Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
The sky is charcoal. The air electric. Smooth clouds spread like moldable smoke, smudging darker on the horizon.
Ferocious wind whips my soaked hair around me like tentacles as I climb the rickety metal stairs to the guard tower one slick step at a time.
The persistent drone of rain dulls the nervous worries in the back of my head.
Don’t slip. Don’t slip. I avoid the hole that nearly took me out earlier, and on an exhale, my shoulders loosen. Almost to the top.
Behind me, Charlie is dead quiet. His anticipation buzzes in place of the words we don’t speak, attention pinned to the storm at our west.
I clear the last step to the platform and yank open the door to the observation post, rushing in to escape the rain.
Charlie paces to the DSLR on the tripod tasked with recording timelapse footage and I prop myself against the wall, shoulders sagging as I catch my breath.
He assesses the camera setup, simultaneously swiping open the iPad on the table which splashes a cool glow over him in the dim tower.
The violent reds, yellows, and greens of the radar come alive beneath his touch as he flicks through layers and different views—all of which mean nothing to me.
This is not the easygoing Charlie who breezily explains why he thinks lightning, and therefore chemistry, is sexy.
He’s methodical and exacting as he analyzes this language I don’t speak like it’s second nature to him.
A bolt of lightning splits the sky, followed by a crack, and I flinch.
Charlie only briefly glances up, completely absorbed in whatever he’s doing.
So am I.
The way his brows stitch together, how he sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, how he moves with so much surety. He mutters words under his breath that may as well be French to me—updraft, couplet, wind shear, mesocyclone—but he makes it sound like poetry all the same.
“You’re staring, Win,” he murmurs, sliding his phone from his pocket without looking away from the screen.
“Just lost in thought.” Flushing, I swing my backpack off my shoulder, attempting to busy myself. I feign like I’m digging for something.
“Chad texted. This system spit a tornado out about twenty miles east-northeast of here that him and Garrett are chasing right now. Narrowly missed a new neighborhood development, thankfully.”
He tucks his phone back in his pocket, and retrieves a second camera from his backpack, affixing a hefty lens to it. A breeze kicks up through the window open in front of him, playing with his hair as he brings the viewfinder to his eye. Click.
I move to his side, curious to see the storm how he sees it, and my brows lift as I truly take in the view.
We’re up high enough I can see past the thick tree line to the expanse of fields that run for miles beneath the tortured sky.
To my untrained eye, it’s a swirling gradient moving from ash to gray, the impressive stacked shape of it like a toppled-over wedding cake.
Charlie captures a few more shots then lowers the camera, admiring the sight without obstruction. Wonder sparks behind his lenses. “Absolutely gorgeous,” he mutters. “Been a while since I’ve seen a storm this clean. Bet the timelapse is insane.”
“What’s so special about this one?”
“The structure’s incredible.” He shakes his head, awed. “Those sculpted striations mean this meso has some deep, powerful rotation. Makes it look like a stack of plates, or an alien spaceship.”
“You and your spaceship clouds,” I quip.
He doesn’t laugh but he cracks a smile. I’ll take it.
“You can’t deny how striking it looks.” Adjusting his glasses, he draws his outstretched finger in a line.
“That’s the inflow tail into the updraft.
And there”—his finger sweeps left—“that clear slot in the clouds, that’s the RFD.
Rear flank downdraft. If the inflow keeps doing its thing, we should see a wall cloud tighten up eventually.
From there, if we’re lucky, a tornado. Although this supercell on its own might be enough to win us that grant money. It’s textbook.”
Gratification flows beneath all his words, and I’m happy for him. I am. But envy stitches my ribs together. He got what he came here for and I didn’t. Charlie raises the camera again and I take my cue to give him space to work.
Slumping back against the wall near my backpack, I cross my arms. The journal was a dead end, with no confession letter to prove anything of substance, and every time we coaxed a spirit to intelligently communicate with us it ended in .
. . it ended in me and Charlie kissing. Lindsay in the cafeteria, James in the warden’s office.
Strange coincidence, now that I think about it.
I scoff silently. Or is it? Have these ghosts been playing some kind of twisted joke on me all afternoon? Meddling in my failed marriage?
