I really shouldn't be up so late posting this part, considering I'm having company over tomorrow, but I just couldn't resist!
Shadows and Light Part Five
Rated: PG
“How is he?” “He’s still stable, Doctor, but he remains comatose and unresponsive.” In the darkness, MacGyver became vaguely aware, the words being spoken sounding distorted as if he were underwater, his ears humming and vibrating. Gradually, he felt as if the weight of an anchor pulling him down had released him, allowing him to float and drift, feeling light and weightless. Light flooded his eyes, and as his sight returned, he saw that he was once again in the hospital room, staring down at his own body. Once again, he tried to penetrate it, but his flesh was solid and would not allow him entrance. He saw the doctor and the nurse leaving the room, finished with their latest examination.
“Wait, where’s Pete? Is he here?” He asked, his questions ignored as they left the room. He sighed and turned back to look at his body, knowing they would never hear him. Still, he had to know where Pete was, if he had managed to get away safely, and if Nicholas and his men had been apprehended. No longer did he feel drained, and as he watched his still body, listening to the heart monitor beat steadily, he realized the reason he had returned. “It must have been to replenish my energy reserves,” he said aloud. “When everything went dark and I couldn’t feel…I must have reentered my body. I needed rest. The question is, why can’t I stay inside it?” He gripped his own arm, lost in thought.
He realized that at that moment he didn’t have time to find the answer he was seeking. More urgent, pressing matters were at hand, such as what had happened to Pete when he was cruelly yanked away from him again back into that temporary state of unconsciousness, sharing his body’s suffering and fate. Being able to remain inside his body was important, and could be critical to his ultimate survival, but at that time Pete was still in danger and needed his help, something he could not provide in any capacity if he were to return to his body and find himself locked inside, lost and unaware.
“I have to get back to him,” he said, closing his eyes. “Hang on, Pete, I’m coming...”
As he gained experience being a ghost, he learned that travel was almost instantaneous, that all he had to do was think of someone or a location and he would be there within seconds. It had worked when he first left his body after his fall and had immediately reached Pete to alert him of his distress, and it worked now. When he opened his eyes, he found Pete, still inside the old house, hiding in one of the many winding, narrow, almost labyrinthine corridors of the expansive mansion, trying to evade Nicholas and his men.
“Find him!” He heard Nicholas say in the distance, his voice once again assertive, his fear of the house ghost obviously gone as the activity had long since ceased. He listened as their footsteps shuffled, scuffing against the worn, threadbare floors, trying to determine their exact location. He could see Pete was doing the same thing, holding his breath, trying to remain as calm and still as possible, nervous sweat beading on his forehead.
“I see you didn’t have time to make it out,” MacGyver said as he watched Pete. “They didn’t stay scared and disordered long enough. I’m sorry. I should’ve been here. I should’ve kept distracting them until you were safely out of the house. I just couldn’t. I…something pulled me away…I had no control…”
He noticed that Pete didn’t seem to hear him, still looking down the hallways, pressing his body against the wall.
“No, oh please, not now,” MacGyver said. “Pete, come on. You have to hear me. You have to know I’ve come back for you. Please.”
Pete remained oblivious, searching for an exit, moving cautiously, careful not to make any noise to alert their attention and reveal his location.
“Pete, can’t you hear me at all? Can you see me?” MacGyver asked, standing directly in front of him, waving his hand at him. Pete stared beyond him, even walking right through him, not once acknowledging his presence.
“This is just like last time,” MacGyver said. “I came back after briefly being in my body only to find that you couldn’t hear or see me anymore. My energy must take some time to build before I can fully manifest myself.”
