by BL Maxwell
I paused the recording and turned to Jason. “What the hell? Do you remember any of that?”
He didn’t answer me for a moment. “I don’t remember anything. I only remember us deciding to go down there to check it out. Nothing after we went into the basement.”
He’d said almost the exact same thing earlier, but watching the video, I still couldn’t work out what had happened. What made him freeze like that? Was it the spirit that was visible in front of him in the video? And how was that even possible?
“Wade, I don’t understand. Why don’t I remember? What did she do to me?” He gave me a pleading look, and instantly I wanted to put his mind at ease.
“I’m not sure, Jason. Maybe it was shock? Maybe just seeing a spirit that close shocked you and you couldn’t react.” I knew that sounded lame, but I had no explanation at all for what we’d both just witnessed. “Let’s get settled in for the night. We can keep an eye on things from here. No need to leave the room with all the cameras we set up, and the perimeter alarms to warn us.” I smiled at him, hoping it reassured him. I knew he’d be disappointed if we left, but I wasn’t sure staying was smart either. I hoped by not leaving the room we’d be safe.
Chapter Nine
As the night wore on, I hoped we’d made the right choice. Eventually, we settled down and started going over the videos and checking all the equipment. Everything seemed fine, so we were taking notes, checking and double-checking our data. I huffed out a laugh at that thought.
“What’s so funny?” Jason quietly asked.
“I was just thinking how we’re checking our data, like we’re really scientists or something. The thought made me laugh, since we’re just doing this for fun.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher, shock, maybe a little hurt. “Is that how you really feel? All of this is a joke?”
“No, that’s not what I mean at all. I mean that we’re supposed to be doing this for fun but somehow it turned into something more serious. I was wondering when that happened.”
“Do you know why I started getting into paranormal investigation?” Jason asked.
“I thought it started from watching That’s Incredible and Ripley’s.”
“Well, that was some of it,” he grinned over at me, “but mostly I liked hanging out with you. I knew you had lots of other friends, so I thought I needed something you could only do with me. Something that could be our thing. Know what I mean?”
Actually, I didn’t know what he meant. Not. At. All. “I don’t understand. You were into this when we first started hanging out. It never changed.”
“I did like watching those shows, but it was so much more fun watching them with you and then pretending to go investigate places around the neighborhood. I didn’t want it to ever change, so I started saving my money and buying gadgets. I knew how geeked out you were by them.” He smiled at me then, that happy, carefree smile I’d grown to love and welcome.
“You’re right, I was—I am. I always had fun hanging out. I’m not sure what you mean. I kinda hung out with everyone.”
“Yeah, you did, and I guess in a way I was jealous. I wanted you to just be my friend. My only friend. When we were in high school things changed.” He took a deep breath and seemed to be bracing himself to say something. “How I felt about you changed.”
He seemed to try to gauge my reaction, but I still wasn’t sure I believed what I was hearing. There was no way he was saying what I thought he was saying. There was no way I’d let myself hope.
“You don’t have any idea how I feel about you, Wade? No idea at all?” He seemed hurt.
“You’re my friend. We’re friends. Best friends.”
“You stopped feeling like a friend to me a long time ago.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean, Jason. Of course we’re friends.”
He walked over to where I was sitting on the bed and sat next to me. Slowly, very slowly, he reached over and took my hand in his.
“Jason? What’s going on?” He was acting so out of character. He had never been a touchy-feely kind of guy. I could count on one hand how many times we’d hugged through the years. He’d never seemed comfortable with it. But maybe that wasn’t the problem at all. Was he comfortable with it after all? “Jason?”
He didn’t answer at first, just looked down at our entwined hands. “Wade, I’ve always wanted you, always. As long as I can remember, you’re all I ever saw. Not the other guys and certainly not the girls. I’ve been so afraid for so long to tell you how I really feel. Somehow it was easier if you didn’t know, then I didn’t have to deal with you rejecting me. I knew for a while you were interested in me, but I wasn’t sure if it was real for you or if it was just a crush. I thought maybe you’d eventually confess your feelings, but when you never did I thought you were over it, over me. I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose you. At least as friends we could still hang out together, but I worried you wouldn’t be interested in me as anything more, that you only wanted me as a friend, so I kept my secret all these years. You have no idea how hard it’s been keeping that secret.”
He was so vulnerable and exposed. Taking a chance and throwing his heart out there, and hoping I didn’t stomp on it. Like that could ever happen. This was my dream come true, my heart’s desire. Everything I’d ever dreamed of happening.
He looked at me with expectation. He’d just made a huge admission, and it was easy to see he was worried about my reaction. “Jason, why would you wait so long to tell me this? We’ve known each other for years. I had no idea, none. All this time, all this time I’ve been hung up on you thinking I had no chance, then—”
“Wait.” He stopped me. His expression anxious. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we’re idiots. You thought I wouldn’t be interested in more with you, and you’ve wanted me the same way I’ve wanted you, for all these years. Really?” I asked him, still reeling in doubt.
