“What?” Mary called.
“I already have homework.”
“That’s amazing,” Mary replied. “What do you get to do?”
“I get to read a book and answer some questions,” she said. “Can I read it to you?”
Mary’s heart warmed and she nodded. “I would love to have you read,” she said.
She stood up and led Clarissa to the couch. “Shall we read here?” she asked.
“Sure,” Clarissa responded, climbing up next to her.
With Mary’s arm around her, Clarissa nestled closer and began to read while Bradley helped Ian make the rest of the dinner. Halfway through the book, Clarissa stopped and looked up at Mary. “Can the bad man get me at school,” she whispered, watching to be sure Bradley didn’t hear her.
Mary looked down at her and shook her head. “Your daddy, Bradley, talked to the principal at your school about the bad man, so they are going to be watching to make sure you’re safe. And Mike is going to be there to protect you. And, because you are very smart and very aware, you are going to watch and be careful until we find him, right?”
She nodded. “Right. I’m not going to go near any strangers.”
“Exactly,” Mary said. “And your daddy and I will keep working on catching him, so you won’t have any worries.”
Clarissa looked up at Mary for a moment, a questioning look on her face. “If Bradley is my daddy and he’s going to marry you, will you be my mommy?”
Mary’s heart melted as she looked down on the dear little face. “I’d really like to be your mommy,” she said. “I have always wanted to have a little girl.”
“Is it okay for a kid to have three mommies?” she asked.
Smiling down at her, Mary nodded. “Oh, sure, that just gives you more people who love you.”
“Can I come to your wedding?”
“Oh, yes, sweetheart,” she replied. “And I would love to have you be my flower girl.”
“Would I have to walk up the aisle?”
Mary nodded. “Yes, you would. We’d get you a special dress and you would sprinkle flower petals on the ground. Does that sound like fun?”
“Could Maggie do it too?” she asked. “So there could be two of us?”
Mary placed a kiss on Clarissa’s forehead. “Oh, that would be perfect,” she said. “Two beautiful flower girls. I love that idea.”
Clarissa smiled up at her. “Me too.”
“Now, we need to finish the rest of this book,” Mary reminded her. “So we can eat dinner.”
Clarissa met Mary’s eyes one more time. “Thanks for being my new mommy,” she said.
Mary placed another kiss on the top of her head. “It is my pleasure.”
Chapter Eighteen
“So, the owner didna want to meet us here?” Ian asked later that night, as they pulled the car around the circular drive and parked in front of the door.
“Nope, she just handed me the keys and told me to return them to her once the ghost was gone,” Mary replied.
“Well, I suppose we can cross her off the list as possible recruits for a paranormal activities society,” Ian teased.
“Yes, I think that’s a safe bet,” Mary laughed as she got out of the car.
They walked up the steps to the front door. “It doesn’t look like your typical haunted house,” Ian said, gazing around at the lavish upscale estate.
“That’s the funny thing about haunted houses,” Mary replied as she stuck the key into the lock. “You just can never tell when one will pop up.”
Mary pushed the door open and then turned and helped Ian carry his equipment into the foyer. “I’ve never used electronic equipment before,” she said. “Do you think I ought to add it to my process?”
“Well, darling, it just depends on what you want to do,” he said, as they carried several large cases of equipment upstairs to the second floor. “If you’re trying to record things for scientific measurement and annals, then you need all this crap. But if you’re just trying to help a soul move from one realm to the other, you just need your natural ability.”
Mary opened the case that held the video camera and set it up on a tripod, facing the middle of the room. “You won’t see what I see on the video, will you?” she asked.
Ian shook his head. “No, that’s highly unlikely to get such a clear picture,” he said. “But we’ll probably get some orbs, we may get a shadow and the camera has a sensitive recording device for picking up EVPs.”
“EVPS?”
“Electronic Voice Phenomena,” he replied. “There’s a belief that spirits try to communicate with us and we can pick up their words through enhanced electronic recording equipment.”
“Does it work?”
