©1 September / 2026 Levite
http://themediadesk
1.
I thought I was still sound asleep in my apartment, and dreaming, but I wasn't sure. Maybe that was a dream and this was the unpleasant reality.
I was sitting in a classroom that looked familiar, but the teacher didn't. I looked around and recognized several of the kids that I had gone to elementary school with, and most of them looked like they did then. But then I saw something written on the board, and it was a white board where the classroom that I remembered, had a traditional chalkboard.
What was written on the board gave me chills. "Spelling review test."
I usually did pretty good on the weekly spelling tests, but most of the time I was lucky if I got a 'B' on the reviews. And right then, I knew I hadn't studied for it.
Then the teacher, who looked a little different now, stood up from her desk and said, "The first word on the test is 'Effervescent', 'effervescent'. The soft drink was effervescent when she poured it into the glass."
I looked down at my test paper and picked up my pen and tried to write the word, but I know that what I wrote down had nothing to do with the test word.
"The next word is 'Intelligence', 'intelligence'. The scientist has great intelligence."
"Now we have 'Detective', 'detective'. The detective should stay in the job she is in and help those that need her."
I froze and looked up at the teacher.
Instead of the teacher that had begun the test, the woman next to the desk with the list of spelling words was the old Gypsy woman that the young man called 'Baba'.
Instead of writing down the spelling word I said, "I don't understand."
Then another voice spoke from to my right. I looked over and saw Stella Arch, the ancient Wise Woman of the local native tribes on the Island.
"You will understand Detective Elaine. You will." The old Native woman said.
I looked back at the teacher and she nodded, and, even in the dream, I could tell that her eyes were looking through me.
I woke up not knowing where I was or what was going on, but then I felt a mild cramp in my hand and realized I was still acting like I was holding my pen for the spelling test.
It was just after two in the morning. And I knew I wasn't going back to sleep after that. I got a quick shower and got dressed, then went for an early morning drive, and was out on the Atlantic side of the Island walking along a totally deserted beach watching the sun come up while still thinking about the dream.
It was still way early in the morning, but I wanted to talk to Derek.
He had been tied up with some major changes at the dealership for over a month and we'd barely seen each other. So when I called him, I had to reassure him that everything was all right, "I just thought I'd buy you breakfast this morning."
He laughed, "Well, OK, let me finish getting dressed and I'll meet you wherever you want to go."
It was a relief listening to him talk about how they'd added a new European nameplate at the dealership, even though that meant moving almost everything, adding on to the showroom, turning one service bay into a new parts and accessories area, and now they were building on to the service department as well.
And then I realized I was halfway through telling him about my spelling test dream.
I kept going and when I finished he shook his head, "It doesn't sound like a regular dream," he said, "that was a vision. Somebody, somewhere, was sending you a message. You said that one captain is retiring, but you're not going to put in for the position."
"No."
"Can they promote you without your applying for the position?"
I hadn't thought about that. It had happened before, but not for a long time.
I looked at him, then at my coffee cup. "I hope not." Was the best answer I could come up with for either. "So," I said to change the topic, "Are you going to get to drive one of the new models?"
After breakfast I went to the office and suddenly felt like I didn't belong there. Something had changed, and I wasn't sure what it was, and then I realized that I was still seeing it through the filter of that dream.
I went to my desk and sat in my chair. "OK, this is real. Derek was right, it was a message, but that's all it was. I have to go on, and deal with whatever comes up." I whispered to myself. Then I checked my emails.
And then I spent an hour on the phone to the county finance office because they'd found another bill that was extremely similar to the fraudulent bills, but with some different information on it.
They sent me copies of everything they had on the bill and I went through the invoice, the cover letter, and even the signature. And, to me, Not only did it look like the same character had generated it, there similar typographical errors in the invoice, including an incorrect letter in the city name in the address.
I called her back and told her what I'd found and she agreed with me, "I just wanted a good second opinion before I sent it to the lawyers."
I laughed, "Send it off, and I suspect there will be more of these coming in, until the bad guys figure out that we're not going to pay them. Then they'll move on."
"I'm sending all of this to a friend of mine in Nassau county too. Maybe it'll save them some trouble."
"Good idea, I'll do the same thing."
And that sense that I didn't belong there any longer was gone.