Wondering if he could get Pete’s attention and communicate with him any other way, he tried to move a framed, dusty, faded portrait on the wall with the command of his thoughts, but he simply didn’t have the strength, feeling dizzy and faint after trying. He didn’t know how long it would take for his energy to fully restore, and he knew he didn’t have time to stand around and wait, watching Pete helplessly. Nicholas and his men would find him eventually. It was a large house and there were many options for places Pete could hide, but he could only hide for so long before he was discovered and the lethal poison was injected into him. He might have been able to stall Nicholas’s plan, but ghosts or not, he knew he would return to business which was what made him the top man in his deadly field. Paranoid and frightened of the supernatural and the unknown or not, he was still a professional, determined to carry out his duties, especially for something he desired as strongly as Pete’s Phoenix access codes to sensitive, classified information that they could not afford to have viewed by enemy eyes. Time was precious, and MacGyver was running out of options. He knew he had to tell someone where Pete was, but how could he if no one could see or hear him?
“Cynthia,” he said. “That’s it!”
Cynthia Rhoades was head paranormal researcher for The Phoenix Foundation, a department that up until then MacGyver mocked and had little faith in, believing it to be a waste of resources. She specialized in studying spectral phenomena, using devices to detect electromagnetic energy, thought to be the source of ghosts, the remaining energy footprint of a once living being. Since MacGyver knew that was exactly what he was at that moment, he had to see her in her lab. If he could get the devices she used to register a reading, then he might be able to reach her and get some help for Pete. He lightly touched Pete’s shoulder, pretending to give it a pat, trying to keep his hand from going right through him.
“Don’t worry Pete,” he said. “I think I found a way to get you out of here.”
Closing his eyes again, he thought of Cynthia.
***
Cynthia was in her lab, bent studiously over her work, her long brunette hair pulled back loosely in a ponytail. “Well, we have made some inroads with our research recently,” she said over her petite shoulder to Trish, her lab assistant. “These data gathered from that Civil War monument and battlefield were particularly illuminating. I mean, do you realize that if we can prove the existence of an afterlife in some form we will be providing people with hope of an existence beyond the grave, not to mention offer an explanation to one of the most misunderstood and unexplained phenomena in the field of paranormal behavior?”
Trish smiled. “Well, we do have a long way to go before we prove anything conclusively,” she said.
Both of them stopped when they heard a crackle of static. “What was that?” Cynthia asked, looking over at Trish with her cool blue eyes.
Stunned, Trish looked down at one of the devices they used to detect electromagnetic fields. Picking it up, she looked at it closely, watching as the needle spiked. “Uh…Dr. Rhoades, you should see this,” she said. “I am getting some high frequency EM pulses here.”
“In the lab?” Cynthia asked, rushing over to Trish’s side, peering over her shoulder, watching the increase in the reading.
“There’s definitely something here,” Trish said. “Either that, or it is reacting to something else in here.”
“No, that can’t be it,” Cynthia said, watching the needle. “Look at that reading. It’s high, and climbing higher. That is a nice, strong reading, similar to the one we had when we investigated that battlefield. No,” she said, looking around the lab. “There is definitely some form of paranormal activity occurring in here.”
Trish shivered, gathering a wool sweater she kept on the back of her chair around her. “It’s getting cold,” she said, her breath fogging around her.
“A sudden, dramatic drop in temperature, strong EM fields…no, there has to be something here. Turn on the tape recorders. Let’s see if we can actually record a voice or any other kind of evidence.”
Standing in the lab, watching as the two women worked, MacGyver grinned. “I knew I could count on you, Cynthia,” he said. He watched as Trish depressed the record button, waiting until the tape reel began rolling before he spoke.
“Listen to me,” he said into the tape recorder. “Look, I know this is hard to believe, but this is MacGyver. I’m the…presence in your lab right now. I’m not dead, but I was severely injured on a hike and I’m in a coma. Pete Thornton is in serious trouble. I know where he is. Please, he needs your help. I request that you bring several agents and police backup to the abandoned house on 12155 Pearl Avenue immediately. He’s running out of time. A Russian agent named Nicholas Stanislav is holding him and trying to get secret information from him. He will inject him with a fatal poison if you don’t act soon. Please…”
Once he was finished delivering his message, MacGyver closed his eyes and thought about Pete so he could return to him as quickly as possible. As he felt himself being teleported, the sounds of his surroundings slowly changing, he hoped his voice had been imprinted on that tape and that it was heard before Pete was discovered and Nicholas had time to finish what he had planned.
