“I suppose I understand,” she said finally, though she didn’t like the idea of being in the position of having this portion of the investigation on her shoulders. “Maybe we should get started with the EVPs then.”
In the moonlight she could see the silhouette of his head nod and she held up the recorder.
Jorden started with the standard questions – was there someone there, what their name was, and such, and just like every other investigation on the island she heard nothing in response, though she knew that often times the responses were rarely audible without the aid of a sensitive recorder.
As they asked their questions, the air around them started to grow heavy and stale, in spite of the growing wind beside them.
“Do you feel that?” Jorden asked.
“Feel what?” Matt asked as he panned his camera around the quickly tightening space.
“It feels like the walls are closing in on us,” she said, growing more and more uncomfortable by the minute.
Matt took his camera in his left hand and took out his EMF detector with his right. “I’m getting a reading of one-point-six,” he said curiously. “What is our base reading in here?”
“Point-one,” she said as her head started to cloud and her stomach churned.
Matt grew obviously concerned and he moved closer to her, just to make sure that she didn’t grow lightheaded and take a long tumble in the wrong direction. “You feel warm,” he pointed out after putting an arm around her shoulders.
“I feel cold,” she argued, though couldn’t put much behind her words.
Matt looked back at the EMF detector. “Up to three-point-two and still climbing.”
Jorden’s stomach tightened even more and she wrapped her arms around herself. “I need to get out of here,” she said as the urge to throw up started to creep up on her.
She thought that Matt might be mad, after all, they hadn’t been up there long and he was reluctant to send up another team.
“All right,” he said almost immediately, “lean on me and I’ll help you down.”
“What about the investigation?” she asked, trying to keep her mind off of her churning stomach.
“I’m more worried about you at the moment,” he freely and readily admitted.
She was surprised, but said nothing further. Instead, she leaned on Matt, feeling the strength of his arm that wrapped around her back and beneath her right arm as she tried to walk down the stairs on her own, though not successfully.
Just halfway down, the sick feeling increased and while she couldn’t be certain, she thought that she heard something. It was just the faintest of sounds and she thought that it might be a voice, though she couldn’t be sure. To be safe, she looked down at the recorder, which was still recording, and held it out in front of her.
“You don’t need to do that now,” Matt said and reached out, however she kept it out of his reach.
“Just help me to the cottage,” she said curtly, not wanting to talk much – afraid that more than just words would come out.
It took Matt just ten minutes to get Jorden down the stairs and to the cottage. He helped her all the way to the bathroom door, shouldering most of her weight the entire trip, just to have the door slammed in his face. Not a second or two later he could hear heaving and he knew that her brusqueness wasn’t directed at him, but he’d hoped that she would have allowed him to help her. After ten years on the street as a cop, he’d seen enough not to be bothered by her illness.
“What’s going on?” Tony asked from the doorway of the den.
“Jorden had a nasty experience up in the bell tower,” Matt said simply then handed him the recorder she’d been clutching up until she hit the bathroom then dropped it on the floor. “Log this in and mark it priority. Once I know that Jorden is all right I want to listen to it.”
“You know that we don’t have the analysis software on the monitoring computers and we don’t have any of the analysis equipment set up yet…we weren’t planning on setting it up until tomorrow afternoon,” Tony said steadily.
“I know, but I want it in the computer now,” Matt insisted firmly. “In spite of how sick she was feeling she was damned determined to have that thing out ahead of her and recording and I want to know why. Not to mention the fact that one of our team members is sick as a dog in there for no apparent reason. The answer might be on that recorder.”
Tony didn’t need any more convincing, in fact, he probably didn’t need that much; he and Jorden had been friends longer than she and Matt. All he really had to say was that Jorden thought there might be something on it and he would have been all over it anyway, but Matt was frustrated and even a little angry at the thought that Jorden might have been attacked in some way and he wanted everyone to know it.
From the doorway Matt watched Tony get one of the laptops used for analysis set up on the coffee table in front of the sofa in the den, but was unwilling to go in himself. He wanted to be there when Jorden came out…something she didn’t do for another twenty minutes.
“Feeling better?” he asked as she passed through the doorway.
“Yeah, much,” she said. “I don’t know why I got sick, but I definitely feel better now. Still a little chilled, but no longer nauseous.”
“The EMF spiked at sixteen before we got to the ground floor. You know that high EMF readings can have adverse reactions on different people. You’re probably just sensitive to them.”
She shook her head. “I’ve been around high EMFs, even higher than sixteen, and I’ve never felt like that before.”
With an arm around her shoulders, Matt led her to the sofa in the living room where they both took a seat. “What exactly did you feel?” he questioned.
She shrugged and rested back as she accepted a cup of hot tea from Saph. “At first it was like I said, the air was getting thick. Then it started to feel as though the walls were closing in around me, smothering me…” her words trailed off and she donned a distant gaze.
“Was there anything else?” he pressed, wanting to know everything that she felt, hoping that it might finally lead to a real experience.
“Just the churning of my stomach, and then of course the voice I thought I might have heard when we were leaving.”