The next morning I got a call from Manager Marjorie at the Historic Office.
"It just happened. Nothing had ever been reported in the building before. We've had several groups have meetings there in the evenings, and some went way late into the night. And nobody said a word."
"What changed? Has the house been remodeled or painted? New old furniture moved in?" I asked her.
"Not that any of us knows of. I can meet you out there and show you. I've got photos of the place going back thirty or forty years we can compare."
And so I checked my kit and set off for what was one of the oldest houses in Smithtown, New York. And, depending on whose brochure you read, it was the oldest existing house in the town, although at some point it had been moved from where it originally stood to where it was now. But even that was well over a hundred years ago and shouldn't be the reason for the sudden spike in activity.
The wood frame house was small. Essentially three rooms. A large area that, when the place was new, was the living and bed room, and two smaller rooms to the back, one of which had served as the kitchen and the other was what the historic office called a "utility room" with a really small half bath in between them. All that was upstairs was a partially furnished room that, as far as anybody knew, had only ever been used for storage, the only access to it was a built in ladder on the wall of the utility room.
"Calling it the utility room means we really don't know what it was used for, although it was part of the house when it was moved in the eighteen nineties. But there wasn't any plumbing in here until the thirties, and even then, it's never had a bathtub or shower. It still doesn't."
"Nineteen thirties?" I asked.
"Yes. This house was dry for a century and a half. Whoever lived here carried water in from an outdoor well for that long."
The plumbing and electricity were installed at the same time, which was when the half bath was built into the utility room and the kitchen remodeled, which meant that the 'new features' were eighty years old. And even the lights in what was now a meeting room had been there for a long time. The newest item in the place was a coffeemaker in the kitchen, and I knew for a fact that the one we had in the office was newer, and it was a couple of years old now.
I sat at the table with Manager Marjorie and looked through some of the reports. The oldest of which was from just over two months ago. I read it out loud.
"Our committee members were all around the table discussing the Friends and Family Weekend events when there were a series of slaps and bangs from the kitchen. Anise thought that something had fallen out of a cabinet, but when she went in there, everything was in place. Then as she was coming back to the table the slapping sound happened again."
I put the printed page down, "A slapping sound? I've never heard of a sound described like that before. And she says 'slaps and bangs'."
Manager Marjorie had another report, "Dave from the service club said the same thing from, let's see, three weeks ago tomorrow. '... the treasurer couldn't read his report because of the continual smacking sounds from the kitchen. We have used this space for years and this has never happened before.'"
I got up and walked into the kitchen area. I checked in the cabinets and under the small sink. The apartment sized refrigerator had been there for years and looked it, but it was working and there were several bottles of water in it that were cold. Even the microwave on the counter next to the fridge had been there for a long time.
The newest thing in the kitchen appeared to be a canister of store brand coffee, but I didn't think that would lead to a spike in paranormal activity.
I went back to the table and checked the days and times when the meetings had happened. There was no consistency to when the people had been here, either by day of the week or time of day. Apparently, the activity either happened, or it didn't. The only link I could find was that when the activity started, everybody was around the table and they all agreed that the sounds were coming from the kitchen and utility room.
I talked it over with Marjorie and decided that I'd try being there working by myself that night, and if nothing happened, I'd have a meeting in there in a couple of days.
I left for a little while, and came back with, pizza, and actual work to do. So I set up my stuff on the table where I had a view of the kitchen.
Then I did a really slow background sweep of the kitchen and utility room and didn't find anything unusual, even around the old Edison type screw in fuse panel that was still in active service in the corner of the utility room. While higher than the rest of the house, the readings were still in what I considered the normal EMF range an arm's length from the panel. And the rest of the house was even less interesting.
Then I got a slice of pizza and a drink, turned the kitchen light off, and sat at the table in the big room to start working on everything from an assignment for a class I was taking to a report about a mundane investigation of an employee who was suspected of trying to collect unemployment from another business while working for the county.
I started with the report about the employee, talking to myself the whole time, then playing the audio from an interview with them and a handful of others. Then I read an email from the unemployment office out loud, and so on.
Maybe I was the only one there, but I was trying to make it seem like there was several people at the table.
It took longer to do the report there at the table in the old house than it would have in the office, but after a protracted round of reading it out loud, while eating pizza, I finished it and sent it off.
