Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Oscar stood frozen, staring in the spirit’s menacing face. As he watched in horror, her left eye disappeared, becoming nothing but a black void. She stretched out one hand, and her fingers started to fall off, one at a time, disappearing before they could hit the ground.
“What the fuck,” Chris whispered in horror.
The ghost lurched toward them, and Oscar back-pedaled fast. As she struggled to reach them, more parts fell away, until with a silent, agonized expression, she dissolved into nothingness.
“Is…is she still here?” Chris asked after a long moment of silence.
Oscar shook his head. The night around them felt empty now—no obtrusive sensations that didn’t belong to him, no inexplicable cold spots. “I think she expended all the energy she was able to get from the battery.”
Chris let out a long breath of relief. “That was intense.”
Oscar tried to think of any stories of ghosts with body parts falling off, but nothing came to mind. “She was trying to communicate something to us…but what?”
“Maybe you got something on the EVP.” Chris looked around. “You’re sure we’re alone now?”
“As sure as I can be.”
A frog chirped, as if agreeing with him. Another peeped back, and the night chorus slowly returned to its previous volume. Oscar listened to it for a long moment, then shook himself. “Let’s walk around a bit more, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything else.”
They wandered a bit, finding nothing more interesting than an owl, which flushed from a tree as they passed by and glided off on silent wings. When they arrived back at the command center, it was to find Nigel, Zeek, and Adrienne there ahead of them, all wrapped in blankets with mugs of coffee or instant hot chocolate. Tina had left her post at the monitors and stood beside them.
Alarm immediately shot adrenaline through Oscar’s veins—they shouldn’t be back so soon. “What happened? Is everyone all right?”
Nigel blinked up through his glasses. “We’re fine, but we had an…eventful time with the mirrors.” He turned his attention back to something in his hands, and Oscar realized they’d all been looking at the photograph from the superintendent’s office. “Dr. Herbert Wilkes,” he read off the back, then flipped it face-up again. “What do you think, Adrienne?”
“That’s him.” Adrienne tapped the picture with one manicured fingernail. “The man I saw in the mirror.”
“And the woman next to him is definitely the nurse who showed up in my mirror,” Zeek added. “What the hell was that all about? Was the doctor trying to warn us, or…?”
“Warn you?” Oscar asked, at the same time as Chris said, “Were you in danger?”
Adrienne waved a dismissive hand. “We’re fine. We got great results, if a bit more dramatic than we’d bargained for.”
“Views are going to go through the roof, though,” Zeek said. “Especially with you screaming like that.”
“Screaming?” Chris asked, eyes widening. “Adrienne?—”
“I said I’m fine. Honestly.” She blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Long story short, I saw this man, Dr. Wilkes, very clearly in my mirror. He pointed to the wall, some words appeared telling us to look up. The creeper was on the ceiling over our heads?—”
“What?” Oscar exclaimed.
Nigel shivered. “It was pretty, ah, creepy. For lack of a better word. And that was before the lights went out and the mirrors broke.”
“I saw the nurse in my mirror just a split second before it exploded all over the place,” Zeek put in. “I think she’s the one who drained the battery and broke the mirrors.”
Oscar found a chair and sat down. He and Chris had been wandering around the cemetery and grounds, while Nigel and the others were being terrorized by hostile spirits. He should have been there to help, should never have agreed to splitting up.
“The nurse certainly has been the most aggressive spirit so far,” Nigel said. “This site is incredibly active, given we’ve only been here a few days. Why are all the spirits so strong? After years of abandonment with no living people to give them energy, I would expect them to be weaker.”
Oscar ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the roots. “There’s so many of them.” The whole property seemed infested with the restless dead. How was he to help them all to move on?
This was his job, his legacy, and he couldn’t even keep his own boyfriend safe.
Adrienne sat back in her chair, expression distant as if she was thinking hard. “The nurse—what was her name again?”
“Della Young,” Nigel supplied.
“She’s our main issue here. It’s hard to investigate when she’s breaking equipment or scaring the other ghosts into silence.” She blinked, then focused on Zeek. “We definitely need to remove her.”
“We have a Faraday tent,” Oscar said. “We once lured a ghost into it with some batteries, so maybe we could do the same here.”
“Thank you,” Adrienne said, “but that won’t be necessary.” She locked eyes with Zeek, who started to grin. “We have our own plan in mind.”
Nigel slept poorly that night, thanks to the congestion settling in his lungs. Coughing fits woke him more than once, and he cursed whatever bacteria was setting up shop in his airways. At least he didn’t have a fever, so hopefully the cold would remain mild, especially since they were hours away from the nearest walk-in clinic.
When he stumbled blearily into the tech tent, clutching a cup of coffee, only Tina and Dr. Lawson were awake. Since Dr. Lawson had gone to bed early the night before, she quizzed him closely about everything that had happened.
“I agree with Adrienne,” she said when he finished. “The nurse’s ghost is a problem. Once she’s gone, things will likely settle down.”
Adrienne and Zeek had remained coy about their plan, even though Zeek seemed bursting with excitement to tell them. Whatever it was, they’d clearly planned on using it before even coming here.
Hopefully they knew what they were doing. With the nurse out of the way, maybe they could make some progress communicating with the other spirits and encouraging them to move on. And with all her patients gone, maybe the nurse could be persuaded to pass over as well.
