What Lies Beneath

Chapter Eighteen: Ghost Stories

Back in the real world, the taxi driver who had dropped both Karen and Sophie off at the house, was busy doing some research of his own.

After he had gotten back to his apartment from abandoning Sophie, he had spent the rest of the night on his computer looking up old newspaper stories about the creepy old house. Even with an extensive online search, he could find were old stories about a missing girl presumably killed by her father. Although, no remains were ever found.

By the time that the sun began to rise, all he had was the name of the reporter on scene and determination.

He may have been extremely exhausted, but he wasn't about to waste time on sleep when he had answers to find. So, when his alarm clock began to beep alerting him that it was time for him to get up and get ready for work, he just pulled out his cell phone and called in sick. Then, he called his friend Bobby and told him to meet him at the city library.

The library was practically empty when he arrived, which was to be expected since it was a Wednesday morning, and most library goers were either at work or in school.

He didn't know what he was looking for, perhaps an address of the reporter, or maybe one of his family members since the report was almost fifty years old. Since the latter was probably the best bet, he figured that the ideal place to start was probably in the archives.

Being that he was only a lowly taxi driver, some would say, he didn't really know how to access the archives. After all he wasn't really the library type. That wasn't to say that he wasn't smart because he most certainly was. In fact, he had a degree in Bio- Engineering. The only reason that he was a taxi driver was that he got laid off a couple of years back from his job, and nobody was hiring except the taxi company that he is currently employed to.

He supposed that he could have continued his job search, but he found that he loved being a taxi driver. He loved meeting new people and hearing all their stories.

Now all that being said, he was still unaware of how to use the archives at the library. So instead of trying to figure it out all by himself, he enlisted the help of one of the lovely librarians on staff.

When his friend Bobby finally arrived at the library, he was already knee deep in the old archives.

"What the hell is all this about?" The sudden sound of his friend's voice caused him to drop the paper that he was scrutinizing over. Unlike most libraries, the one that he had chosen had yet to digitize their old records.

"Good, you're here. I need your help in going through that stack over there. I am looking for anything about an old abandoned house, a missing girl, and a reporter named Sal Vance."

"Have you gone insane? What's all this about Joe?" Bobby didn't move an inch and he wasn't planning to until he got some answers first.

"I don't know, yet. I only have a hunch and I am hoping that you will help me in proving that I'm right." Joe barely looked at his friend. His focus was mainly on a pile of papers that he was searching through.

"What kind of a hunch? This isn't like last year when you had a hunch that Tony was stealing from the daily tole is it? Because we both know that it was Valerie."

"Yeah, but Valerie and Tony were dating. Anyways, this is different."

"How so?"

Joe thought a moment before answering."I don't know, it just is okay?" He didn't know how to explain it. He only knew that there was something very strange happening at that house. He supposed that he could try and tell Bobby all of his reasoning for this spontaneous investigation, but Joe knew that he would just laugh at him. He hoped that even without giving him an explanation, that Bobby would still want to help him. After all, they were friends.