Excessica Anthology BOX SET Winter (102 page)

“Hey,
looks like the reunion came to you,” Zack’s voice came over the headset.

“An
earlier warning would have been appreciated. I nearly fell out of my chair.”

“Sorry,
was taking a leak.”

Looking
through the little window, she groaned. Carla opened the door. “Hey, what are
you doing here?” she asked Bobby who had Sara and Pete in tow.

“We
thought you could use some company, coffee,” Bobby told her and shoved a large
Styrofoam cup in her hand.

“Thanks.
Come in before people think a party is going on.”

“Damn,
looks like a stakeout setup,” he said, pulling himself up through the door.

“Whoa!
Thermal surveillance,” Pete said, coming in and heading straight for her
workstation.

“I’m
ignorant to all this, but ghosts don’t have body heat. Do they?” Sara asked,
remaining near the door.

Carla
ran her fingers through her short dark hair, knocking the headset off. She
grabbed it and put it back in place. “Listen, guys. I don’t mean to be rude,
but I’m working here.”

“Oh,
well, maybe we should go, Pete,” the woman said.

“This
is inside the house. It looks like an empty room,” Pete commented when he moved
to another monitor.

“It’s
the west bedroom on the second floor.” A smoky gray patch darted across the
room and he jumped back, causing her to grin.

“Did
you see that? What was it?”

She
picked up the book and documented the movement. “A child who died in that room
in the early 1940’s.” Letting her eyes rove over the other monitors, she
grasped the mouthpiece of the headset just as Zack let out a hearty “whoa” in
her ear. “Zack, I see a grouping. Is that what you’re getting?”

“Where’s
he at? Inside the house?”

She
waved Pete off and sat down, her eyes moving to the thermal and bringing up the
dining room full-screen. “Temps dropped seventeen degrees.” She went back and
forth between the monitors. “Maybe five?”

“Holy
moly, I think there’s more. Do you see how some of the black formations widened
like they’re standing close to each other.”

“This
could be the start of a change I hoped to see.” She made quick notes as she
watched, more to remind herself when she went back later to fill in details.
The master bedroom camera went snowy and she switched the thermal to check it
out. A black shadowy form stood in the corner of the room. “Master bedroom
dropped nine degrees. Looks like activity in the northwest corner.”

“Well,
mama, looks like your baby’s coming alive early this year. Settle back with a
bowl of popcorn and enjoy.”

“Didn’t
think to stock it.” Hands laid on her shoulders and she jumped. She’d forgotten
she wasn’t alone.

“What
is it you need? I’ll run and get it.”

She
shook her head. “Thanks, but it’s not anything I need.”

“Are
they staying long?” Zack asked.

“Not
sure.” She returned the monitor back to multiple views and sat back with her
arms folded, watching. It wasn’t normal for the apparitions to hang around this
long.

“Hey,
a cat ran through camera four. Guess it’s back working.”

“Maybe
it feared you’d break dance or something and froze up.”

“Funny.
See what the people want, I’ll keep watch.”

“Back
in five.” She took the headset off and turned in her chair. “I don’t want to be
rude, but wasn’t there an after-party party you were going to?”

“We’re
on our way, just dropping Bobby off.”

She
looked up at Bobby who stood with his hands deep in his khaki pockets. His
blues moved from the monitors behind her to her questioning browns. “You’re
staying?”

“If
it’s all right with you.”

“I
guess, but you’ll find it boring.”

“Not
bored so far.”

“Ok.
We’ll check in tomorrow. Maybe, if nothing is going on, we can talk you into
coming out for a while,” Pete told her.

“If
the reunion was any other weekend, sure.”

Chapter
4

Alone
with Bobby, Carla wasn’t sure what to do, or say. She took a long drink of her
soda and scanned the rooms of the house barely noticing things were back to
normal while her mind whirled with one question.
What now?
She finished
off the soda and tossed the can in the trash can sitting nearby.

“Carla,”
he said with a familiar softness. “I’m sorry.”

“For
what?” she asked, looking up at him over her shoulder.