As Ian attached the cables to other equipment and set it up around the circumference of the room, he responded to her question, “Well, generally the sound is so faint or garbled it’s anyone’s best guess what the ghost was communicating. And often, if the investigators have clues beforehand, they might be biased towards thinking it was something relating to the clues.”
“So why are we doing it?” Mary asked, pulling a small Digital EMF Meter from another case.
“Well, in this case, where you can actually view the entity, it might be interesting background to see if we can pick anything up and then apply this case towards other, less visual, paranormal investigations.”
“Okay, well, you can stand over here with this and see if you can actually pick up any electromagnetic readings when she shows up,” Mary said. “And I’ll be over here, to see if she’ll actually speak with me.”
They moved into place and waited. But they didn’t have to wait very long. The atmosphere in the room began to change; Mary actually felt a chill as the temperature began to drop and she rubbed her hands over her arms.
Ian looked down at his EMF Meter and saw the slender arm raise as it registered the phenomena taking place in the room.
Mary didn’t need Ian’s machine to feel the electricity in the air. It was as if someone had opened a portal from another place and the room was being filled with a kind of ectoplasmic fog. She tensed; the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end as she held her breath.
The ghost appeared in the corner of the room, translucent and glowing. Her body was slightly turned, her arms were outstretched, as if she were re-enacting pulling something across the room. A muffled sound, like something being dragged across the carpeted floor, seemed to echo from all corners of the room.
Dressed in pajamas, her long hair was caught back in a ponytail, and her feet were bare. She stopped in the middle of the room, underneath the ceiling fan and slowly turned, gazing around the room. Her macabre smile seemed eager as she ran to the closet door and tied something tightly around the knob. She hurried back to the center of the room and climbed up on the invisible object that she had pulled to the spot.
Standing mid-air, she continued her preparations as she tossed something over the fan. Although she couldn’t see the object, Mary knew the ghost was throwing a cord over the fan.
Tugging on the end of the invisible cord, the ghost smiled again and turned towards the bedroom door. No more than a minute passed before the door slowly opened. Ian, who’d been standing next to it, jumped out of the way and sent Mary a look of startled surprise. She replied with a quick nod and then turned her attention back to see the ghost’s reaction.
The ghost’s smile widened. She looked down at the door and her mouth was moving, although neither Mary nor Ian could hear what she was saying. Because her face was translucent and was shifting in the low light of the room, Mary had a hard time reading her facial expressions, but she didn’t seem upset or startled. It was as if she had been expecting her visitor.
With a shake of her head and a laugh, the ghost seemed to be placing the cord over her head. She held her hand out to the side, as if she held the end of a noose with it. Then she pulled it sharply to the side for a moment and bent her head, mimicking someone who’d been hanged. A moment later, she clapped her hands together and laughed at her visitor.
Moving around the elevated platform with confidence, she pointed and laughed at her visitor. Suddenly the bedroom door slammed shut with great force.
Both Mary and Ian jumped at the sound, and then turned quickly because the ceiling fan started to turn on its own. The ghost’s smile quickly faded as she looked up at the fan. She screamed silently towards the door, and began to frantically pull at the cord around her neck. She was slowly lifted upwards as if the cord was being wrapped around the rotating fan. She struggled and they both heard a thump on the carpet in front of them, as if the platform had tipped over.
Desperately, the girl clawed at the cord, gasping and crying as she struggled. She tossed and fought for several minutes, until finally her arms fell limply to her sides, her head rolled to her shoulder and she hung, lifelessly, slowly rotating in the middle of the room.
Turning from the macabre vision, Mary looked at Ian. He was leaning back against the wall, his face ashen and his eyes still locked on the ghost.
“Ian,” she whispered.
He turned to her and it seemed as if he didn’t know her, his face reflecting hopelessness and sorrow. He seemed vulnerable and lost.
She crossed the room and placed her hand on his arm. “Ian, are you okay?”
Shaking his head quickly, he looked over at Mary and took a deep, shaky breath. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to mask his emotions with a smile. “This one hit closer to home than usual.”
“What happened?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’ll tell you another time,” he said softly, “and I thank you for your concern. But, I think we need to get back to our ghost.”