***
“The EM fields have dropped,” Trish said, watching the device. The room returned to its normal temperature, and she removed her sweater. “Temperature has regulated as well.”
“Then it must be gone,” Cynthia said, looking around the lab as if she was half expecting to see visual evidence that they had been visited. “Rewind the tape and play it back to me. Let’s see if we have anything.”
Trish rewound the tape. She looked up at Cynthia. “It’s so odd,” she said. “Why would a ghost visit us here?”
Cynthia smiled and shrugged. “Maybe whoever this is appreciates our attempts to advance the field of paranormal studies,” she said.
Trish smiled sarcastically. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “Besides, don’t spirits usually remain rooted in the places where they died because that’s where their energy would be strongest and most likely to materialize?”
“That’s only theory at this point, Trish, like so much of our work. If we can just for once get some concrete evidence, something to prove it to the smug, arrogant, broader scientific community that does nothing but laugh at us, then maybe we will finally get some respect—and some much needed grants. We are, after all, the most underfunded research department here at Phoenix. Now, why do you think that is? It’s because when people hear about ghosts, they think we’re insane, that ghosts belong in Gothic novels, not in the realm of scientific research.”
Trish sighed. “I’ve got it,” she said dully, rolling her eyes. “The tape has finished rewinding.” It wasn’t that she disagreed with her research partner. She admired her passion for the field, but she grew weary of her tiresome sermons and rants.
“I’m sorry, Trish,” Cynthia said, realizing that she had been rambling. She watched the tape player with intensity and excitement, eager to hear what they had recorded, hoping it was more than static and indistinct noises that may or may not have been voices from beyond. “Go ahead and play it. Let’s see if we have anything.”
Neither of them was prepared for what they heard. When MacGyver’s voice ended on the tape, they sat there in stunned silence, the tape still playing, neither of them taking any actions to press the stop button, remaining paralyzed in their amazement and incredulity.
“H-how…” Trish asked, staring blankly, her mouth agape, her poorly formed words toppling sloppily out of her slack lips. Once she regained some of her senses, she turned to look at Cynthia, who appeared to be just as astonished. “H-he said he’s not dead, but he came here as a ghost?”
“Of course,” Cynthia said, her eyes glinting with enthusiasm, a beaming smile spreading across her narrow face. “An out of body experience! Trish, he may not be dead, but he said he was in a coma, a state that closely resembles death. We have proof that his soul has left his body!”
Trish smiled. “That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, MacGyver’s the last man you would expect something like this to happen to. He’s the biggest skeptic I have ever seen!”
“Well, he won’t be anymore, will he? Now that he’s experienced it firsthand,” Cynthia said.
“He said Pete is in trouble. How would he know that?”
“He must be able to teleport his soul to wherever he likes,” Cynthia said. “That would disprove the theory that spirits are imprisoned for eternity in the places where they died, which could explain the frequency of hauntings in areas all over the country and the world, regardless of whether someone died there or not. Ah Trish, if I can just get him back in the lab to run more tests!” She gleefully clasped her long, slender hands together. “These are much better results than I ever would have anticipated!”
“Doctor, what about Pete? MacGyver said on the tape that Pete is in trouble. Shouldn’t we do something?”
“Yes. It’s a classic example of one of the reasons why a ghost would haunt a particular location or a person. They want something. They’re trying to communicate—or warn us.”
“Doctor!” Trish snapped, trying to break Cynthia out of her euphoric reverie. She knew that the culmination of her life’s work had at last presented itself to her after years of struggle and being considered a laughingstock among her peers, but a man’s life was at stake.
“I’m sorry, Trish. You’re right. We have to help Pete first. This lab work can wait. Play the tape again so we can get the address. Oh, God! I still can’t believe this is happening!”
“Especially to MacGyver,” Trish said.
To be continued…
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
--Henry David Thoreau
brains+brawn+beauty+personality=MacGyver
Very nice chapter! Ack, poor Pete, he's still in danger! 
