“Okay, here’s the plan.”

            Johnny smacked the palm of his hand on the table for dramatic effect. He, along with Meg, had been on lockdown for three days, ever since Grandpa Tuesday had received the news about the animal attack that had claimed a man’s life right outside his own home. Despite both Meg and Johnny’s protests, he had been adamant that they remain inside “for their own safety, until he knows that it’s safe.” They lived far enough away from the main town, he had said, that it was dangerous for them to be outside too, in case whatever had killed that man decided to come back. Johnny had argued that he was new in town, was probably just not careful enough, and that he knew better, but the old man had stood firm. Not a toe out of doors.

            So the two of them had been relegated to watching television, playing cards, and listening to the same three records over and over again. Grandpa Tuesday’s tastes in entertainment, Meg had decided, were old-fashioned. Although Meg was plenty used to keeping herself occupied, Johnny had been slowly losing his sanity. Which was why he was now standing over the kitchen table with a determined expression on his face, like he was delivering a war briefing.

            “As you know, there’s going to be a search party tonight, a big one. Practically the entire town is going to be there, Gramps included. However, there’s no minors allowed. Which means you and I are going to be stuck here in this tiny house for the fourth night in a row, right?”

            He looked at Meg expectantly. She blinked rapidly. “Um, yes?” she guessed.

“Wrong!” he exclaimed. She rolled her eyes and let him have his moment. He was clearly enjoying it.

            “Too long have we been crushed under the grip of tyranny! Too long has our thirst for truth gone unquenched! Tonight, we journey…” He paused for dramatic effect. “…to this creepy abandoned hospital!” He slapped a printed image of a dilapidated building on to the wooden table in front of them. “Ash got this from the library a few days before you got here. We’ve been planning it for weeks, but I wanted to wait until everything was ready to show you. So,” he said. “Are you in?”

            Meg hesitated. She still had some reservations about this “operation” that he had planned. She had to admit, though, that she was starting to feel the effects of cabin fever herself. In any case, she also felt a bit of obligation to humor him after the drama she had caused the other day. “What the hell,” she said. “You convinced me. I’m in.”

            “In that case,” he said. “Here’s the plan.”

            Jefferson East Hospital and Care Center was located in a large field near the residential area of town. It had been a nice facility, apparently, until a smaller hospital was erected in the shopping district of Ether Green and the building was abandoned. Back in those days, it was expected that the town would one day expand, but it never did. The building had been gradually deteriorating over the course of the past several decades while it was slowly reclaimed by nature.

            “So what’s the deal with this place?” Meg asked as they approached the chain-link fence that surrounded the facility. Signs that read things like “CONDEMNED” and “UNSAFE STRUCTURE” were attached every few dozen feet. “You were planning on telling me eventually, right?”

            “This place got shut down forever ago but we did a whole bunch of research on it and apparently there was a whole bunch of safety hazards that were just completely ignored. Black mold, electrical hazards, that kind of stuff. The place was super dangerous. Then there was this whole big disaster. The hospital tried to cover it up and everything, but the whole place got shut down anyway. What’s even cooler is that there were rumors that there were sadistic nurses that worked here who would secretly kill their patients and perform experiments on them and stuff.”

            “I don’t know if ‘cool’ is the exact word I would use.”

            “Come on, this is prime ghost story stuff. This place has got it all.”

            “It just looks like a normal old building to me.”

            “It’s an old, abandoned building. That automatically makes it creepy.”

            “You are so geeked out about this stuff.”

            “Yeah, obviously. Oh, that reminds me,” he said as he reached into his backpack and fished out a small, handheld device that looked like a game controller. “I’m letting you handle this for tonight.”

            “What is it?” she asked.

            “It’s an EMF reader. It reads electric frequencies and stuff, I think. I don’t know how it works exactly, but apparently it’s supposed to be able to detect supernatural activity. You can ask Paul about it when he gets here. He’s the one who built it.”

            As if on cue, a large shape approached the two from the distant neighborhood. He gave Johnny a nod and Meg an apprehensive glance. An uncomfortable silence began to settle over the group. Nobody looked like they wanted to be the first to say something, so Meg decided to speak up.

            “So, I just want to say sorry for the whole… you know…”

            “No hard feelings,” he said. “I am glad you decided to come. We could use someone to help keep this guy in line.” He nodded his head in Johnny’s direction.

            Meg managed a laugh. “That might be the one thing I’m good at.”

            “Well, it’s a tough job. Not many people can manage it.” He turned to her. “How about we start over? I’m Paul. Paul Barrows.”

            “Meg Markot.” They shook hands.

            Meg hadn’t really gotten a good look at Paul the first time they had briefly met. He was similar to Johnny in the face, close enough that they could have been distantly related, but he was a bit shorter and broader. He also had a far more serious look about him. He wasn’t unfriendly, just more reserved than the average person.

            “I see Johnny entrusted you with my EMF reader. I take it he didn’t explain to you how it works. Want me to show you?” he asked.

            “He said he didn’t know,” she whispered.

            “I’m surprised he admitted it,” he laughed. “Here,” he said, pointing at the device.

            It was a small black box, about the size of a two-way radio. On it were a couple of buttons and switches, as well as a screen with a dial that ran from green to red. He explained how each of the functions on the device worked. It was actually pretty simple. The dial on top would show how the strength of electromagnetic frequencies in the area where you pointed it. You could adjust the range and sensitivity by twisting the dials on the side. All in all, it was pretty cool gadget, but Meg still didn’t know what exactly she was supposed to do with it.

