The Haunted National Park: A Tale from the Peter Wood Multiverse
Chapter Four: Home Away From Home

Once they were all inside, the scouts took stock of the station’s small living area and realized that this was definitely some sort of lounge room for visitors. There was a small TV in one corner by the outside window, a vending machine, some couches, as well as some other furniture you’d replace in a living room. All of which were covered by cobwebs and there were old Christmas decorations still all about the place from some long-forgotten winter. Peter thought that was pretty convenient given the time of year it was at that moment. The large block of ice that was housing both the ghost lady and the coffee table that she was phasing through at the time of being was in the center of it all now.

They all took their winter gear off and as the others began settling into their new lounge area, Peter decided to do a little exploring. Across the small hallway and past the staircase was an office area that was being used by the park rangers of old. All of these were covered in cobwebs too, Peter noticed. But there was something odd about them; they each had plates and cups that still had old food and drinks in them. However, this still sense of things being perfectly preserved came in direct clash of course with the fact that a ghost had been haunting these walls and the giant claw marks in the wallpaper of the office and visitors' areas.

“Peter?” came Lily’s voice from the hall. “Come help us out with moving the banshee over a bit to the side of the room so that we can get started.”

“Coming.” Peter called back. He took one last look at the office and made his way back to his friends.

Peter and his troop mates spent the next hour or so making the old station their own personal home-away-from-home. One of the things they began doing was begin watching some old park safety videos—with the animated adventures of Growly the Grizzly—on the TV of the Visitor's Room. Mindy enlisted the help of Lily with her alchemical experiments on the frozen ghost, and while the two cousins were doing that, Peter and Oliver were spending their time cranking up music on the pocket radio they brought, drinking away bottles of honey-nogg that they managed to knock loose out of the Visitor Room’s old vending machine, and playing games as the night went on.

“Hey, does anyone know where the staffroom is?” Lily asked. “I wanted to see if I could wash some of this stuff off my shirt in the sink or something.” He stretched out his shirt to them, and Peter could see a giant slimy blotch caused no doubt by the same green ectoplasm that Mindy had siphoned from the ghost lady.

“No, I haven’t seen it.” Said Peter. “Have you tried down the hall?”

“There’s nothing there down the hall.”

“Nothing?” said Oliver.

“Have a look. Just passed the stairs there’s nothing but a dead-end.”

The boys followed Lily and made their way down to the end of the hall to see for themselves what was there. Maybe there was a door that Lily missed, Peter thought to himself. There was no other door, though.

But something did catch Peter’s eye: there were scratch marks on the ground just in front of the back wall of the hallway. They were coming away from the wall in an arch as if some door had scratched those lines into the ground. But Peter stared at the wall and pushed on it, and tried to even pull on the wooden designs in the wall to try and see if they were dealing with some sort of a hidden doorway. But nothing worked. The wall appeared to be just a wall. But why the scratch marks on the floor? What caused them?

“Are you sure there isn’t a staffroom upstairs or downstairs?” Oliver asked.

“I checked.” Said Lily. “The basement’s empty, and the upstairs is just filled with a bunch of beds and other furniture covered with bedsheets.”

“Mindy,” Peter called back the other way. “Can you come look at this please?”

When Mindy came down and had a look at it, she used her tool bag and the equipment inside it to try and to determine what they were dealing with.

“Has it been obscured?” Peter asked. It was common for paranormals to use their technology to make minor warps of space—a process referred to as obscurement—to hide anything from small rooms to entire cities.

“No, I don’t think so.” Said Mindy. “I’m not reading any aether-gas on any of my tools. I think it’s a ghost trick. I think there is a room behind this wall—which would mean that this is probably the room where that back door that Peter saw outside leads to—but for whatever reason, the ghosts don’t want us in there.”

“Why would they do that, though?”

“Well…it’s possible that there’s a body in there. And it’s probably the body of the ghost lady we have in the Visitor's Room. This way, no one can banish it using its body…”

No one said anything at first. Everyone turned and looked back down the hall where they could just make out the edge of the ice block trapping the banshee in question.

“So, how do we get in?” Peter asked.

“What?” Lily gasped.

“Peter, you can’t be serious.” Said Oliver. “You want to mess around with a dead body?”

“I don’t want to mess with it.” Said Peter. “I just want to look at it.”

“No. Absolutely not! I’m staying out here if that’s what you lot are up to.” Said Lily.

Peter turned back to Mindy, who was carefully feeling a portion of the wall for some reason. “Mindy, what are you doing?”

“Well…I thought I saw something…something just beneath the wood…ha!” It almost looked like Mindy was somehow peeling away a small section of the wall’s wooden layer with just her nails. The wall around this section glowed a lime green as Mindy pulled whatever it was off the wall. However, a few moments after she did this, the sheet of wood that she had peeled off slowly transformed before their eyes until it fully became a sheet of paper with writing on it. It was a handwritten letter.

“Whoa.” Said everyone in unison.

“Weird,” Mindy passed it over to Peter after taking a minute to read it over herself. “Have a look at this.”

Peter took the letter and read it aloud for everyone to hear:

To Whomever Finds Our Lady,

I’ve served her for as long as I could, but just like the others, my body fails me now. The others and I tried calling out to her, to wake her up, but we’re still getting no answers. We shouldn’t have left her in the staffroom. Now she’s sealed herself in the staffroom—whether on purpose or in her grief, we don’t know. And…I think something’s gone wrong.

After all the time that had passed, we weren’t sure if she was still alive or dead, but for whatever reason, her power is no longer keeping us alive. Now it’s just me left, but soon I’ll be gone too.

Please, whoever replaces this, help her finish her plan so that if we do all die here, we may all rest in peace.

Forever in her service,

Helena Schmidt, Ranger (3rd Class)

“So, wait, does that mean that the ghost lady was a ranger?” said Oliver.

“I guess so.” Said Peter. “Now we know for sure there’s another room behind here.”

“What did it mean by ‘her power’, though,” Lily asked, worriedly. “And who were they talking about?”

“I don’t think we’ll know until we go in there.”

In response, Lily quickly made her way back to the staircase and watched them all warily from just behind the railing. Meanwhile, the rest of them began adding small charges of explosive putty that Mindy had in her tool bag to the surface of the wall. Peter made a mental note to ask her why she had explosives on her later on.

With a loud BOOM that was bound to stir many of the ghosts in the surrounding woods, the door that was disguised as a wall blew into pieces. The new opening revealed the hidden staffroom open at last for them to see; the dark room in question was very small compared to the Visitor's Room. The outer wall of the room was comprised of a kitchen counter, a sink, and a fridge. In the middle of the room was a table, and sitting at one end of the table was a figure thoroughly covered in cobwebs.