What it came down to was that there were three men named Jason B. Stewart in the State of New York. One was working for a private employer in the western part of the state, and wasn't part of this issue, at all, and I wanted to keep it that way. His middle name was Bradley, and he was about sixty years old.
The other two were the problem. Both had the middle name of Bruce. And both were born within a year of each other, and the Social Security Numbers were more similar than different.
Except one of them lived in The Bronx, the other one lived and worked in Suffolk County.
The one in the Bronx had been collecting unemployment for several month after his employer went bankrupt, and was getting by doing odd jobs. I checked his home address and even spoke to him by phone. He'd never been to Suffolk County and wasn't planning on visiting any time soon.
Our employee was still working, had never been on unemployment, and couldn't remember the last time he'd even been on the mainland, let along the Bronx.
The kicker was that if anybody had checked their driver's permit files it would have been obvious that they were two different men. One was Black, the other was White.
I had documented everything, including the difference in their signatures, and that there was no missing information on any of their paperwork to confuse the matter.
It had all come up when the State had conducted an Artificial Intelligence scan of the unemployment role looking for possible fraudulent claims, except the AI wasn't smart enough to realize that the two men were two different men.
And then while I was reviewing the files I noticed a note from an investigator in Manhattan who had an even bigger problem. The same AI scan had kicked out four Garret Smiths. Two of which were getting state benefits of different types. I chuckled under my breath and wished them well.
Then I started on my homework for the class, and, the same as before, I talked to myself, and played an MP3 of the professor's lecture, and then argued with myself as I worked through the analysis that was part of the assignment.
At some point I looked at my watch and saw that it was after nine PM. The latest anybody had reported activity in the house was about ten, so I had about an hour left.
I saved my homework and had another slice of pizza and just watched and listened to the house around me.
And nothing happened.
I asked if there was anybody there. If they needed anything. If it was OK that I was working in the house. All of that. And got nothing. No slapping sounds, no voices, no orbs or mists. Nothing. The place was, in a word: dead.
The next day I spent some time talking to Derek, and Amy and her boyfriend the body builder, and a couple of others if they could make it, and we put together a meeting where we would spend hours eating junk food, and later, pizza, and having essentially random discussions and making plans and even evaluating fundraising techniques.
So then on a perfectly good Saturday afternoon I unlocked the house and set up my equipment where it had been the first evening in there. Later the others arrived one at a time, and we set up our meeting.
Derek even brought a projector and had a slide show about the charities the dealership supported.
We spent almost an hour talking about what we were going to talk about when Amy's boyfriend got up and went into the kitchen for another drink, he stopped in the doorway and looked back at the rest of us and asked if anybody else wanted anything.
"whack !!!!"
The sound was so sharp and sudden that we all jumped.
"What was that?" Amy's boyfriend said looking behind him.
After a quick inspection of the kitchen I reviewed the video of the camera I had sitting in the back corner on the counter and the one that was on a side table in the living room. Between the two we could see both of his hands and his feet when the sound occurred. There was nobody else in the kitchen and nothing that was in view of either camera had moved.
According to the directional recorder that was sitting next to the coffee pot the sound had come from in front of, above, and slightly to the right of the unit. Which would put the source somewhere near the fridge. A full four or five feet behind the bodybuilder.
We half laughed it off and blamed an over achieving mouse that found a loose board in the attic.
Then, about twenty minutes later, with everybody at the table, and Amy going through what her old Girl Scout Troop was doing in the summer, including a canoe trip down the Peconic River, out along the bay to a campground, staying overnight out there, and then paddling back in the morning... it happened twice more.
Two quick, solid, sounds that really did sound like somebody getting slapped across the face. Except to me, it sounded more like a very hard clap.
Once again I pulled the images off the cameras and the recording off the directional that had been sitting next to the coffee pot again.
The first sound was almost directly in front of the recorder and closer than the previous one. The second sound was further from the recorder and slightly to the left, which would put it near the door to the utility room, and it was also a distinct sound after several seconds of silence so it was not an echo.
"OK, Elaine, I think we should tell them why we're here." Derek said after everybody calmed down.
I nodded. "Other groups, doing what we're doing here, having a meeting, have reported that sound. Sometimes it happens repeatedly while they're here."
"Like it just did," Amy said.
