The Lost: Book Two, The Eddie McCloskey Series (The Unearthed 2) (8 page)

An
a
heard a knock on her door as she scurried to tidy the apartment up. Jimbo was two hours deep into his daily nap in the bedroom, and she’d used the time to collect his beer cans and put them into the recycling. She didn’t want Eddie to see how much her boyfriend drank and how little he did around the apartment.

Satisfied that she’d gotten the living room into satisfactory condition, she said, “It’s open.”

Eddie came in.

He’d been in his car for awhile. That was along time for a man to be on the phone. She was curious who he’d been talking to and wondered if it would be bad form to check out the call history on her cell phone.

“Everything alright, Eddie?”

“Yeah.” He handed her the phone. “Thanks.”

Their fingers touched as she took the phone. A tiny jolt of excitement ran through her body.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked.

“Call Colin, we’ll try to see him tonight.”

“Sure.”

“You were out filming at the lake last week, right?”

She nodded and chewed on her bottom lip. She was embarrassed by the thought of him thinking how amateurish the tape would show her to be.

“I’ll take a look-see at the tape while you get a hold of Colin and set up the meet.”

“Yeah. Okay … Jimbo will be up soon.”

“It’s okay I’m here, right?”

“Oh yeah. It’s just, we only have the one TV and Jimbo .. he’ll want to watch his shows when he gets up.”

She noted the disapproval in his eyes.

“I don’t want to cause any trouble,” he said. “I just need a place to watch this. I don’t have a TV.”

She said, “It’s alright. I’ll tell him it’s important for the investigation.”

An
a
put the tape into the VCR and he was treated to a startling view of her magnificent posterior but managed to peel his eyes away before she turned around.

She grabbed one of the six remotes off the coffee table and handed it to him. “Okay, I’m going in the other room. I can’t stand watching myself and I hate my voice.”

“Did you watch this yet?”

“I was going to but I got caught up in that book, and then everything happened so fast last night …”

Eddie hit PLAY. Ana left the living room.

The tape started. Eddie had been expecting a green, shadowy landscape indicative of night vision tech and was surprised when the screen showed an almost pitch black view with just a couple of barely discernible shapes.

On the tape, Ana said, “Uh, guys, you wanna get the lights?”

There was a jump cut, the tape skipping ahead in time. Suddenly the dark landscape could be made out.

Someone’s breath kept fogging a corner of the screen.

“Dude, move over,” Ana said on the tape.

Someone responded to Ana unintelligibly, and she repeated her command. The breath disappeared.

Eddie heard somebody coming down the hallway. Ana appeared in the living room a moment later. “Sorry, I’m just getting a drink.”

Ana tiptoed into the kitchen and rummaged around the fridge for an inordinate amount of time before finally deciding on something then looked at Eddie while taking a swig from a bottle of seltzer. It was obvious she’d changed her mind and now wanted to watch.

Eddie paused the video. “Ana, could you do some research for me?”

“Sure. Like what?”

“Anything you can find on the houses we have to investigate. Rumors, previous owners, unsolved crimes, any violence associated with the residences. That sort of thing.”

“Busy work?”

“Important work. We do this on every investigation.”

“Yeah, okay.” She disappeared down the hallway again with her seltzer.

Eddie pushed PLAY again.

A male voice on the tape. “This is awesome, just like watcha-call-it paranormal movies.”

Another mail voice, muffled. “That’s what they’re called. Paranormal something.”

“Nah, that’s what I’m asking, what’re they called?”

“Paranormal—”

“Guys, keep it quiet,” Ana said.

No noise for some time. Someone slowly panned the camera and Eddie could see the far left end of the lake, where the water glittered from the reflection of moonlight.

* * * *

Eddie watched for what seemed like hours but in fact was twenty minutes. Reviewing the evidence was always the worst part of the job. On the tape, the two dimwits said they were going to try and capture some electronic voice phenomenon. Eddie heard them moving behind the camera.

Ana laughed. “Guys, you might want to take the tape recorder with you.”

“Oh yeah.” They promised to be back soon.

Eddie figured the real purpose in their going off was to fire up a fatty. He knew one of the guys was Jimbo, Ana’s boyfriend, and suspected the other was his best friend, Tony, the dude who’d brought the weed to the last party.

Eddie heard Jimbo’s heavy footsteps coming down the hallway. Ana’s boyfriend appeared sporting basketball shorts that were falling off him and a long-sleeved t-shirt.

Eddie paused the tape. “I’m Eddie, we met before.”

“Sure, I remember you,” Jimbo said.

Jimbo was a big guy with a dull expression on his face. His eyes were half-open. It could have been from sleep but Eddie suspected it was because Jimbo couldn’t be bothered to open them the whole way. Would have required too much effort.

Eddie asked himself the eternal question: how did this guy end up with that girl?

Jimbo took two long strides so he could see the TV better. “You almost done?”

“Think I’ve got another hour.”

“Really? We were only there about a half hour, I thought.”

Eddie kept the laugh to himself. The fool had gotten high and lost track of time and didn’t understand that the tape needed to be studied.

Jimbo put his chin to his chest and scratched the back of his neck. “It’s cool, I guess,” he said, as if giving permission. Eddie knew this was Ana’s apartment and guessed that Sasquatch wasn’t too helpful when it came to paying the rent.

Eddie hit PLAY.

Jimbo shuffled lazily into the kitchen and relieved the fridge of two beers, neither of which he offered to share with Eddie. He plopped on the love seat and put his clodhoppers on the coffee table.

On the tape, Ana said, “Hey, sis. It’s me. You around?”

