by Eve Evans
Surprise caught him off guard, and he blinked at me. “S-sure. I’ll be in the next room with the others. If you need anything, give us a shout, or signal to the camera.”
I gave him a thumbs up, trying to hide my apprehension, and he slipped out of the room, leaving me alone.
Making my way to the table he was sitting on, I hoisted myself onto it and shuffled back so that I was leaning against the wall. Then I closed my eyes, focusing on what I could hear around me. The soft sound of my own breathing, the faint creak and groan of things being moved by the wind outside, the patter leaves falling against-
My eyes flew open. Darkness swelled around me. The light in the room had gone out, stranding me in the gloom. Around me, the smell of blood was thick and pungent. The inside of my mouth went dry and I could almost taste it again, bitter, and metallic on my lips. Could almost feel it, on my hands, wet and slick and fresh. I glanced down, expecting to see blood on my hands, but they were clean.
I breathed shallowly through my nose, looking around.
The smell of blood was still strong. My gaze fell to the floorboards, where my mom’s blood still stained the wood.
Another chill tiptoed into the room, making goosebumps break out across my skin. I glanced up, and for a moment, I thought I saw something – an anomaly in the darkness, a shadow in the corner of the room, there and then gone in a second. I stared hard at the wall, expecting it to come back, but there was nothing there. Maybe I had just spooked myself.
Eyes could be deceiving in the dark.
Shaking away my apprehension, I dropped shakily to my feet and started towards the door.
As my hand touched the cold brass handle, a floorboard creaked behind me, and I got the overwhelming feeling that I was no longer alone in the room.
A soft gasp left my lips, but I was frozen to the spot. I could neither turn the handle nor look behind me to see if my suspicions were true.
My mind conjured images of inhuman shadows, dark, grinning faces, and I shook them all away. There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there, there’s nothing-
The door swung open ahead of me, making me stumble forward. A small hand steadied me, and when I looked up, Amie was staring at me, her lips a small oval. Her eyes flicked up, over my shoulder, then back to me.
“Are you alright?”
I straightened myself quickly, nodding. “Y-yeah,” I said, my voice wobbly. “Sorry. I thought… never mind.”
“You thought?” Max urged from behind her.
“I heard something and… felt something. I felt like there was something in there with me. Did you see anything… on the camera?”
Amie stepped aside to let me pass, and she flicked another glance in the room before shutting the door. She’d told me that keeping doors closed was a way of trapping energies and making sure they didn’t move around too much.
“Nothing unusual,” Trish said, shaking her head. She was seated in front of the monitors, watching the screens intently. “We saw your reactions, but nothing showed up on the screen.”
I nodded, slightly perplexed. How much of it did I imagine then?
“What exactly did you experience?” Max asked, handing me a glass of water he’d filled from the tap. I took it with trembling hands, seating myself at the counter.
“I thought I could smell blood… it was really strong, almost like back then, when I came home to find my parents…” I trailed off, sipping the water. It soothed my throat, and my voice came out smoother. “And then… I thought I saw a shadow move in the corner of the room, but that could have been anything I guess.”
Amie glanced at Trish, an unspoken command passing between them, and Trish started rewinding the recording.
“I started feeling a little spooked by then,” I admitted, “so I went to leave. But then I heard something behind me, and suddenly felt like I wasn’t alone.”
“Here,” Trish said, pointing to her screen. “You’re right. There’s a shadow here, moving on its own. There’s nothing in the room that could have created it,” she said, an excited tremor in her voice. “Look at it, it’s humanoid, but distorted along the walls.”
I watched her play the recording, a long, gangly-looking shadow darting from one corner of the room to the next and shuddered.
“What the hell is it?” I said, swallowing.
“Shadow figures are some of the most common signs of a haunting,” Amie explained. “Think of them as energy in ethereal form. They create apparitions that aren’t fully formed, which is why they can seem distorted like this.”
I forced myself to look away from the screen.
“Have you ever experienced anything like this before, while living here?” Max asked.
I shrugged loosely. “I don’t really remember. As a kid, I always had the usual fears – things hiding in the dark, being in small spaces. But I don’t remember ever… seeing anything. I… I don’t know.”
“It’s okay,” Max said quickly. “It was a long time ago.”
I said nothing.
“Well, looks like we’ve got something to show,” Trish said, breaking the tension. “Should we call the others back and review the recordings together?”
“Sounds good.”
Trish reached for the walkie-talkie on the table and spoke into it: “Hey, guys? Want to come back and we can see what we’ve got?”
“Sure, on our way.”
“Hear anything?” Joe asked, tapping his fingers gently against his knee with a look of studied concentration on his face. I found myself sneaking a glance towards him as we all sat around the kitchen table, remembering what Amie had said about his status as a psychic.
He doesn’t usually like to include it in the introductions. People tend to be pretty sceptic about the power of spirit communication, and he doesn’t like to give people preconceived notions of him.
I could appreciate that, and in a way, it made me trust him more. There was no unnecessary theatrics with these people. They seemed genuine in what they did, and I was starting to have a lot more faith in the existence of the paranormal after what I had already seen.
