate on the subject. "Well," she said, finally. "There is this thing." She removed the first disk from the machine, and then inserted the second. "This one chronicles two additional event points, which I clipped and compiled for convenience. At each point the scene seems to progress just a tiny bit farther along." She forwarded it to the event in question. "See, here," she said, pausing the film. "See how the door begins to open a second time."

Bernie leaned in close, and called his wife, who was currently framing the scene as though she were a film director, forming the thumb and forefinger from each hand together to make a square. Once her attention was gathered, Bernie filled her in with the updates.

The video showed the woman in white disappear out of frame as normal, but the camera, still focused on the door, showed the handle rattle a second time and then open a crack.

"It stays open like that for hours," Melody said, forwarding the video. The only movement in the shot was the bushes just off to the right of the screen. At Melody's insistence, they danced around quickly as though a light breeze in the air. The ever-present clock at the top of the screen, zipped along at a frantic rate as though a very poor rendition of H.G. Wells' _Time Machine_.

"Then look here," Melody said, pointing to the door. "Four hours and ten minutes later. The door simply closes itself."

Bernie scratched his head. "You said there's one more even on this tape."

Melody winced but decided not to correct his description of an optical disk as a "tape". "Yep. Let me get to that point, but I need to warn you that it's a little disturbing." She moved the film past the point where the woman usually walks past. "The door behind her rattles as it did previously, and then opens." After another few minutes a giant hand grabs the very top of the door frame, and what looks like a massive head peers out from the darkness. "Eyes emblazoned with undefinable hatred," Melody said as an added narrative. Although, with the film as grainy as it was, just how emblazoned the eyes were was very much open to interpretation.

"What IS that?" Lonnie said.

"It looks like a bugbear," Bernie offered, recalling one of the creatures from his days of role-playing games. "And I'm only half-joking."

"What looks like the giant hand could just be a leaf that flew over and landed on door frame," Lonnie said. "It's not a very good picture, after-all."

"Did the leaf also open the door?" Melody could sense the tension in the air. While she found this portion of the video creepier every time she saw it, she knew her parents couldn't _not_ be feeling the same way. It was common practice, after all, for humans to try to simply explain away spooky things as common everyday, normal things. That what looked like a giant hand followed by the emergence of the face of a beast could so easily be explained by a falling leaf was congruent with a mind grasping at any natural explanation it could find. It was likely an attempt to preserve sanity in the observer. This was understandable and something that Melody herself was happy to go along with as long it didn't interfere with reality. The supernatural was not the norm and most things which seemed odd on the surface had roots in the workaday. However, this particular phenomenon was something different. Casual observation showed that these were facts which couldn't be denied. A ghostly woman in white. A beast of some variety lurking behind her. Both trapped in some sort of time loop or matrix. _This_ is something they would have to deal with and could not simply wish away.

"You see now why we need to get this building destroyed?" Melody said.

Bernie found the remote and played the scene back a few times more.

"Even if it is some sort of evil beast – which sounds especially ridiculous when you say it out loud -- what makes you think that destroying this building would stop it from coming? Maybe destroying its environment would simply make it come out faster. Or even make it angry and lash out at everyone in the neighborhood."

Melody rolled her eyes. "Common sense tells us that destroying the focal point will end the activity. I think you tend to worry about every conceivable outcome no matter it's likelihood."

"I just like to look at it from every angle," said Bernie, a little miffed.

"Not very helpful."

"Melody!" Lonnie said crossly. "Stop pointing out your father's flaws. He doesn't like it."

"Sorry," Melody said. "Though I'm sure you'll agree that Dad worries about everything."

"Granted," Lonnie said. "But it's always better to tip toe around these things, or at least mock on a more subtle level. Following proper social protocols, that is."

"Hey!" Bernie protested. "You guys could at least wait until I leave the room before you start talking about me, following proper back-stabbing protocols."

"Oh, Bernie," Lonnie said, rewinding the video again. "We're just teasing you."

Bernie pouted, and folded up his arms intentionally dramatically. "Bernie Jackson don't like to be teased," he said.

"So, noted," said Melody. "I'll put you down for back-stabbing only."

"I appreciate that," said Bernie, sounding not at all appreciative about the whole thing.

Lonnie threw her hands into the air. "I can't get a good read on this thing," she said, and then turned to her daughter. "You said that this happens pretty much like clock-work, yes?"

"Yes." Melody gave the response slowly, and mistrustfully. She didn't exactly know where her mother was going with this for certain, but she had a good idea that she wasn't going to like it.

"When's the next time this lady in white is schedules to depart."

"Actually, tomorrow morning. Though even if you do find a good spot for the camera in the house, I don't think it will be of sufficient quality from this distance, even at high definition. Plus there's no timer so you'd have to be up at that time anyway to man it." She fell silently for a moment, and tried desperately to find more reasons for her mother not to act on what she was thinking. Finally, she snapped her fingers, or at least tried to. (As Melody had never quite learned this trick, she accomplished the desired effect by saying the word "snap" after the attempt.) "Also, my camera doesn't have night-vision, and it's too dark that time of the morning to..."

"I've been thinking of all of that," Lonnie said, effectively cutting her off. "And I have the solution."

Scene Four

The weather station was a shoe box castle, antennae instead of parapets, portcullis overgrown shrubbery. Except instead of keeping out the spooky, it apparently contained it, and occasionally even spat it out into the world.

Bernie and Lonnie sat out in the cold morning air, huddled against the edge of Mrs. Mendleblat's dew-soaked, and semi-rotten fence. Melody, who could not be awoken, though Lonnie assumed she was faking for obvious reasons, was conspicuously missing from the family outing.

"You noticed that suspicious white van parked in front of Shenenigans' house, right?" Bernie said, softly.

"Oh," Lonnie said. "I hadn't until just now." In truth, Lonnie had been eying that van very carefully. Their neighbors to the right (facing the street), always seemed to be up to something, so an unmarked van in front of their house didn't seem too out of the ordinary. "Maybe they hired their cousins to finally disassemble and reassemble our back fence one inch closer to us."

"The Shenenigans'," Bernie mused. "Up to their old shenanigans."

The Shenenigans' made no bones about their feelings of constant annoyance that the Jacksons were somehow on their land. They were constantly threatening to send a survey crew out to prove just that. Though, Bernie would swear he had once seen such a crew in yellow slickers and portable fancy equipment stop by once in the morning hours, but nothing ever became of it.

"The war of attrition rumbles on, eh?" Bernie looked away and towards Lonnie's backpack. "So," he said, slapping his hands together and rubbing them quickly as if to warm them. "What sorts of snacks did you bring?"

"Bernie, for goodness sake, we're fifty feet from the house. It's not like we've been hiking all day."

"What? It's my _sleepies,"_ he said. _"_ They need to be fed."

When the two were first married, Bernie had once tried to convince Lonnie that a race of fairy-like beings lived in his stomach and, if he was forced to wake up before a certain time, they would demand tribute of fine chocolates or some other acceptable goodies.

"Well, I only brought a blanket, a camera and the big flashlight. And you're already sitting on the blanket. You're free to snack away on any of those items."

"Fine," Bernie said. "Never mind then. What time is it anyway?"

"Five minutes to show time," she said. "So get the light ready. This thing doesn't shoot in the dark."

While Lafayette did have street lamps, it was too wane to effectively light up the scene in front of them, casting the weather station in a creepy paleness which made the entire endeavor look like a scene from a horror flick.

"Why do I feel like I'm on the set of The Columbus Day Massacre IV all of a sudden?"

"Because Bernie Jackson don't have what it takes to be in the ghost investigation gang!" Lonnie shined her pen light up at her face and made a _Whooooo_ sound that caused her husband to jump slightly.

"Stop it," he told her. "I want to go in now. I'm hungry and tired."

Suddenly a figure emerged past the privet bushes, and Bernie and Lonnie both jumped up and screamed. "Why didn't anyone wake me?" asked the tall, skinny figure.

"Melody!" Lonnie yelled in a whisper. "You can't just sneak up on people on a ghost hunt. Especially people with bad hearts like your father."

"I don't have a bad heart," Bernie corrected.

Melody yawned, and handed her father a small container of almonds and chocolate chips. "Here," she said. "I brought snacks."

"She so gets me," Bernie said, smiling.

Lonnie sighed, looking at her watch. "Like father like daughter." She then slapped Bernie on the shoulder. "It's almost time," she said, hurriedly. "Shine that flashlight on the door, and don't do it like when you're helping me with the car engine."

"I can't help it if your giant head gets in the way."

"Just shine it, joke boy!"

Bernie hefted the large, twenty pound flashlight at the door, and switched it on. Suddenly the door and surrounding area was aglow.

Bernie whispered to Lonnie. "Calling this thing portable is a bunch of propaganda." He then turned to Melody. "Is there any way we can hook this up to your tripod?"

Melody and Lonnie both shushed him as he was nearly talking over some crackling noises coming from behind the door.

"I think it's happening," Melody said, her heart racing. She placed her palm on her chest as if to keep the organ from beating itself out of her rib cage. It was at this moment she realized she had not only grabbed her father's hand, but was squeezing it tightly.

The door knob began to rattle as if caused by an internal vibration. It wasn't the same sort of motion that one would expect a person to make. It was more mechanical, awkward. Finally, the vibrating stopped and the knob slowly began to turn.

The Jacksons held their breath as the door opened slowly, showing at first only darkness within.

"Is that it?" Bernie asked nervously.

Melody shushed him, but then unconsciously grabbed his hand tightly again as a figure emerged.

It was a woman dressed all in white. She was very demure. Her skin was like alabaster, hair silken and tied up in back with a fine bow. She held up her hand to the light as though it caused her pain.

"She's reacting to the light, Bernie. Do you think this is an intelligent haunt?"

Bernie said nothing, as though unable to move.

The woman moved out of the light slightly, and called out to them. "Is there someone there?"

Melody pushed herself between her parents. "Well, this definitely didn't happen in the video," she said, out of breath. "Definitely an intelligent haunt." She wanted to sound as though she knew what she were talking about, but deep down she just wanted to run away.

Bernie tried to force his mouth to work, and managed a stammered sentence. "D-do you think we should respond?"

"I don't know if engaging with a ghost is a good idea," Melody warned.

"Who's there?" the woman in white continued. She seemed sad and forlorn. "Why won't you talk to me?" She again tried to move away from the light, but like a physical force it seemed to hold her back.

"I think the light is keeping her in a bubble," Melody said.

"You're just making that up," Bernie said.

"Who are you?" Lonnie called out suddenly. She then turned to Melody and said. "It's rude to just sit here and say nothing."

"I'm Madeline," the figure in white said. "Madeline D'amarite. Who are you and what are you doing on my lawn?"

"Lady," Bernie said. "You've got it all wrong."

"How many of you are there? Please turn off that light, it's burning my eyes!"

Lonnie reached out to Bernie's hand. "Bernie," she said. "At least point it lower."

Behind the woman in white the knob began to rattle again, and as if triggered by her presence the door opened all of the way quickly. Exposed now was a large, grey, nondescript form.

The creature was at least seven feet tall, and had to bend down to peer through the doorway. It's face seemed non-existent, devoid of any features at all except for a gaping hole where the mouth should be.

This creature emitted a horrific muffled snarl and stepped aggressively towards the woman in white.

Madeline turned and screamed in terror as a thick, clay-like arm reached around her waist and pulled her inside.

