by Kim Hornsby
“Holy hell. It’s on camera. The blood.”
I turned to the wall, as if to look at the blood. “And there it is,” I lied. “I’m assuming if you can see it on camera, Carlos, Mood Peeps will see it too.” I tried to not sound disappointed though truthfully, I was the only person who couldn’t see the blood. Now, anyone with eyesight and the internet could see what I couldn’t. “You’re still seeing it through the camera, Carlos?”
“It’s faint but yes, there’s definitely something on the wall. Wouldn’t you say, Eve?”
Eve concurred. “I see it too, but only in the camera, not with my bare eyes.”
I couldn’t turn back to face the camera because I didn’t know where the camera was any more. It was better for me to look way off the mark, like I wasn’t even trying, than to focus just inches from the eye of the camera. Still, I did not want to interrupt this moment of discovery. Having blood seen on camera would go up there with our viral video that catapulted my show into fame last year. I put my hands on the wall, hopefully near the blood, closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath. I thought about editing, instead of thinking of ghosts and wondered how to make a good transition to the next shot, which just seemed wrong considering we had something mind blowing in front of us--trailing blood down a mural of what appeared to be a painting of this house.
“Carlos, can you see it? The blood?
“Only on camera, Moody.”
I turned to where I thought the camera was, kept my head low, like I was thinking and spoke. “Are you here with us, tonight?” I waited. “We are in this house to help you. Can you give us a sign?”
Eve interrupted. “She wants to come through but can’t.”
I nodded. “She can’t,” I repeated like the shyster I was. Shoot. Eve was getting something, and I was a plain and simple con artist pretending I got the feelings, too. A part of me wanted to go back to my bedroom, lie down, and cry. Being a good sport was getting harder and harder now that Eve had the ability to do what I used to do. Then I remembered I had to finish this segment and stop feeling sorry for myself. “Can you tap the window, touch one of us, or move something?” I said to the female spirit Eve felt. “Maybe speak your name.”
We waited while the tape rolled. It was normal to get nothing. What was exceptional were those tiny moments when something got through. Lately, we’d had more ghost action than we’d had all last year. Even in this house, our action had been phenomenal. We often taped hours of nothing, hours of me asking for a sign, hours of waiting.
“Eve? Are you feeling emotion from the spirit?” I remembered she’d felt something last time.
“Like you, Moody, I feel anger.”
Ah, she was angry. “I believe our ghost died right here, at the hands of someone she hated. What a great find, this house is. Our very own ghost to investigate.” My blood quickened, and I had to remind myself to calm down. “Gone too soon. Who was this ghost? A smuggler? The wife of a smuggler? The house’s history is rich with suspense. This investigation is not over.” I chuckled like this was the best case I’d ever been on. “Moody out.” I said. “For now.”
“And cut,” Carlos said.
I leaned against the wall wondering if we got what we needed. At this point, I always went behind the camera to watch the playback.
“Bryn, please tell me you saw the blood,” Eve said. “Or felt the ghost.
“Nope. Tell me what you felt, Eve.” I waited.
“Mostly hatred and anger at the person who killed her.” Eve was walking around the room now. “I didn’t get a feeling of who she is or what time period she came from, but she was furious.”
“And the blood?” I asked. “You could only see it on camera? Not with your eyes?”
“Right.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of what had just happened but whatever it was, it was rich. At least one of us was getting something, enough to make a great show. “Carlos, do you want me to sit with you while you splice and edit tonight? You could describe to me what you’re seeing.” I’d always accompanied him to decide on what would make up the show.
“I think I got it,” he said.
As the director of the show, I usually sat to Carlos’ left, listening to our playbacks, searching the footage for anomalies. But not tonight. I could slump in a chair near Carlos’ work station in the den and wait for him to tell me what he found. But it wouldn’t be the same and I was pretty sure my tech guy could pull everything off our data that was show-worthy and present it to me verbally after I’d had a good night’s sleep.
We made a plan to convene in the den at eight tomorrow morning, take a look at the edited episode Carlos would be doctoring all night. I’d be listening, and Eve would be describing what the footage looked like.
Even though it would be a farce about me seeing the blood, and feeling the ghost, I couldn’t be too hard on myself. I had seen a ghost tonight. But my ghost was not a woman who couldn’t get through. My ghost got through loud and clear.
Almost reluctantly, it seemed.
Chapter 9
Smuggler’s Cove Museum was described to me as a fake log cabin off the very small main street of a rickety-looking coastal town.
“How many blocks is the downtown?” I asked, as Carlos parked The Marshmallow near the museum.
“Three solid blocks of stores, then a gas station, it looks like.” Eve sounded like she’d never seen such a small town before. She didn’t like living in the boonies and probably couldn’t wait to get back to traffic and skyscrapers.
“Is there a sign outside the museum?” I asked, needing to keep the narrative going.
Carlos took this one. “There’s a wooden sign with old font saying Smuggler’s Cove Museum, with an anchor after the last word. As a matter of fact, there’s mucho stuff in town with anchors. Must be part of their logo in Smuggler’s Cove.”
