by David Clark
“Megan, where are you?”, called Jordan.
“Back here,” her voice called from a door to his left.
In the room he saw the light of her phone sweeping back and forth. He followed and walked into Sharon’s small bedroom. The attached bathroom was to his right. By all appearances, it was a quaint and well-kept room. Her bed was made, clothes hung up in the closet. There was a simple dark wood dresser that Jordan assumed contained more clothes. “We shouldn’t be here,” whispered Jordan.
“Oh, come on, you know you don’t want to leave any more than I do,” retorted Megan.
She was right. They shouldn’t be there, but Jordan wasn’t going to leave until he found what he was looking for. The little voice in his head that was asking a million questions, trying to guess what Sharon Carter attempted to tell him wouldn’t let him. Neither would the flood of images that came to him every time he closed his eyes. Just being in her house was enough to ignite his senses. Walking around the dark inside, he expected to see her everywhere. The meter in his hand confirmed that feeling, but so far, he hadn’t. Just an empty home locked in time, just like it was when she last left. Even the bathroom, which was clean, had that lived in look. Almost as if any moment now Sharon would burst through the door and start grabbing one of the several sticks of lipstick or other containers of makeup to get ready for a night out.
Jordan turned around at the door of the bathroom, his attention on the meter, which now danced between the red and orange bulbs. He didn’t see the bed until he bumped into it and kicked some papers out from under it and across the floor. They stopped at Megan’s feet. She leaned down and picked up the papers before Jordan could say, “No, don’t touch them!”
The backpack swung around, and Jordan immediately reached in and pulled out two pairs of green latex gloves. He fumbled with them while trying to separate the two pairs, dropping one to the floor. Jordan leaned down and picked them up. When he looked up, he froze. Megan was frozen too, staring right at him. Her chin trembled, her breathing was raspy. What little color she had on her face had drained away, leaving her complexion ashen. Each exhale sounded like a muffled scream. The papers were held in her hands at the end of rigid arms. They locked eyes, and Jordan shared the terror.
“She... is.. behind... me... isn’t... she?”, asked Megan through each labored breath.
Jordan nodded.
12
Jordan stood up slowly, hoping not to scare the spirit of Sharon Carter away. The meter in his hand was now stuck on the red light. She floated there behind Megan, like she did in the corner of the coroner’s office and did not appear to be afraid. A light blue shadow of her former self, wearing the same jeans and white top he saw her in earlier. Perhaps what she wore when she was murdered. She was interested, engaged in what he and Megan were doing, but Megan remained frozen. The papers still in her hand. Those papers had Sharon’s attention.
She leaned over Megan’s shoulder and reached forward with her right hand, pointing at the papers. Jordan saw Megan shiver when a portion of Sharon passed through her. Her eyes followed the ghostly hand that pointed to the papers.
“What are they?”, Jordan asked. Megan looked up at him with a ‘who me?’ look. “Megan, what is on the papers?”, he clarified.
“Numbers. Just numbers, but she wants us to know what they are,” Megan started. Her body melted and loosened up. Almost appearing comfortable with Sharon on her shoulder, like a pirate with a parrot. “I can’t sense why, but these are important... not to her, but to what happened.”
Jordan walked around the bed, dropping the meter and extra pair of gloves there, and joined Megan and Sharon. He felt the cold radiating from Sharon as he stepped next to Megan. This was not a cold like the cold wind of a winter's day. It was a feeling that went to his core and froze him from the inside out. The first time he felt it, it made a lasting impression on him. He felt dead. For a while after, he had to wonder if he actually was dead.
The papers were exactly what Megan said, numbers. Each on a piece of paper ripped from a spiral notebook, little tags of paper still hung on to the edge. Numbers were not Jordan’s thing. He was more of a bookworm in school than a math and science geek, but he didn’t need to be one to recognize the pattern. “Phone numbers,” he whispered.
Sharon’s hand jerked back and Jordan turned to see her nodding her head. He was right.
“Yes, they are phone numbers,” Megan said.
She turned and Jordan watched as she and Sharon locked eyes. Maybe he had questioned Megan’s ability too much. There seemed to be a link, a connection between the two of them. Almost as if they were sharing thoughts, or trying to. Jordan hadn’t really seen her ‘do her thing’ in person before, just on her show, which was more theatric than this moment, probably for her viewers. He had never seen a real medium at work at all. The few the agency had brought in, he knew for a fact were frauds. Everything they tried to convince the senior agents of was made up, and Jordan knew it. Jordan knew the truth of what was going on, and the mediums were never even close.
The worst was Cheryl Minton. She had reached out to the agency to assist with a case that was all over the news, the first warning sign for Jordan. The case was a missing child’s case. She claimed a spirit reached out to her and told her they knew where the child was. When she arrived, dressed all flamboyant with a feather boa, she played it up big to the child’s parents. That was warning sign number two. Even a few of the more senior agents noticed this. The world was full of those wanting their fifteen minutes. Some will even take advantage of something as serious as a missing child for theirs. The third sign, and the one that made Jordan roll his eyes, was when she started shaking and gyrating like she was in the middle of the earthquake to end all earthquakes with her eyes rolled upward to make it appear as though they had rolled back in her head. The whole time Jordan knew there wasn’t a spirit anywhere around. He didn’t feel it, and neither did the meter he had sitting next to him on a table. Seeing her eyes roll forward to see who was watching her didn’t help her cause.
