20. Tuesday, October 31, 2023 #2
Sierra glares at him, rewinds the tape, and presses Play again.
She’s gone far enough back so they hear her voice asking for John to give them a sign that it’s him.
The other noise doesn’t start until after Sierra invites the spirit in, and she turns it up so that they can hear it better.
It sounds like wind, but one that is blowing inside and doesn’t stop.
Then there’s the rattle of the fire poker falling and Ethan and Polly’s screams. The wind noise gets even louder for a few seconds and then stops suddenly.
Sierra fiddles around with the recording device and then presses Play again.
“I’ve slowed it right down. Sometimes that helps. ”
It still sounds like wind, but there’s another sound now, one within the wind, and it sends a shiver through him. He laughs, as if in disbelief, to mask it.
Polly
Sierra plays the recording a few more times until Polly finally tells her to stop.
It sounds like a crowd of people all talking at once, there in the room with them.
Every time she hears it, her stomach clenches and she can feel the fear growing inside her.
She can’t believe how unbothered Quinn seems to be.
He’s usually the anxious one. If Quinn’s not freaked out, then she shouldn’t be either.
They’re back sitting in a circle, this time on Quinn’s bedroom floor.
Sierra passes around the photo. “This is fifteen-year-old Riley Gordon, who lived in this room until his mother suffocated him in his bed.” Polly glances at the picture, thinking there’s something familiar about him.
Maybe it’s the fact that he’s the same age as Quinn that fills her with sadness.
She passes it to Ethan, hoping to stop the sensation.
He barely looks at it before passing it to Quinn.
Sierra does her thing again, calling to the spirits, asking if Riley is there with them. Other than a whine from Panda, there’s no response. Not even from the EMF meter. Sierra tries again in a deeper voice. “Is anyone here? Please give us a sign of your presence.”
The doorbell rings, and everyone except Sierra screams.
“Probably just trick-or-treaters,” Polly says, feeling silly. She pulls her hands free and gets up. “I’ll hand out some candy and be right back.”
“Don’t break the circle!” Sierra yells, but Polly ignores her and leaves the room. She’s so done with this stupid séance shit.
Her mom left a huge bowl of candy by the front door and there are two lit jack-o’-lanterns on the front step.
Polly grabs the bowl and opens the front door.
Nobody’s there. She steps outside to get a better look down the long driveway.
There are no costumed figures passing under the beams of the lampposts.
Not a single person in sight. Only the strong wind whipping through the trees, making branches creak and crack, spilling leaves to the ground.
She turns to go back inside when she hears someone call her name from the side of the house. Abandoning the bowl of candy on the front step, she hurries over to the figure standing amongst the trees.
“Gray,” she says, reaching out to pull him into the light from the house. “Where have you been?”
He gives her a distracted hug before pulling free from her grip. He points at the house. “Are you having a séance in there?”
“Were you spying on us?”
Without answering, he marches over to where Quinn’s bedroom window is. She follows. They have a clear view of Sierra, Quinn, and Ethan sitting on the floor around the circle of candles, with the photo of the fifteen-year-old in the center and the rest of Sierra’s paraphernalia spread around them.
“It looks to me like you’re having a séance.”
“Yeah, so? What’s the big deal? It’s Halloween.”
His expression is deadly serious. “It’s not right. You guys should stop right now.”
“Wait. I haven’t seen you in almost two weeks, and all you care about is some stupid séance?”
“You need to go in there and stop it!” he shouts. “Now!”
“What? Why don’t you just come inside with me? Meet my brother. See for yourself.” Polly hopes they might have a normal night hanging out with other people, indoors.
He starts backing up toward the trees. “I’m not coming inside with you. You’ve ruined everything.”
“Wait,” she calls out. “Just tell me what the big deal is.”
His face is so pale it’s ghostlike, and the wind lifts his dark curls in a wild dance. “It’s too late. You’re way too late.”
A gust of wind blows her hair across her face. By the time she’s gathered it up and tucked it back, Gray has disappeared.
She stands at the edge of the trees calling his name, hoping he’ll come back, even though his visit has made the fear inside her grow even larger, crowding her organs, pushing against her bones.
