17
AND THIS,” SAID THE proprietor in a sonorous voice, “is where she was hanged.” His name was Grooms, and he pointed a trembling finger at a dark wooden beam in the attic hallway. “The coachman tightened the noose around the poor maid’s neck, threw it over the beam, and pulled her up while she struggled and twisted.” He paused, his cadaverous face taking on a ghastly expression. “You can still see the rope burns in the wood.”
Wendy Gannon, watching her two camera operators shooting the man’s little act through the two screens on her console, had to admit Grooms was an ideal subject for the documentary. He had the perfect look as a guide to the supernatural, and no doubt he took pains with his appearance: the threadbare suit one size too large for his gaunt frame, his six-foot-six-inch height, the stringy gray hair and sunken eyes. She suspected a judicious touch of makeup here and there added to the Lurch effect. And he knew enough about creating atmosphere to protest while the gaffer set up camera lights in the building’s dim interior. Gannon could see why the haunted Montgomerie House was one of Savannah’s biggest tourist attractions.
As the guide pointed his spidery finger at the beam, Gannon murmured for the second camera to zoom in on where she could indeed see abrasions in the wood.
She glanced over at Moller, listening with his head tilted, the expression on his face unreadable, as the guide told the story of the murder: two hundred years ago, the coachman of the house became engaged to one of the servants. All was well until the coachman, who was a nasty sort, fancied that she was cheating on him and, in a fit of jealous rage, forced his way into her bedroom in the attic of the house, threw a noose around her neck, dragged her out into the hall, and hanged her from an exposed beam. He then went back to his own quarters, lay down on the bed, and cut his own throat—not just once, but twice.
“And,” the man concluded, “ever since then, at the stroke of midnight, it happens.”
He paused, dramatically drawing in his breath as he raised his bushy eyebrows. “Not every night, of course, but often enough. Dozens of witnesses can testify to the horror of hearing the murder occur. All the recountings match. It always starts with a muffled scream, quickly choked off; then the sound of a person being dragged against their will along the passageway; next, the sound of a heavy rope being tossed over the beam; the unmistakable sound of cord tightening and sliding as the rope is violently drawn upwards. Next comes the sound of the rope swinging, accompanied by a strangled choking. Then…” He paused. “Then, after a few minutes, you can hear slow, heavy footsteps going back down the corridor; the opening and closing of a door; the creak of bedsprings—and then, all of a sudden, the wet gargling of a throat being sliced down to the neck bone with a straight razor.”
Gannon captured this recitation on both cameras perfectly, and Betts called for a cut. He seemed thrilled, rubbing his fat hands together. “Awesome! Awesome! Gerhard, you’re up.”
Moller nodded sagely. He had brought up to the top floor a large hard-shell roller case, which he now unlocked and opened. Inside, nested within foam cutouts, were the tools of his trade.
“Get a shot of that,” said Betts.
“No,” said Moller sharply. “As I already explained, Mr. Betts, I do not allow photographs of my equipment while it is inside the case. You may only photograph the equipment in use.”
“Right, okay,” said Betts, irritated.
Gannon kept the cameras still as Moller removed an old-fashioned-looking oscilloscope with a round screen; the camera in its box; a silver wishbone-shaped object that looked like a dowsing rod; a slab of semitransparent stone, allegedly obsidian, smoky and dark. He laid these things out on a sheet of black velvet. He nodded to Betts that it was now permissible to shoot, and Gannon nodded in turn to the camera operators.
Betts strolled into the frame, face lit from below, his skin pale. “It’s almost midnight: when the ghosts of the coachman and the maid are said to re-enact their grisly ends. Dr. Gerhard Moller is setting up highly sensitive tools and instruments—some dating back to the medieval period, some of his own devising—that can detect what specialists in the field call ‘spiritual turbulences’—that is, ghosts and other paranormal forces. At midnight, our watch will begin. Are we ready, Dr. Moller?”
“Yes,” he said.
There was a pause. Finally, Gannon nudged Betts.
“We have with us,” Betts went on, “Savannah’s well-known historian of the supernatural, Mrs. Daisy Fayette.”