Bernie and Lonnie rushed to the woman's aid, but though the door was still wide open they seemed impeded by some force from entering the building. The doorway seemed replaced with smoky sheet of glass. They could make out a front parlor inside. Portraits hung on the wall decorated with fuzzy red wallpaper and antique furnishings completed the room. For a horrifying moment, they could hear faint, distant screams as though the woman in white were being dragged down into a basement lair.

"Hello," Bernie called out to her, but there was no response. Soon the vision faded into blackness, and thankfully so too did the heart wrenching screams.

Bernie ran back for his large flashlight and shined it into the black void to no avail. It was as if he were attempting to peer into a deep, bottomless ravine.

Behind them came the screeching of an engine as the white van, once parked suspiciously across from street, sped off into the night.

"That was some good timing," Bernie said. "You think this was a stakeout?"

"A stakeout for a ghost?" Melody narrowed her eyes at her father, for she could see no reason for it. "True," she said, "an unmarked white van tearing off after the conclusion of the appearance of a ghost seemed a tad fishy. But that would seem to imply that this woman in white phenomenon was known outside the neighborhood."

"Possibly the government," shuddered Bernie.

"Here's the scary part," said Lonnie. "I don't think it was a actual a ghost we saw."

"Well, she and that beast thing seemed real enough." Bernie turned to his wife with a confounded look on his face. "You saw that, right??! What was that?"

Lonnie shrugged, lost for words.

"You see," Melody said. "You see why I wanted to get this thing torn down." She pointed to the door. "And now it's closed. Did anyone see that happen?"

Bernie rapped on it with his knuckles, and was suddenly worried that someone might actually answer his response. "I suspect," he said, "that it was never opened in the first place. I think this door is what was barring us from entry."

Lonnie chimed in. "And the faltering background was the ghostly remains of that poor woman's former house glowing in the past."

"...And fading like a candle?" Melody finished, cockeyed. "You suddenly getting poetic on us, mom?"

"No," Lonnie said, blushing in the moonlight. "Sometimes I just talk...that way."

"Well, I say," Bernie began, "but not as floridly, that we all get back in the house. OUR OWN HOUSE," he corrected. "And maybe have a snack and get ready for bed. We can talk about this in the morning."

Lonnie sighed. "More snacking."

Melody led the way, and then turned. "I just have this horrible feeling that our presence here tonight might have allowed that beast to finally grab that woman. This might be our fault."

"Thanks," Bernie said. "That's the something we were trying not to think about."

Scene Five

In the morning feelings weren't much brighter. The Jackson's were still shaken up by the events of the previous night, but at least most of that fear was dwindling.

"I wish I had gotten a glimpse of the license plate on that van," Lonnie said.

"I don't think it had one," said Bernie. "Besides, if it's here again next week, we can check then."

Melody didn't like the implications of this woman in white being more than a local problem. If outside parties were interested, then it would be harder to get rid of.

What did they want? Was it to study the phenomenon? Then why so secret? Was the government involved? The military?

Mostly though, the item weighing on her mind was the possibility that her family had been the cause of the woman in white being grabbed by the strange creature, possibly with only eternal torment to look forward to.

Bernie slammed a small glass jar and a plastic bottle in front of Melody. "Hey, Rodin!" he said.

Melody looked at him, shook her head and gave her father a stern look that told him, "why are you interrupting me?"

"Jam or syrup on your waffles?"

"I don't care!"

"I've been talking to you for five minutes."

"Fine. I'll have jam."

"Strawberry or seedless blackberry?"

Melody's eyes narrowed in frustration.

"Strawberry it is," Bernie said, and began to spread the thick berry blend on top of Melody's toasted honeycombed cakes.

"I still think it's our fault," Melody said, suddenly.

Bernie winced as though in pain. "This conversation was going so well, too," he said, shoving a larger than appropriate portion of waffle into his mouth. "Wha whas?" he tried to say.

"The woman in white," she clarified.

"I'm afraid you're probably right," Lonnie said, and Bernie shot her a look. "But I've also been thinking about it, and I think she still might be okay."

Melody cocked her head to the side, and made a whimpering dog sound, and then her eyes grew large. "Oh, you might be right," she said.

"But I haven't even said it, yet," Lonnie said, frowning.

"The looping nature of the event. When we interfered, we completely changed it from its former loop. It changed this time because we stopped her from running out of her house. Next week, the event should repeat again just as before."

"Yeah, that's what I was going to say, alright," Lonnie said, sighing. "But it took me all night to figure it out."

"Don't worry, mom," Melody said, turning her attention to her waffles. "My synapses are younger."

"Yeah," Bernie said, tapping his wife on the knee. "Your synapses are all old and rotten."

"That still leaves the matter of that mysterious van."

"I'm hoping it was Scooby and Shaggy," said Bernie.

Melody sighed and shook her head. "Unlikely that it will be your cartoon heroes," she said. "Besides if they _were_ real people they would be dead by now."

Bernie began to tap his fork on his plate as though banging on a war drum.

" _I'm hoping_ ," Melody continued. "it was just some group of ghost hunters making a television show, or something dumb like that."

Bernie nodded. "Yes," he said, half smiling. "That would make everything better,"

Lonnie, now standing, picked up her now waffle-free plate and placed it in the sink. "Well," she said. "I think we should head over to the library, or maybe even stop by the Historical Society when y'all are done. I want to look up Madeline D'amarite. Nothing about her came up on the Internet."

"Did you spell her name right?" Bernie asked.

"Yeah, mom, maybe we should ask the ghost to spell it out next time."

Bernie snorted, but continued eating. "We should look up what used to be there before it was just an empty field, too."

"All very good suggestions," Lonnie said.

"I'll talk to the boys, too. Maybe they have a bead on that unmarked van."

"Well I'm going to eat the rest of these waffles and watch some television," Bernie said.

"You're going to take a shower and come with me to the library," Lonnie told him.

"When, exactly," Bernie said, "did we become the Jackson Family Detective Agency? I was hoping to relax this weekend."

"When the ghost calls, you have to answer," Lonnie said.

Bernie smirked. "Who says?"

Melody smiled at him. "Every horror movie ever made."

When Melody returned from her discussions with "The l'il Lafayette militia", as Bernie was now calling them, her parents were in the car waiting for her.

"Anything?" her mother asked.

"Nope," Melody said. "Wasn't on their radar. I think it might have been past their bedtimes. Sadly they only have so many night-vision cameras."

"Well, that's actually comforting," Bernie said from the passenger's seat. "I wasn't entirely thrilled with the thought of Little Brother watching everyone's move on this block."

"What have you got to hide, Bernie Jackson?" his wife asked him, one eyebrow raised.

"It's not a matter of criminal behavior," Bernie said, uncharacteristically serious. "It's a matter of personal freedoms and hard-fought liberties. Also, there's a definite creepy factor. Does anyone even know where this army's allegiance lies?"

"I was just joking," Lonnie admitted. "Also, I don't recall the last time you fought for any liberties."

"Well, someone did," Bernie said, folding his arms at his chest. "And we shouldn't squander them, no matter how cute the transgressors."

Melody smiled at her father, but didn't have anything to add to the discussion. Bernie in a serious moment was not something often witnessed, and she didn't want it cluttered with a bunch of chatter. Although she soon discovered she couldn't help herself.

Her mother started the car and they were soon on their way.

"Can we pick up a new journal while we're out today?"

"Um, sure," said Lonnie. "Why?"

"I want to record the moment when dad takes a stand against oppression."

"I thought girls wrote in _diaries_ not _journals_?" Bernie asked, looking at her in the rear-view mirror with a goofy grin on his face.

"Cancel that order," Melody said, smirking. "The moment has been ruined."

"It was just a matter of time," Lonnie laughed.

Once Lonnie turned on to Powell, she pointed the car towards downtown and turned on the radio. From that point on the Jackson's retreated into their own minds for much of the rest of the trip. Bernie made his usual concerns about going to Central library verses a closer branch, to which Lonnie reminded him of its proximity to the historical society. Melody also chimed in noting Central's collection of newspaper back issues and other research potential, which most branches didn't have.

"Also," Lonnie said. "We should go to the zoo before our membership runs out."

Bernie exploded. "This is turning into a whole thing," he said. "Do you know how crazy that place is going to be on a weekend?!"

"Okay," Lonnie acquiesced. "Then no zoo. But I'd like to at least go to that button store."

"Oh, that place that you've been salivating over?! This entire ghost thing was just a ruse to look at buttons for hours. I knew it. I bet Madeline D'Albright was one of your friends from the craft barn."

"It's D'amarite, dummy, and now you're just being ridiculous," Lonnie said. "Besides we'll be there twenty minutes, tops."

Melody, was also in favor of the idea of going to the button store, giggled from the back seat. "Try to stay focused, Dad," she said. "You're starting to act paranoid."

"I just wanted to sit and relax today and watch PBS in my underwear. Is that too much to ask? It's the one thing I look forward to. Why on earth this family gets involved in so much madness is beyond me."

Lonnie shook her head. "It's just a button store," she said.

"I'm talking about this ghost!" he exploded again. "And I'm talking about this secret, unmarked van that scares me. And this little army that runs around our neighborhood videoing everything in the dark."

Lonnie shook her head. "You make it sound like this sort of thing happens all the time," Lonnie said.

"You're kidding, right? Lafayette is a supernatural hot spot. Take my missing sweater? How it was in a drawer for years, and then suddenly it ended up in the attic."

Lonnie groaned. "You mean the one your mother bought for you four Christmases ago? The one you never wore. I stuck it up in the attic as an interim step to see if you would forget about it before I donated it to the thrift store. Mystery solved. Another case closed by the Jackson Family Detective Agency!"

Melody laughed. "That probably solves a lot of Dad's supernatural mysteries."

"Quiet, you," Bernie said. "How about the scratches that appear on my arms, and the tears in my pants that occasionally show up? Poltergeists!"

Melody jumped in. "That's probably more to do with clumsiness than anything," she said. "I've seen you climbing through the blackberries more than once."

"Blackberries?" Bernie shook his head. "I have never been in the blackberries!"

"You really need to though," Lonnie told him. "They're getting out of control back there. Pretty soon they're going to eat the swimming pool."

He snapped his fingers. "What about that weird bell sound you guys heard?"

"Yes," Melody said. "That was a simple case of 'what was that?' We didn't know what it was, and it wasn't something we could really investigate."

Bernie growled. "There's other things, but I just can't think of them."

Melody giggled some more, but soon stopped. She suddenly began to worry about her father's health. She knew that his memory wasn't that great, but forgetting that he was entangled in the blackberries on more than one occasion seeming a little hard to believe. Maybe she should suggest a brain scan.

Instead, she said. "Dad, are you taking an aspirin every day?"

He turned around to look at her. "Yeah, why?"

"Just checking," she said. She turned to her mother. "Mom, does our insurance cover preventative EKGs?"

Lonnie turned to Bernie. "Your daughter is worried that you might be due for a stroke," she said.

Melody jumped in quickly, knowing how her father might react to that statement. "And it's not because you're old," she said. "Anyone of any age can have a stroke."

He turned around and gave her a look that seemed to say, _Then perhaps maybe we should shove you into that tiny tube._

She shook her head. "Well, not twelve-year-olds. That's just dumb."

Bernie turned back to face the front of the car. "Are we there, yet?"

Lonnie sighed. "How I made it as a single mom with two annoying kids, I'll never know."