“Yes, really. Forever. Like as long as I’ve known you.” He absently shook his head. “We need to work on our communication skills.”
He lifted his hand and slowly drew his thumb along my jaw. “Is it okay if I kiss you?”
With that I shoved him back. “Wait a second. We’ve known each other all this time and you’ve never looked at me twice. You’ve only dated girls, and now for some strange reason you want me?”
“Wade, I swear this is how I’ve felt all along. I was a coward. I didn’t want to be crushed if you didn’t want me the way I wanted you.”
“How do I know you’re not just messing with me? You’ve always given me a ton of shit about dating guys.”
He stood up and flung his arms out for emphasis. “That’s because I wanted to be them. I wanted you to be dating me.”
I eyed him a little more, looking for any signs of deceit, but all I saw was my best friend throwing his heart out there and hoping I didn’t stomp on it. “Are you being serious, because if you’re fucking with me right now, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to forgive you.”
“I’m not fucking with you, Wade.”
At some point I’d jumped up from the bed and was now pacing the space between the bed and the bathroom. Jason slowly walked toward me. Where I was frantic motion, he was slow and smooth. He stopped right in front of me as I started to pace back in that direction.
“I’m not fucking with you.” He reached up and lightly traced my eyebrow and let his hand drop to trail down my arm to my fingers. “I want you. I want you so bad.”
I grabbed his hand with more force than I’d intended, but I couldn’t control myself. “Do you know how I feel about you? How I’ve always felt about you?” I realized I was panting. My need to tell him so great but my fear of losing him as a friend was still there too. Even with his confession.
He shook his head and pinned me with confusion and apprehension. He was afraid of what I was about to tell him. He had no idea at all. “Wade, I’ve been . . . I’ve had a crush on you for years. All the year
s. For as long as we’ve known each other, I’ve always wanted you, even before I even knew what that really meant.”
I threaded our fingers together, leaned closer to him, and put my other hand on his hip. “I’m not messing with you. I feel the exact same way you do. I always have,” I said, and waited to see what happened next.
Neither of us moved. We stood there in the bedroom of a dilapidated and very real haunted house and were both speechless. Jason leaned toward me, and I started to lean into him—then all hell broke loose.
Chapter Ten
The room seemed to explode with sound. The perimeter alarms were going off and the laptops were both flashing with all the information that was streaming into them. Jason and I were frozen for a second, and then we both ran over to the laptops to see what the hell was going on.
At first I couldn’t tell exactly what was happening. It was a mass of confusing flashes and noise. “What’s going on? Is someone else in the house? Is that what triggered the perimeter alarms?”
“I don’t know. Let me look. There’s no way every alarm could be going off at the same time. How could someone be on all three floors and in the attic and basement?”
He typed frantically at the keys, trying to look at the camera feeds and the data coming in all at once.
Then it stopped. The alarms cut off abruptly, and the screens stopped flashing. The laptops blinked back to life and the video images were like they were before. Nothing was happening: no movement, no sounds, no other people. Nothing.
Neither of us moved a muscle. I was afraid if we moved then everything would start up again. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and sat next to him on the bed. Grabbing my laptop, I picked a camera view and rewound it.
The view was of the top floor, the one that had all the water damage. I remembered we’d put the laser grid up there, so if anything was up there it would show either on the camera or as an image in the laser grid.
Jason leaned over and watched it with me, both of us on edge about what could have set everything off at the same time. I wound it back about twenty minutes then set it to play on faster than normal but not so fast we would miss anything.
At first the hall appeared the same as we’d left it, sagging ceiling and wallpaper hanging down the walls. Nothing seemed any different than it had before. We could clearly see the laser grid, and it didn’t appear to have been disturbed. Then after about two minutes things changed, and in a very obvious way. The laser grid flashed a few times, giving it a strobe light affect.
The camera feed started to glitch, the image fading in and out like it had a short or a plug had worked loose. All at once they all flashed off, but only briefly. Then there were three people standing at the end of the hall seeming to be in the middle of a conversation. People dressed in Victorian garb. The woman wore a large hat with a big feather that flowed off the back of it, the front of it low on her brow. The two men she talked to both had top hats on and seemed to be dressed for a formal event. The woman’s dress was the same, more formal with a fitted jacket over the top. Like she’d just come in from being outside in the winter chill.
They appeared as solid as the two of us. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that the house had been broken into or someone was playing a very elaborate joke on us. I turned to look at Jason and he had a look of shocked wonder on his face.
“Are you seeing this?” he asked me, not even attempting to tear his eyes from the screen.
“Yeah, I’m seeing it. I don’t understand exactly what I’m seeing, but I’m seeing it.”
“Two guys with top hats and a woman that look like they’re from the Victorian period?” he asked.
“Yep, that’s exactly what I’m seeing too.” I was past being shocked. It was like I had used up all of my body’s ability to be any more shocked than I already had been tonight. But I also knew that could change really fast. This house just seemed to keep on giving.