Matt rested back as well, but never took his eyes off of her. “I don’t want to sound condescending, but are you sure that it isn’t something you ate?” he questioned. Expecting her usual squelch of protest, he winced in preparation, but all she did was look up at the ceiling.
“It wasn’t anything I ate,” she assured. “And it isn’t due to a lack of sleep or a result of reading too many ghost stories regarding this place,” she added. “It was unlike anything I’ve ever felt before, and all things being equal, something that I would not care to experience again.”
“Well,” Matt said as he placed his hand on hers, “all things being equal, I wished that it’d happened to me.”
She looked at him and smiled with true appreciation in her gaze.
“Hey guys,” Tony addressed from the den’s doorway. “I got the laptop set up. Whenever you’re ready.”
Matt stood, as did Jorden though it was clear that she was still lightheaded.
“Why don’t you stay here? I’ll tell you if there’s something to hear,” Matt offered.
“Like hell,” she snapped. “I’m the one who got sick for this. If there is something there, I want to hear it.”
Much to Matt’s chagrin, Jorden followed him into the den where both of them took a seat on the sofa that sat against the wall to the right and in between a couple of short bookshelves made of real oak and not the manufactured pressboard that so many furniture companies were trying to pawn off as acceptable these days. Both of them crowded close to one another as they pulled on headphones and listened to the playback.
They listened to the recording from the moment they entered the bell tower and for the first fifteen minutes or so there was nothing to hear other than their own conversation, bu
t when Jorden mentioned that the air was getting thick, something indiscernible seemed to be straining in the background. It could have been a strained, distant voice or just the howl of the wind. In any case, Matt made a note of it as he continued to listen.
For the next five minutes or so, the straining sound faded in and out, up until they went down the stairs, and that’s when both of them sat bolt upright. From out of the blue there was something…a real voice that didn’t belong to either one of them. Just as suddenly as the voice screamed out, it, along with the distant sound, stopped abruptly.
Both of them took off the headphones and looked at each other.
“You did hear that…right?” Jorden questioned. “I’m not crazy or out of my mind with whatever overcame me up there…or am I?”
Matt smiled at her and even laughed slightly.
“What?” she questioned.
“You’re cute when you’re stressing,” he said with a smile.
She gave him a brief sneer before growing serious again. “But you did hear that…right?”
He nodded. “Oh yeah,” he said then looked up at Tony and Saph. “Come over here.”
Both Tony and Saph stood and crossed over to the coffee table where Matt and Jorden waited for them.
“Listen to this,” Matt said.
Both Tony and Saph took a pair of headphones and listened to the long recording followed by the voice, which made both of them jump slightly. “That was definitely unnatural.”
Tony was often the king of understatement and Matt had to laugh. “Were you able to make out what it said?” Matt asked.
Tony replayed the last segment of the recording and listened to it several times before he shook his head. “Sounds Italian, but you might want to ask Syd to be sure.”
Matt rested back with a smile on his face. “Finally,” he said. “I was beginning to think that we weren’t going to get anything.”
A knock on the door forced Matt to his feet. He didn’t know why any of his team would knock; it wasn’t like they ever locked the door or even had to.
Irritated that they were interrupted, Matt approached the door and was ready to chew out whichever team member was on the other side, but when he opened the door, he was unable to say anything at all.
“Am I interrupting something?” Harper asked with a smile.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Caretaker’s Cottage – 12:30pm…
The night before was tense with no one getting enough sleep and the tension the following morning was no less. The hope that Jonas’s arrival had been a nightmare blew away with the breeze outside the moment Matt stepped into the dining room.
At the table in between Jorden and Nigel sat the last man on the planet Matt wanted to see. Actually, the entire team was gathered around the table for the first time since they made landfall and it was an interesting sight. Had Jonas not been there, Matt would have even been pleased, but instead, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the man that showed up so unexpectedly on their doorstep in the middle of the night.
“Matt,” Jesse greeted from his chair. “Come on in and join us. Jonas made breakfast and it’s actually good.”
Jonas looked at Jesse with a creased brow and then at the faces of the others. “I’m not sure how you meant that but I think that I’ll choose to take that as a complement,” he said curiously.
Jesse stuffed a fork full of pancakes into his mouth and was unable to apologize, though he did nod.
“Mister Harper,” Matt addressed in a tone so firm that everyone from the table looked up. Ignoring the looks of curiosity and disapproval from the others, Matt kept his eyes fixed on the relative stranger. “I need to talk to you outside,” he said then turned and walked out of the cottage before Jonas, or anyone else for that matter, could protest.
As Matt stood outside and waited for Jonas, he pulled the sleeves of his SBPD sweatshirt down around his arms. Since the day they arrived the temperatures had gradually dropped, but now, with a gray sky above and an icy, stiff wind blowing in from the water, it was clear that a storm was on the way. Funny that it would arrive on the same day as our unexpected guest, Matt thought.
Taking his time, Jonas stepped out of the cottage, pulling a sweater over his head as he approached. “Sorry that took so long, but I wanted to pull the biscuits out of the oven before coming out,” he said with a wide smile.