“The
cockeyed things I said about your interest in the paranormal.”

She
held her breath, absorbing the sincerity in his voice. That’s all she ever
wanted. “Why now?”

“I’ve
learned a thing or two over the years.”

“Why
would you bother?”

“I
never stopped thinking about you, so I read and researched.”

“My
word wasn’t good enough, but you’re willing to see what other people say and
suddenly you believe me.” He gestured to the monitors, but she waited for him
to say something, anything she could buy into.

“Activity
on camera six.”

Carla
looked around, saw the spiraling dust on the floor of the basement and brought
it full screen. Remounting the headset, she spoke to Zack. “Thermal on the
basement is on your end, what do you see?”

She
jotted the activity down while he told her, “It’s showing nothing. Temperatures
holding at base.”

“Interesting.
Checking the perimeter,” she told him as she switched to outside the house to
look for any signs of window breakage. She’d put florescent tape on them to
give her something to go by.

“The
basement door is open,” Zack mumbled.

She
scanned the exterior and as far as she could tell, the windows were intact.
Going back inside the house, she saw the basement door close on the north wall
of the room.

“I’m
thinking we’re being played with. Mama’s got company and not giving the kids
her undivided attention.”

“A
bit of a stretch, don’t you think?” Carla let the pen bounce on the tabletop
while she watched the mini dustbowl wind down to nothing. When all was still,
she looked over her shoulder. Bobby wasn’t there. She looked around and he’d
moved to stretch out on the bed, his hands under his head, watching the monitors.
His gaze swung to hers, studying more than just looking. “What’s her name?”

“Who?”

“Your
wife…ex-wife.”

“Trina.”

“The
two of you met at college? You married before graduation and her parents hated
it.”

“About
sums it up, but that wasn’t what was wrong between us. I was never supposed to
marry her.”

They
stared at one another for eons. She refused to ask why not though she wanted
to. “I trusted you with something I was afraid to tell anyone else,” she ended
up telling him.

“In
my defense, I was seventeen.”

“So
was I, Bobby. We had something ultra special, so I thought. And then you go and
hurl horrible garbage and leave me standing there when I needed you—”

“Hey!
Hey-hey-hey!”

“Yeah,
Zack.”

“Third
party here.”

“Sorry.”
She flipped the sound switch off and continued her conversation. “When you
walked away from me, I felt abandoned, hurt…no devastated. Something like that
stays with you.”

Bobby
sat up on the edge of the bed near her. “Having your girlfriend tell you that a
ghost had sex with her, wasn’t my idea of fun under the bleachers. The idea
didn’t scare me so much as that you believed it really happened.”

Scared,
he was scared. The high school state wrestling champion three years running was
scared because his girlfriend told him she’d been sexually accosted by a ghost.
He rested his arms on his thighs, fingers clasped in such a serious pose, but
unlike he did for her back in high school, she’d let him talk. 

“I
had no idea what you were telling me was even possible, but it haunted me every
single night. One day, I decided to research it, and talk to people. There’s no
doubt in mind what you experienced happened. It still pumps the blood through
the heart faster, but it’s amazing you were chosen.” He pressed his fingers
against his mouth while his eyes narrowed as they looked into hers. “I want do
this with you, see firsthand, experience the paranormal with you. If you’ll let
me?”

Chapter 5

She
sat back in the chair and folded her arms. “Why the interest now? Is it because
you have no one to go home to, you’re lonely?”

“No.
Like you once said, a person has to be accepted for all she is and that
includes the work she does.” He reached out and took her hands in his. “I’ve
never stopped loving you. Trina knew that. She held it over my head for years,
refusing to divorce me. Until she found someone else.”

It
both exhilarated and saddened her to know she’d come between him and his wife,
like a mistress without the fringe benefits. Still, the fact remained, he never
once contacted her. He could have, he should have.

He
reached over and picked up a magazine from a box. “I have all of your
interviews, your articles.”

She
perused the monitors. Knowing he kept tabs on her should be some kind of
consolation, but it wasn’t.