"Yes. And all of this started about three months ago now."
"As old as this place is? Why would it start now?" Amy's boyfriend asked.
"I have no idea. Which is why we're here."
He smiled, "I'm OK with that, let's order a pizza and I'll tell you about the Mid-Atlantic Pose Off. My entry is in and I've got some pictures from last year's competition. Der can put them on the screen."
Derek laughed and held up his phone with an app open, "I've got her favorite already programmed, what do you guys want, I'll add it to the order and send it in."
Less than an hour later the pizzas arrived, so we sat around the table and watched the slide show and talked about how the body builders were judged.
He had just explained that some competitions have a series of mandatory poses that everybody had to do when he stopped and held up a finger and pointed toward the kitchen.
"I hear it," I said as everybody got quiet.
There was a distinct hard tapping sound coming from the kitchen.
I moved as slowly and quietly as I could to get up, then I motioned for him to keep talking about the competition. He nodded and went to the next slide.
"When I was at the show in Boston they made us hold these poses for so long my shoulders got stiff," he said and then went on about another competitor that got a leg cramp.
I picked up the directional recorder and had my video camera running going as I eased slowly into the kitchen doorway.
The sound continued while I stood there and let the instruments take in the kitchen and what I could see of the utility room.
It was a rapping on a hard surface. But it didn't sound exactly like wood. According to my ears, and the directional recorder, it appeared to be coming from the half bath just inside the utility room door.
"Keep talking," I whispered to the others. Then I crept forward half a step leading with the camera and the recorder.
The rapping never missed a beat while Derek asked about costume requirements for the bodybuilders.
I was concentrating on the sound so I didn't hear the answer, but when the others laughed the tapping got louder for a moment.
I whispered back to the others, "tell another joke, it reacted to that."
And that's when we found out that Amy's boyfriend had a talent for telling some really strange jokes about body building.
"Why does the slider sandwich hang out at the gym?" He waited a second, "he likes the other buns."
OK, I said they were strange.
But as the others chuckled, and even groaned, the tapping got louder.
I took another step forward.
I have no idea what joke he told next, but I could hear Derek laughing and then make a comment that got a laugh from the others.
And the tapping got louder and a tick faster.
I was in the doorway between the kitchen and the utility room and could see almost all of the half bath. The sound was coming from in there and seemed to be originating from just over the sink.
I stood there for a minute as the tapping got fainter again, but then there was laughter from the living room and it got louder again.
I held the video camera as still as I could and tried to watch the wall above the sink in the dim light that was coming in from behind me.
There was another round of laughter and I heard Amy say that that was the worst joke yet.
The rapping above the sink seemed to react to her voice and laughter. So I chuckled and said "those bad jokes are usually the funniest ones."
It worked, the rapping got even louder.
And then something happened that I didn't expect.
"!!! !!! WWHAAACKK !!! !!!"
The powerful slapping sound was behind me, and to my right. Evidently it originated just in front of the refrigerator again.
And as soon as it happened the tapping in the restroom stopped.
I stood there for a moment and waited. Nothing.
Then I turned on the light in the half bath and looked at the area over the sink.
I could see four screw holes and a line on the wallpaper where a small shelf had been just below the mirror that was so small it was barely usable. In fact, I know I've seen bigger mirrors mounted on the passenger sun visor in cars.
"Maybe that's what changed and set all this off," I said as I inspected where the screw holes could still be seen in what might have been the oldest wallpaper in town.
I went out and asked the others if any of them knew anything about bathroom remodeling. Then I explained why I had asked as I got another camera to take pictures of the area over the sink. So they all took turns in the tiny room and then offered their opinions.
"It wasn't taken down all that long ago, you can still see the fade line where the shelf had been," Derek summarized and the rest of us agreed with him.
I hooked my laptop up to Derek's projector and we spent the next twenty minutes looking at the old photos of the house. The only one we could find that reliably showed the inside of the restroom was from about thirty years ago when the house had taken a turn as 'Santa's House' during the town's Christmas festival.
The small house had been heavily decorated. Including the half bath, with a wreath on the door.....
.... ...and candles and ornaments on the shelf over the sink and a garland around the mirror.
I enlarged the photo until we began to lose the detail we needed, then I zoomed out just a step, or two. We could just make out a small shelf under the mirror.
