Liv opened the folder and examined the photograph. It was of Kayla and an old woman sitting around a small kitchen table. Kayla looked a little younger and her hair was several inches shorter. The old woman was clutching a crucifix with one hand and gesturing wildly with the other. Tiny pinpoints of light dotted the space around her. "Did you see these at the time?" Liv pointed at the picture where Kayla appeared to be looking directly at the other woman.
She shook her head. "Nope. It wasn’t until I looked at the recording the next day that I caught a glimpse of them." With her index finger she traced the dots. "Those are yellow. I’ve seen pictures of green, white, and red, too." A buzzing fly circled her head and she shooed it away with a few swats of her hand.
"Wow." Liv set the photograph down and looked at the computer screen with renewed interest. "So have you seen any yet on this recording?"
"Not yet. But that’s why I’ve got the speed cranked up. They’re actually easier to spot in fast-forward mode. Sometimes the balls appear and disappear all in the same spot. Those are called stationary light balls. But more often they dart around objects or people like fireflies and leave a light trail the way a shooting star does. There’s almost no research on them though, because the only evidence they exist at all is photographic. They’re not visible to the naked eye in real time and no ‘normal’ or at least plausible environmental cause can explain their presence in most cases." Kayla turned her head and regarded Liv seriously for a moment. Then she smiled. "I like this." She wrapped her fingers around Liv’s and squeezed gently.
"Holding my hand?" Liv asked impishly.
"Yes," Kayla admitted with an arched brow. "But I meant working with you." Her smile widened until it shaped such a contented, happy grin that Liv found herself mirroring it without thought.
"Me too, Kayla. I feel like I’m learning a lot."
"You are. And you’re doing great." As abruptly as it came, however, the tender moment passed, and Kayla was all business again. She pulled her reading glasses out of the front pocket of her denim shirt and tucked her hair behind her ears before starting up the recording again. "This is murder on my eyes," she complained slightly petulantly. "No wonder I need these damn things."
They were sitting shoulder to shoulder, and Liv whispered her thanks when Kayla tilted the screen a little so they both had a good view. The picture suddenly went black and Kayla took a moment to replace the DVD. "Nothing for the kitchen. First floor hallway’s next." The scene changed to the narrow passage that led to the first cluster of guest rooms.
"So do you think this place is haunted?" Liv asked curiously, her eyes glued to the screen. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer, but if she was going to get serious about this job she was going have to accept that it was at least a possibility.
"The feelings you described to me earlier… the ones you had last night, downstairs?"
Liv nodded, remembering the icy chill that had chased down her spine and how the hair on her arms had stood on end as though being subjected to static electricity. "How could I forget?"
"Those are very consistent with reported hauntings." Kayla frowned. "Though the whole blood-on-the-wall thing is really more in line with demonic possession or some sort of cult ritual than it is ghostly. The profiles of those events are very distinct. And if I do say so myself," she shrugged self-deprecatingly, "I have a pretty good sense about these things and this seems like a haunting of some sort to me." Kayla surprised herself a little by how sure she was. She tried not to form any sort of opinion until she’d analyzed all the hard data, but something about this job was different.
Liv swallowed hard. "Demonic? As in: Linda Blair, crosses, and spewing green pea soup?"
"Don’t be ridiculous," Kayla laughed. "Besides, I’d spew too if I ate pea soup." She mock-shivered. "Yuck."
"Thank God." Liv breathed a sigh of relief. "I knew that had to be fake."
"Oh, it wasn’t fake," Kayla corrected her conversationally. "The film just combined several well-documented accounts of Satanic possession into one single incident for dramatic effect." She snorted in disgust. "So unrealistic. Speaking in tongues, the Stigmata,
and
levitation? I mean, come on!" She looked at Liv as though her conclusion was completely obvious. "You might get two of those–tops."
The smile vanished from Liv’s face. "I feel so much better now," she said flatly. "Thank you."
"No problem. But we don’t deal with those intentionally, Liv. There are specialists who do, just like I specialize in—"
"Ghosts?"