“I can’t get out of her what the numbers are other than they are phone numbers, and they aren’t hers,” Megan said.
Jordan put on his gloves and then took the stack of papers out of Megan’s hand. Then he turned to Sharon to treat her like any witness he would have in an interview room. One by one he held the pieces of paper where Sharon could see the numbers. Each time he asked her two questions. Was the number hers and did she know whose number it was? Now this sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. There was only one way to know if a spirit could respond to him, but based on what he had already seen from Sharon, he was hopeful. The connection between her and the events seemed strong, so he watched her reaction the first time he asked. Her responses were clear. A shake of the head to the first question, and a nod of the head to the second. When he finished running through all fourteen numbers, he asked her one final question. “Do any of these numbers belong to those that hurt you?”
Sharon looked at him for a second. He could see the wheels turning behind her kind eyes. Her thoughts didn’t come to him like they appeared to come to Megan. That was her gift. A gift he was starting to believe in more with every passing second. He didn’t need that gift himself to know she knew what he was getting at. Other than her translucent blue appearance, and that she was hanging in mid-air, she appeared human and troubled. As the moments passed, that troubled look became stressed, then annoyed, and eventually full out mad. Her hands participated in a mini-tantrum slapping against the sides of her head. A sound he didn’t hear with his ears but did with his eyes. Jordan didn’t need her to explain. He would feel just as frustrated, probably more so, if he had something to say, but physically couldn’t. She slapped the sides of her head again with both hands and then disappeared in a wisp of blue that blew across the room and out. The cold breeze that accompanied her almost blew the papers out of his hands.
“Come on!,” Megan exclaimed and grabbed his hand. He followed
her around the bed. Out of the side of his eyes he saw the meter on the bed where he laid it. Only the green lights flickered on the low end of the scale. He slowed to look at it, but Megan yanked him through the bedroom door, causing pain in his shoulder. Jordan thought if she had pulled it any harder, it would have popped right out of the socket. He followed her into the living space where the blue form of Sharon knelt over the spot on the floor.
Megan didn’t stop, but did let go of Jordan’s hand before she ran to Sharon. She knelt down face to face with Sharon. “Here?”, she asked. Sharon nodded. Megan turned her attention to the floor and the mustard colored throw rug. Megan moved to the edge of it and flipped the end of it up and folded it in half. One half passed right through Sharon before it landed on the floor with a puff of dust. She then knelt down again in front of Sharon. Her fingers pulled at the planks of the wood floor. At first Jordan didn’t know what she was doing, but then he noticed with each attempt she made, a plank moved. It was loose, but Megan couldn’t get enough leverage to pull it up. Sharon’s hands were attempting to help as well, but they just passed through the floor.
A fingernail almost latched hold of the edge, but then released. The board snapped back down, and Megan yanked her hand back up and waved in the air before she put the finger in her mouth in what Jordan knew was an attempt to ease the pain. That was when the idea hit him, and he reached inside his pocket and pulled out his car keys. Megan saw him and held up her hands as he threw them at her. The hope in her eyes matched the expression on Sharon’s face. It only took Megan a second or two before she had the key wedged in the gap between boards and wiggled the loose board up and out of the floor.
Sharon’s hands shot down into the gap under the floor as Megan watched. She turned and reached her left hand back to Jordan, snapping her fingers. “Give me those gloves. Quick,” she demanded. The only ones he had with him were the ones he wore, which he took off and tossed to her. Megan struggled at first to get them on, previously worn gloves are nearly impossible to put on, but she eventually managed to get them over her fingers, kind of. The ends protruded off her fingers, but they did what they were supposed to. She reached into the hole and pulled out a cell phone.
Jordan pulled the backpack around again and reached inside. He pulled out a Ziplock bag and stepped forward to hand it to Megan. He didn’t need to provide any instructions on what to do with it. Megan seemed to know, and dropped the phone in the bag which Jordan then swiped down the seal to lock it. “Sharon, is this your phone?”, he asked.
She nodded.
“Are those numbers in the contact list with names?”
Sharon shook her head back and forth while mouthing the word, “no.”
Jordan rubbed the back of his neck, feeling confused. Sharon led them to this phone. It had to be significant in some way. What was the link? He paced across the floor while he thought about it. The phone dangled in the baggie from his right hand as he did so. Then another question hit him. It was what he had asked her when she took off from the bedroom. “Sharon, are the people who hurt you in here?”, he asked while holding up the phone.
There was no confusing that answer, it was a yes. Both Sharon and Megan nodded at the same time. Jordan felt they were on to something and that feeling was shared by all three in the room. Then it all changed. First, it was Sharon. Her expression changed to worry, and then her jaw dropped. Her eyes darted around the room. Jordan felt a damp, dank darkness closing in on the room. The fresh coolness of the late afternoon air that had followed them in through the backdoor was now putrid like hundreds of rotten corpses. Little by little the light from outside was being squeezed off, leaving the center of the room with a sparse hint of illumination. The ring of darkness continued to close in on them, and then Sharon appeared to scream and disappeared. Megan leapt up and grabbed Jordan by the hand again.