“A
part of me couldn’t let you go even when I left town. I tried,” he continued
like a damn burst and all had to be said before he was swept away. “The women
didn’t give me that sense of home or comfort, they just weren’t you.”

“Yet,
you married Trina rather than coming back here, and didn’t bother to contact me
when it wasn’t working out,” she said, feeling the sadness of the reality.

“I
know, I should have. I wanted to so many times. I was afraid you’d shoot me
down. I wouldn’t have blamed you. I still wouldn’t, but I want a chance to earn
your trust again.”

Carla
got up and got another soda from the refrigerator. Popping the tab, she guzzled
to push back the tears stinging the corners of her eyes. She’d given up on him
ever coming around; given up on sharing her passion with anyone except Zack.

However,
she cautioned herself. If the pot stirred the way she hoped, he might high tail
it out of town faster than a locomotive. A sound from the monitors had both of
them turning to check them.

“What
is it?” he asked.

“Zack
will have to run it and break it down. Sometimes it’s noises, sometimes a
voice.” She flipped the switch to reconnect with him. “Where’s it coming from?”
she asked, searching the rooms.

“What’s
your base temperatures for upstairs?” Bobby asked her.

She
looked at him, frowning. Had he really gone to the trouble to learn the lingo?
“Sixty-six downstairs and seventy upstairs.”

“Ok,
upstairs hall and the stairs are starting to fall between them.”

They
watched and she saw a shadow begin to appear. As the area chilled, the darker it
became. “The stairs, Zack, one coming down, one at the top.”

“Got
it. So, he’s joined the team?”

“Not
exactly, later conversation. Is this what I think it might be?” She reached
across the workstation, brushing against Bobby. “Sorry.” It couldn’t be helped
though. The trailer didn’t have much space, and with her endless mass of
research there was even less room.

She
pulled a binder from the stack she kept and flipped through the pages until she
found the couple who’d fallen down the stairs to their death. Betsy and Roger
Duncan, fourth generation residents, according to what she’d learned of the
family tree. She turned to the copy of the police report and scanned down to
the conclusion. Yep, domestic dispute the report listed and they were found at
the bottom of the stairs in a rather provocative state, she determined from the
indecent
descriptive the officer had used.

“What’s
going on?” Bobby asked.

“I’m
not really sure. If this is the couple I believe, we may be seeing what
happened the night they died. If so, it’s a first for us.”

“But
not unheard of. I think I read some documentation where it happens on the night
and time of the actual event.”

“A
few months off here.” She gestured toward the thermal view. “See how the shadow
stopped in the corner of the landing and you can see the other shadow merging.”
He nodded. A few seconds later it seemed like they’d become a ball and they
stopped at the bottom and disappeared.

“Hey,
Shirley just came in, going silent for a bit.”

Startled
back to reality, Carla looked at Bobby as it sunk in that they’d just spent a
few minutes on the same plain. He really had done more than read her articles
and stuff. She told herself not to get too excited about it, she could end up
hurt again. Instead, she sat down to log the activity, and he bumped her. “You
don’t have to stand here and watch. It could be hours before there is any
further activity or we may have seen all we’re getting.”

“Doesn’t
that discourage you?”

“Definitely
not. It’s always a hit and miss event. This year, I’m all about what goes on
when no one is there stirring them up.”

 “Tell
me what I can do to help.”

“Don’t
interfere, is the thing I want to stress the most. Whatever happens, or you
think is happening, stand back and let it. If it’s too much, breathe and take a
walk.” She looked up at him, making sure he understood, he nodded. Because it
was imperative if something should go on when she did enter the house.

Carla
picked up another three-inch binder and tossed it over on the bed. “If you want
to know the dirt on the house, those are the reports I’ve made.” He looked at
it with obvious curiosity and finally moved from her side, giving her some
breathing room.

Chapter
6

“Hey,
I’m going to play back the sounds, want to join me?” Zack said in her ear.

“I’ll
be right in.” She flipped the switch off and stood. “We’re going to run the
sounds, you’re welcome to come along.”