The trio stood there for a few more minutes, and the woman slipped her hand through one of the men’s elbows and reached for the other man. The three of them then walked right into the laser grid. None of them seemed to notice. They passed through it, and we could plainly see the shape of the three of them outlined in the grid. But we didn’t even need it; they still appeared completely solid.
When they reached the other end of the hall, they paused for a second. One of the men dug in his vest pocket for a key, after retrieving it, he bent forward to put it in the lock and turned the knob. The door opened and all three stepped into the room, and then they were gone. It was as if they had returned from a night of celebrating and now were returning to their room to turn in for the night.
Slowly we turned our heads and looked at each other. A slow smile spread on Jason’s face. This right here was what he truly wanted to see. Not having glass thrown by a malevolent spirit or having it trick us to go into the basement. But seeing a spirit do something as mundane as walk down the hall of an old hotel and enter a room.
“Wade, do you have any idea what I’m thinking right now?”
“I’m not sure. Does it have something to do with the visitors that are staying in a room on the top floor?”
“We saw a ghost. A real ghost. And we actually captured it on video. We really did it.” His excitement was contagious. I could feel a smile tugging on my lips as I watched him try to contain all of his obvious delight. He’d been waiting for this for years, and finally it had happened.
“You did it, Jason, you finally did it.” He looked from screen to screen taking everything in, when suddenly he stopped and turned to look at me. His expression unreadable.
He crooked his finger and settled it on his top lip like he needed to consider what I said. “We did it, Wade. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.” He leaned closer to me then, closer than would have been comfortable for someone who thought of us as just friends. “Is this okay?” He put his hand on my hip and pulled me even closer to him.
“More than okay.”
He was really blowing my mind tonight. Every move he made to prove he was interested in more with me left me breathless and reeling.
“Really?” He reached up and cupped the back of my head, slowly running his fingers through my hair. My eyes started to close at the sensation. Then I felt his lips on mine, soft, warm, and perfect. When I felt his tongue on my lips, I opened to let him deepen the kiss.
My mind was officially blown. I had fantasized about this happening for years, never really thinking it ever would, yet here we were kissing. Jason was kissing me. A smile I couldn’t control spread on my lips, breaking our kiss.
“Hey, what’s that all about?” he whispered to me while he pulled me forward so my forehead was resting against his. I was so happy in that moment that I couldn’t stop smiling.
“Is this really happening?” I asked as I looked into his bright green eyes.
“It’s happening. If I have anything at all to do with it, it’s definitely happening.” Then we both turned to look at the laptops and other various gadgets and supplies we’d put there earlier.
“Give me three seconds and I’ll move all this.” He was instantly in motion, grabbing the equipment and putting them on the other bed, getting the sleeping bags and unrolling one to cover the bed, grabbing the pillows and flinging them at the top of the bed.
“Wow, you work well under pressure.” I stood with folded arms grinning at him. He really was being very sweet.
“Come here.” He patted the bed next to him and waited for me expectantly. Suddenly I felt so shy, like all of this was something new and something I knew very little about. Which after thinking about it I guess was actually true. I’d been with a few different guys, even had a few relationships, but Jason was different. He was my one. The one guy that I’d always dreamed of being with and thought it could never happen. I finally made myself move and sat back down.
“Wade, I’m not joking about any of this. After all that’s happened tonight, I just star
ted thinking how much I’d regret it if I never told you how I felt.”
“After all that’s happened, I’m not sure this is the best place for this conversation. I’m still pretty freaked out by it all, and I’m not sure I’m all that comfortable staying here,” I whispered to him.
“I know a lot has happened, but you’re not suggesting we leave are you?” he whispered back to me.
I thought about it before I answered. “I know this is everything you’ve wanted to experience. And I want you to get that, but I’ve been scared shitless the whole night. I’m not gonna lie, every time something happens it’s all I can do to not go running screaming out the door.”
He didn’t move. Then he reached over and entwined his fingers with mine.
“I’m sorry, Wade. I have to make another confession. I’ve known all along how much this stuff bothered you. But I just always thought you enjoyed it anyway. Was I wrong? Because if being here is really making you feel like you need to leave, I’m with you. Whatever you need. I don’t want you to have to stay here just to make me happy.”
I turned so I could look right at him but kept his hand clasped in mine and let it rest on top of my leg. He brushed his thumb over the back of my hand in a soothing way, patiently waiting for what I had to say.
“I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here with you. But I’m not lying when I say I’m scared. All of the shit we saw earlier is just too weird.”
“I know. I never imagined we’d actually see anything. Especially nothing like what we’ve seen so far. Want to take it easy for a while, go over some of the other recordings? Just see if we missed anything earlier. Let’s just make this a fun time, okay?”
He looked at me with so much hope, and yet it was easy to see he wasn’t really sure what my answer would be. But there was no way I could make him leave when I knew how much it meant to him to be here. “That sounds good. How about if we review the recordings, then maybe try to get a few hours of sleep?”