Sam said nothing. She had her eyes closed; a pair of headphones pressed tight to her ears as she listened back to the EVP session they did. The rest of us waited quietly. I kept my eyes on the monitor, watching them for any sign of movement. Even with all of us here, I felt a prickling of unease, lingering still from my experience in the sitting room. The shadow, the blood, and then the feeling of something in there with me. Was there something bad here after all, something that had caused all of these tragedies to happen in the past?
I stifled an involuntary yawn behind my hands. The others were starting to look tired too, and when I glanced at my watch, I saw it was almost one in the morning.
“Wait,” Sam said suddenly, her whole body going stiff. “Go back. Rewind it back.”
Trish did as she asked, rewinding the tape back a few minutes. Sam listened hard, clenching her eyes shut.
“I can hear something,” she muttered. “It sounds like someone crying out.”
“Let me listen.”
She passed the headphones to Joe, who cupped them over his ears and gestured for her to play it. After a few minutes, his cheeks paled, and he slipped the headphones off.
“Did you hear it?” Sam said.
“Yeah. It sounded like someone in pain, crying out.”
He shuddered softly, and part of me was glad they all seemed troubled. For as long they’ve been doing this, reactions still elicit unease. They were not insensitive to the spirits they were trying to reach.
“Can I listen?” I asked, and Joe handed over the headphones.
As soon as I had them over my ears, everything went muffled. I couldn’t hear anything but the echo of my own breathing.
I saw Sam’s mouth move around the words ‘are you ready’ and nodded. She hit play.
“Is there anyone here with us?” Joe’s voice came through the speaker, slightly distant. “If there’s so
meone here, please can you make a noise.”
There was silence for a minute, and then the shuffle of feet.
“Do you know what happened here?” Sam spoke this time. “Did you pass away here?”
Again, there was silence. And then there, in between the soft hum of static, was a different voice, lower in tone, deeper in quality. I strained to hear, gesturing for Sam to rewind. The tape went back a few seconds, and I heard it again. It was someone moaning in distress, an almost guttural, inhuman cry of pain. It made my body go cold suddenly, and I quickly slipped the headphones off.
“You hear it?”
I nodded mutely.
“I’ll finish listening to the tape, see if there’s anything else,” Sam said.
In my head, I kept hearing that noise – that horrible, guttural groan that sounded both human and inhuman.
The rest of us sat in silence, watching the monitor. Every now and then, Sam would utter something softly under her breath, but she didn’t draw our attention to anything in particular. “Oh,” she said suddenly, her expression becoming twisted. “Oh god.”
Joe reached for her arm, making her flinch, her eyes flying open.
“What is it?”
She took the headphones off, trembling slightly. “Listen.”
I held my breath, wondering what had upset her. What had she heard?
Joe listened to the recording, his own face turning pale and slack. “What the hell?”
Amie shot them both a questioning glance, and they passed the headphones over. She had a similar reaction. “What’s it saying?”
“I don’t know, but that must be one of the longest EVPs we’ve had,” Sam said. “Let Nadia listen. She might be able to decipher it.”
I took the headphones again, listening to the soft static. There were no human voices. But in the silence was the soft, guttural whisper of someone speaking. It was garbled by the static, difficult to hear exactly what was being said, but somehow the voice itself was enough to bring a chill over me. Like that cry, there was something distinctly inhuman and unnatural about the way it spoke. Yet I was confident it was no glitch in the recording. It wasn’t something a computer could produce either.
I handed the headphones back. “What is it?”
They all looked just as clueless. “I don’t know, but I don’t like the way it speaks,” Amie said with a shudder.
“Which recording did you pull that from?” Max asked suddenly.
Sam glanced at the screen. “Yours and Nadia’s.”
“What? You mean…”
“That shadow you saw, the presence you felt… this voice might belong to it,” Amie finished. “There’s definitely something here. Something that shouldn’t. I can feel the malevolence coming from its voice. Whatever it is… it’s no longer human.”
“What do we do now?” I asked, glancing at each of their faces. In the undulation of shadow and light, they all struck a solemn and discomfited figure.
Joe swallowed, glancing at Amie. “We’ve established a presence,” he said when nobody else offered an answer, “but we still need to understand why it’s here.”
“How do you do that?”
“Usually, we try a more direct means of contact,” he said with a wavering smile. “I don’t know if Amie told you, but I’m trained as a spirit medium. I can contact people who have passed on.”
“You’re going to try and speak with… with the spirits that linger here?”
Joe nodded, reaching up to scratch his beard. “I’m going to try,” he echoed with a soft chuckle. “It’s not a perfect art. But it’s the best way of establishing the root of the haunting, which helps us when we cleanse the house of its energy.”
“I think I understand,” I said, picking at a thread on my shirt. “Do you think… I mean, is it possible…”
“I can try and contact your parents, yes,” he finished. “Amie already told me. I can try and reach out to particular spirits, but it doesn’t always work. So, I’m afraid I can’t make any promises.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll get set up then,” Amie said, scraping back her chair. “Which room?”