"You could say that." Kayla stopped the recording again and jumped to her feet. She handed the machine to Liv. "Bathroom break for me and those six cups of coffee you bought." She glanced at the computer then back at Liv. "Can you keep going on your own?"
"Sure," Liv answered excitedly. Another fly buzzed around her face, and she batted it away, smiling diabolically when she hit it and sent it sprawling to the wood floor.
"Great. I’ll be back in a few. If you spot anything out of the ordinary just pause the recording, okay?" She left the room, chuckling to herself when she heard Liv cursing as the dazed insect flew up from the floor and began annoying her again.
"Go ‘way!" Liv’s hand darted out, and in an impressive display of coordination she snatched the fly out of mid-air and threw it hard against the floor, ending its tiny existence instantly. She stared at its lifeless, black body for a few seconds. "Don’t look at me that way," she warned. "You made me do it. It’s not like I wanted to."
Free from distraction, the blonde woman turned her attention back to the laptop screen. After a few moments she felt her attention began to wane. She rubbed her eyes and when she glanced back at the screen she saw it. "Whoa!" She hit ‘pause’, then ‘rewind’, and ‘play’. It was so fast that she nearly missed it, but if she was careful, she could pause it at just the right frame and see a fluorescent blue light ball. It looked just like the ones from the picture Kayla had showed her, and when she allowed the recording to play she could see it began at one end of the hallway and race erratically to the other end, where it disappeared. "Oh, wow." Liv paused the recording again and pushed to her feet. "I can’t wait to show Kayla this. She’s going to freak."
She looked towards the door, feeling for the first time since coming to Edinburgh that she’d actually made a contribution towards this case. Sure, Kayla would have probably found it herself. But the point was, it wasn’t Kayla, it was her. It wasn’t obvious either; it had been a good catch. "Where are you, ghostbuster? You didn’t drink
that
much coffee."
Another fly landed on the tip of Liv’s nose. "God dammit!" She knocked it away and glared down at her previous victim, which was still lying on the floor quite dead. Liv carefully set down the laptop, her eyes scanning the large room. In the very upper corner she spied several more buzzing flies. "Where are you little nasties coming from?" she wondered aloud. Moving closer, she peered at the white wall, the same wall that had supposedly been drenched in blood only weeks before. Would bugs still be attracted to it? Probably, she decided, though surely the painters would have scrubbed it clean before painting, right?
She lifted her eyes up to the corner again. Several more flies had mysteriously joined the first few. She walked a few steps to the window and gave it a firm tug. It was closed tight. When she looked back the number of bugs had decreased. "What the—? Ah. Ha." The flies were moving into the corner of the room and disappearing into the wall.
There must be a crack.
She took a step closer and heard a tiny crunch under her foot. Liv lifted her shoe and noticed a few crushed paint chips stuck to its sole. She brushed them off. "Hmmm…"
Doing something she’d only seen in the movies, she made a fist and knocked on the wall.
Okay, that would have been more enlightening if it hadn’t sounded exactly like a wall.
But gamely she walked over to another wall and repeated the process. The resultant noise sounded firmer, and definitely less hollow.
Twin eyebrows jumped.
Something behind the other wall perhaps?
Liv spun around at a faint noise. "Kayla," she called out loudly, straining to listen. "Are you there?"
Silence.
"Okay, don’t be such a chicken," Liv said on a shaky exhale. "The only working bathroom is downstairs." She cringed because she’d found that out the hard way yesterday. "Kayla just can’t hear you." Liv put her hands on her hips and returned her attention to the wall, puzzling out how she could see what was behind it without tearing a hole in it. Next door, she remembered, was a small sitting room. "Well," she sighed, "might as well see what it sounds like from that side. It’s probably best that I’m alone anyway, considering I’m already talking to myself like a crazy person."
