by E. E. Holmes
“Ah, fuck,” David muttered, and ran his fingers back through his long hair, pulling several strands of it from his ponytail. “I suck at this, just ask my soon-to-be ex-wife.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, what I meant was, you may have come across other people in your travels who fancy themselves paranormal investigators but who are no more than a bunch of assholes who enjoy scaring the shit out of themselves in the dark. I am not one of those people.”
“Is that so?” I asked stiffly, though I felt my arms unknot themselves just a bit.
“It is,” David replied. “I have a Ph.D. I am a real scientist doing serious work. I’ve written scores of articles and even a book on the nature of spirit activity. My presence at occult fairs aside, I am always striving for truth and verifiable fact in what I do. And I do believe that what I can do—with my equipment and my team—can really help people. And I think if you had proof of that, you might not think I’m taking advantage of people.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the voice recorder he had been using at the occult fair. “I brought something I think you might be interested to hear.”
I looked down at the voice recorder with a vague kind of dread, like it might self-destruct at any moment. “What is it?” I asked.
“It’s what I picked up during my conversation with Lionel and Patricia Thompson. I played it back so I could write down their contact information and heard more than I had bargained for.”
Hesitantly, I stepped out from behind the counter and stood closer to the recorder, which David held out into the space between us. He pressed the playback button, and we both listened as the conversation we remembered replayed into the silent shop.
“Please go on. You mentioned knocking and footsteps.”
“That’s right. It usually only happened at night, when both of us were home. Then things started moving.”
“Moving?”
“Yes. Like, we’d put something down in one place, and then when we went back for it, it was gone.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Little things. Keys. Phones. Earrings. Hairbrushes. And they almost always seem to materialize in the same location.”
“Which is?”
“The windowsill in Reggie’s bedroom.”
The voices were as I remembered them. But there was something else that could be heard beneath the voices: a sort of low, throbbing, periodic moan that had definitely not been audible in the room at the time. It was a heart-rending sound. And then, right at the end, as Patricia’s voice broke and she succumbed to her tears, the moan stopped and four words could be heard, as plainly as though someone had whispered them in my ear.
“Please don’t cry, Ma.”
David stopped the recorder, letting the words hang in the air, so plaintive, so desperately sad. Before I could get a handle on myself, my eyes had filled with tears.
“He was right there with them,” David said, his voice halfway between a statement and a question.
I nodded.
“You knew he was there?”
I nodded again. “I saw him. For just a moment, his form manifested right behind his mother. It was probably the surge of emotion.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Pierce asked.
“Because I didn’t know if I could trust you!” I snapped. “There are a hell of a lot of people out there just trying to prey on desperate folks. Sometimes I have to assume the worst to protect myself—and people like the Thompsons.”
“That’s fair. Yeah. Yeah, I get that,” David said. “But listen, you need to realize that we don’t go into our process trying to prove that there are ghosts haunting a place. In fact, we do the opposite.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“While we do believe in the existence of spirit activity, nine times out of ten, we are able to find logical, non-paranormal explanations for what families and businesses are experiencing. We look to debunk much more than we look to confirm, and that’s the God’s honest truth. More often than not, a haunting is just a plumbing issue or a bird stuck in the attic, or a baby monitor picking up errant frequencies. And we help people just as much by putting their minds at ease with a simple explanation as we do by confirming a spirit presence in their house.”
“I see,” I said, trying to conceal my genuine surprise.
“Look, I’m used to the skepticism,” David went on. “I’ve grown a pretty thick hide when it comes to people who doubt what I do. I would imagine the same is true of you.”
I nodded.
“I’ve developed my own healthy skepticism when it comes to anyone who claims to deal with the paranormal from a mystical standpoint rather than a scientific one. To be honest, so-called psychics and mediums and fortune-tellers often make my life significantly harder. But I do believe that true mediums exist—sensitives. And I think it’s pretty clear that you, Madam Rabinski, are the real fuckin’ deal.”
He grinned broadly at me. I scowled back.
“Thank you for your endorsement, Dr. Pierce, but I assure you I was not looking for it.”
“Oh, believe me, I know you weren’t,” David replied, throwing up his hands in a kind of “mea culpa” gesture that was somehow endearing and therefore annoyed me even more. “But the fact remains that you picked up on Reggie Thompson in ways that my equipment didn’t. You have a gift, and I need your help.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You need my help?”
“Yes. My team and I are investigating the Thompson home this weekend. I want you to come with us—to work with us.”
I blinked, completely blindsided. “I… no. I don’t do ghost hunts.”
“Don’t think of it that way,” David said encouragingly. “Just think of it as helping the Thompson family.”
I bit my lip. “I don’t… play well with others. Or so I’ve been told.”
Pierce chuckled. “That’s okay! I’m just going to stay out of your way and let you do your thing—whatever your thing is. The truth is, I’ve always hoped to find a truly legit medium to work with our team, and I’ve never found anyone who passed muster. But you… you’re the real deal. I can tell.”