Scene Six

The downtown Central library was a massive square of concrete. Melody had only been here a couple of times, mainly because it wasn't as locally convenient as their Holgate branch. Unless one worked downtown, according to her father, it was an annoying mess to find a parking spot. Contrary to that statement, however, Lonnie found one on the street right away.

Melody, as she usually was when confronting newish places, especially when said newish places were of such fine architecture, came prepared. She pulled out her video camera, and filmed it from every angle she could as they approached. And as for practice, or perhaps even to set the mood, she began to read from her first draft of narration:

" _Opening in 1913, this grand structure -- in Gregorian style and designed by architect A. E. Doyle -- was..._ "

"Do you need to do this now?" Bernie asked her.

"This is going to be my opening shot." She held up her hands as if to frame the building. "Just picture the approach."

"I am picturing it," Bernie said. "I'm here. And I can tell you with some confidence that I'm probably not going to want to relive it over and over again afterwards."

"Oh, let her practice, Bernie. She might be a famous film-maker someday."

"Yes father," Melody said, not pulling her face away from the view finder. "And you don't want to be left out of the thank-yous during the Academy Awards, do you?"

"I'll take my chances," he said.

Melody scowled and put her camera away. She tried to figure out why her father was being so grouchy. He liked to be contrary normally, and he could fall into a foul mood on occasion which seemed to occur out of the blue. Perhaps it was due to low blood sugar. She reached into her camera bag (which was actually a small backpack), pulled out a granola bar and handed it to him.

"What's this for?" he asked, taking it from his daughter's hand.

"It's for your mood," she said.

"Unless there's something stronger in it than granola," Bernie said, "I don't think it's going to solve my problem."

Melody understood the joke, but she didn't appreciate it much. Maybe there was a clue to his onset anger in a recent conversation. She scanned her brain:

  * Television

  * Underwear

  * Blackberries

  * Supernatural mysteries

She smirked. "At least you're doing something with your family," she told him.

Bernie smiled, and put his arm around her and her mother. "This is fun," he said. "We should really do this more often."

"You're just saying that to shut us up, aren't you?" Lonnie said.

They ascended the steps, which spanned nearly the entire front of the building. It opened in the middle with three heavy sets of doors. There was a small entryway which housed the library gift shop, and a concierge of sorts who served some unknown purpose. Through another set of doors, the Jackson's found the main checkout room, which contained administrative services employees, and several rows of automated checkout machines. There were two rooms branching off: the main fiction room to the left, and the Beverly Cleary Children's Library to the right, as well as main staircase of polished black stone ascending in the center.

Lonnie began immediately towards the second floor.

"I'm going to check in with the research squad and see if they have any tips for finding this woman," she said.

Melody let her body sag, which it did when her mother said something annoying or embarrassing. She was almost completely positive that "research squad" wasn't the official name for any group of people.

"Please don't address them as that," she told her.

"Why not?" Lonnie said. "They'll think it's creative." She turned around quickly and grabbed for her daughter's hand, eyes alighted. "Maybe they'll name it that, and create a banner or something. Wouldn't that just be like totally embarrassing for you?"

"Yes," Melody said. "It would. You know it would."

Lonnie laughed softly to herself. "Don't worry," she said. "I won't even talk to them directly. I'll just grunt and point."

"I would greatly appreciate that," said Melody.

After speaking to the person in charge of the microfiche, Melody found her mother who was at the moment returning from her queue at the reference desk.

"She said we need a specific date," Melody told her. "And that she couldn't just simply give us _all of it_."

"Rules, eh?" Lonnie attempted a laugh, but seemed lost in thought.

"What is it, Mom?" Melody looked at her mother with some concern.

"Todd, the guy behind the counter, said that there was just a man here looking up info at that same address. He also suggested that we'd have more luck conducting our research over at the Historical Society. Which is what I thought in the first place, so score one for mom, and you stopped listening to me a while ago, didn't you?"

Melody's eyes were huge with excitement. "Here we go," she said. "This is just starting to get good. Did Todd say how long ago, or what the man looked like?"

"About ten minutes ago, I guess. And no, I didn't think to ask. Also, that's a little creepy, don't you think?" She had blinked and in that briefest of moments her daughter seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth. "Melody??" She turned to find her daughter rushing to the reference desk. Lonnie raced after her, but Melody was already making her inquiries.

"Thanks, Todd," she told the slightly balding, middle-aged man behind the reference desk.

"There you are, girly," Lonnie said, perhaps a little too loudly and chuckling as she approached. She looked up to Todd, who adjusted his glasses but not his indifferent expression. "This is my daughter, Mel," she stammered. "She's just overly curious. When I told her about the predicament she just had to know if this was someone we knew."

"Oh," Todd said. "That's fine. I get questions all day." He smiled suddenly, and the act of it made his eyes nearly disappear into his forehead.

"Well," Melody said, attempting to move the conversation to its conclusion. "Thanks again."

"Actually," Lonnie continued, sounding almost frantic. "We're on a highly competitive scavenger hunt. Mel, here, shouldn't even be asking such pointed questions."

Todd simply looked at her, his smile now gone, his eyes returned.

"Okay, we're going now. Thanks for your help." Melody dragged her mother away from the desk and into the open flow of the main hall.

"We're not stalkers or anything," Lonnie yelled to Todd over her shoulder.

"First of all," Melody began slowly. "Mel?"

"I was trying to preserve your anonymity," Lonnie said.

"Then you should have called me Barbara, or something. Second of all, and this is more of a note to myself, next time you want to embarrass me I'm going to just let you call them the _research squad_ and be done with it, because that would have been less horrible overall."

Melody turned around, and saw that Todd was still staring at them with one eyebrow raised. When she waved at him, he turned away and began to instead stare at his computer screen.

"Anyway," Melody said. "Here's the skinny: About six feet, Caucasian, very hairy, glasses, blue shirt," Melody said, pulling on her mother's arm to bring her ear closer to her mouth. "Is that someone you recognize?"

"Yeah," Lonnie said. "Just about everywhere."

Scene Seven

The Jackson family decided to walk over to the Historical Society, it was only a couple of blocks away in the park district, and Bernie didn't want to give up what he called their "primo spot".

As they approached the large, windowed structure, Melody caught site of something parked on the side of the street.

"Coincidence, or what?" she said, pointing to the unmarked white van with her eyes.

"Well," Lonnie said, whispering. "What with the other interested party at the library, I'm thinking this is closer to falling on the "or what" side of things."

Bernie agreed, though he didn't say anything, other than to appear more on guard, if such a thing were possible; this involved looking around surreptitiously, and taking a more defensive position in front of his wife and daughter as they walked.

"Maybe we should go home," Lonnie said. "I mean, they know what we look like, which is an advantage we don't have on them."

"Then they'd know we were on to them. I think it's better to pretend we have no idea that they're here and that they're after the same thing. That's to our advantage."

Bernie cleared his throat. "I think Melody's right about this one," he said. "We're much safer in presumed ignorance."

Lonnie acquiesced. "All right," she said, putting up her hands. "As long as we're safe and don't do anything stupid."

They walked to the front of the building with as much nonchalantness as they could muster.

"Be casual," Bernie said under his breath, calling upon his former childhood talent of ventriloquism and not moving his mouth. "We don't know if they're watching us."

Lonnie scratched her forehead, using her arm to block the motion of her mouth movements. "You don't have to keep saying that, you dope," she told him. "In fact, stop walking so casually. That hip swagger of yours is going to give us away more than anything."

Bernie straightened himself, and attempted to walk normally.

Melody ran ahead and opened the door, waving her parents inside. "Let's just get this over with," she said. "Dawdling is not our friend."

The museum opened on a very large, mostly empty room. To the right was a counter, which served as admissions.

Lonnie stepped up and spoke to the overly made up, older blond woman behind a computer. The woman was wearing a crisp blue vest bearing the logo of the museum. "Has anyone else been in here asking about this address?" She slipped a piece of paper across the counter."

"Very not suspicious," Melody grumbled under her breath. She eyed the woman sitting in front of them warily. She looked like the town gossip, normal in most ways -- enough to avoid personal attention -- but greedy eyes always on the lookout for some juicy tidbit. She dallied with reenacting her mother's _we're not stalkers_ skit from the library, but thought better of it. Instead, she went with a tack a little more believable:

"We just lost track of my uncle, Darleen," she said, finding the woman's name engraved on a plastic badge at her chest, "and was wondering if he might have wandered in here."

"Well," the woman said, leaning forward. As she spoke Melody saw that a small crumb had become embedded into her overly polished lips, and it danced around as she spoke. Melody tried to look away but feared she could not. "There were a couple of gentleman that walked in. One was kind of good looking, a little hairy," she bunched her lips together as she said this part, but the crumb stayed put, "and the other was wearing a beat up cowboy hat, and looked as though he was a hit-man for the wild west mafia or something. They didn't stop and ask me anything though, but rather went upstairs like they knew what they was looking for."

_Look away_ , Melody told herself. _Look away from the dancing crumb. That crumb is none of your business_!

"They were the only two to come in in the last twenty minutes, so perhaps this is the party you were looking for? Although, I assume the more good looking one is your uncle, and not the shady character."

Melody, who had forced her eyes to look elsewhere, found herself drawn once again to the woman's waxy lips. To her surprise the crumb was no longer present. Her eyes darted all around the counter as though she were searching for a lost contact lens. Finally she found it, delicately poised on the tip of the woman's uniform pocket. "Nope," she told Darleen. "It's ol' shady that were looking for."

"Oh," Darleen said. "I didn't mean any..."

"Let's go, Mom," Melody said, feigning offense. "We need to make sure your _shady_ brother, Gordon 'the hand', gets his diabetes pills so he doesn't slip into a coma."

Behind them, Darleen began to stammer, and once they were safely away Lonnie said, "What was that all about. Do you two have a history I'm unaware of?"

"She just looked like a person who would blab our business if those men came and asked what we were up to."

"And now she's going to mention that you were his niece, if they do."

Melody scrunched up her face. "Doubtful," she said. "She'll be too embarrassed to mention anything for fear that we might have told ol' uncle Gordon what a creep she thought he was."

"Genius! Although you didn't let me ask her how we could find our information."

"You were panicking, Mother," Melody said, directly. "A loose cannon. You would have shown too many of our cards."

"Ladies," came a voice behind them. Melody and Lonnie turned to find that Darleen was pointing to a hallway directly behind her.

The elevator was behind some lockers and seemed like a place they shouldn't be authorized to go. Lonnie pushed the button and a whirring sound began to emanate behind the doors. Melody held her breath for fear that the two mysterious men might be in there on their way down.

Lonnie nodded. "How about Mike?"

"Huh?"

"You were thinking he needed a name, weren't you?"

"No. Don't be daft."

"Yes you were I know you too well. The creepy cowboy guy is Gordon, so the hairy guy needs a name, too."

"So Mike?"

"Hairy Mike," Lonnie said, smiling.

"Fine," Melody said. "You can name the bad man this time."

There was a ding! and the doors slowly began to open.

"We might be headed for a trap," Melody said.

"I'm sure we'll be fine," Lonnie tried to assure her.

The elevator was small, but very cozy. There was a small writing desk to the side, on top of which were fanned out pamphlets about the research library.

"Should we wait for Dad?"

"He's still being nonchalant over there," Lonnie said. "He can catch the next one."