"Those brackets under the shelf look like they'd just fit the holes that are there," Amy's boyfriend said examining the image.
"That's what I thought," I said, "but why take it down?"
"Maybe it just came loose after being up there forever."
"Probably."
Derek got up and went to the utility room, "What do you want to bet that it's still here? Somebody took it down when they saw it was coming loose, and intended to put it back up, but never did."
Before I could answer, he walked back out of the room holding the shelf, and one mounting bracket.
"Nevermind," he said, "what are you doing tomorrow? I'll get another bracket and we can put this thing back up where it belongs."
I took several pictures before, and then after Derek's repair. He even managed to find a set of brackets and some drywall screw anchors that were a fair approximation to what had been there. We never did find the other bracket, and Manager Marjorie didn't even know it was missing.
The next weekend we had another 'meeting', with pizza, and a slide show, and several jokes, and all the rest, with the addition of Manager Marjorie and her husband... and never heard a sound from the kitchen.
My presentation about the known history of the house was the centerpiece of the evening. Or at least I was told it was.
"The only person who I could find a picture of that lived here is this lady." I clicked from the image of the front of the house to an old black and white picture of a woman who couldn't look more unpleasant if she had tried. Her scowl even made Derek lean back in his chair, and he is paid to be nice to people that look like that because they bring their cars in for service.
"Her name is Miss Linda Hawkins. She lived here from around Nineteen ten, or so, about twenty years after the house was moved, until she was moved into what was called a rest home in the sixties. She was here when the plumbing and electrical service were installed. Until then, she carried water in. First from a surface well somewhere around here, and then from a community faucet on another building. And she used an outhouse"
"Wow. You don't realize how people lived back then."
I nodded, "She was one of the last people in town to agree to have indoor plumbing installed."
Amy laughed, "I believe that."
"Do you think the knocking and slapping was her?" Manager Marjorie asked.
I shook my head, "I don't know. I've done several EVP sessions here with call and response type questions asking for her, or whatever is here, and got nothing. Before the shelf was put back up, and since. No activity at all."
"So maybe it's over with."
"We can hope. And if it ever starts up again, call me and I'll try to figure out why."
"Again." She offered.
I nodded, "yes, again."
And then I was back in the office. And I noticed a bit of a different attitude with various ranking officers.
After a couple of days of it I caught the Sheriff on his way in and asked him if he had a minute.
"Sure, you got a new case?"
"No. Just want to talk."
"Oh," he looked disappointed, then his expression changed, "and you may be the expert on psychic stuff, but I think I know what you want to talk about. Come on in," he gestured to his office.
He walked in and went to his desk and sat down, then looked at me.
"You didn't take a seat," he said, stating the obvious.
"No, sir."
"You want to know about the upcoming vacancy."
"Yes, sir."
"And whether or not you are being considered for it, and that you ... well... don't really want it."
"Exactly, sir."
"I can tell you this. Yes, your name has come up at the committee. And, one of the members has asked to speak to you about another matter. They heard about what you did for Rollins's sister and...."
I couldn't help but smile, "you mean they want to talk to me about their family ghost."
He nodded, "probably. But I don't know, I'm just supposed to see if you can be here Wednesday afternoon. In any case, they all know you are probably the best qualified of our current staff for the position, but that, at least for right now, you wouldn't want to leave your current role here."
I thought about it for a moment. "Thank you, sir. And I don't know of anything else going on Wednesday. Let me know what time and I'll make sure I'm here."
Wednesday afternoon, I was at my desk when one of the county board members came in with the Undersheriff I had worked with recently, and the Sheriff himself who nodded at me and gestured toward the conference room.
I finished up the phone call I was on about a previous mundane case, and joined them.
"A pleasure to finally meet you in person, Detective." The board member said with their hand out.
After the pleasantries the board member came right to the point by saying "Can we get started, I've got a last minute meeting with the contractor who is redoing our kitchen at three. They're already three weeks late finishing and I don't want to give them an excuse to go another week later."
We all laughed. The Undersheriff said they just went through that.
I shook my head, "that's why I rent."
The board member brought out an older model digital recorder that was similar to one of the ones I use on my own investigations. "Can I download them and then play them through that?" They asked indicating the presenter's place.
