Hearts of Darkness: A Valentine's Day Bully Romance Collection

by Joanna Mazurkiewicz

  “When I stop turning it, yes,” Tyler answered calmly. He was a whiz at operating these antiquated machines. Brent hated them. He wished that these local libraries would get with the times and put their records on the cloud so he could just access them with his smart phone.

  Tyler stopped the whirring of the machine, and the newspaper page came into focus. The date on the page was February 22, 1909.

  “Murder-Suicide on Keifer Farm,” Tyler read aloud. “These are our peeps.”

  He dropped a coin into a slot on the side of the machine, and a copy of the page in question began to print. Brent looked at the monstrosity they were using and shook his head.

  “How old is this crap, anyway?”

  “The microfilm machine? New. State of the art.”

  “Seriously?”

  Tyler looked at him with a smile. “Not everything is digital, Gameboy.”

  Steve smiled behind his camera, and Brent grabbed the printout to cover his annoyance. “Okay, so this is about the neighbor finding the bodies. Sounds like it was pretty gruesome. It said that Catherine, the wife, could only be identified by the clothes she was wearing and her wedding ring.”

  “Yeah.” Tyler leaned his chin on his hand. “He beat her face in with the butt of a pistol, the story goes.”

  “Too bad they didn’t do autopsies back then.”

  Tyler started to rewind the microfilm. “They did autopsies on Lizzie Borden’s parents, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t have done some on these people.”

  A thought occurred to him, and it was so ridiculous that he laughed at himself. “We could always call Emma and ask her to ask the victims.”

  Tyler smirked. “Yeah, right. As if.”

  “See, you don’t buy this psychic stuff, either.”

  He sat back, well pleased with himself. Over the past two seasons, there had been numerous occasions when both Quinn and Brent had been filmed making light of psychics and their abilities, but he had never gotten Tyler to join in. He hoped that maybe he would finally convince his reticent friend to air his doubts.

  “Normally, no, I don’t,” Tyler admitted. “But there’s something about Emma.”

  Steve adjusted his camera, shooting a close-up on their faces. Brent noticed the change and tried not to look into the lens. “What do you mean? You think she’s for real?”

  “Well...” He hesitated. “I’m thinking she might have some abilities that we don’t understand. I mean... “

  “Hey,” Brent shrugged. “Maybe we should have her read us.”

  Steve spoke up. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “Is she even out of the hospital yet?” Tyler shook his head. “I don’t know what happened to her, and I don’t want to push her...”

  “I do,” Brent interjected. “I wanna push her up against a wall and...”

  “Quiet,” Tyler groaned. Steve chuckled.

  “Keep talking,” the camera man encouraged.

  “Don’t you dare.” Tyler glared at his two companions in turn. “This is the era of Me Too, and that would be evidence. No. Way.”

  Brent chuckled. “I’m not really gonna do anything to her.”

  “Too bad,” Steve said. “From what I saw, she’s hot. She’s probably down for the D.”

  “If so, it wouldn’t be mine,” Brent snorted.

  Tyler chuckled. “As long as Quinn is around, none of us has a chance.”

  “Maybe she’s into older men. Think she might like to take a tumble on Professor Montcalm?” He warmed to his own theory. “Maybe the prof wants her. I mean, he was pretty intense about warning us off of her.”

  Steve laughed, but Tyler rolled his eyes. “He’s trying to keep the college out of any sexual harassment lawsuits, idiot. I don’t think cock-blocking us was his motivation.”

  “Too bad,” the camera man commented. “That would make some spicy TV.”

  Brent opened his mouth to speak, but he was interrupted by Tyler’s phone, playing the ringtone had assigned to Quinn. “Yeah,” his friend said, answering the call.

  Their missing teammate’s voice said, “When you get back to the hotel, you’ve got to come to Sean’s room.”

  Tyler glanced at Brent, who shrugged. “Okay... What’s up?”

  “I’m looking at the footage of what happened to Emma last night, and you are not gonna believe this shit.”