Melody looked worried. "But he might need _our_ protection." Her narrowed eyes indicated that she was truly worried for her father's safety.

"Okay," Lonnie said. "You might be right." She stuck her head out of the opening of the elevator, but didn't catch sight of him. "Hold the door a sec," she said, and took off down the hallway. She spotted Bernie still around the corner perusing one of the displays. He was laughing at something but Lonnie recognized it right away as one of his apocryphal displays.

"Psst," Lonnie projected.

Bernie looked up right away. His expression seemed to convey, "Yes, stranger. Did you lose your umbrella?"

"Get over here," she said.

Bernie looked around, looked back at his wife and slowly began to shake his head.

Lonnie winked at him, nodded in agreement, and then proceeded to give him a thumbs up. She then held up four fingers, although this only seemed to confuse him Lonnie grimaced, waved him off and then returned to the elevator.

"I think your father is getting dumber," she said.

Melody laughed, but then stopped. "Wait," she said. "He's not coming?"

"Hopefully he'll figure it out once the clues settle in."

The doors closed silently, and the room began to move slowly upwards.

"As I see it," Lonnie continued, "our mission is two-fold: find those men and keep them in our sights."

Melody shook her head. "Is that two folds? That seems like exactly one-fold to me," she said. "A combined fold perhaps, but single none-the-less."

Lonnie sighed. "I didn't think I had to mention the original fold." She pulled her phone from her pocket. "Hand on, I think Bernie's texting me." She smiled.

"What?"

"He's complaining. He had to pay for our tickets once Darleen regained her senses."

"I thought tickets were free," Melody said, grimacing.

"Only to residents."

"Aren't we residents?"

"Apparently, we both wandered off without showing your ID."

"Maybe Darleen will give us a refund if we show them to her now."

Lonnie shook her head. "Do you really want to go down that road?"

Melody shrugged. "I'm kind of curious actually where that crumb ended up."

Scene Eight

When the doors opened, and the two of them collectively relaxed their bodies, the elevator had opened onto a large room, fronted by two unoccupied desks. One of them was clearly the librarian's station, and one, practically blocking the entrance, seemed to be some sort of check in. On top of it was a sign which read, "Please excuse our mess".

Melody looked around. The "mess" in question was not easily determined. The library was neat, and all of the books were on the shelves. There was no half peeled wallpaper or slightly pulled up linoleum anywhere.

"I don't feel at all silly," Melody said, "when I tell you that I was very glad that that second fold wasn't waiting for us on the other side of that door."

Lonnie nodded in agreement, but her commitments were elsewhere. She had caught sight of another museum volunteer: a young man who was simply wandering around with his hands behind his back. She recognized him as a lurker -- someone who was probably meant to be a resource for questions, but was mainly there to gently yell at people who got a little too close to the exhibits. Nose prints and the oils from fingers, after all, were not friends to aging documents.

Melody tapped her mother on the shoulder and pointed to him. "Go ask that guy," she said. "He's the quiet type, more loyal to the museum than to personal agendas."

Lonnie nodded. "Way ahead of you," she said. She walked over to him while Melody went off to explore the research floor.

"Excuse me," came a voice from behind her, softly.

Melody turned to find a frumpishly dressed young man with bleary, blood-shot eyes. He looked as though his head had been buried in a book for the past several days.

"Is this your first visit to the research library?" He seemed insistent, but friendly, while at the same time trying not to sound annoyed.

"Well, yes," Melody admitted.

The young man laughed nervously to himself. "Then you'll need to fill out a card with your information and sign the agreement that you will not damage our materials."

"Oh, we won't be..." The look on the man's face showed Melody that he wasn't about to let her past without following his instructions to the letter. Melody shrugged her shoulders. "Okay," she said.

The young man smiled, and sat down behind a little desk between them. He then pushed a large card in front of her and handed Melody a pencil.

The girl wrote down her name and address and email as instructed. When she handed the card back, the young man pushed it back towards her.

"And please sign the back," he said.

Melody nodded. "What's this mess your sign is speaking of?" She was hoping perhaps to get a good deal on a used sign. It would go perfectly with their kitchen decor.

At first the young man appeared confused, and then it seemed to strike him suddenly. "Oh, we recently had a drainage problem which ruined all of our carpets. We've had to pull them up but they've not been replaced yet."

Melody responded, commiseratively. "At least none of the materials were damaged, I hope."

The young man nodded, and stared off into space for a moment. "Well," he said. "Please enjoy your visit, and let me know if you have any questions."

"I will do that," Melody said, but the young man had already removed himself from the desk and wandered off.

Melody looked around the library. In front of her, where her mother had run off to, were several shelves of books. The center of which contained displays under glass. To the left, in front of a sort of caged area of bookshelves, were large file cabinets. Unsure where to even start looking, Melody headed in this direction.

She discovered that most of what these file cabinets contained were archival photographs. There were thousands of photos of individuals, and also of buildings and locations. Amazed, she followed the cabinets around the corner where they eventually evolved into microfiche containing entire print runs of hundreds of old newspapers.

"This is incredible," she said to herself. "Imagine the research I could..."

Suddenly, she heard talking behind her, and the loud clunking of boot heels on the floor. Two men emerged from the microfiche viewing room. One was tall, a little over six-foot, with short, black messy hair. He wore a short-sleeve red and green striped shirt which exposed his extremely hairy forearms. "Hairy Mike," Melody thought wildly. Though his features were normal, and probably could be considered pleasing to look at as described by Darleen, Melody found him otherwise nondescript. The man next to him was almost a foot shorter, dirty looking, and wearing a worn and floppy cowboy hat. His appearance gave the impression that he had spent much of his life out on the plains, perhaps rustling dogies if such a job still existed. As he walked, the loud knocking of his boot heels filled the room.

The two men had been talking softly to themselves, but stopped when they saw her. Melody quickly spun around and pretended to look at one of the placards on the wall, hoping the motion appeared organic.

The placard in question was about the history of the Lewis and Clark Centennial exposition of 1905, "In 1804...," it began. Melody couldn't concentrate, though she pretended to be reading, feigning interest for effect. _Come on_ , she thought. _Click away, boot heels_.

No response from the cowboy's feet.

What were they doing? She thought wildly to herself. Were they trying to decide if they recognized her, or if she were actually reading and not a spy. She could hear the two of them breathing behind her back. She wanted to turn around and shout at them, and ask them what they wanted.

Melody wondered what her mother was doing. Would she and the volunteer come and rescue her? Or was her mother in danger as well? Would Dad figure out the clues and pop out of the elevator at just the right moment?

Why were those two men just standing there staring at her. She could feel their eyes on her back, daring her to not be reading this placard.

Her eyes began to twitch. "Okay," she told herself, and began to read the words again to herself in her mind. "In 1804..." It was no use. She was unable to concentrate on actual sentences. It was impossible to read when there was someone staring at your back. Instead she decided to simply bob her head and appear interested.

Then a horrible thought entered her mind. What if they were slowly reaching out their hands to choke her? They could be doing that. One of them probably had already grabbed her mother, an obvious spy who could not hold her excitement and keep a secret to save her life. Now her creepy-faced, cowboy-boot wearing fake uncle was reaching out to strangle her as well.

She shook her head. "Stop being ridiculous," she told herself. "You'll be fine as long as you keep pretending to read this nonsense about Lewis and Clark."

Melody took a dramatic deep breath. Now these two men were making her turn against Lewis and Clark!

_WHY WERE THE COWBOY BOOTS NOT MAKING ANY SOUND_!?!

The problem with the placard was that it was only two paragraphs long. She should have finished it minutes ago were she actually reading it. This was going to be her downfall, she decided. No one should still be reading this text. It would be obvious to anyone that she not really reading. "I could be admiring the photo," she told herself. There was an artist's rendition of the exposition along the waterfront. "Yes," she said, and smiled. "I'm admiring the photo. And look down at the text again as if to compare a possible passage of description." She did this, and nodded to herself. "Yes," she said in her mind. "They match. Now squint at the text. Maybe there's a smudge on your glasses preventing you from seeing too clearly, thus taking longer to read." She leaned forward, and lifted her glasses up slightly above her eyelids.

Suddenly a large group of children stumbled into the room, talking loudly and making disruptive noises. This was followed by the loud booming voice of a female adult shouting, "Quiet children. People are trying to read!"

"Or at least pretending to," Melody corrected inside her head. The presence of these new people gave her the courage to turn and find another exhibit to peruse and thus extend her charade. However when she turned, the men were no longer there!

Down the hall she spotted her mother who was quickly traipsing up to her.

"Okay," Lonnie said. "Here's the ultimate skinny."

Melody squinted at her mother with revulsion. Sadly, Lonnie Jackson was fond of adding the world "ultimate" to make any phrase sound like it was of slightly greater importance. As a fanatic of old, and no longer used slang, however, Melody did enjoy Lonnie's use of the word "skinny" to define newfound information. She often used it herself. However, "ultimate skinny", at least in her eyes, was not an acceptable modern upgrade.

"Go on," Melody said in a deep, husky voice.

"That nice young man, Derek, I talked to led me to the record room, and we looked up the address in his database...."

Melody's mind began to wander. Where did those men go, and how long was she worried about them strangling her after they had already gone? With her senses super heightened, she didn't think there was any way for those clacking boots to get away without her notice. It was like they simply vanished into thin air. Were these men ghosts as well? Unlike her mothers vegetarian gravy, this plot was definitely thickening.

"Researching apparitions," Melody said suddenly, in a musing sort of way.

"Huh?" Lonnie said. "Were you even listening to me?"

Melody shrugged. "Of course I was. You were talking about the lot across the street and looking up the address with a young man named Derek."

"Um, that was just the first sentence I said, mixed with anecdotal evidence. I was talking for approximately three minutes after that. I'm pretty sure you faded away at that point, as evidenced by the 'researching apparitions' comment which had nothing to do with what I was talking about."

Melody was about to roll her eyes but thought better of it. She _hadn't_ been listening to her mother, that was a fact. Any arguments against that case would probably net her one nastily placed "you're just like your father," comment.

"So," she said, instead. "What did you find out?"

Lonnie stood there for a moment as though waiting for an actual apology, but since it seemed her excitement could not be contained, she continued. "Well, _again_ , we found that there WAS a woman living there in the thirties named Madeline D'amarite. The house burned to the ground exactly a year after her husband died by mysterious means."

Melody's eyes lit up. "Oooh," she said. "Mysterious means. Very intriguing."

"Are you being sarcastic now?" her mother asked her, placing her hands on her hips. "Because this is a little what's up."

Melody cringed again. Whenever her mother spoke to people ten or more years younger than herself, she attempted to use a hipper vernacular for a time not less than several hours after said contact. This time Melody could not keep quiet about it. "A little _what's up_? Please don't say things like that. It's completely meaningless, and you sound ridiculous. Is that a thing that _Derek_ said?"

Lonnie cleared her throat. "I don't know," she said. "Maybe. Anyway, where did your father drift off to? Is he still lurking somewhere in the shadows?"

"Probably," Melody said. "Although, I'm not entirely certain he ever figured out where we went. He might be prowling around in the basement for all I know. Did you find out anything specific about this Madeline person or her husband?"

"Not really," Lonnie said. "Derek was pulling up the database of the Oregonian but he got distracted by two men walking through the library in their socks and carrying their boots in their hands. He did show me a link and how to research that on-line, so we can do that from home."