"Certainly, I'll turn it on for you," I said and got the system running, then they sat down and plugged in the unit.
They scrolled through the menu on the computer and found a couple of sound files on their recorder.
I told them that the speakers were on and ready to go.
"Very good, I'll play the first one." They said and clicked with the mouse.
In a second we heard somebody say, "it's playing again," and then the board member answered, "it's getting it."
And we could all hear what sounded like a music box playing a light aire.
After about a minute it ended, "That was my cousin Sheryl at first, she's the one that called me about this, I'll play it again." They said.
"I recognized that song, but I don't know the name of it," the Sheriff said.
"Was it 'Clair de Lune'?" I asked.
"Yes," they said and played it one more time.
"And then there is this one," they said after it finished, and they clicked on the second file.
The second recording was the same song, but a different arrangement. This one was slower, and a chord or two lower, and actually rather sad sounding.
"Let me guess," there were no music boxes around wherever you were." I said.
"No, detective, and we've checked for music players, radios, all of that. I've even disabled her doorbell just in case it was a programmable one. That was almost a month before I got these." They gestured to the recorder.
"Have you ever heard any other songs?"
"No ma'am. And we think we know why it is only this one. It was my great-grandmother's favorite song. She had several music boxes that played it. Different styles, faster, slower, and so on, but always this song." They chuckled at the memory, "I remember her saying she could listen to it several times and never heard a commercial for a tire store or anything."
"Good point."
"She died back in the seventies. And we don't know what happened to her music boxes. And this house where I recorded these wasn't even built until the nineties. Twenty years later, and in a different city."
"So why is grandma's music suddenly playing there?"
"Yes."
I nodded and then asked them, "Are any of her possessions there? Antiques, maybe jewelry, old dishes, maybe even a quilt or a needlepoint on the wall?"
They sat back and thought about it, "you know, yes there is. Sheryl said that she'd been collecting family mementos from different ones. But she doesn't remember Grandma Sadie, she was a baby when she died. I wasn't much older, but I do remember her, but by then she was in a retirement home, with her music boxes. I'm pretty sure she has some of her jewelry and knickknacks. Grandma Sadie collected a lot of odd, small things, like salt and pepper shakers."
"Has Cousin Sheryl asked the rest of the family about the music boxes? Those aren't something people usually throw away. It could be that Grandma would like her to have them."
"You know, I think you're right. And I might know who has at least one of them now that I'm thinking about it." The board member nodded, and picked up their recorder, "Yes, now that I'm thinking about it, I think I remember seeing one at their house. I'll stop by and ask them about it."
Then they sat back and smiled.
"Sheriff, I'll say this, as a Public Safety Committee member. We need to leave the good detective in the job she is in to help the people that need her."
'The detective should stay in the job she is in and help those that need her.'
It took a moment before the chills that ran up and down my spine stopped. I had heard those very words before.... in my sleep. Except it hadn't been a County Board member, it was the old Gypsy woman that had spoken to me in the dream.
The Sheriff looked at me, "She's said she isn't interested, and, for me, that's that."
The board member stood up, "Agreed. If it comes up again in committee, I'll recommend we look at other candidates."
I felt relieved, "thank you." Then I had a question, "Excuse me, does your cousin really hear your Great Grandmother's music box."
They nodded, "I've heard it myself. In fact, several family members have. Some are frightened by it, but to me, it's a happy memory."
"Good, that's how it should be. Let me know if you find a music box and that settles it down."
A month or so later I got a message from them. They had found the one they knew about, and then two of the music boxes at the house of another relative who had forgotten they had them. Their cousin had put them in a place of honor next to some of their great-grandmother's salt and pepper shakers and a small teacup with a swan painted on it that she had adored. And they had only heard the song a couple of times, and very faintly, since then.
As far as the promotion went. The Department had a round of open bidding on the position, and it went to a senior officer from the County Police who was looking to do something else for several years before they retired.
I thought that would be about when I would be looking for something else to do, and then, I might put in for it.
In the mean time: I'll stay where I am and help the people that need me.
-end Promotion 2-
[NOTE: The above story were written as adventure fiction, and is to be taken as such. While most of the features of Long Island exist, including some very old small houses, the rest of the setting is fictional.
Thank you, Dr. Leftover, TheMediaDesk.com]
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