            “I made it myself out of some old electrical parts I had in my garage,” Paul said proudly. “I also don’t think it’s the most stable equipment I’ve ever made, so don’t drop it or anything.”

            “You’ve made other stuff like this?” Meg asked as the three of them started walking along the perimeter of the fence surrounding the building.

            “Oh yeah, all the time. My family loves how I’m able to fix basically anything that runs on electricity. I guess you could say it’s a hobby of mine,” he said. “You could say that I’m the tech expert of the group, for what it’s worth. Ash is the book smart one, and Johnny is –”

            “Your fearless, charismatic leader,” Johnny finished. “Speaking of Ash, I thought you said she was going to be here tonight. We can’t start without her, you know.”

            Paul shrugged. “All I know is she said she would definitely make it. Maybe she couldn’t find a way to sneak out.”

            “Aww, do you really have that little faith in me?” said a voice from the other side of the fence.

            “Jesus!” Paul yelled, jumping backwards while Johnny laughed hysterically. “Dammit, Ash, why do you single me out when you do that?”

            “It’s funny,” she giggled. “Anyway, I found a way in,” she said, holding up a pair of large wire cutters.

            So this was the other group member that Johnny had mentioned. She really wasn’t what Meg had been expecting. She had dark eyes and long hair that she had pulled back into a ponytail. Although her hair was dark in color, it was speckled with white patches where it looked almost bleached. However, they were too random to have been done artificially. It looked like a natural trait. Meg noticed that she bounced around animatedly as she talked, though she wasn’t energetic in the same way that Johnny was, and Meg wouldn’t have described her as hyperactive. She just seemed like a person who was fun.

            “Yes, I can see that,” said Paul, still clutching a hand to his chest. “My heart is already going to be stressed as it is,” he mumbled to himself as Ash led the way to the hole in the fence she had created. It turned out to be just a couple of feet wide, so the three of them had to crouch down low in order to fit through, especially Johnny, tall as he was. As soon as they were all through, Ash bent the gate back so that it looked like there had been no tampering at all.

            “You’re pretty good at that,” Meg remarked.

            “Practice makes perfect,” Ash replied cheerfully. “How many places have we illegally trespassed in?”

            “Like three,” Paul replied.

            “And this was my most seamless infiltration point yet. By the way,” she said, turning to Meg. “How did they rope you into this? Johnny says you hate people.”

            “I did not!” he protested as Meg shot him an angry look.

            “I’m just messing with you,” she laughed. “It’s so exciting to have someone new to talk about the supernatural with. Every time I try to explain anything to those two, their eyes start to glaze over.”

            “Not true!” said Johnny. “I think haunted stuff is just as cool as you do.”

            “Your appreciation for the otherworldly begins and ends with ‘ghosts are cool’. I happen to have a much more academic interest in these subjects.”

            “Told you she was the book smart one.”

            “I prefer the term history buff. In any case, having knowledge of a place you’re planning on breaking and entering into can never be a bad thing.”

            As they walked across the field towards the abandoned hospital, Meg surprisingly found herself relaxing a little bit. She had been wary of this excursion when Johnny had brought it up, but she was starting to find that she was enjoying herself. Johnny, Paul, and Ash all seemed to get along so well. It was completely different from the way most of her friends acted around each other back in Philadelphia. The way Paul and Ash had talked to her, as though they were already best friends… It was a strange and foreign feeling. If she had been honest with herself, she had really planned to hang around with them for a bit, then make an excuse to leave. Now that she was already here, though, she supposed it wouldn’t hurt to spend a little more time with them. It’s not like they were bad people, after all. In fact, they seemed almost nice.

            There was one thing that baffled her, though. She decided to break the silence by asking a question.

            “So, are you guys really serious about this stuff?” she asked. “The actual ‘ghost hunting’ part, I mean.”

            “You mean do we really believe in the supernatural,” said Ash. Meg nodded hesitantly in return.

            “It’s all in good fun, of course,” said Paul. “Though the chances of crossing paths with a true phantom are all but zero, it is thrilling regardless, isn’t it?”

            “Oh, stop it, you’re gonna ruin all the fun,” said Ash. “Paul might not believe in ghosts, but Johnny and I know better. There’s too much weird stuff around here for it to be coincidence.”

            “What kind of weird stuff?”

            “Oh, right. I forgot you’re new here so you wouldn’t know. I’ve spent a lot of time reading up on the local histories and there’s been a ton of strange stories over the years. People vanishing into thin air, having bizarre hallucinations, stuff like that. Way more than what’s expected for a town of this size, you know? Also, around 50 years ago, there was some weird plague that went through. What was it called again, Johnny?”

            “The Contagion of ’56,” he called back.

            “That’s right. There was this big infection that swept through the entire hospital, and eventually ended up getting the whole place shut down. The weird thing, though, is that even though there was never any kind of quarantine or anything, it never spread to the rest of the town. Kinda creepy, huh? Oh, we’re here.”

            The entrance to the hospital loomed above them, four stories high, the walls covered with vines and moss, creeping in through broken windows and crumbling brick walls. The words “Jefferson East Hospital and Care Center” were inscribed on a cast iron sign directly above the front doors. The place was filled with a foreboding atmosphere. It seemed to say, “The world has forgotten this place. Nobody has business here anymore.”

            Johnny spun dramatically towards the rest of the group and clapped his hands together.

            “Well team, shall we head inside?”