Melody raised her eyebrows. The men _had_ seen her, and had actually removed their boots to avoid detection from _her_! That was brilliant, she thought. "So they weren't ghosts, but in reality were yellow-bellied chickens."

Lonnie tilted her head to the side. "Okay?" she said, confused.

"Come on," Melody said. "I want to see if that van's still parked out front."

Scene Nine

The van was gone, which didn't surprise Melody in the least. She filled in her parents on what she knew of the two men, and this seemed to make them a little less worried about their own involvement. However, what Hairy Mike and Uncle Gordon knew and what they wanted was still a big mystery.

"Maybe they're testing out some new holographic projector technology or something," Bernie said.

Melody shook her head and groaned. "That is possibly the dumbest suggestion I've ever heard.

Bernie stammered as though he didn't want to concede his argument despite the fact that he was struggling to find solid ground. "It's a valid suggestion," he said.

Melody turned her lips into a crooked smile and formed an expression which indicated to her father that she was about to engage in a verbal battle the likes of which none have ever seen. Before she could put forth her first argument, however, Bernie raised his hands in defeat.

"Never mind," he said. "I've seen _that_ look before."

Melody raised an eyebrow at his lackluster attempt, but was happy for the victory nonetheless.

Lonnie stepped in. "There's no evidence that they really even had anything to do with this. Did you see them pointing any projectors at the door? I am starting to wonder if we're all just not being a little too paranoid about these guys."

Melody shrugged her shoulders and tilted her head, but otherwise didn't disagree with the statement.

Bernie just became quiet, and seemed to ignore the entire conversation.

They decided due to the lateness of the day, and the growling in their stomachs, that food should be procured as soon as possible.

"What?" Bernie said, raising an eyebrow. "You think Melody would eat something out of a food cart?"

"There _are_ restaurants downtown," Lonnie said.

They decided on a middle-eastern restaurant close to the river, named _Al-Amir._

Melody had been here with her family a few times before, and was the least keen on the idea. On their last visit her father spent a good deal of time asking the waitresses if they knew Al, or if Al was short for Alvin or Alfred, or even more horribly, _Aladdin_.

"Let's please not have a repeat of last time," she told him.

"What?"

Melody explained her dilemma.

Bernie chuckled. "Everyone thought that was funny," he said.

The girl shook her head. "Nope," she informed him. "Not one person did. It was very embarrassing."

"You're just at that age where everything your parents do is embarrassing."

"Okay, but if the hostess rolls her eyes and flips the open sign to closed when they see us coming, just don't be surprised."

They entered and were greeted with a very nice, but small and intricately decorated entrance. This led past a ornate wooden bar to a back dining area.

A short woman with a dark complexion and glasses approached them quickly, smiling. "You caught us a little early," she said. "The cook is just getting the kitchen ready if you don't mind waiting a few minutes."

Melody's heart beat loudly in her chest. If her father hated one thing it was waiting. She might avoid embarrassment after all.

Bernie looked over to his wife, who merely gave him a look that said, "Don't even think about it."

"Three please," Bernie said, and then looked at Melody out of the corner of his eye. He smiled in that slight way which she found exasperating. "Also, am I to understand by the name of your restaurant that you have Alum Ear?" Bernie then pointed to his ear as if to illustrate the location of the fictitious affliction.

Melody covered her face with her hands. She could feel it going purple.

The hostess however, didn't seem to understand. "I'm sorry, sir?"

"Alum Ear. Like in the cartoons, you know, like when Yosemite Sam (although Bernie didn't even bother to pronounce Yosemite correctly -- instead going with _Yo_ -Zem-Mite for double the embarrassment) "accidentally takes a drink from the bottle marked "alum", and then his face puckers up."

The hostess appeared flabbergasted. "I don't..." She looked over to Lonnie for help.

Lonnie grabbed her husband by the arm. "Don't mind him," she said. "His veins are small and he's prone to stroke."

"Oh." The hostess's eyes widened, and appeared almost relieved, but then jumped in, "Should I call a doctor?"

"No," Lonnie said. "It's nothing serious."

Slightly confused, the hostess said. "Right this way, please."

Melody stared around the room in wonderment as though the surroundings had just transported her to another land. The room was dark, but each of the neat tables was lit by a twinkling red glass candle. From the ceiling hung a yellow drapery which gave the impression of flowing sand dune overhead. On one large, imposing brick wall was a painting of a middle-eastern town square in which Melody imagined people talking politics or playing Parcheesi.

Melody suddenly became lost in thought. She was onto a new idea. She liked new ideas, especially when they dragged her away from other thoughts that stressed her out.

"Parcheesi," she said.

"Parcheesi?" Bernie stared at her for a moment.

"Yes," Melody said, but didn't elaborate.

"What about it?"

Melody didn't say anything.

Bernie snapped his fingers in front of his daughter's face, but her eyes were currently glazed over. He shook his head and returned to the menu.

Melody liked Parcheesi, but felt as a game it was old and decidedly long. She thought it could be spiced up in some way. Her mind now turned away from the excitement of Uncle Gordon and Hairy Mike was now focused on creating new mechanisms which could possible improve the game play.

Once the Jackson's were seated, she propped her head down on her elbow. "Perhaps with some cheese mechanism," she began, as though this were the current topic of the table. "If blocked by an opponent, the player could bribe the blockers with a certain number of cheese tokens...." Her eyes brightened. "Or lure rat henchmen from within the city walls." Her face became suddenly dour as she began to grow concerned about the theming of this new spin-off. "Wait, do they even have cheese in the far east?" She would have to ask the waitress.

"Dad?" she said, popping open her eyes as though she had just awoken from a nap. "Do we have any game publishers in the family? I think this could be a great idea."

Bernie laughed. "No," he said. "But your uncle Richmond always has to be the dog in Monopoly."

Melody scowled at her father. What did that have to do with anything, she wondered.

The waitress came around and her parents already knew what they wanted. Melody, however, who had been daydreaming, and who also had only experienced Lebanese cuisine a couple of times before, was completely lost.

"I'm a vegetarian," the girl pointed out adamantly to the waitress.

The waitress laughed. "Many of our items are vegetarian," she said, in a long, carefully formed voice. Melody looked up at her for the first time. She was a fairly large woman in a white shirt and a red scarf. Her hair was long and beautiful, and she spoke with a voice dark and full of umber.

"Okay then," Melody said, straightening her blouse.

"We have lamb," the waitress continued. "Much lamb, but you don't eat."

Melody quickly scanned the menu, thinking, "Dad, please don't say anything about alum and it's puckery effects." Then it hit her the question that she wanted to ask. "No lamb," she confirmed. "But do you have cheese in your culture?"

The waitress laughed even harder at this. "Cheese?! Yes. We have Ackawi, which is a soft, milk cheese. We have Naboulsi, which is boiled, as well as Jibneh Arebieh..."

"Okay," Melody said. "I guess that was a silly question."

"Would you like some cheese?"

"No," Melody said. "I was just doing some research for a board game idea." She put down the menu and proclaimed that she would just have the first thing she saw on the menu which suited her dietary restrictions: "Vegetarian Maza, please."

Still chuckling to herself, the waitress took the menus and departed to the kitchen, ticket in hand.

Bernie leaned forward. "Board game research?" He shook his head. "How could you embarrass your mother and I like that?"

Melody squinted at her father until her eyes were just barely slits. "Your mother and _me_ , not your mother and I," she corrected.

Bernie cocked his head to one side. "I don't think so," he said, laughing mockingly.

Lonnie placed her hand on top of his, "Why do you argue? You know she's right."

"It's easy," Melody said. "Just break it up into two parts. How could you embarrass _me_ and how could you embarrass _your mother_?"

"Either way," Bernie said. "The point is it was embarrassing."

"That is also incorrect. Compared with your interaction when we arrived, my interaction was comparatively not-embarrassing in the slightest. There's a easy test. In my case, the waitress laughed. So, it's a jolly occasion in which no one is embarrassed. In your case, the hostess looked horrified and asked if she needed to call a doctor. Hence awkwardness. Hence embarrassment for the family."

Lonnie puffed out her cheeks, and did her best godfather impersonation, cupping her hand and facing it upwards across the table. "You have brought awkwardness on the family," she said.

Bernie pointed to his wife with his thumb. "I suppose you don't think _that's_ embarrassing, either."

Melody slapped her cloth napkin open in front of her and dropped it neatly in her lap. "Not at all," she said.

Bernie rubbed his chin, said "Hmmm," a few times, and then began to play with his fork.

The table became a little somber at this point. Lonnie took a piece of paper out of her purse and began to make a list, presumably a shopping list of some kind. Melody became lost in thought once again.

She was still having a difficult time with this ghost business. This wasn't something she generally believed in. If it was a residual energy, she might be okay with it. That is to say, human energy which still remained in the general vicinity of where it was created might make sense. She knew that when people were angry, for instance, they left waves of energy behind on the environment. Melody occasionally experienced strong feelings in rooms she had never previously been in. Rooms which just felt wrong. Her mother seemed to experience this phenomenon fairly often and would quantify how a room felt on her "creepy scale" from one to five. Five being the most creepy.

The other type of "ghost" that Melody could live with was the "recorded message" type. As in when a person or event seemed to play out over and over again as though the single point in time were recorded, like a magnetic tape, onto the environment. Similar to the first type, this event was probably burnt onto the fabric of reality somehow due to its strong emotional energy content.

However, this woman in white business seemed to exist on an entirely different level than these two explanations. One even beyond most normal hauntings: The full bodied (and exceedingly realistic) apparition! What's more, this was a predictable full-bodied exceedingly realistic apparition. One could practically set one's watch to it. This was definitely NOT something she was comfortable with, but at the moment couldn't think of any acceptable theories.

"OKAY!" came the voice of the buxom, dark-haired waitress, stamping her feet on the ground for dramatic effect. She had a large flat-bread held above her head with one hand, and a tray containing many small bowls in the other. To Melody's horror, these bowls contained rolled up grape leaves, white liquids and pastes, and some kind of green chopped salady thing which the woman kept calling "Tabuli"

The woman had arrived at the table with a bland-looking cohort. The man expressionlessly helped her spread everything out. Every time he placed something new on the table, the plate would clank hard on the wooden surface, and he would shout "Okay?". With the woman's booming voice and feet stomping, and the man's plate clanking and shouting, the entire affair seemed to Melody more of a dance number then a presentation of food.

"Please say this isn't just all for me!" Melody looked on the scene with horror. She was never a big eater. She had nothing against Lebanese food, other than that it was sometimes more flavorful than her pallet could handle, but eating large quantities of food was not something she was known for.

"Yes yes yes," the waitress exclaimed with zeal and great enthusiasm. "The young lady order Vegetarian Maza, and that's what the young lady gets."

Bernie leaned forward. "The fourteen dollar price tag should have been the tip off for you,' he said. "Your mother and I usually share that particular entrée."

"Why didn't you stop me," Melody said, horrified as the plates continued to clank on the table, following by the expressionless waiter shouting, "Okay!" after each one.

"It all happened so fast," Lonnie confessed. "But that's okay. We can help you."

"And leftovers are nice," Bernie added, rolling his eyes. "Lots of leftovers."

Melody instantly blushed.

Once all of the food was placed in front of them, and the servers appropriately thanked, Bernie dug into practically with both hands. Melody noted that this motion was analogous to a baseball player sliding dramatically into home plate.