I snorted. “How? Just because I claimed to see Reggie attached to his parents? How do you know I wasn’t lying? What if I told you right now that I made the whole thing up? Would you leave me alone?”
“No,” David replied with a knowing smile that was almost a smirk, which I would dearly have loved to slap off his beardy face, “because you weren’t lying and you didn’t make it up. And for the record, that EVP detector you touched was unsalvageable. Fried crispy. Anyone with that kind of electromagnetism is someone I want on my team.”
“I’m not interested in being studied like a specimen. I’m not a science experiment,” I warned.
“Well, that’s good, because I’m not interested in studying you,” Pierce said, crossing his arms and meeting the challenge in my gaze. “My only interest here is helping the Thompson family. I think you want to help them, too. That should make us allies, not adversaries. So, what do you say to joining forces, you working in your way, and me working in mine?”
I didn’t answer at first, stalling for time as I fought an internal battle. My gifts were meant to be protected, like a precious treasure, my grandmother had always told me. But what good was treasure buried away? Shouldn’t I be helping people—and I mean truly helping people, without all the crystal balls and smoke and mirrors to cheapen the effect?
“What do you expect from me on this… investigation?” I hedged, stalling for time.
“Nothing extraordinary, I assure you. Come see what we do. I think you’ll be impressed. And we’ll give you whatever time and space you need in the house to see what your sensitivities pick up. I’m not expecting miracles here. I just think we should bring in as many avenues of help for this family as we can.”
Ugh. He looked so earnest. Like a Boy Scout. I couldn’t say no to him. And hence, David Pierce roped me into his nonsense for the first time.
; “Fine. I’ll do it. But under no circumstances can you spring me on those poor people. Get their permission for me to come, or I won’t do it. Tell them whatever you like, but just remember: I’m doing this for them, not you, and I am not joining your team.”
David’s smirk broke into a delighted grin. “It’s a deal.”
§
I sat in my beat-up car outside of the Thompsons’ house for a full twenty minutes, debating whether or not I should even go in, which was the same thing I’d been doing in my head for the last five days, since David had called and said that the Thompsons had given permission for me to join the investigation. I was scared. Scared that I would make contact with Reggie Thompson and scared that I wouldn’t. Scared that my abilities would get exploited or worse, get discounted. All of it was selfish, but my brain wouldn’t let it go. Finally, though, when the time came to turn off the engine and get out of the car, I did it.
“Annabelle! You came!”
David was sitting in the back of an open van, winding electrical cords around his arm, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
“Isn’t that a fire hazard or something?” I asked.
“Not till you plug ‘em in!” he replied, grinning. “Come on inside, we’re almost entirely set up. I’ll introduce you to the rest of the team.”
And that was how I met “the boys”—my boys, these days: Iggy, Oscar, and Dan. I’ve become as fiercely protective of them in David’s absence as a mother bear of her cubs, even though both Iggy and Oscar were both considerably older than me. It’s hard to imagine now that there was ever a time we didn’t implicitly trust each other. But that day they regarded me as warily as I regarded them, though they welcomed me nonetheless. They walked me through a process for the first time that would become second nature to me in short order: the placing of cameras, the checking of batteries, the running of cables, the testing of doors, windows, switches, pipes, and appliances, all in preparation to spend the night investigating a dark and quiet house. Even though I was still skeptical at that point, I was impressed with the scale and professionalism of their operation.
Lionel and Patricia had left the house for the night already. Perhaps they had found it too unsettling to watch their home being overrun with equipment, or perhaps they didn’t want to deal with the curiosity of neighbors who kept wandering out onto their front walks to gawk at the disturbance. Either way, I was grateful that I didn’t have to interact with them yet—I was hoping to get a feel for the energy of the house without their grief and expectation weighing down on me. Over the years I’ve found that the stare of living eyes was often harder to tolerate than the eyes of the dead, and I don’t think I’ve ever met a single seasoned sensitive who disagrees with me.
Once everything was in order, Dan ensconced at his tech table, Iggy and Oscar manned with cameras, and David armed with a toolbelt of gadgets, David turned to me. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What do you need? Where do you want to start?”
“I… I don’t know. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Well, do you want to go with one of us through the house? Or would you prefer to go alone? What’s your process?”
“David, I’ve already told you, I don’t have a process. I might be a sensitive, but this is a first for me. Just… can I have a few minutes to walk through the place? Alone?”
David looked disappointed for only a moment—I’m sure he probably wanted to go with me so he could wave gadgets in the air around me as I went—but he rallied almost at once, nodding encouragingly. “Go for it. We’ll wait here until you’re done.”
As I set off through the house, the only thing I felt was… emptiness. The whole house felt like the acute absence of someone, rather than their presence. In truth, I had been expecting to feel something from the moment I had walked in the door, and the lack of energy, in itself, felt significant. How could Reggie have had such a strong presence around his parents and yet no detectable presence at all in his own house, the place to which he was most intimately connected? The only conclusion I could come to was that he was, at that moment, decidedly somewhere else.