“We have to get out. Now!”, she screamed and headed for the back door.
Jordan didn’t argue. He felt the same impulse and hurried after her. The world he saw outside the backdoor was still bright and alive. Inside, where they were, was dark and dying by the second. He felt a great beast of evil behind them closing in, which caused him to move faster. He gave Megan a little shove to force her out faster. She exited and he was a step away himself when some immovable force hit him from the front, throwing him backwards on the kitchen floor. He scrambled up, but no longer saw the door. Darkness now covered the opening of light. A darkness with a set of bright white circles, eyes, that looked down at him. It leaned over him and he felt everything closing in. The world around him became heavy, but the air became thin. Each inhale pulled in less air than before. The burning of suffocation was beginning, as was the buzz in his head. His hands pushed on the floor to crawl backwards, but they sank into the darkness that was moist and rotten beneath him. He went nowhere, but the eyes got closer. His right hand yanked up and crossed himself. “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I denounce you,”
The darkness was gone, and he crawled for the opening of the back door, gasping for air. Megan raced to him and collapsed on the ground with him, holding him in her arms. Her hand stroked his forehead and face. “What was that?”, she asked.
“Don’t know,” Jordan croaked. “Let’s get out of here.” He struggled up to his feet, and Megan took his left arm and threw it over her shoulders, helping him down the driveway and back to the car.
13
“What the hell was that?”, Megan asked.
Jordan only groaned as an answer. That was probably the fifteenth time she had asked that since they left Sharon’s house. Throughout the drive from there to the hotel Megan had arranged for both of them, the walk into the lobby, the ride up the elevator to the fourth floor, and down the hall to room 408, his answer had been the same. He didn’t have a clue. As he laid back on the bed, he still didn’t. Nothing he had experienced or studied was even close to whatever that was. Jordan wasn’t even sure how to describe it for any research he might do. The encounter took a toll on him. He felt strangely weak, tired. His eyes were closed, and he knew if he could clear his mind, he would drift away into sleep right there. Of course, Megan would need to calm down a bit and stop the constant pacing back and forth in the room first. She sat a few times in one of the two chairs in the room, but it was only a momentary pause before she stood up and started her pacing again. Megan admitted she felt whatever it was too, just before she fell out the door.
A knock on the door caused Jordan’s body to jump, and he landed up on his elbows, eyes wide open glaring at the entryway. Megan appeared to be less surprised and walked to the door. She opened it without checking the peephole, something Jordan would have normally warned her of, but his mind was no longer thinking of such things. He couldn’t see who was beyond the door, but watched as Megan closed it and returned with two familiar white Styrofoam containers. It was the room service Jordan barely remembered her ordering after they arrived. There was a brief conversation about going out to grab something, but Jordan’s condition and the storm that raged outside settled that.
“Come eat something. You’ll feel better,” Megan said. She put both containers on the table and arranged the chairs to match.
Jordan joined her and opened up his container, not remembering what he had ordered, hoping he had even ordered. If Megan was left to decide, he would find a nice leafy salad under the lid. His shoulders dropped, and he sighed at the first hint at what was inside, but then there was relief when he realized the piece of green lettuce was only the topping on top of the large slab of char-grilled ground beef on a bun surrounded by an ocean of soggy dinner fries coated with a layer of sparkling salt crystals. The smell itself put a smile on his face. The first bite tasted good. The second tasted like new life.
“Feel better?”, she asked in between bites of her shrimp salad with red wine vinaigrette which he could smell across the table. It replaced that putrid smell of death that had hung with him.
“Yea, a little,” Jordan sa
id, shoveling a fry in his mouth before the ketchup could drip off of it.
“Jordan, I have never felt anything so evil before, and I have been in some pretty sketchy paranormal messes in the past. A few I should have known better than to even try, but this... this was another level,” Megan managed. Her normally confident voice was reduced to just a whisper of itself.
“Me either. Let’s not talk about it. Not now,” Jordan said. He was just starting to feel himself again and didn’t want to go back down that rabbit’s hole, but he knew they would need to at some point. “Not yet. We can later.”
Megan didn’t agree or disagree. They both sat in silence eating their dinner, listening to the sound of a muffled television from one of the neighboring rooms and the rhythm of the rain on the window. Once they were done, Jordan picked up the containers and took them to the trash can. It was the least he could do. She had ordered and met the waiter at the door. He took the opportunity to walk into the bathroom and splash water on his face. The image that looked back at him appeared as though he had aged ten years in one day. The lines around his eyes were more pronounced, but having spent enough time in hotels he knew it was because of the lighting they use in the bathrooms and not what he had encountered, or so he hoped.
When he returned, Megan had laid the evidence they had collected on the table. Both were still in the zip-lock bags, and she was slipping on a pair of gloves she found in Jordan’s backpack. “Happy?” she asked with a smirk.