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was quiet and the words were clear and in a language mice never spoke outside of Saturday-morning cartoons: “You’re blinding me.”
    Wayne retreated a step and his skull knocked against a support post, sending squiggly lime sparks across the backs of his eyelids. His flashlight bounced to the decking and went out. He wobbled and hugged the post for balance.
    The temperature in the attic dropped 10 degrees and the electrical surge rippled from his head to his toes.
    The wind, dummy, it’s November. And mice. Yeah. Mice.
    He squinted into the darkness, orienting himself by the distant square light of the access door and the zebra-striped vent. The dark form now blended into the black space of the attic, and it was easy to believe he’d imagined the whole thing.
    But that didn’t stop his heart from hammering like a man trapped in a coffin.
    “Wayne?” Burton called.
    He swallowed and his throat chafed as if the air had turned to sawdust. “I’m okay,” he croaked.
    “What’s going on?”
    “Nothing.”
    “I heard a couple of bumps.”
    “I dropped my light.” Wayne reached out with the tip of his boot, probing for the flashlight, wondering what he would do if something grabbed his foot.
    Burton’s head poked up through the access opening and he swept a flashlight across the attic until Wayne stood in its spotlight like a cabaret dancer on stage. He blinked into the light– You’re blinding me –and then glanced toward the chimney.
    The shape was gone, just as he knew it would be.
    Because it had never been there.
    We made a promise, Beth, but neither of us believed it. And lying gets easier as you get older.
    He stooped and gathered his flashlight from its bed of shredded paper. He tested it and found it still worked. “Okay, pass me a couple of the cameras,” Wayne said, pulse returning to normal.
    He was a little embarrassed at his suggestibility. He’d never considered himself a skeptic, and he wasn’t interested in all the physiological changes that caused people to hallucinate. Ghosts were good business, from campfire storytelling to blockbuster horror movies. With thousands of people running around chasing them with fancy electronics, the poor souls were probably hiding safely under ground instead of rattling chains and slamming doors.
    Burton set a plastic case on the decking and slid it toward Wayne. “Two Sony DVMs,” he said. “Hey, it’s cold up here.”
    “November in the mountains,” Wayne said. “What do you expect?”
    He mounted the first camera so that it would catch the main section of the attic, though one wing of the hotel would not be visible.  He aimed the second camera so it would take in the chimney. He connected the cables that Burton had snaked toward him, and then used the viewfinder to test the chimney cam. As he zoomed in, the camera’s auto focus fixed on a hand print in the chimney’s soot and grime.
    Made by a worker’s glove, probably.
    He zoomed out and duck-walked over to the chimney, keeping his head low. He ran his flashlight over the bricks and masonry joints. The hand print was gone.
    He went back to the camera and set it to record, the satellite hard drive in the control room capable of recording an entire weekend’s worth of footage. “Come on out and play,” he called into the dead air of the attic.
    “What’s that?” Burton called from below.
    “Nothing,” Wayne said.
    What was he expecting? Beth?
    Nothing.
    Just like always.

 
     
    Chapter 7
     
    Nailed him.
    These New Age flakes were too busy smoking fairy dust, drinking koo-koo Kool-Aid, and gazing into crystals to peek behind the curtain.  Which gave Ann Vandooren all the power of the Wizard of Oz, and by Sunday, Digger Wilson and his band of merry pranksters would wish they’d never left Kansas, or Pluto, or wherever the hell these losers came from.
    Ann had hidden a closed-circuit television camera in the corner of the attic two days earlier, renting Room 306 so she could be across