Like the rest of the house, the study sat empty. Except for the wall that it shared with Mr. Keith’s bedroom, which was covered with built-in, ornate, oak cabinets. Liv drew her fingers across the dust-free surface. The craftsmanship was truly beautiful. And they also meant that she wasn’t any closer to figuring if there was something behind the wall. She opened one of the tall cabinet’s doors, which creaked quietly. The empty space was almost big enough for her to stand in, so she did just that. Deciding this was as close as she was likely to get to the actual wall, she knocked on the cabinet back, giving it several solid thumps. On the third hit, the wooden back gave way, swinging away from Liv and sending out a wave of warm, stagnant air.
A horrible, putrid smelled assaulted her and Liv covered her mouth and nose and stumbled back out of the cabinet. "Jesus," she coughed, trying to keep from gagging as a small swarm of flies flew out, some hitting her in their confusion before darting away. "Eww." Safely out of the cabinet, she glanced back at the study door. "Kayla," she called again, growing more alarmed with every passing second. Her partner had been gone for nearly twenty minutes and she was torn between going downstairs to look for her and continuing her exploration of the secret she’d just discovered.
With a sigh she schooled herself in patience.
She’s still busy, Liv. Get a grip. You can’t go charging downstairs for no good reason and start banging on the bathroom door like some psycho. She’ll think you’re ridiculous. Part of her taking on a partner should be that she can have a few minutes to pee in peace if she wants to. But how friggin’ long does it take to use the bathroom? Tomorrow, dammit, we’re going to the grocery store for some prunes or bran muffins or something. I don’t care what she says.
"Okay." Liv shooed away several more flies. "Let’s see what we have in there. Please God, don’t let it be a body." She froze, not having really considered the possibility until the words tumbled out. "Oh, shit." She searched her mind but neither the files nor Glen or Mr. Keith had mentioned that someone was missing.
Okay, it’s probably not a body. Maybe it’s a dead mouse or something. Yeah.
She suddenly felt a little better.
That’s disgusting, but I can live with that.
Liv pinched her nostrils shut and moved back to the cabinet, ducking her head into the space between the walls. It wasn’t, she discovered, really a hidden room like the ones they’d found in the house on Cobb Island. Rather, it appeared to be nothing more than an extra-large space between the walls.
That’s how all these old houses are, for all I know.
The space was no more than three feet wide and traveled the full length of the wall. The light that spilled in from the study wasn’t strong enough to reach the corners of the hidden space, but Liv’s eyes were already beginning to adjust to the shadowy interior.
A folding metal chair came into view, and a tiny table that was, upon closer examination, a TV tray. On the tray was a pair of sewing scissors, a roll of masking tape, and a small pad of paper covered with doodles and phrases that were scribbled unevenly across its surface.
I can read that later, when I’m not in here.
She stuffed the pad in her back pocket and picked up an empty pack of cigarettes and a matchbook.
Ah. Some light.
She let go of her nose and lit a match and moved a few steps deeper into the space between the walls. The smell was filtering through her pinched fingers, bringing with it a disturbingly familiar odor.
Blood.
She closed her eyes.
Don’t freak. Don’t freak.
"Ouch!" The match burnt out against her fingertips. Wincing, Liv popped her fingers into her mouth then lit another match. Several more flies buzzed around her head but she didn’t try to knock them away for fear of extinguishing the tiny flame with her movement. The pack only had three left.
A few feet more and her eyes widened at the sight of what the flies were so attracted to. She stared in horror. "Oh, my God."
Liv felt a sudden rush of cool air behind her. The match blew out and the hidden door behind her slammed shut, plunging her into inky darkness.
Liv’s heart began to pound so hard she truly feared it would explode out of her chest, and her fingers were trembling so hard she could barely light another match. But finally it did light, illuminating the space in a hazy, golden glow. She let out a slightly hysterical laugh, relieved beyond measure that, other than the flies, she was still alone. She moved to the hidden door and with a gentle tug on a rope that had been nailed to the wood as a makeshift door handle, she pulled open the door. "S’okay," she told herself, laying a palm on her heaving chest. "Everything is okay. It was nothing."