They both looked up at the ghost again. Her face was slightly bloated and turning purple. Her lips were swollen and her head was lying sideways. Suddenly her eyes burst open and she stared directly at them. A moment later, she was gone.
The atmosphere in the room abruptly changed back to normal and both Mary and Ian inhaled deeply.
“I dinna think what we just saw here was a suicide,” he said softly, his heart still racing from the experience.
Shaking her head, Mary slowly moved away from Ian and towards the center of the room, staring at the ceiling fan. “Someone else knew the truth,” she said slowly, wiping the residual tears from her face. “Someone else left the room just before Hope died. Why didn’t they tell the truth?”
“Aye, and now there’s your mystery.”
Chapter Nineteen
After packing up Ian’s electronic gear, the ride back to the house was completed with minimal conversation as both Mary and Ian contemplated what they had just witnessed.
“Do you ever get used to it?” Ian asked quietly as he stared out the window into the night sky.
Shaking her head, Mary took a deep breath before answering. “No, you never do,” she replied. “And if you start to, you need to step away because you are losing your humanity.”
They drove in silence for a few more minutes. “Were you able to hear anything she was saying?” Ian asked.
“I thought I would hear a whisper, but nothing intelligible,” Mary said, as she turned the car onto her street, she glanced over to him. “And I have to admit I’m grateful that I didn’t have to hear her struggle for her life. It was bad enough to watch it.”
“Aye, you’re right,” Ian said. “And it was frustrating to know it happened twenty years ago and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it now.”
She pulled into the driveway and turned to him. “Thank you for coming with me. I’m really glad I wasn’t alone.”
“No one should have been alone to witness that,” he said with a nod.
“And yet she was,” Mary replied, staring out the front of the car, “all alone when she died.”
“Well we don’t know that,” Ian said. “All we know is that a door slammed. The visitor could have still been in the room, watching her suffer.”
Startled, Mary turned to him. “Do you really think…”
“Well, hopefully we caught a little more with the equipment,” he said. “But until we know for sure, we have to be open to any possibility.”
Mary rubbed her arms with her hands. “Picturing someone watching her die and not trying to help makes her death seem even worse.”
The house was quiet when they opened the door. Their arms were filled with Ian’s equipment. “I wonder where Bradley is,” Mary whispered as they moved to the kitchen table.
“Probably putting the wee bairn to bed,” Ian said, “and enjoying every minute of it.”
Smiling, she nodded her agreement. “He really is enjoying being a father,” she agreed.
A few minutes later, as they were setting up the equipment, Bradley came down the stairs. “So, how did it go?” he asked.
“Is Clarissa in bed?” Mary asked.
He nodded. “Yes, she’s sound asleep. I just left her.”
“Then come over here,” she invited. “We need to look this over right away, while the experience is still fresh in our minds.”
Ian nodded, placed his case next to the table and slipped off his coat. “I’ll run upstairs and get my laptop,” he said. “Then we’ll see what we captured.”
“Captured?” Bradley asked Mary as Ian headed up the stairs.
“Ian brought his electronic equipment with him this time,” she said. “We’re hoping it picked up some things we couldn’t.”
Ian came back down and attached the equipment to a control box that was plugged into a USB port on the side of his laptop. He pressed a few buttons and the girl’s bedroom came into view. The camera scanned the entire room and then stayed focused on the middle of the room. There was a box on the bottom of the screen with a series of numbers in separate boxes.
“What’s that?” Bradley asked.
“The first box is the reading from the Digital EMF recorder,” Ian said. “You’ll see that as we set up the equipment, the numbers are pretty low, from 0mg to 1.5mg. If it is able to read the ghost Mary saw, you’ll see readings that can go as high as 8mg.”
“And this number,” Bradley asked, pointing to the next box.
“That’s the digital thermometer reading,” he replied.
“I know, cold spots, right,” Bradley said.
“Aye, but there can also be hot spots at times,” Ian said. “Any reading plus or minus ten is a sign of paranormal activity.”