“And Mrs. Hightower has put up the OPEN sign, to welcome us in,” Eve said, facetiously.
We walked in the front door, a bell jingling our arrival. I heard voices, a hushed conversation off to the right, and immediately recognized Joan’s distinctively high-pitched voice.
“There she is now,” Joan said, probably forgetting that I’m blind, not deaf. I imagined she meant me, the way she cut herself off.
We’d made the five-mile trip to town to secure our tenuous relationship with the only person we knew in Oregon, a woman who’d also run out of the house yesterday, afraid to divulge what she knew. Joan’s reaction to me or us hadn’t been normal, and I intended to get to the bottom of her skittishness.
“Mrs. Hightower,” Eve said, “We thought we’d visit your museum.”
Eve sounded credible.
Heels tapped on the floor, getting closer. I put out my hand. “Hello again, Joan.” I felt her warm hand in mine as she attempted one of her pumping handshakes.
“Mrs. Moody, nice to see you again.”
I heard footsteps on the other side of the room. Whoever Joan had been speaking with when we arrived, they’d moved off. “If you have guests to attend to, don’t let us keep you,” I offered. I hadn’t thought we might compete with others for the museum curator’s attention right after the place opened for the day.
“Oh, that’s fine. They’re my friends who just dropped in to say hello. We have a new display of arrowheads and they are looking at those. What can I do for you?”
I couldn’t say we dropped in to look at arrowheads because I couldn’t see the dang arrowheads. The wonders of the Smuggler’s Cove museum were lost on me unless Eve described the things I assumed were in glass cases. Even then, so much would be lost in the translation. I intended to get right to the point. “As a psychic,” I said, “I know things when other people don’t.” I paused for effect. “Yesterday, I sensed that you weren’t telling me something and I hoped we might have another chat. I’d like to put your mind at rest about our investigation, and our intentions.”
I wished I could look deep into her eyes to fix her with one of m
y stares, but instead, I just waited, my gaze fixed in the darkness in front of me, listening, even smelling her spicy perfume.
“Please follow me,” she said.
Eve took my arm and led me to another room where I was guided to sit in a hard, wooden chair with arm rests. “I can leave you two,” Eve said.
“That sounds fine,” Joan said, her voice lower than I’d ever heard. “We’ll be only five minutes.”
I waited to hear what this mysterious woman had to tell me that couldn’t be said in front of anyone else. Papers shuffled on what I assumed was a desk.
Finally. “You’re right. I have secrets. But it’s in your best interest I not reveal anything. Not yet.” Her voice was no longer frivolous but determined and almost foreboding.
“When can I expect full disclosure, Joan? I’m trying to unravel a mystery here.” What was this woman keeping from me?
“I’m waiting to see what you turn up in the house. Your investigation. I want you to go into this with a clear mind, no expectations.”
What the hell did that mean? “It might help if you could give me a hint of what I’m looking for. I don’t want to say I’m flying blind but it’s kind of feeling that way.”
“I’m sorry. I can only tell you to find Belinda’s ghost. Someone who is not the murdered woman in the bedroom, but a man.”
“Is he looking for something? Is that why he lingers?”
The woman sitting across from me was silent and I wanted badly to read her expression, or at least have Eve present to read her expression. “Does he wear boots? I thought I heard boots on the third floor.”
“Yes, I believe he might wear boots.”
“What time period is he from?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Maybe from a time when men wore coattails and boots?”
“Maybe.”
I decided to try to draw out more by playing the sympathy card. “What if I never find this ghost? What if he doesn’t appear for me, like he did for Belinda?”
“Oh, he’ll appear. He’s quite full of himself.”
Aha. “He likes attention?”
“I need to get back to the museum now.” Her chair scraped against the floor.
I heard Joan leave the room, speak to Eve in a low tone and I waited. I stood and thought about what I’d learned in the last two minutes. Even though I felt slightly triumphant at getting more information from the museum curator, I hated being this helpless.
But more than that, I hated hearing a juicy tidbit from someone about a ghost and then not being able to read her expression.
**
Dinner that night was ruined by a call from my mother. It wasn’t what she said but just the sound of her voice that made me lose my appetite. She called just as I was shoving a wrap with Smuggler’s Cove Delicious Deli chicken and Caesar salad into my mouth.
“Ron says they are investigating Mrs. Giovanni’s death. So there.”
I put the wrap down on my plate. “Congratulations. Maybe you can contact ghosts after all.”
“I just had a feeling and Eve confirmed it.”
Dig.
“I’m glad. Eve is a huge help to me as well, these days.”
“Ron would like to meet you.”
I smiled. “Isn’t it early for your boyfriend to meet the family, Rachel? How long have you been dating?”
“It’s not that. I told him you’d seen Terri drinking poison.”
My mother had lied to her cop boyfriend. “If I meet him I’ll have to call you out on that one.” I put her on speaker so the other two could enjoy what I went through.
“You’ll do no such thing, young lady. I won’t have you call me a liar. I did what I had to do to get Terri’s murder avenged.”
“We’re just about to eat dinner. Can I call you back?” This was my own standby phrase that meant, “How about we drop this subject and I’ll pretend you didn’t call.”