I purposely saved Reggie’s bedroom for last. Turning the knob, I peeked my head around the door like I might be interrupting someone. The room was as heavy with his absence as the rest of the house; perhaps even more so, as the room looked as though he were about to stroll in at any minute—his comic books on his nightstand, one sneaker peeking out from under the bed, a sweatshirt tossed over the back of his desk chair. I doubted his parents had moved even a single item from where he had left it six months earlier. I could feel the tears welling in my eyes as I eased the door shut again and made my way downstairs.
“I’m all done,” I said, adopting as impassive an expression as I could muster and sitting back down at the tech table. “Your turn, gentlemen.”
“What did you—?” Iggy began eagerly, but David held up a hand to silence him.
“I actually think it would be best for Annabelle to keep her impressions to herself, for the time being,” he said. “It will prevent us from being influenced in our own personal experiences. Let’s try to remain objective. We can compare observations after we’ve finished.”
I had not expected this level of restraint from the guy who had gushed over an old set of tarot cards like they were winning lottery tickets, but I appreciated it. The rest of the team looked slightly disappointed but agreed to David’s proposition. Then they all set off separately through the house, cameras aloft and detectors flashing. I sat at the table beside Dan, who acknowledged my presence only once in three hours by asking me to pass him a bag of potato chips. One by one, Iggy, Oscar, and finally David returned to the tech table. They set down their equipment, looking crestfallen. All the eager energy that had been buzzing between them at the start of the night had faded.
“Anything from the stationary video cameras, Dan?” David asked, though without much hope.
Dan shook his head. “It’s been dead all night,” he said.
David looked at me. “I think I already know the answer to this question, but how did you make out on your walk through the house?”
I gave him a sad smile. “He’s not here. I’d bet my life on it.”
David swore under his breath. “Damn it. And I was so sure we were going to find something, after all the activity his parents reported.”
“Can I ask… did you ask the Thompsons to leave, or did they choose to go while you were investigating?” I asked hesitantly.
“We always have the family vacate the premises,” David replied. “It’s standard operating procedure. There’s far less interference with equipment when we don’t have to keep track of the clients as well as our own team.”
“There’s also the possibility that the clients are manufacturing the experience themselves,” Iggy said grimly. “Remember Sarah Spaulding?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Former client. Called us in. Swore her house was haunted, that the spirits in it were trying to kill her,” Oscar chimed in.
“And they weren’t trying to kill her?” I guessed.
“They didn’t even exist,” Iggy replied, shaking his head. “We caught her on camera scratching up her own back and turning crosses upside down. Since then, we’ve never allowed clients to stay in the house while we’ve been investigating.”
“That makes sense, as a general rule,” I said. “The problem is, I don’t think Reggie is haunting his house. He’s haunting his parents. And if you’ve sent them away, we may have ruined any chance we have of communicating with him.”
David considered this. “That’s a fair point. We’ve only been at it for three hours, though. It’s not unusual for it to take most of the night before we get interaction. You don’t think we should give it more time?”
He was asking the group at large, but he was looking at me. I shook my head.
“He’s not here, David. I’m sure of it.”
“
Right. Well, that’s good enough for me,” David replied. “Dan, have you got the contact information there? I’m going to call the Thompsons and see if they’ll agree to come back.”
§
The Thompsons readily agreed to return, and within half an hour, they walked back through the front door. The moment they did, the cloud of spirit energy that surrounded them was so powerful that it raised the hairs on my arms and seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the room. I must have gasped because David gave me a sharp look. I nodded discreetly.
“Lionel, Patricia, why don’t you come on in here and have a seat. Make yourselves comfortable. It’s your home after all, and you certainly won’t get in our way,” Pierce said when Lionel and Patricia continued to hover in their own doorway. Still looking out of place in their own house, they walked around the tech table and sat down on their sofa.
Pierce looked at me, asking a silent question which I nonetheless understood: what do we do next? I took a deep breath and sat down in the chair opposite them.
“Mr. And Mrs. Thompson, my name is Annabelle Rabinski. I appreciate you trusting me enough to invite me into your home.”
“Dr. Pierce said that you were sensitive… that you could sense ghosts, and that you thought you sensed Reggie around us at the convention last weekend,” Patricia said, her voice cracked with emotion.
“Yes, I… I did,” I replied. “I have had this sensitivity since I was about eighteen years old. My grandmother had it as well. She was the one who taught me how to cope with it. To be honest, I’ve spent most of my life trying to disguise it as something less… intimidating. The tarot cards and jingling bracelets and gypsy persona make talking to the dead less scary and more entertaining, you see—for them and for me.”
Patricia’s face twitched into a suggestion of a smile before falling again into lines of misery. “So you… you believe us? That Reggie is… is…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word. And damn it, neither could I.
“He’s with you,” I said instead. “And he’s trying desperately to communicate with you. I think that’s why we haven’t had any luck making contact with him. He’s not attached to the house. He’s attached to you.”