Lonnie, however, paused. She leaned in, slightly, and spoke in a whisper. "I don't want to alarm anyone," she said, softly. "But I think the pursuers at some point became the pursued."

Bernie looked around conspicuously. "Whad yoo men?" he said. Though his words were mangled due to the many food obstacles lodged in his mouth, his intent was clear.

Lonnie shushed him.

"Don't look, you idiot," she said. "I'm pretty sure that 'carry boots' and 'hairy arms' are sitting a couple of tables behind us."

Melody stretched, and arched her back in an unobtrusive fashion. She acted as though she suddenly needed to stretch as if from an extended nap. "I can't tell for sure," she said. She then rubbed her eyes, continuing with the ruse that she had simply just woken up. "Well," she said. "That guy on the right certainly fits the bill."

The man in question was facing away from them wearing a red, cowboy style shirt, and his hair looked like it hadn't been de-greased in ages.

Bernie began to fidget. His nervousness did not fail to curb his appetite, however, as he continued to shove food into his mouth as though it were going out of style. "Was he looking this way?"

"He wasn't when I did my stretch move," she said.

"Well look?"

"I can't do another stretch move. It would be too conspicuous."

"Maybe you're just a stretchy person."

Melody squinted at her father in a way that told him that she could keep up this dimwitted line of argument as long as he could. "I am not a stretchy person. And I choose not to role play such a character without considerable research."

"But they don't know that. They don't know anything about you. To them you _could_ just be a stretchy person."

Melody growled under her breath. "Why don't you pretend to drop a fork or something and look. That way you could also see what kind of shoes he's wearing."

"If any," Lonnie added.

Bernie swallowed what food he had in his mouth, and began to speak while at the same time using his fork to emphasis his speech. "Fine," he said. "But if you think that I'm going to..." The fork suddenly flung from his hands, bounced off the table and then onto the floor. It really did look rather natural and for a moment, Melody was proud of his acting skills.

"Butterfingers," came the voice of the expressionless man, appearing seemingly from out of nowhere. "Here's a fresh fork, sir," he said, placing a shiny new three pronged utensil in front of Bernie while at the same time quickly squatting down and picking up the other. Before Bernie could thank him, the expressionless man said, "Okay," and disappeared seemingly into the ether. This wasn't entirely true, however, as Melody saw him depart down the hallway and then behind the bar.

Bernie scowled at the fork in front of him. "Not only did he ruin my plan," he said. "He gave me a trident!"

Like the pronunciation of the "t" sound in the word often, it was the three-tined fork that seemed to be the bane of Bernie's existence. Melody had inquired about this more than a few times, but never got a satisfactory answer, and more or less assumed that there simply wasn't one. "It just looks evil," he would say. "Man wasn't meant to eat food with an utensil of evil."

Melody shook her head. "Every time with the trident speech," she said.

"When your father finds a joke he likes," Lonnie jumped in, filling a large piece of pita with some hummus, "he sticks with it."

Suddenly, Bernie shoved a large piece of pita drenched with _baba ganoush_ into his mouth, and stepped on both Melody's and Lonnie's foot. "No wun loo up," he said, his words were greatly obscured by the bread. "Ach natweral."

Melody squinted at him as she tried to decipher the meaning behind it, and wondered why if he wanted them to respond quickly to his message that he would muddy up his words with a mouthful of food. She, however, did as instructed, and nibbled on hers so as not to look as though she expected something was about to happen.

Even still, when the man in cowboy boots stopped behind her and began to speak, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Good evening," the man said. His voice was weathered like a rusty wood rasp, and seemed older than the man could possibly be.

Melody said "good evening" in return, cautiously and at the same moment as the rest of her family. She then turned, though it must be said with incredible apprehension, to look up at his face.

The man was burnt and brown, as though he had spent most of his life lying on his back out in the sun. The stubble on his face was thick and coarse like a wire brush. And when he smiled he showed a mouth full of yellowish-brown teeth, stained by years of chewing tobacco and neglect.

"That was a mighty apt description, young lady," the cowboy said. "You do me a great service."

Melody clapped her hand over her mouth, blushing.

"I feel almost like we have met before someplace."

The Jacksons all looked at each other with confused expressions on their faces, and shrugged their shoulders at each other. "No," they all said. "I don't think...."

"Waaaal," the voice behind Melody said, in a long, drawn out fashion. "Maybe y'all just have one of them faces." He then tipped his hat, which only Lonnie could see. Melody had her back to him, and Bernie couldn't meet the man's gaze. Uncle Gordon then turned and left the restaurant.

"That was awful neighborly of him," Bernie said, trying to make light of the tense situation.

"That was an awfully bold move for someone who was recently walking in his socks to avoid detection from a twelve-year-old girl," Melody said.

"Maybe he just had a rock in his boots or something," Bernie offered.

"Oh," Lonnie said, in a dark tone. "I'm pretty sure that was a warning."

"What do you think we should do, mom?" Melody said. She almost added, "I don't cotton to threats," but in actuality they did make her extremely nervous. "Call the police?"

Bernie laughed, and placed his hand to his ear as though it were a phone. "Hello, Precinct. There was a man who tippie-toed past us earlier who now just said 'Hello' to us in a restaurant. Can you please send a squad car over?"

Melody laughed, but quickly stopped herself by biting at her lower lip. She did not want to encourage her father in his silliness or they could be sitting here all day.

Lonnie placed her hands out wide onto the table, in a motion that meant everyone needs to stop talking and calm down. "What I think we should do is get a Great Dane-sized doggy-bag for all of this food, and go home and research that Madeline D'amarite on-line before our next encounter with her."

"Are you sure you want to continue after Mr. Creepy Cowboy said we had familiar faces?" Bernie seemed shocked.

"Also," Melody continue. "I don't think we need to end the meal, that's still a week away."

"Okay," Lonnie said. "Let's just sit here and eat while that cowboy and his furry friend break into our house and claim squatter's rights."

Bernie choked on his water, and called the expressionless waiter over. "One dump truck, please," he said. "And the check."

Scene Ten

It didn't take long to learn all that the historic Oregonian newspaper knew of Madeline D'amarite and her husband. However, since their research extravaganza, life had gotten in the way. This was a nicer way of saying the Jackson family tended to procrastinate. It was only on the night of the woman in white's next appearance that the they finally got to the task at hand.

Simply put, these were the only entries they found.

1932, April 27

The body of inventor, Jacob D'amarite was found mangled in the backyard of his Portland home. The coroner, Dr. Donald Emery, could not determine the true cause of death, only that it was most likely due to the apparent physical abnormalities.

"His body, on every level down even to his bones, appear to have been twisted by some unknown means. Further trauma, as indicated by extreme bruising on the underside of the body, indicates that Mr. D'amarite was then dropped from a great height."

When asked for a possible cause, the coroner only had this to say. "That's something you'll need to take up with Mr. Charles Fort."

Jacob is survived by his wife, Madeline who declined comment. Police, who have ruled the case as suspicious and probable homicide, say she is not a suspect at this time.

1933, April 27 -- short blurb

Fire consumes former home of Jacob D'amarite, a Portland man who passed away due to mysterious circumstances one year ago today.

His wife, Madeline D'amarite is missing and presume dead.

"Brrr," said Melody.

"Charles Fort?" Bernie smiled.

"He was a perverter of oddities and anomalies," Melody began to explain, but her father stopped her before she could finish.

"I know who he was," he said. "I just enjoyed the reference. Although, I would call him more of a reporter of spookiness, rather than an oddities pervert."

Melody rolled her eyes. "If you say so," she said.

"Although there didn't seem to be any mention of the creature."

"The creature?" Melody looked at her father as though the hairs in his nostrils had just turned to bat wings. Suddenly his eyes grew wide and then became distant.

Yes, it was probably the creature that killed Jacob D'amarite -- the thing that had come upon the woman in white and grabbed her back into the house. The faceless thing of unknowable horror. Why had that thought occurred to her father before it did her?

She turned to her family who were currently staring at her.

"Was I saying that out loud?" she asked.

"About the 'faceless thing of unknowable horror'?" her father said. "No. Not at all."

Melody raised an eyebrow. Somehow she would have to get a handle on the narration of the thoughts in her head.

"For a minute I thought we might have been listening to Cthulhu radio. But then I thought, wait, there IS no Cthulhu radio. But we DO have a daughter who says weird things that rattle around in her head."

Melody blushed. "Sorry," she said.

"Yes," Bernie reiterated. "The creature. I hadn't thought that that would be something the Oregonian would have reported. I'm sure monster stories would have been frowned upon, then as well as now."

Melody shrugged. "We have backup support coming tonight, though, right?"

Lonnie nodded. "Yep. Chazz and Malika from my end. Bern?"

Chazz Mahoney was a former police officer who left the force to open up a yarn and tea shop. She did so with her girlfriend Malika almost immediately after a shootout left her with a bullet in her rib cage and without a partner.

"Can you imagine anything less stressful than yarn?" Chazz had explained to Lonnie at a local crafting conference \-- Lonnie at the time was going through her knitting phase. "It has no sharp edges. It has no evil intent. It's only desire in life is to be soft and fluffy."

Chazz, who Lonnie called _the queen of persuasion_ , had talked her into taking a few classes at her new shop, "Distant Early Yarning," as well as about twenty skeins of yarn. They had been friends ever since.

"I understand Chazz," Bernie said, "but what help is Malika going to be?"

"They're a couple, dear," Lonnie said. "They do things together. Also, Malika's very spiritual. She might have some insight into the situation that we haven't considered."

Bernie raised one of his eyebrows. "How's religion going to help?"

"I didn't say she was religious, just that she has some experience with this kind of thing." Lonnie seemed dodgy about this part, and Bernie wasn't sure if she was just relating something that perhaps Chazz had told her, or was deliberately being evasive for some reason.

"Chazz was a powerfully built woman. Six feet tall if she were a yard. Arms as sturdy as a battleships..."

Bernie placed a hand on his daughter's shoulder. "You just can't stop, can you? We all know who Chazz is, and she's definitely not a cowgirl of the high seas."

Melody shrugged. "Yes," she said. "But my viewers don't know who she is yet. And I'm trying to stay with a theme."

Bernie looked crestfallen as though his daughter's mental report card had just come back stamped 'Insane'. "Your viewers...?"

"Never mind, Bernie," Lonnie told him. "She's going through her director's phase. We talked about this. Did you manage to get some of the tough boys from your work site to come over tonight?"

"I mean, I just don't see a camera in her hands..."

"Stop changing the subject."

Bernie began to fiddle nervously with his fingers. "No...sorry," he said, and then elaborated slightly when the daggers began to appear out of Melody and Lonnie's eyes. "Well, it's not something that's easy to bring up to those guys. They're not a really open bunch when it comes to the supernatural."

Lonnie shook her head, in disgust. "Fine," she said, resolutely. "Chazz should be able to handle any trouble that pops up."

"Besides," Bernie said. "She does have arms built like battleships, after all." He winked at Melody who told him to stop being creepy.

The trio had a quick and quiet dinner, and afterwards gathered their gear together. Melody once again shared her fear -- not only of the faceless creature who grabbed at the woman in white, but also the very real cowboy and his companion. These were fears her father also agreed with. However, her mother seemed to be almost obsessive in her excitement of the night's upcoming festivities.

It was nearly dark by the time that Chazz and her girlfriend arrived, though it was still hours from the main event.