“No need. I just wanted to find out what the weather is like over there and if I should pack my rain slicker.”
Carlos chuckled. Damn him.
“Yes, it’s rainy here but you aren’t exterminating for another few days, right? We’re heading back to Seattle tomorrow.” I had to be firm with my mother before she showed up at the door with a giant suitcase and Ron, both looking for a month’s vacation on the Oregon coast.
“I was able to get the exterminator to come early, so I need to get out tomorrow.”
I counted to three, calmly. “Where will you go tomorrow?”
“I’ll drive to Oregon, of course.”
“We leave here tomorrow.”
“I can stay in a house all by myself. I don’t need you, Bryndle. Except to give me the address and a key.”
“I’ll call you later,” I said and hung up.
I wondered what Carlos and Eve’s faces looked like as I counted to ten this time. “Don’t anyone give that woman the address.”
**
The evening’s investigation was to be conducted on the third floor this time. The woman who died on the second floor was now of lesser interest to me for obvious reasons. I couldn’t reach her. She wasn’t my ghost. She didn’t allow me anything unless she was the ghost who moved my coffee cup, but I hadn’t been able to get anything in the kitchen since.
The third-floor ghost, who I believed was a handsome man in boots, seemed to have an uncanny effect on me--an ability that allowed me to see him. In his presence, I’d seen everything, including the lamp, the rug, him. The strange twist was that I was starting to think it was not sight from my eyes, but psychic sight. What I saw in front of my face was inside my head, not coming from my useless eyes. Still, what I sensed in front of me was actually there. My mind had shown me a banister, then I reached out and saw my hand touching the banister. So, although my eyes were still useless, I could see in the presence of this ghost.
Very strange, indeed.
Carlos had put together a compelling piece of footage for our next show. It was a compilation of our investigation the night before, and after I gave my okey dokey to upload it, we had ourselves a new episode of Moody Paranormal Investigations. That felt good after such a long time of using old footage.
That was the good news. The bad news was that it turned out that the blood seen on the wall was actually a smear of something on the camera lens and we weren’t able to capitalize on our viewers seeing the bloody wall, like we’d thought. It was hugely disappointing, but something had already warned me that it was too good to be true. I hadn’t believed what was seen on camera was the blood on the wall and it turned out my instinct, or my returning psychic abilities, had been correct.
Shortly after going live with our new episode, Eve started tweeting and posting like a social media maniac and that’s when the fun started. The show was getting hits like it was the latest video of a pop star disrobing. Our subscriber numbers were increasing at such a rate that we wondered what had happened. That night, Carlos kept a running commentary about the success of the episode as we ate a baked lasagna that I happened to make all by myself.
Earlier I’d gotten the noodles, two jars of sauce, (I know it’s cheating, but hey), a bag of shredded mozzarella cheese and put everything on the counter with a lasagna pan Eve found in the cupboard and had since washed, just in case. While the ground turkey was frying, I started the process of layering lasagna into the pan on top of marinara sauce. An hour in the oven and Eve helped me pull it out to rest on the counter for fifteen minutes.
“Two thousand more.” Carlos announced through a mouthful of chips he’d opened just before dinner was served.
“What’s happened that’s getting us such coverage?” I asked.
“I’d guess we got on some site’s search engine for ghosts and when someone searches, they get our link.”
This was what we’d been hoping for after the ghost video a year ago that put us on Yahoo News and sent us into the stratosphere of paranormal occurrences. “We need more footage tonight and a quick
upload tomorrow to keep up the momentum.” The more successful our site was, the better chance of being able to continue with this YouTube show and support all three of us. Eve dished out the lasagna onto bowls, so I wouldn’t push my square off a flat plate and onto the tablecloth and we sat down to eat.
I was surprised that the meal I’d made was actually quite edible. Not very unique with everything coming from bags and jars, but it was a tasty lasagna. As we ate in silence, I wondered how long I’d be able to fool the public into thinking that Moody still saw ghosts. Everything I’d said on the new show about my visions, was a lie. I was a sham.
By the time I was standing at the sink holding a sponge, my hands in the hot water, Carlos reported a jump of twenty thousand new subscribers and attributed our success to a link from Yahoo News that was titled “Oregon Ghost Hunter Finds Bloody Wall.”
Eve laughed. “Now you’re an Oregon ghost hunter, Bryn.”
“We didn’t post the smear on the lens, did we?”
“Negatory,” Carlos said. “But you did say you saw a bloody wall.”
“Eve saw the bloody wall,” I said. “I hi-jacked her revelation.”
I felt for the dish rack and put a plate in it for Eve to dry. “Eve, can you put something up on the site about us continuing the investigation tonight? It’ll build excitement for when we post in a few days. Get those ghost lovers to set reminders to watch the show.”
“Done and done,” Eve said.
“Good,” I handed Eve the next plate. “Tonight, I want to stand where I saw the shadow in the doorway. Let’s get me on camera doing something for real. You guys can situate yourselves across the foyer and zoom in on me but let’s not overwhelm this spirit.” If this ghost was only present when I was around, I wanted to keep my awesome twosome slightly out of sight.