Slowly, Ana panned the camera from left to right as if she were performing a tracking shot in a Spielberg flick. Then back again.

The lake was calm, the wood silent.

“My earliest memory is of you,” Ana said, projecting her voice. “I was four. We  were in the backyard and you showed me how to brush my doll’s hair.”

The camera panned back again. Jimbo chugged his beer, his eyes not even on the TV screen.

“My last memory of you was … not so nice. I was screa—”

The camera jerked to a stop and the lens auto-focused on the middle of the lake. A ripple glided across the lake.

“Tessa?”

There was another ripple on the lake. Eddie figured it was just a fish.

“Tessa?”

Nothing.

Nearly two minutes of breathless film unrolled, and the lake went still.

“If you’re there, could you do something to let me know?”

Nothing.

“Can you do that with the lake again?”

A sudden noise off-camera made Ana jump. The camera tilted and the world turned sideways.

“Who’s there?”

Another shuffling noise, but the audio was so bad, Eddie couldn’t even hazard a guess. Probably just some animal.

“Are you there?”

Ana suddenly righted the camera, as if just remembering it was running, and spun one hundred and eighty degrees. The screen went nuclear bright as the halogen lamps they’d posted for back lighting hit the lens. Then the screen went black again for a moment. After the cut, Eddie could see the woods behind Ana. The landscape looked as though it rose then peaked with some unseen hill. The trees cast eerily long shadows.

“If there’s anyone out there? Jim … Tony … This isn’t funny.”

No answer.

Then something rippled on the lake again, and Ana cursed worse than a sailor. The camera stayed put, but he heard her scramble away.

Her voice was distant when she spoke next. “Hello? Is that you, Tessa?”

On the love seat, Jimbo laughed. “She got really freaked.”

Eddie ignored him.

Nothing on the tape. Three minutes passed. Then, another noise from the woods.

Ana panned the camera to the right then realigned the halogens.

“Are you there?”

Another sound, but the audio was so bad Eddie couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Hello?” Ana said.

Then Eddie spotted something.

He reversed the tape and sat forward on the sofa. Hit PLAY.

Ana’s voice saying hello.

Then an image of something.

Eddie jumped off the couch and sat a foot away from the TV. He backed it up and hit PLAY.

A shadowy image formed on the far edge of the lake. It wasn’t sharply defined, but it had a human-like shape. Two arms, one foreshortened like it was pointing at the camera. Two wispy things that might have been legs. The shape seemed suspended just above the far shoreline.

It disappeared abruptly.

“Holy shit,” Jimbo said. “She said she saw something but … dude, back that up.”

Eddie kept backing the tape up and watching the image appear then fold back on itself.

“Cool, isn’t it?” Ana stepped out of the hallway. “I was looking through the lens when it showed up. Didn’t see it with the naked eye.”

Eddie hit PAUSE. “Is that lake stocked?”

“With fish?” Jimbo asked.

No, with refrigerators
. “Yeah.”

Jimbo shrugged and finished his second beer. “Guess so.”

Ana approached the screen and touched the image. “I didn’t see it again, but maybe the camera caught it.”

Jimbo looked at his watch. “So you guys are almost done, right?”

Eddie took a deep breath and tried to relax. Ana looked over her shoulder at Jimbo. “Just a little bit longer, okay?”

“Whatever.” He went to the fridge for another cold one. Then he exited stage left, down the hallway.

“Did you find anything online?” Eddie asked Ana.

She was too close and her lips sparkled with gloss and she’d put makeup on and she smelled too nice so he put some distance between them and sat on the couch.

“It turns out this town does have a history,” Ana said. “This girl named Tessa Lovsky drowned in the lake …”

“Smart ass.” Eddie smiled. “Anything else?”

“It was a coal-mining town a hundred years ago, but then the coal-breaker opened up in Wilkes-Barre and the Kindlers opened the saw mill. Some occupational deaths and some arms and legs amputated but nothing too juicy.”

“What about the three houses we’re going to investigate?”

“Kindler built his house five years ago, so it’s got no history. There’s no record of anything bad happening at Colin’s or Bernard’s.”

“Good work. Thanks for looking into it.”

Ana smirked. “The lack of other history supports the prevailing theory. That it’s Tessa.”

“Don’t confuse wish-fulfillment with theory.”

She stiffened. “You think you’d act differently if there was an outside chance it was your brother?”

Her words cut him to the quick. He sprang off the couch and went to the window. It was full dark. He saw her reflection in the glass, her eyes glued to his back. Two deep breaths later, he was ready to be civil again.

“Yeah, Ana, I probably would but I would be just as wrong for not following protocol.” He faced her. “I’ve gotta finish the tape.”

She nodded sheepishly and left him alone.

Eddie sat back down and hit PLAY.

He watched in silence. Ana changed camera positions a few more times. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. Jimbo and Tony returned eventually and Ana asked if they’d seen anything. They hadn’t. She then asked if they were trying to prank her in the woods but they denied it.

Ana said, “You guys wouldn’t believe what I saw through the lens … guys, where’s the tape recorder?”

There was a brief silence then Jimbo and Tony started cracking up. “Guess we left it on the other side of the lake.”

They had the ganga-giggles and couldn’t stop laughing.

“Great,” Ana said under her breath. “Let’s go find it. Where were you?”

“On the other side …”

“Alright, let’s go.”

Their voices faded. The camera kept rolling. The lake was still again, the moon’s reflection captured on the right side of the screen.

Eddie was about to fast-forward but his thumb stopped over the button.  He lowered the remote and watched, his mouth open.

No way …

The lake had to started to
glow
.