“So, there’s a strange box in the barracks?” Harper asked. “Did you report it?”
“We’re tellingyou.”
“Why me?”
“Maybe you could, like, tell us what you think? Like, if it’sdangerous or whatever. I mean, it’s probably just a prop from a frat hazing thing, or Halloween, or something. But we’d like to look into it—there are stories going around about the spirit of a doctor that roams the streets looking for victims…” Blanca trailed off. “I mean, it’s like you said, people come up with wild stories to explain the unexplainable, right?”
“We can show you,” said Jenny, glancing down at Harper’s leather boots, which Harper had bought as much for comfort as for style. “You even have the right shoes on. Aurelio’s brother’s a locksmith, and he’s got tools. The thing’s locked in a storage area.”
“Who’s Aurelio?”
“He’s, like, helping us with our podcast?”
“What podcast?” Was she that out of touch with her students, or were they being unintentionally cryptic?I’m getting old, Harper thought.
“OurCreepy Californiapodcast. It’s like a true-crime thing. You should check it out.”
Five
Aurelio turned out to be a skinny, small-framed young man with a mouth full of orthodontia gear that kept him from speaking clearly. Or perhaps he was simply shy. Whatever the reason, he didn’t say much.
Blanca and Jenny more than made up for his silence, chatting nonstop as the four of them walked the mile to the abandoned barracks, which were surrounded by a sagging cyclone fence. Large holes cut in the fencing suggested the “off-limits” barracks were frequently breached.
Inside the fenced perimeter were several blocky, two-story buildings that had obviously been abandoned. Numerous windows had been shattered, the walls sprayed with graffiti, and old metal doors stood wide open. The grounds were scattered with items that had been dumped—a broken-down, brown La-Z-Boy lounge chair, a rusty camp stove, a puzzle with its pieces spread in all directions, an old car seat—while foam to-go cups and ketchup-smeared fast-food wrappers were blown about by the ocean breeze.
“You come here a lot?” Harper asked.
“All the time,” said Jenny as she led the way through a breach in the fence. “It’s just something to do. We’re kind of far from things, out here on campus. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah, nothing to worry about,” repeated Blanca. “You’ll see.”
The students hadn’t lied: Harper saw no signs warning away trespassers. Of course, the cyclone fence was probably all the signage one needed. A large banner draped between two wooden stilts that had been pounded into the ground read:Future Site of a Philips Seaside Development.
Harper ducked carefully as she followed the students through the opening in the fence. The concrete-block buildings and aluminum windows were strictly utilitarian, the dirt hard-packed and barren of plant life except for a few mangy shrubs. Fort Ord did not hold a candle to San Francisco’s elegant Presidio, which she had toured when she first arrived in the Bay Area. It was hard to imagine what this place must have been like when it was in use: young soldiers rushing this way and that, hurrying to mess hall and training, goofing around in the common room, calling home to loved ones.
“This way,” Aurelio mumbled, heading into one of four identical barrack blocks.
A long corridor was lined with doors, the beige linoleum floor covered with dirt, trash, and more broken furniture. Chunks of insulation, no doubt asbestos, dangled from holes in the ceiling, and graffiti was everywhere. Beige curtains circa 1960 still hung in some of the windows, and cheap plywood dressers and armoires slumped against the walls.
Though shards of glass and fallen plaster crunched underfoot, there were no broken beer bottles or crushed cans, nocigarette butts. No signs of life at all, or even partying, apart from an occasional scorch mark from an attempted bonfire.
Harper snapped a few photos with her phone, intrigued despite her misgivings. Some of the graffiti was crude, but other tags were downright philosophical, and one or two quoted local hero John Steinbeck, including one of her favorites fromEast of Eden:
And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good
“Why hasn’t anything been done with these buildings?” Harper wondered aloud.
“I heard it’s because the army plans to tear it all down soon,” Blanca said. “My mom says they gave up trying to do anything with it. I think there’s a rich developer making plans, though.”
“Like we said,” Jenny added. “Nobody cares.”
“Not even an attempt to salvage anything?” Harper asked. Not that there was much of value to salvage. Someone—the military, or vandals—had already stripped out some wiring and probably whatever copper piping might have been present behind the walls.
The students shrugged.
“Down here,” Aurelio said, leading them farther along the dark corridor. Grime on the windows blocked the bright afternoon sunshine, making it difficult to see clearly to the end of the shadowy hall.
“Be careful where you step,” said Harper, wincing at the sound of her “mom” voice.