“I think we got the most activity in the sitting room,” Joe said, flicking a glance at me. “So, we’ll try in there.”
“The rest of you, keep an eye on the monitors,” Amie said as she and Joe hauled a bag between them into the next room, letting the door swing shut behind them. We watched on the screen as they pulled the table into the middle of the room and began setting up more equipment around the room. I flicked a glance to the other camera screens, but everything seemed quiet.
“What was that?” Max asked suddenly, leaning forward in his chair. He was looking at the monitor next to mine, squinting at the top left corner – the master bedroom.
“What?” Sam asked.
“I thought I saw something,” he muttered. “Looked like someone walked past the camera.”
“Here, let me,” Sam said, pulling the monitor towards her and rewinding the recording back. We all watched as, on the screen, the camera captured a shadow flitting across the lens, as though someone had walked past quickly.
“Damn,” he muttered, “we’re picking up all sorts of activity.”
“Look, motion sensor’s going off too,” Trish said, pointing to the hallway outside the bedroom. “Like someone walked out of the room and into the hallway.”
The others seemed excited, but I felt a prickling of unease at seeing the shadowy figure disappear across the camera. Had these things been here the whole time, and I’d never noticed them?
“We’re ready,” Joe said, poking his head through the sitting room. “We just need chairs.”
“Nadia, do you want to join us?” Max asked, standing up. “Trish and Sam are gonna stay here and keep an eye on the monitors.”
“I’ll come,” I agreed, dragging my eyes away from the screen where the shadow had been. The main reason I’d come here, after all, was because of the possibility of speaking with my parents. Finding out what happened that night, why my father had killed the woman he loved. I was starting to understand now that it hadn’t been him, but whatever entity was possessing this house.
Carrying a chair through, like Joe had directed, I set it down on one side of the table. Amie and Max set theirs down at the other ends, and then Joe. As I sat down, I noticed a line of salt had been put around the table and adjusted my chair to be within the circle.
“All you need to do,” Joe said to me, “is keep your hands touching the table, and keep your mind clear.”
My hands were still shaking, and I tried to keep them still as I laid them on the table.
“Close your eyes,” Joe instructed, and I bent my head slightly so that I was looking down at the table, not at the room. I couldn’t deny I was scared. I’d never done anything like this before, and although I trusted these people, I couldn’t shake away the feeling of unease that had rooted itself in my stomach. “Okay. I’m going to reach out to anyone who is here in this room with us. If anyone wants to speak, you can. We’re opening the space to you.”
Beyond the steady sound of our breathing, I couldn’t hear anything. Someone shuffled their feet. I swallowed loudly.
“If there’s anyone here with us, please speak with me.”
Again, the room fell into silence. The wind picked up outside, wailing through the chimney. Coldness prickled my skin.
And then I felt something. A faint shift in the atmosphere. Just like before, I got the distinct, uneasy sensation that we were no longer alone.
“I can… feel something,” Joe mumbled softly. I fought the urge to open my eyes. I wanted to look, see if there was something there, but I didn’t. “There’s… there’s someone here with us? Can you tell me your name?”
I held my breath. Hair stirred against my left cheek, as if blown by a breeze. Or a breath.
All of a sudden, I felt frozen in place. Something in the room felt wrong. There was something that shouldn’t be here.
A soft whisper, low and guttural, brushed against my ear, and my eyes blinked open just as the solar light went out again. We were plunged into darkness. I blinked rapidly, my eyes slowly adjusting to the gloom, and I glanced at Joe. He wasn’t saying anything, just staring straight ahead with a strange glaze in his eyes.
I tried to open my mouth, but nothing would come out. Amie and Max still had their eyes shut; their faces schooled into portraits of calmness. Was I the only one feeling scared? Was I-
In the corner of the room, something moved in the dark. Fear clenched my throat. Joe cried out suddenly, his face twisting. “No… you’re not…”
My eyes tracked the movement in the darkness, watching a shadow bleed away from the coagulating gloom and move across the room towards us. My fingers clenched against the table, and I fought with my instincts to run. Whatever was coming wasn’t my parents, it wasn’t anything good. It was inhuman and malevolent.
“Joe-”
“No, stay away,” he cried, his whole body seizing up. “You’re the one causing this… you’re…”
Amie and Max had both opened their eyes now, staring at Joe with unabashed horror.
“Joe, what is it?” Amie asked urgently.
“It’s not… you must leave. You don’t belong here,” Joe said, his voice becoming low and tortured, his features twisting as though in pain.
I felt something brush past me, heard that same low, guttural murmur. “It’s here. It’s in here with us,” I whispered, my voice pinched. “I saw something.”
“Joe, come back to us,” Amie urged, but the medium either wasn’t listening, or he couldn’t hear.
He threw back his head, letting out a low cry. “No, get away.”
“We need to bring him back,” Max said. “Joe, can you hear me? Break away from it. Come back to us.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed visibly against his throat, a bead of sweat rolling down the side of his head.
“Joe?”
His head snapped forward suddenly, and he slumped over, panting heavily.
When he lifted his eyes, I saw they were no longer glazed over, but hooded with shadow.