  Brent pulled the phone out of his friend’s hand. “Speaking of Emma, is she out of the hospital yet?”

  “Yeah,” Quinn answered, and there was a weird tone in his voice that he’d never heard before. “She’s sitting right here.”

  Tyler took the phone back. “Is she okay?”

  “Seems to be. How much more you gotta do?”

  “We’re pretty much done here. We’ll be back in half an hour.”

  Brent could imagine Quinn nodding his head. “Good. See you soon.”

  Tyler put his phone away, saying, “He sounds shaken up.”

  Brent didn’t know what to say. He’d heard Quinn sound rattled by evidence exactly once, and it had been an excellent piece of video showing a glass sliding across a tabletop on its own. He couldn’t wait to see what had made their fearless leader sound so afraid.

  THEY GOT BACK TO THE hotel in what seemed to Brent to be record time, and Steve led the way up to the room he was sharing with Sean. The lights were off but the door was open, and the faint blue glow of computer monitors made the faces of their waiting compatriots look ghostly. Quinn was standing up behind Sean, who was seated at the computer’s keyboard, staring intently on the screen. Emma sat on the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, chewing on the side of her thumb. Rick was pacing, and Talia was nowhere to be found.

  “Everybody looks pretty tense,” Tyler said.

  “Come here and watch this.” Quinn beckoned his friends over, and they stood beside him, their eyes on the screen.

  The monitor showed the video Sean had taken of Emma’s run-through, and he turned the volume up until her voice roared through the room. They watched the whole thing, starting with her arrival, up until she led the way into the bedroom on the second floor.

  “That’s...” Brent started, but Tyler shushed him. He cast a pointed look at Emma, and Brent fell silent. He amended, “That’s the room.”

  “Yeah,” Quinn said. “But watch. Frame by frame... pay attention to the upper left-hand side of the screen.”

  Brent leaned in so he could see more clearly. There was a tiny spot in the area Quinn had indicated, a glowing, wobbling light that seemed to spin faster and faster as they watched. With every frame, the glowing anomaly looked less like a ball and more like the outline of a woman. They watched as the ghost - for it could be nothing else - attacked Emma, swarming around and into her. Then, frame by frame, they watched the psychic fall to the floor.

  Quinn watched his friends’ reactions as they saw the video they had wanted to film all their lives. Tyler’s jaw dropped, and Brent covered his mouth with his hand. Sean backed up the video over and over, and they watched the video at least ten times before any of them spoke.

  “Jesus,” Brent said, breaking the heavy silence first. “What the hell was that?”

  “Did we get a ghost on film?” Tyler asked Quinn, incredulous. “Is that what that was?”

  Quinn looked at the girl on the bed. “Emma?”

  She stopped gnawing on her thumb and tucked it into the crook of her knee. “I... honestly, I don’t remember what happened at all. I remember feeling two spirits in that room, and hearing the old man from downstairs warning me about going up, but I...” She shook her head. “Until I watched that video, I had no idea that I’d been attacked.”

  Tyler went to her and sat beside her. “Are you all right?”

  Emma looked into his face and shook her head, fighting back tears. “No.”

  Brent watched, nonplussed, as his friend pulled Emma into his arms. He was even more confused when he saw the angry, jealous expression that flitted across Quinn’s face. He t
urned back toward the monitor, finding the paranormal easier to understand than his partners.

  “So...” He looked at Sean. “When you were filming in the moment, did you see that thing then?”

  “No,” the camera man answered. “I honestly didn’t see anything until just today, when I looked at the video.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I called Montcalm,” Quinn said. “He’s actually in his room on the phone with Henry right now.”

  Brent laughed. “Wow. I’ll bet Henry is beside himself...”

  “Most likely.”

  Quinn sounded distracted, and when Brent looked, he saw his friend staring at Tyler and Emma. “Uh... dude.”

  “Shut up, Brent.” Quinn went to the door. “Tyler, can I talk to you?”

