Margot was crawling on all fours, praying someone wouldn't trip over or step on her. She couldn't see a damn thing and had a pretty good idea why. That thing was here and apart of her was thrilled at the opportunity to catch it on camera. She came prepared with her night vision camera. Then she remembered Douglas still had it. Margot cursed at herself. What was she thinking, giving her evidence to that miserable old fool? He'd make up some bullshit excuse that it was fake or accuse her of concocting some elaborate scheme to fool everyone. Empirical truth was staring him in the face and he’d deny it.

     No wonder Trisha hated him. Margot grimaced.

     Margot wished she was here now. She'd know what to do. She wouldn't have made all the mistakes as I did, she thought. Someone brushed up against her stepping on her hand making her hiss from the pain before they scurried away. The ringing had gone on uninterrupted for a good three minutes now which was very odd. It had to be the ghost manipulating it, she thought with excitement. A ghost was manipulating a phone! This was amazing!

     Yet here I am, crawling on all fours, without my friggin’ camera.

     If Joe or Aria were here, they could be filming it now. Margot felt a stab of guilt. One of the most important rules about SPIRITS was to never do an investigation alone. Margot had seen too many things in Heatherton to know how stupid it was to go up against the paranormal alone. Except she had gone and broken her own cardinal rule by coming here by herself. It was Coby MacFarland, a Physics Major, who had come to her asking for help. She thought it was some bullshit prank that the Science Club had concocted to make SPIRITS look like idiots. She wouldn't have been surprised if Dr. Douglas had been the one to plan it. But there was no malice in Coby, according to Aria. She sensed he was afraid and desperate and in spite of Margot's suspicions, Aria had convinced her to listen to him.

     He told them of the abnormal things that were happening in the new Astronomy Building. He had seen shadowy figures following him even when he was alone, the temperature dropped sporadically in certain spots and something always made him trip and fall on his face every time he walked through the hallway. Once, maybe twice was just clumsiness. But every day for almost a week? By the looks of his poor nose, Coby wasn't lying.

     "Something grabs me by my ankles and pulls me down." He explained when Joe had asked him to describe it. Any doubts or further reservations they might have had evaporated from the horrified expression. Just thinking about it brought back bad memories of her own.

     To her astonishment, it wasn't just Coby experiencing strange things. No one ever used the women's bathrooms. Too many girls have claimed that they felt someone was watching them, staring at them when they sat down to pee. Two girls she spoke with claimed they kept seeing someone standing in the corner out of the corner of their eye. Our shadowy friend’s a peeping tom as if I didn’t have enough reason to dislike the guy. Margot thought as she slinked upwards against the wall. Even the men's restroom felt suffocating. But the worse trouble seemed to be happening in the Star Lab, by the telescope.

     "We keep hearing what sounds like scratching coming from inside the walls. Like, rats or something. We told Dr. Douglas about it and he had someone check it out. They didn't find anything. But we still kept hearing it only now it sounds like someone’s walking in the walls."

     Joe, Aria, and Margot had shared a look between them. This was not like any haunting they'd ever had here on campus. The ghosts that dwell here were largely benign. There was the little boy who haunted the old Cavalry Building, now the Campus Police Station; there was the Lady in the Library, the one whom they had the most contact with. She'd always been kind. They actually felt safer knowing she was around. She even had a sense of humor, occasionally stealing items from students and teachers then placing them somewhere else in the library. She certainly didn't approve of the renovations.

     The worst ghosts were in the Art Buildings. They were originally used as an old hospital and morgue during the Texas Revolution and later the Civil War, long before this area was turned into a University. The ghosts could be aggressive, sometimes territorial, but none had ever gone so far as to actually hurt anyone on campus, at least not to Margot's knowledge. But those hauntings were all in the older parts of the campus. When one crossed the Bentley Memorial Bridge over Reed's River they were in the new parts of campus. The Science and Engineering Building, the Computer Labs, the new Library and the new Lecture Hall, Astronomy Tower and Star Lab were across the river and ghost-free.

     Until now.

     Which was what made this so damn important to Margot. They'd heard on and off that strange things were happening at the Astronomy Lab and the nearby Lecture Hall. When they’d agreed to investigate the building, Coby left, leaving them with some big questions. How were they going to investigate this? It was no secret that Dr. Douglas hated SPIRITS. He'd never miss an opportunity to humiliate them, he’d even sicced his pet favorites on them when he couldn’t. She remembered how upset Aria was when, after her Speech Class, Craig Bulstrode, one of Douglas' favorites, went out of his way to insult and ask very inappropriate questions about Aria's project. She'd chosen ghost of Heatherton University, a popular subject at their campus and Hell, it was one of their selling points! It was even on the school's damn pamphlet! But Aria was attacked by Craig and a few other students with little repercussions.

     That was why they decided to proceed slowly with this investigation. They hadn't been on one since Trisha....left. Douglas seemed to believe they had something to do with her abscondment, an accusation that hurt. Trisha left without a word, leaving us in the lurch.

     Margot shook her head. Focus on finding that damn phone, she told herself. Margot moved to her right, thinking she was closer to the sound of the phone.

     Then she heard someone screaming.