There was a loud, almost obnoxious banging upon the door, and Lonnie rushed to open it. She found, beyond the screen door, an imposing woman who stood a full head above hers. Chazz Mahoney was practically dancing with excitement.

"Welcome," Lonnie said. "Welcome to our home."

Chazz bent down slightly as she walked through the door frame. She wasn't in any danger of bumping her head. Rather, it just seemed this was something she did out of habit rather than necessity.

"Wow," she said. "Nice place.' She wore a pea coat, and carried a duffel bag, and Melody wondered nervously if she had somehow remotely heard her battleship reference. The woman had short, straight black hair which terminated in points at the sides and also at seemingly random sections of her forehead.

She stepped in all of the way and allowed for a diminutive woman to enter the house. "You remember my girlfriend, Malika."

"Hi," the dark-skinned woman said, timidly, waving her hand quickly about.

Malika was tiny compared to Chazz. She was at least two feet shorter, and was as skinny as a cotton swab. Her dark skin only seemed to augment her large, white, fearful eyes.

Chazz laughed softly. "She's a little shy around new people. But get some wine in her...and Hoo boy!"

Malika tossed Chazz a dagger-laden glance, which seemed to remind her never to make such jokes again in her presence. Chazz caught the hint right way, and smiled.

"Say," she said. "There were some boys riding their bikes down the street kinda of giving us the evil eye earlier. Do we have to worry about our car or anything?"

"No," Melody said, chuckling. "That's just the neighborhood watch. Lafayette Street's own little army."

Lonnie laughed and then made the proper introductions between her family and her friends, and then they all sat and got down to business. Specifically, the business being: the weather station, the cowboy and Hairy Mike, and just what they might be in for this night. Melody even broke out the video and narrated the scenes.

"I don't see the faceless one in the video," Malika said, softly.

Melody took charge of the question and answer period. "We believe the episode hadn't yet progressed that far."

"Interesting. So the story only advances a few seconds per sighting."

"That seems to have been the case. However, once we introduced ourselves into the equation, things certainly stepped up quite a bit." She stuck in a small, square card into a device sitting next to the television, and said, "Watch this." The video that was displayed on the screen was the one which her mother had captured the previous week. The two guests watched with rapt interest.

"Interactive ghosts?" Both Malika and Chazz leaned forward in their chairs. "She looks so real," she said. "Are you sure this is a spirit haunting, and not someone putting on a play or pulling a fast one?"

Lonnie said, "To tell you the truth, we're really not sure what's going on. We haven't ruled anything out. We were hoping that you might be able to shed some light on the subject."

Malika looked more disturbed by this comment than she did when she first walked through the door.

Chazz hadn't said much for a while, and when prompted by Lonnie simply shook her head. "I gotta tell you," she said. "This isn't what we expected." She then went on to explain some of the adventures she's had with her ghost hunting group. "I mean, we've had a few spooky moments: a couple of EVPs, glasses flying off the shelves, some disembodied growls in a basement or two -- nothing, though, that I could systematically point to and say ' _this is definitely proof of existence from the other side_.' But this..." She shook her head. "Malika?"

Malika simply stared at the screen, her eyes wide. She seemed to be in shock. She tried to say something, but her mouth wouldn't completely open and nothing seemed able to emerge.

"You're not having second thoughts, are you?" Bernie suddenly asked. There was a slight quiver in his voice as though he himself were not very confident about pressing forward.

Melody nodded. She thought the woman in white and his faceless cohort had been a chilling sight to be sure, but she had no idea it was out of the norm when it came to ghostly sightings. Rare, certainly, but this phenomenon was now sounding completely different than anything anyone else had experienced.

"No, no no no, of course not," Chazz said, emphatically, completely contradicting the expression on her girlfriend Malika's face. "Thanks to you all for inviting us. I haven't been this intrigued by a ghost hunt in a long time."

Bernie and Melody weren't sure if this reaction put them at ease, or simply heightened their uncertainty. Melody had been monitoring Malika's emotions for the last few moments and was surprised that the woman's skin hadn't yet turned green.

"Now the cowboy and his friend add an interesting wrinkle. I am going to take point in the shadows and see if I can get a bead on them. Although, I also do NOT want to miss the woman in white, and a big especially NOT to her faceless demon friend...."

Melody suddenly stood up. "DEMON! Huh! Wait...no. I said, No thank you, ma'am."

Chazz chuckled to herself. "Relax," she said. "I just a term I use for any unexplained anomalies. Ask Malika. I do that all the time."

"It's true," Malika confirmed. Her voice was soft and diminutive. "We had a demon in our sink just yesterday before Chazz plunged it out."

"Okay," Bernie said, as if quickly to change the subject, slapping his hands together. "Let's go get our equipment set up before I start to loose my nerve."

"Good idea," Chazz said. "Ours is in the trunk."

"Ours? You keep your nerve in your trunk?"

Lonnie chimed in. "Chazz has a lot of 'ghosting' equipment from her group."

"If this pans out in a predictable way, I'll get the entire team over here next week. I wanted to scope it out first. We've had a run of dry locations recently."

"Well, if there's one thing about this location," Bernie said, half smiling. "It's definitely not dry." He turned to Malika, who seemed to shrink at his gaze. "If you know what I mean."

The Jacksons followed Chazz and Malika to their car which was parked down the street a ways. The trunk was filled almost completely with odd gadgetry.

"After reviewing your tape, there's a bunch of this stuff we won't need. EVP recorders, ghost boxes -- anything to try to communicate with the spirit indirectly." She had upon her face a strange, wry smile. She rooted through all of the equipment and pulled out her lights and cameras and handed them to Bernie. She then pulled out various electromagnetic tools, mumbling under her breath something akin to "...measuring fluctuations... temperature... ...magnetic fields." She then loaded these bulky items into the apprehensive arms of Melody and Malika and then softly closed the trunk behind her.

"Well," she said, excitedly. "Let's get at it, shall we."

Scene Eleven

Lonnie and Bernie helped to set up Chazz's equipment. This consisted of high-intensity lights, both infrared and several other high-definition cameras, as well as various sensors to measure all types of phenomenon.

Bernie stared at the small devices in his hands. "So what does all of this stuff do?"

Chazz grunted, and dropped a large coil of cables at his feet. "Well," she said, wiping her brow, indicating the object in Bernie's left hand by pointing at it, "that one senses magnetic changes in the environment, and that other one measures immediate changes in temperature down to a tenth of a degree."

"Because...," he tried to find some words to add which might turn this into more of a conversation, "Ghosts don't like it chilly?"

Melody appeared behind him suddenly. She was carrying a picnic basket filled with snacks. Malika was next to her with some bottled drinks.

"No, dad," she said. "Because ghosts are not physical beings. They need energy to manifest, and that usually means pulling it from their surrounding environment. In this case heat."

Lonnie leaned into him. "See," she said. "Now don't you feel stupid."

Bernie whispered back. "At least she brought snacks as well as her condescension." He then turned to his daughter and patted her on the head. "I was talking to the nice ghost hunting lady," he said, in a passable Sgt. Bilko impersonation. "Why don't you make yourself useful and _scare_ us up some lunch, already."

Melody narrowed her eyes at her father. "What is that character you're doing?"

"Don't know, eh?"

"No. Either you're not doing it right..."

"Oh," Bernie proclaimed loudly. "I'm doing it right."

"Let's not forget you also thought your Jerry Lewis and Groucho Marx impressions were spot on, and they basically sounded fairly similar."

"I can't help it if your ear is not finely tuned to pick up subtleties in the human voice."

Melody narrowed her eyes even further, so much so that they hurt. Finally, she made her guess:

"Woody Allen."

"Close. Give the little lady a cigar!"

Malika, who had up until this moment been quite shy, smiled suddenly and then began to laugh. It was a very nondescript laugh, and uncharacteristic of what Melody previously assumed was her personality. For a moment, Melody even thought the woman might even be choking.

Bernie smiled back once he realized what was going on. "Are you okay?" he asked her.

When Malika didn't answer, Chazz took the small screwdriver out of her mouth. "Oh, Mali's a sucker for Phil Silvers." She sighed, and shook her head, half-smiling. "Though I've never understood the attraction."

"Ah ha!" Melody pointed her finger in her father's face and gave him a crooked grin. _"_ That was a horrible impression."

Bernie raised his eyebrow back at her. "It would have been an even worse Woody Allen."

"Okay," Chazz said. "We're all setup and ready to go, unless Bernie wants to continue his Vaudeville act."

Bernie raised his hands. "I'm good," he said. "I'm good."

Melody suddenly felt like she was on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the part where all of the scientists were poised in the valley and geared up to talk to aliens. She snorted at the thought of it. While it was impossible not to believe in life on other planets given the extreme size of the Universe and number of possible stars containing life-sustaining worlds, Melody thought it preposterous that aliens would ever come to this backward place.

They were all sitting on the ground just on the bordering edge of Mrs. Mendleblat's house, waiting for the thing, whatever it was, to happen. Maybe nothing. It was still quite possible that the creature had already taken the woman in white, and that was that. Show over.

"You see it," Melody heard her mother whisper. Although Melody wasn't certain what she was referring to as she didn't see anything.

"I see it," Chazz said. Though she had already been sitting in the shadows, she now rolled into the blackness and quickly disappeared from sight.

Now from the corner of her eye, Melody saw it, too. The white van was sitting in front of the neighbors house just as before, as though it had simply been parked there all night long.

"Did it just appear out of nowhere?"

"Not sure," Lonnie said. "Probably just slowly drove in with it's lights off."

"What are you all talking about," Bernie said, probably too loudly. He was immediately shushed.

Melody jabbed him in the ribs with her forefinger, and out of the side of her mouth said, "Just look out of the corner of your eye. Our friend, 'carry boots', is back."

Bernie nodded, but didn't say anything, at first. "Is that where Chazz went," he said finally piecing all of the puzzle together.

"I reckon," Melody said.

"Please don't turn into a cowboy, now," Bernie said.

There was suddenly a crackling on the doorstep of the weather station, and Malika let out a gasp and covered her mouth.

Melody assured her it wasn't time yet. "It tends to make these popping sounds for quite a few minutes before it happens. So this is a good sign."

The entire week she had been wondering if they had done the woman in white an injustice. Now she would find out if Madeline was given another chance.

"OKAY, PUNKS!" came a forceful voice from the other side of the street. "GET OUT OF THE VAN!"

The Jacksons and Malika all turned their heads in that direction as though the All Clear alarm had been sounded, and from here on out all became a chaos.

The van lit up like the sun. Not only its headlights, but some massive internal illumination. This light was so intense that the passengers, if there were any, could not be seen. The van began to rattle, and a roar emerged from its engine which made it sound like a once sleeping dragon had awakened after a thousand year nap.

Melody covered her ears, and looked around the neighborhood, certain this would bring everyone on the block to their doors. Oddly, not a porch was alighted, not a dog barked.

The noise continued for a full minute, and then it suddenly shut off along with the lights as though it had never sounded.

"What was that?" Melody asked no one in particular.

No one in particular responded, being too dumbfounded to find any words to convey what they had seen.

Eventually, and very slowly, Chazz made her way over across the street and rejoined the group.

"Before you ask," she said, raising up her hands as if in protest. "I don't know what happened. I started banging on the side of the vehicle and it just went off."

"But what happened to the cowboy and Hairy Mike?" Melody had a look upon her face which conveyed the fear that the van might have turned into some oddly shaped traveling teleportation device which possibly spewed the two men to some other point on the globe.