  Emma pulled out of the young man’s comforting embrace and wiped her face. “No. Don’t be that way.” She stood up, squeezed Tyler’s hand, and walked to Quinn. She looked him in the face, and there was something strange and distant in her eyes. She spoke softly, sounding distracted. “You look like him.”

  Emma touched Quinn’s cheek with her fingertips, then pulled back with a gasp. Brent bolted to his feet in consternation, and Quinn grabbed her wrist. She yanked it away from him and left at speed, fleeing down the corridor and ducking into her room. She slammed the door and threw the deadbolt.

  “What the what?” Brent asked, thoroughly confused.

  Tyler and Quinn stared at one another, and Brent went to stand between them.

  “No. We are not fighting amongst ourselves over a chick.”

  “Nobody’s fighting,” Quinn disagreed sharply.

  “Not yet,” Sean said.

  Quinn turned around and glared at the camera man. “See if you can make a couple of back-up copies of that film. I don’t want to take the chance on losing it.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Tyler started to leave, and Quinn grabbed his arm. “Are we good?”

  He pushed his glasses back and nodded. “Yeah. It’s time to interview the clients.” He glanced at the others. “You coming?”

  Brent wasn’t certain what had just happened, but he was glad that they were getting back to work. At least this routine was something that he understood.

  THEY CONDUCTED THE interviews with the homeowners, getting them to describe their experiences. Steve did the filming, which left Brent in front of the camera. He was uncomfortable with this new arrangement, and he felt like an idiot, sitting there like a bump on a log while Tyler was insightful and Quinn charmed the family.

  They took the footage of the interviews back to Professor Montcalm’s room. He had a suite, and the sitting area had been turned into a television production facility, with equipment everywhere and cords running across the floor like spaghetti after a food fight. Quinn and Tyler had been tense with each other, and Brent wasn’t looking forward to what the night would bring.

  Professor Montcalm looked up at them. “Okay, gents,” he greeted. “Tonight is your first investigation. It’ll be the three of you, plus Steve and Rick. Talia will drive you out to the location. The family will be staying here at the hotel for the next several nights, like they did last night, and you’ll have the run of the house and property. Do you have any questions before you go?”

  Quinn answered, “Just one. Will Emma be joining us for this investigation?”

  They all looked at him in surprise. “That wasn’t the plan,” Professor Montcalm answered. “Do you want her to?”

  “I was just asking.”

  Brent thought his friend sounded defensive, and that wasn’t like Quinn at all.

  “She’ll be with you tomorrow night,” the professor told them. “Tonight it’s all you.”

  “Good,” Tyler said. “I don’t need the distraction.”

  Brent laughed. “She distracts you?”

  “Of course she does,” his friend answered, annoyed. “Doesn’t she distract you?”

  “I’m more bothered by being in front of the camera instead of behind it,” he shrugged.

  Talia came into the room. “Okay, boys. Miss Emma wrote each of you a little note. I guess she had spirit messages for each of you. It’s up to you if you want to read them, but she wanted you to have these before you went for your ghost hunt.”

  She handed each of them folded pieces of paper. Quinn shoved his into his back pocket with a roll of his eyes, and Tyler tucked his away, too. Brent opened his.

  Your Grandmother is proud of you. She says it’s time you stepped into the early daylight, Emma had written.

  He stared at the note. His grandmother, who died when he was only eight, had always tried to encourage him to overcome his debilitating shyness. The exact words she used were “step into the early daylight.” There was no way she could have known that exact phrase.

  “But... Talia... when did she write these?”

  “Just a minute ago.” She grinned. “Did she get ya?”

  He nodded. “She got me.” He looked at his friends. “I can hardly wait to see what she wrote to you guys.”

  “I can,” Quinn said. He tossed a hard look at Tyler, who ignored him. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Chapter Ten

  When they got to the house, it took them an hour just to get all of the cameras and equipment set up to their liking. They had IR cameras, EMF detectors, ghost boxes, handheld recorders, K2 meters, Mel meters, and FLIR thermal cameras deployed all around the house, and soon there wasn’t a single square inch of the old building that wasn’t under surveillance. Quinn double checked all of the camera placements, and when he was satisfied, they got to work.