I didn’t come here to have my nose rubbed in all my mistakes and shortcomings. I came here to help. To provide closure, to prove a dead man’s innocence. And that dead man had the nerve to fuck with me? Very classy, James. The afterlife must be boring.
But I can’t shake the feeling I’m not done here.
A cool draft passes over me, setting my hair on end as goosebumps rise on my arms. My stomach hollows out, a flare lighting in my gut. Charlie’s hair is perfectly still. That wasn’t a breeze.
There’s something up here besides the two of us.
Maybe James isn’t done either.
But I’m craving more than the one-word answers of the Ovilus. Squatting to unzip my backpack, I ask, “Hey, Charlie? How long do you think this’ll take?”
“Wall cloud’s still trying to form, so probably at least a solid twenty before anything more interesting than this happens.” Excellent. I only need fifteen. “Why?”
“I need help with something.” I fish out my headphones, then the Spirit Box. No blindfold—I must’ve forgotten to pack it—but I can shut my eyes. “An Estes session. I need a second person. I . . . I know you don’t owe me anything, especially after what just—”
He sighs wearily, pushing his windblown hair back from his face. “Yes, Win. I’ll help. I told you I would, didn’t I?”
He’s probably counting down the seconds until this storm passes over and his inner Boy Scout can confidently let me out of his sight. He must be sick of me. “Don’t worry,” I say flatly. “This is the last thing I’ll bother you—”
“I didn’t mean it like—”
“These are noise-canceling headphones. I won’t be able to hear you when they’re on.
” I loop them around my neck and plug them into the spirit box.
“I’ll close my eyes too. Sensory deprivation.
I’ll plug into this Spirit Box, which scans radio frequencies to pick up on EVP, and I’ll call out anything I hear.
Your role is asking the questions. It’s like a blind study—I can’t tailor my interpretations of what I hear if I don’t know what you’re asking in the first place. ”
A brow lifts as the corners of his mouth tip down. Seems I’ve finally intrigued the scientist. “What do I ask?”
“River usually starts conversationally, talking about what we’re doing here before launching into any questions—build rapport.
You’re good at that. Stay curious, nonjudgmental.
Polite.” I grab the leather journal and hug it to my chest. A good luck charm.
“And let’s see if we can find out what James really knows about who killed Edith Page Milton. ”
“I’ll give it my best shot.”
Lightning tears into the horizon line, trailed by growling thunder, and adrenaline dumps in my veins like gasoline goading a fire.
How could I forget? All this bleeding electricity creeping closer with the storm—it’s a feeding frenzy for the dead.
Far better energy to feast on than my meager phone battery.
This is going to work.
I don’t realize my hands are shaking until I slide on the headphones and the world goes quiet. I close my eyes. I flash Charlie a thumbs-up, turn on the Spirit Box, and I’m thrust into fractured static.
White noise splices with fragmented radio clips, disembodied voices, leaking chaos from the circulating radio frequencies. My heart pounds as I singularly focus on what I hear.
Sticky air flows around me, bringing with it the tangy iron petrichor so thick I taste it in the back of my throat as I breathe. A shudder rolls through me, the thunder overhead muffled to a purr that’s more sensation than sound.
Something comes through. I strain to make it out. “Who are you?”
Everything distorts again.
I take three deep breaths. Listening. “I think I hear . . . apple?”
My lips pinch. I should’ve set up the recording equipment for this session. I was so caught up by the burst of The Knowing, I didn’t slow down to think. This one will have to be just for me.
Navel to sternum, I suck in a breath. That voice was clear as day. “It’s a—a male voice. Sounded like he said lovers, or loved her, maybe.”
Here we go. My nails saw into the hem of my shorts, fidgeting out the restless energy buzzing through my skin. I’m as charged as the atmosphere. Tempted as I am to peek at Charlie and get a read on how this is going from his perspective, I can’t risk the distraction right now.
The same voice breaks through the din. I repeat, “Not me.”
I feel stupid for it, but I smile. That’s right, James. It wasn’t you.
Somewhere along the way, as Charlie and I unraveled James’s fractured story across this prison, I ended up tangled in the threads.
Only hours ago, I’d been dubious at best about his alleged innocence, and now there’s a relentless tether pulling me toward figuring out how to prove it that I can’t trace the origin of.
My brow furrows as I parse the distortion in my ears. “Brother, I think.”