"I can't even say for sure that they were ever in the vehicle in the first place. It was dark inside, and the windows were tinted. For all I know that reaction was just some crazy anti-theft device. Although, I can't attest to the exact state of the vehicle prior, I swear that the light source slightly crumpled the frame."

Melody pointed out that no one in the neighborhood seemed curious about this car alarm, but her father quickly countered that Lafayette street was populated with secretive "looky loos".

"They're probably peeking out through invisible slits of their curtains," he said, "hoping not to be noticed."

Melody nodded at this explanation, as she had seen him react in precisely the same manner on a number of occasions.

"So the Cowboy could just be hiding behind a tree with a camera somewhere?"

"Or even under the floorboards of his vehicle for all I know," Chazz added, not having any real answers to the question.

Melody folded up her arms, and thought, _What's the point of having an ex-police-woman here then_. For a horrifying moment, Melody was afraid she had spoken this aloud, but she carefully watched the expressions of her parents and they gave no such indication.

Chazz, however, received the message from her none-the-less. She shrugged her shoulders apologetically. "So," she said, changing the subject. "What's the ETA on the Ms. White and the Bardo?"

Melody tilted her head. "Bardo?"

Bernie jumped in. "I beg your pardo?"

Chazz laughed. "It's what Mali and I assume this creature that attacked her to be." She opened a bottle of water, and drank deeply from it until the contents were gone. "A Bardo is a sort of intellectual Golem gone rogue."

Melody knew well of the Golem mystery. In the Jewish faith, it was a sort of robotic man made of clay. A defender of he who magically controlled it.

"You think someone sent a Bardo to kill Madeline sometime in the past, and it's now a ghost Bardo?"

Chazz laughed again. "I don't actually think either one of these beings is a ghost. I assume a Golem was sent to kill someone else, mutated, and _then_ became a Bardo, and is now following its own agenda. Whatever that might be."

Melody looked over to her parents who were completely wide-eyed at the explanation. As if cued, Lonnie looked down at her watch, mumbled something under her breath, and then promptly repeated her response louder and more intelligibly.

"Five minutes," she said, "until whatever this is goes down."

Scene Twelve

Right on schedule, the doorknob of the little hidden weather station began to rattle.

Melody held her breath, and she assumed the others did the same. Without any fanfare the door slowly and casually opened, and a woman dressed completely in white stepped through it.

"She's still alive," Melody thought to herself, smiling. However, she quickly realized the irony of the statement and grimaced.

The all white visage of Madeline held up her arm up over her eyes to protect them from the bright lights once again.

Malika gasped. "She looks so real."

Chazz began to quickly tap away on her laptop, checking some readings. "Heat showing at 82 degrees Fahrenheit, electrical impulses negligible. Body appears solid." She looked over to Malika. "She _is_ real."

"Who's there?" said the woman in white. "Who's out there."

"Cut the lights," Chazz said to Bernie, who turned off the main spotlight after some fumbling. "Use the dim, and the infrared."

Malika stood up. "We don't mean you any harm," she said.

"We?" The woman in white appeared confused when she put her arm down. "I can't see you. How many are 'we'? Why are you out here on my lawn?"

_Get away from the door_ , Melody thought to herself, digging her nails into the sides of her legs.

"My name is Malika, and I'm here with my friends." She began to name everyone in the group one by one. "We're worried for your safety."

"Safety?" The woman in white took a step backward.

Malika gasped again, and took a few tentative steps toward Madeline. "Please don't run away," she said. "We're here to help you."

_Shouldn't we be getting her away from the door_ , Melody thought wildly, digging her nails in deeper nearly breaking the skin. She tried to think back to the tape. How long did she have until the Bardo emerged to grab her? Not long. Less than a minute. "We need to get her away from the door," she said, leaning into Chazz.

"Try to draw her towards us, Mali," Chazz said, still tapping away.

"We're friends," Malika said, taking a few calming steps towards Madeline. "We think there's someone chasing you. Do you know who this person might be?"

The woman in white froze for a moment, and seemed to consider this question. A tear suddenly began to stream down her face. "Jacob," she said, slowly wiping it away. "Jacob, where did you go?"

Lonnie leaned way over, behind Bernie, and whispered to Chazz, "Jacob was her husband."

Chazz nodded. "Yes," she said. "I read your clips."

"Do you think Jacob is the Bardo?" Melody asked, looking confused.

"No," Chazz said, resolutely. "I assume that Jacob was the target of the original Golem, and Madeline had something to do with that creature becoming the Bardo."

From Behind Madeline, the door knob began to rattle again, with its tell-tale sign of an emerging presence.

"GET AWAY FROM THE DOOR, MADELINE!" Melody said, jumping to her feet.

Madeline turned and screamed, as though all of the conscious memories of the looping suddenly struck her. "What do you want?" she screamed, although no one was sure if Madeline was addressing the invisible party, or whatever was now coming through the door.

The door opened fully, and the empty face of the Bardo with its gaping mouth hole appeared. She turned and paused as though frozen in place. From her throat came a mewling of desperation.

"Get her out of there!" Melody scolded, but made no move herself to save the woman as she was also frozen in place.

Both Chazz and Malika ran towards the woman in white. However, as she was closest, Malika got to her first.

"I've got you," she said, grabbing Madeline's hand. "Don't be afraid."

A grayish brown arm came out of the black opening and clamped down on Madeline's free hand. The woman in white found her voice once again, and her scream of terror filled the neighborhood.

"I've got you," Malika said, soothingly. She seemed almost in a trance. "I've got you. Don't let go."

The Bardo, however, was much stronger then the frail Malika, and pulled the woman in white back inside the portal.

Chazz grabbed Malika's free hand, and dug her feet into the steps.

Malika let out a horrific scream of pain, but Chazz refused to let go. "If we start to lose her, Mali, you need to let go!"

The Bardo grunted. It was the sound of annoyance. With one sharp flick of his wrist, he pulled the woman in white inside the little room. Still hanging on tightly, both Malika and Chazz were also dragged towards the door.

"MALI, LET GO!" Chazz yelled. However it was no use. The bulky hand of the Bardo reached through the doorway and grabbed Malika around her waist, and wrenched her from Chazz's grip. Once Malika was inside, the door slammed behind her, leaving Chazz lying at the top of the steps, sobbing, pawing at the door and calling out her name.

The Jackson family could only look at each other, too stunned to speak. However, out of the corner of her eye, Melody could see two dark figures standing in front of their house watching the scene dissolve. She turned to her parents. "It's the Cowboy and Hairy Mike," she said.

As if suddenly invigorated, both Lonnie and Bernie got up from the grass and headed over towards their house.

Neither of the men took any notice of their arrival, or haughty expressions.

"So," Bernie said, pointing over to the heartbroken Chazz on the stoop. "Is this what you wanted to see. Some form of tragedy to satisfy your blood-lust?"

"Take it easy, Bernie," Lonnie said, stroking his arm.

"Nope," the cowboy said, matter-of-factually. "Not really."

"Then what then?" Melody jumped in. "Morbid curiosity?"

"Nope," said the cowboy, dryly. "Just looking for a way home."

"You have qualms with the Bardo, too?"

The cowboy shook his head. "It's over now," he said. "I can't go back." He seemed sad, but did not elaborate. He then turned away and walked slowly towards the van.

Scene Thirteen

It had been nearly a month since the incident. Things around the Jackson family had become normal again. Melody finally finished her room, having lined all of her walls with shelving and color coded boxes, each according to a printed database which hung upon a clipboard swinging from a nail at her desk.

None of them really spoke again of the strange night. Except for Chazz's weekly all night vigil across the street, there were no further reminders of it. Neither the woman in white nor the Bardo made any further appearances.

Lonnie looked out through the curtain. The first few weeks she had sat on the grassy hill with her friend. She brought her food, as she seemed emaciated, brushed her hair and talked about such things as when she first met the two of them. Chazz however, so distraught and focused on Malika's senseless departure was practically inconsolable.

"I hear that she spends the rest of her week researching and hunting down the cowboy."

"Any luck?" Melody asked, hopefully. She felt extremely guilty about the situation. Not that it was her fault necessarily, but because maybe if she had followed through with getting that little house torn down then perhaps none of this would have happened.

"I'm not sure," she said, craning her neck as to get a better view. "She's not exactly coherent when I talk to her. I've just heard from a couple of her friends that this has become quite the obsession with her." She pulled away from the curtain. "Not that I can blame her, mind you. I just wish I could help her move on."

"She just needs some time," Bernie said, applying peanut butter to a semi-fragile cracker. Bits of the stuff flaked off and flung onto his shirt as he made the attempt. He seemed not to notice.

"Well, thank goodness this affair didn't make you loose your appetite any," she said.

Melody smiled evilly. "Hey Dad, how long would it take you to get over mom getting pulled into the lair of the Bardo?!"

"That's not funny," Bernie said, pointing his peanut butter knife at her and flinging more crackery bits around the house in the process. "That's also one of those annoying things your _mother_ is supposed to ask me, so you're quite outside your jurisdiction."

Melody raised an eyebrow at her mother, and then Lonnie picked up the baton. "Yeah," she said. "I was kind of wondering that myself."

Before Bernie could bat an eyelash in indignation, however, their conversation was interrupted by a ear-piercing wail from across the street.

"Poor Chazz," Lonnie said, looking out. "I wish there was something we could do."

Bernie and Melody nodded.

"Like burn that place down," Melody said, and shivered.

"I don't find that very productive," Lonnie told her, not turning to look her way.

"At least it might displace her obsession a bit."

"It might also might make her plunge into the deep end."

"There's a bigger problem then that," Bernie said, suddenly. "That Bardo thing might be on the loose."

"You don't know that," Melody told him.

"I don't NOT not know that, either," he said.

"Well, let's worry about the not nots later," Lonnie said, coming away from the front window. She sat down on her chair with a book. "I think maybe the best thing we can do is be there for her when she needs it. I will go out in a few minutes and talk to her."

"Agreed," said Bernie, who promptly returned to what his daughter affectionately termed his "inanities" – a retro broadcast of some nineteen-seventies game show.

Melody crept up to her mother and sat down next to her. "Mom," she said. "What do you really think happened to Malika? You don't think the Bardo is torturing her, or has her in some cave of madness or something, do you?"

"Well," Lonnie said setting her book down. She retrieved a bag of knitting from a lower cabinet and set it in her lap. "I would like to think she's okay, and maybe someday she'll find her way back to us."

"Don't tell dad," Melody said. "But I'm going to research it a bit further."

"I didn't think I could stop you if I tried," Lonnie said, half-smiling. "Although, Melody, and I'm not blaming you for what happened one bit... But maybe next time you happen upon a mystery, don't look into it so closely."

Melody grimaced. "I can't make any promises, Mom," she said. "You know that."

###

The story continues in Episode Two:

Melody Jackson

v.

the Hound from Hell

About the Author

B.M.B. Johnson lives in Portland with his own family, and coincidentally did grow up in a house on Lafayette street. Although the events of this novel are fictional, the characters and some of the situations seem very familiar.

Other books by this author

Please visit your favorite ebook retailer to discover other books by BMB Johnson:

It Happened on Lafayette Street [Series]

Book One: v. the Woman in White

Book Two: v. the Hound from Hell

Book Three: v. the Message from Space [forthcoming]

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