When Oscar and Chris joined them, Tina said, “By the way, there was nothing on your EVP session in the cemetery last night.”
Chris made a face. “Yeah, she seemed more of a ‘show, don’t tell’ type.”
“It would have been nice to get some extra information from her,” Oscar said, then shrugged. “Oh well. We need to establish our plans for today.”
Nigel said, “I’d like to check out the library Chris found. Since they have a newspaper archive, maybe we can find out more about the other ghosts, such as Dr. Wilkes.”
“Sounds good,” Chris said. “What about you, Oscar?”
Oscar seemed to ponder a moment, then turned to Dr. Lawson. “Do you have any information on the surviving member of the investigation team who lives nearby?”
“Name and address,” she responded. “I take it you want to talk to him?”
“I think we should. I want to know if the nurse ghost was responsible for the death of the man who fell down the stairs.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. “If they saw or heard anything that could help us, it would be worth taking the time to track him down,” Nigel agreed. “Can you drop me off at the library on the way out? I can walk back if necessary.”
Dr. Lawson said, “We can take my car to Weston, so you can use the van.”
“And I’ll go with you, Nigel.” Chris drained their coffee mug. “I can get a few more shots of the library’s interior that way.”
Remembering their conversation from the night before, Nigel said, “Zeek will want to go talk to the survivor.”
“Wonderful,” Dr. Lawson muttered.
“He was having breakfast—I’ll let him know,” Oscar said, and ducked back out.
A cough built in Nigel’s chest; he tried to turn away but found himself doubled over as a wracking fit seized him. Phlegm filled his mouth, and he grabbed out a tissue and spit it out before it choked him.
“Taylor?” Dr. Lawson sat up straighter. “Are you all right?”
“Just a chest cold,” he managed, voice rough. He cleared his throat and tried again. “If it gets too bad, I’ll have Oscar drive me to urgent care. For now, let’s take advantage of the daylight and get going.”
Chris grabbed up their still camera. “Okay, doc. Let’s hit the books.”
The drive through the springtime mountains was predictably beautiful. The bright green of new leaves clad the steep slopes, the world springing back to life after the long gray of winter. Streams sparkled in the sunlight, and the wildflowers peeked out of cracks in dark stone. Dr. Lawson steered her Prius around winding curves as the road first climbed, then descended, then climbed again.
“So what’s this guy’s name?” Zeek asked from the backseat.
Oscar sat in the passenger seat beside Dr. Lawson; he saw her lips press together slightly at the reminder of Zeek’s presence. But she answered, “Trey Nelson. The dead man was Kyle McIntosh.”
“Pretty cool that he’s willing to talk to us. Trey, I mean. Though I think we should try talking to Kyle, too.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. “We can certainly give it a shot,” Oscar said. “First things first, though.”
“Mmm.” Dr. Lawson made a noncommittal sound, attention apparently focused on her driving.
Soon enough, the road dropped down toward the river—probably the same one running in front of the asylum back in Howlston. Before reaching the town proper, the GPS directed them onto a narrow, winding road that meandered back uphill again, before finally announcing their destination in front of a slightly run-down house that looked to have been built sometime in the 1970s.
A curtain twitched as they climbed out of the car. Dr. Lawson cleared her throat. “Just so you know, he might have refused to talk to me when I called him earlier.”
“Wait, he didn’t know we’re coming?” Oscar asked.
She shrugged. “I asked permission and it didn’t work, so now I’m asking for forgiveness.”
Great. They were intruding on a traumatized man who didn’t want to discuss what happened with strangers. “That’s not how that saying goes.”
“Don’t be a stick-in-the-mud, Fox,” she said, striding up onto the porch.
No wonder she and Ms. Montague had fallen out—they were too much alike. He exchanged a glance with Zeek, who just looked confused, and followed her.
She rang the doorbell. The curtain fell closed, then a moment later the door opened a crack. “Can I help you?” asked a voice from inside.
“I’m Dr. Ruth Lawson. We spoke on the phone,” she said.
“And I told you I didn’t want to talk to you!”
Undeterred, she went on, “And these are some of the current people investigating the asylum. They weren’t told about what happened to your group before being hired.”
The door opened farther to reveal a grizzled man who looked to be in his early fifties. Most of his hair had deserted his scalp, and his face was marked by deep lines. “Someone hired you?”
“Not exactly,” Oscar started.
“This rich old lady, Ms. Montague? She’s really into ghost hunting,” Zeek said. “I’m Zeek Holt, from Zeeking the Unknown —maybe you’ve seen our show?”
“Trey Nelson, and no. I don’t have anything to do with ghosts, or ESP, or psychics, or any of it.” He glowered at them. “And if you have a half a brain, you’ll get as far away from that crap as possible.”
“I’m a medium, so it isn’t really an option for me,” Oscar said. “Listen, I understand something bad happened to you, and you probably don’t want to think about it, let alone talk to us. But my grandmother died in that asylum, and it’s my duty to help the spirits in it move on. I’d really appreciate any help you can give us.”
Trey studied Oscar through narrowed eyes. “You look familiar. What’s your name again?”
“Oscar Fox. If you follow college football, I played for Clemson a few years back.”
His eyes cleared. “Right, that must be it. Defensive tackle, right?”
“Right.”
Trey sighed and swung the door open. “Fine. Come on in, and I’ll see what I can do to convince you to get the hell out of that asylum before it’s too late.”