When she’s sure that Gray is not coming back, she turns to go back inside the house but is stopped dead. Hovering inches from the ground, only a few feet away from her, is a figure—fully cloaked in shadow and unnaturally tall.
She screams—loud and piercing, rising above the wail of the wind and tearing at her throat on its way out.
Before she has a chance to turn and run, the figure flies at her.
The impact is hard, like running full-speed into a tree, and she’s knocked off her feet.
Her head hits the ground and she sees actual stars.
The breath leaves her body, making the whole world disappear for several seconds.
“Holy shit, Polly! What happened?” She opens her eyes, gasps in a breath, and looks up to find Quinn leaning over her.
She lies there, unable to speak, still in shock. Sierra and Ethan arrive and peer around Quinn, looking almost as concerned as he does. Quinn finally reaches down and helps her to her feet.
“Did you see it?” Polly asks once she can finally speak. “The tall, shadowy thing?” Quinn, Sierra, and Ethan share a look between them but then they all shake their heads.
“We didn’t see anything,” Quinn says. “We heard you scream, and I came running and found you lying on the ground.”
“It knocked me down,” Polly explains. “It was tall, like maybe seven feet.”
“Are you high?” Quinn whispers, as though their parents are standing behind them instead of Sierra and Ethan.
“No, I thought it would make me too paranoid. And anyway, I know what I saw.”
Sierra moves closer to Polly. “Do you think it was a ghost? Should we move the séance out here?”
Polly pushes her out of the way and on trembling legs heads for the front door. “The séance is over,” she says over her shoulder.
“We can’t stop now. As soon as you left there was a knocking sound in Quinn’s closet, and the EMF went crazy.”
“Listen, Sierra, it’s time to call it a night. You got some good stuff for your application, now it’s time to go.” Polly is just about to reach for the front door when Sierra puts out a hand to stop her.
“But there’s one family member left to do. It’s the most interesting part of the case. The older brother, whose body was never found. Let’s contact him and find out what happened.”
“How long?” Polly asks through gritted teeth.
“Fifteen minutes, tops,” Sierra says, already guiding Polly back inside. Ethan and Quinn follow close behind and Polly is pretty sure that she hears Quinn mutter, “Fuck.”
Sierra orchestrates the move from Quinn’s room to Polly’s without lifting a finger. The candles have all been set up and the equipment is ready to go when Sierra realizes she’s left the folder of photos in the living room.
“Is it really that necessary?” Quinn asks, his knee vibrating with impatience.
“It certainly is,” Sierra snaps.
“I’ll go get it,” Polly offers, only because she wants to get this thing over with. She needs to figure out what she’s going to do about Gray, and she’s got to talk to him about the strange figures she’s seen twice now.
On her way to the living room, the pain in her stomach intensifies and she leans forward slightly to ease it.
The folder is there on the coffee table where Sierra said it would be.
Flipping it open to grab what she needs, she finds a familiar face staring back at her.
She looks down at it in confusion, thinking there must be a mistake.
The boy in the photo is the same one who’s been coming to her bedroom window for weeks, the one she had sex with, the one who just scolded her for having a séance.
Snatching up the photo to get a closer look, she reads the caption under the photo: Grayson Gordon, 18 years old.
Polly is plunged into literal darkness—the electricity goes out—just as her brain begins the process of recontextualizing everything Gray has ever told her—like why he has no cell phone, no social media—and everything he ever did to her.
Like enter her, while others watched, in a cave in the woods.
A searing pain suddenly rips through Polly’s gut, bringing her to her knees.
She’s not sure she can stand up, and she’s scared.
She can’t see anything, and everything is suddenly so wrong.
Nothing makes sense—not the pain in her abdomen, nor the photo she just saw of Justine Gordon’s older son.
The son they never found.
She tries calling out for Quinn, but her voice is weak, and the wind is loud.
It howls around the house. Very slowly, still on all fours, the photo clutched in one hand, she crawls in the direction of her room.
There is not a sliver of light to break up the blackness she moves through.
Even at a snail’s pace, she bangs her head on the back of the couch; bumps her hip on the antique trunk they use as a side table.
No pain is comparable to the one that has taken over the lower half of her body though—a hot, sharp knife stabbing into her belly.