“You’re just a regular Betty Crocker…aren’t you?” Matt said dryly.
Jonas’s expression didn’t change and Matt thought that the man was too controlled. “I understand that you’re upset,” he said calmly. “Believe me, it wasn’t my idea to come out here.”
“You seem to be coping all right,” Matt sneered, not even attempting to hide the contempt in his tone, and not feeling that it was necessary to do so in the first place.
Jonas continued to smile and even exhaled a small laugh. “Just because I’m stuck here doesn’t mean that I have to make the worst of the situation.”
The smug gaze on Jonas’s face was like a beaming, bright red target and it took every ounce of self-control Matt had keep his hands at his side and not punch the man in the nose. “So why are you here?”
Jonas took in a deep breath and for the first time since his arrival, his smile dropped somewhat. “My partners were uncomfortable not having someone here to keep an eye on things and being the junior partner, I drew the short straw.”
Matt’s doubt must have been apparent, because for the first time since they met Jonas appeared uncomfortable.
“I tried to tell them that you neither needed nor wanted any of us here, but it’s their island and what they say goes…at least as far as who is here and who isn’t.”
“Well then, perhaps we should just pack up and you can hire a different team…” Matt said with no pause whatsoever, “…one that doesn’t mind having their shoulders looked over and doesn’t mind if the results can be construed as being in your favor.”
This time Matt seemed to hit a homerun as Jonas clearly took offense to the accusation. “That isn’t why they sent me here and I have no intention of interfering or going anywhere near this investigation,” he avowed.
“I’ll believe that once you’ve left,” Matt said with equal assertion.
For a moment the two of them stared at one another in a scene that must have been reminiscent of an old west standoff.
“Look,” Jonas said, finally breaking the silence, “I’m not going to leave, so you and your team are going to have to deal with it.”
Matt’s hands balled up into tight fists, but he forced himself to keep them at his side.
“And I don’t want you and your team to leave. From everything I’ve read, and after speaking with them this morning, I still think that you’re the best and I want you here,” Jonas assured. “And I promise that I won’t get in the way,” he said and glanced down at Matt’s tight fists, “in fact, you and your people won’t even know that I’m here unless you change your mind and want to use me in some way.”
Matt could have hit Jonas and probably would have had the door not opened and Jorden walked out. She stepped up to the two of them and looked from one to the other with her eyes finally resting on Matt’s fists. “Am I interrupting something here?”
Immediately Matt’s fists relaxed and he looked at her. Though she said that she’d been feeling better, she still looked pale, and the icy wind that blew around them visibly chilled her and made her appear even frailer. “We’re done here,” he said then forced a warm smile, “Let’s get inside.”
Before Jorden could protest, he placed his hand on her back and guided her back into the cottage. He then followed her into the dining room, never looking back to see if Jonas was following; though he heard the man’s footfalls following closely.
“There’s a storm moving in, so I want to limit the teams that are out tonight. I think that we’ll go ahead and start analyzing what we’ve done so far, so I’m going to need the other two laptops set up in the den and I want To
ny, Jesse, Saph and Jorden to work on that,” he said then looked across the table. “Nigel, I want you to step up your research on this place. I want it finished by the time we reach the hospital grounds,” he ordered shortly then looked back at Jorden, “and that goes for the analysis as well. We have three days of footage and it shouldn’t take more than a day or two to go over it.” Knowing that he was being short with his team he took a moment to take a deep breath, though it did very little to improve his disposition. “As for the rest of us, Syd and Isis are going back up to the bell tower,” he said and tried to ignore the twisted look of confusion and worry from Jorden. “Ana, you’re with me in the cemetery. I want to take a look at your mausoleum,” he concluded. “Any questions?”
“Yeah, I have one,” Nigel said as he wiped his mouth with a white linen napkin. “What side of the bed did you wake up on this morning?”
Matt glared but didn’t answer. “Any real questions?” he almost growled.
When no one said anything he turned and headed into the den where he slumped down on the sofa. He hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before, in part due to Jonas’s arrival but mostly due to Jorden’s encounter and reaction to it, and all he wanted to do now was sleep. He closed his eyes, though immediately knew that sleep wasn’t going to be allowed when he felt someone sit down on the sofa beside him. When he opened his eyes, he found Isis sitting there with a cup of coffee in hand. “You look like you need this more than I do.”
“Black?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Did our guest make this?” he asked with a sneer.
Her brows creased. “Of course not. You know that the only one who touches the coffee pot in this group is me.”
Thankfully he took a sip.
“So, aside from the obvious, what’s got you wound up like a knotted yoyo?” she asked as she settled back.
“Just the obvious,” he said flatly.
“You know, none of us care for him either, but you can’t take your aggravation for the man out on the team. We’re all trying to deal with the situation and we need you to set a positive example if we’re going to get through this smoothly. The last thing we need is to be forced to break up fights between you and Jonas, or anyone else for that matter.”
The Haunting of Isola Forte di Lorenzo Page 9