  Brent turned off the last of the lights, and Quinn began, holding his voice recorder loosely in his right hand as he walked into the house.

  “Is there anybody here with us?” he asked. “Ezra Keifer, are you here?”

  They stood in silence for a moment, giving the spirits time to respond. Nothing happened.

  “Seems pretty quiet,” Tyler said.

  “Yeah.” Quinn looked around, even though it was too dark in the house to really see. Brent should have been watching through the infrared setting on the camera, but instead he was standing to the side, watching without the benefit of knowing what was going on. Steve panned slowly across the team, filming each of them where they stood, and Brent was struck by how stupid the whole thing was: three grown men, standing in the dark, talking to nothing.

  They tried everything to get a response from the ghosts, and nothing worked. There were no voices on the ghost box. The EMF and the K2 never deviated from the values they’d obtained on the baseline sweep. They even split up and sent Tyler by himself into the bedroom where the murders had taken place, and nothing happened.

  Finally, after hours of futility, they wrapped for the night. When the lights came on and they started to gather their equipment, Steve told Quinn, “Wow, man. That was... really boring.”

  Quinn nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

  “The family who lives here talked about all this stuff happening almost every day,” Brent complained as he coiled up an electrical cable. “We didn’t get so much as a single tap on the wall.”

  “Maybe Emma took the ghosts out of here when she left,” Tyler suggested. “I mean, we saw that... whatever it was, apparition or mist or anomaly... go into her body. Maybe the ghosts are with her.”

  Quinn straightened from packing the equipment and looked at Tyler. “You know, that’s not a bad theory. I wonder if we should do an investigation in her room tonight.”

  Brent burst out laughing and made air quotes with his fingers. “Do an investigation,” he said. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

  “How old are you?” Tyler asked. “My dad says stuff like that.”

  Quinn turned around and asked Steve, “Are you still filming us?”

  “Of course. You’re the stars of the show, and everything you do is interesting.”

  “Not everything. Turn that thi
ng off.”

  Steve grinned. “No way. You’re not the boss of me, man.”

  “Who is?”

  “Rogerson. And he wants me to film every time you talk about that girl, or look at her, or anything.” Steve turned off the camera. “But I guess we’re done here until we get in the car, right?”

  “Right.”

  Rick, who had been utterly silent all night, started to pack up the boom mike he had been carting around. “Have you guys read your notes yet?”

  “No,” Tyler admitted. “I’m going to wait until we get back.”

  Brent nodded. “If she wrote anything half as interesting as what she wrote for me, you’re going to be amazed.”

  Rick looked at the lead investigator. “What about you, Quinn?”

  “I have no interest in playing that game,” Quinn muttered. “Okay, I’m going to do a check of the upstairs to make sure we didn’t leave anything.”

  They watched him leave the room, then Brent turned to Tyler. “You two haven’t said bupkis to each other all night. What gives?”

  Steve turned the camera back on.

  “He’s giving me the cold shoulder,” Tyler shrugged.

  “Dude, you’re freezing him out, too.” Brent loaded his cables into a padded case and closed the lid. He handed the case to Rick, who carted it out to the vehicle. “Are you guys fighting over Emma?”

  “No!” Tyler’s denial was loud and came with a furtive glance toward Steve, who grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. He frowned in annoyance and continued, his voice more moderated. “We are not fighting over anything, and especially not over a woman.”

  “Well... if you say so, but you weren’t like this before she showed up.”

  Tyler slammed the lid shut on the case he was packing, and he turned his irate glare on his friend. “What difference does it make? Friends have issues once in a while. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “No, but it is negativity, and it brings negative energy into a place where there might be dark entities. “ Brent picked up more cables. “I’m just saying that we might be buying trouble with you guys fussing this way.”

  “We’re not fussing,” Quinn said, walking back into the room. He had a voice recorder in his hand. “Forgot this.”