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Desi froze, her head cocked. “Did you hear something?”
“Sounded like people talking.”
They heard faint laughter.
“I know that laugh. It’s Ringo.” Desi crouched next to the vanity, where a large floor vent was covered by a fancy-work grill. She held her hand over the vent. “No wonder it’s so cold up here. There’s barely any hot air coming through.” She pulled the walkie-talkie off her belt. “Dallas? Desi here. Where are you?”
Buck leaned in to better see the vent. He caught the scent of Desi’s hair, a mixture of sweetness and tang. He backed away.
“Basement. Furnace room. Where are you?”
“Still on the third floor, and we can hear you through the vent. Are there any doors?”
“One wall is covered with cabinets.”
“Check the doors, would you?”
In a few seconds came the eerie creak of old hinges.
“That’s it!” Desi exclaimed.
“It’s loose,” Dallas said. “It won’t stay closed.”
“Did the furnace come on within the last few minutes?”
“As a matter of fact, it did. Ah ha! The sudden rush of air moved the door?”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking. This vent must come straight from the furnace room. It makes it sound like there’s a door opening in here.” She flashed a big smile at Buck. “Mystery solved.”
Her smile struck him right in the heart. It made her beautiful.
“All right,” she said. “We’re going to do some EVP work.”
“Wait,” Dallas said. “Do you have a K2 meter?”
Desi said, “I do, but it only works for you and Ringo.”
“Exactly,” Dallas said. “It’s making me paranoid that Ringo is working some kind of hoodoo on it.”
Ringo’s “Hey!” drifted through the vent.
“I’ll give it a shot.” Desi rose to her feet. In the main room she headed for the bed. She set the digital recorder on the quilted coverlet. Velcro ripped and she reached into a deep pocket on her pants.
Buck peered at the unit she held. It was about ten inches long in a plastic case and had a bank of glass bulbs.
“Electricians use them,” she said. “Dallas gets some interesting results with it. Me?” She shrugged. She turned it on and the glass bulbs lit up one by one, flashing from yellow to green to red. It darkened. She set the unit near the digital recorder.
The paranormal researchers had more gadgets than a patrol car. “What does it do?” Buck asked.
“Measures magnetic fields. Dallas and Ringo keep getting what looks like intelligent responses through it.”
An image of a wooden rocking horse flashed through Buck’s mind. Eyes half-closed, he listened with his inner ear. The entity felt friendly and very young, and it was aware of Buck and Desi. Another image danced in and out of his consciousness. A striped rubber ball, the paint rubbed away by use.
Buck and Dallas had talked at length about how they might use Buck’s ability in investigations. The discussion regarding the Moore house focused solely on Buck needing to learn about the research equipment and how to conduct an investigation. Dallas hadn’t told Buck what to do if he saw or felt something in this house. Buck took seriously Desi’s warning against woo-woo stuff.
The spirit felt playful and curious. Buck moved closer to the door, attempting to pinpoint the spirit’s energy with the camera. He said, barely a whisper, “I know you’re here. I see your toys.”
Coldness blanketed Buck’s skin as the ghost’s delight sparked through Buck like static electricity. A pang of pity tightened his chest. Ghosts needed to move on, release or be released from this plane of existence. They had families and loved ones on the Other Side, or so he hoped. Children’s ghosts saddened him. They were lost and too far from home.
“Bring the camera over here,” Desi said. “Let’s do some EVP work.”
“If you don’t believe in ghosts,” he said to Desi, “why do you do this?”
Desi sat on the edge of the bed. “Belief is for church.” She lifted her chin. “Either I know or I don’t know, and whatever I claim to know better be backed up by hard evidence. I’m looking for facts. Anecdotes and sightings are interesting, but they don’t mean squat as proof. You’re filming the floor.”
He jerked the camera up to level.
She pointed at the nightstand. “Set the camera over there. Focus it on the K2.”
Buck was familiar with EVPs—electronic voice phenomena—where recording equipment picked up disembodied voices the human ear could not.
A man said over the walkie-talkie, “Desi? Tony here. Check the IR camera on the third floor. See if a cord got knocked loose. It’s acting up.”
Buck didn’t envy Tony’s position in the command center van. Colorado was in the grip of a cold snap. It had been over a week since the temperature had made it above zero. He wasn’t looking forward to his turn in the command center.
Desi tested the power and line cords to the IR camera. She spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Everything is fine here. What’s it doing?”
“Cutting in and out. Never mind, it’s working now. Shees, hope it’s not the computer. How’s Buck doing? Being a good soldier?” Tony’s laugh sounded like a cackle over the unit. “Tell him if he survives a night with you, I’ll buy him a beer.”
Buck chuckled. He felt the brush of a ghostly hand against his fingers and the youthful spirit seemed to laugh, too.
“Shut up, Tony.” Desi hooked the unit on her belt. She returned to the bed and crossed her arms, looking at the digital recorder and K2 meter. “Is there anyone here who’d like to speak with us?”
Buck glimpsed a glow near Desi’s face, a ghostly outline of a boyish cheek. Buck’s mouth twisted in bemusement. Spirits couldn’t read his mind, so he had to speak to communicate. He wanted to ask the ghost why he was here, and why he would not or could not leave.
“I’m Desi and this is Buck. We aren’t here to bother you or harm you in any way. If you want to talk to us we have equipment here that can help you.”
The ghostly glow hovered over the digital recorder. A wispy hand touched it.
Buck said, “May I ask a question?” He really wanted to ask why she disliked him so much. Most people got to know him, at least a little, before declaring him scum.
She gestured at the digital recorder.
“Do you like being here?” he asked.
A smile flashed, revealing a missing front tooth. Buck sighed unhappily. This child had been very young when he died. Buck’s theory was that a parent’s grief prevented the spirits of children from passing to the Other Side.
“Do you like what the people who live here are doing to the house?”
He got a clear vision of a playroom with striped curtains, a shelf of books and the wooden rocking horse. He caught himself before asking if the child missed his toys. “Would you like it better if they fixed up a room for you?”
“Buck!” Desi hissed. Instead of glaring at him over his dumb question, she smiled.
“Did you see that?” She focused her flashlight on the K2 meter. “It lit up.” She looked around the room. “Can you make the lights go on again?” One, then two bulbs flickered with weak yellow lights. Desi clamped a hand over her mouth, but part of a giggle escaped.
The spirit glow flared, bursting with delight, showing a broad, gap-toothed smile and shining eyes. The child had found a new toy.
“Get really close to this device,” Desi said. “See if you can make it light up again.” Desi’s flashlight dimmed, then died.
The entire bank of bulbs on the K2 lit up. “Did you live in this house? Answer yes with the lights. If it’s no, leave it dark.” The K2 blazed.
Desi laughed. “Unreal! I have never been able to get it to do that.” She snapped a hard look at Buck. “Hey, is Dallas playing a joke on me? Are you helping him set me up?”
“No, ma’am. I swear. That thing is definitely picking up the…something.”
“Freaky,” she muttered. “Are you a woman who used to live here?”
Nothing.
“Are you the man who built the house?”
Nothing.
Desi pulled a disgusted face. “Figures. An anomaly.” She shook her flashlight. It was dead.
Buck asked, “Are you a boy?”
The bank of bulbs lit up.
Buck’s penlight died. He shook it and pressed the button a few times. The only light came from the DVR camera screen and from outside street lamps shining through the windows. Spirits needed energy in order to manifest and interact with the physical world. Batteries were an easy source of energy.
Buck struggled to come up with yes and no questions Desi wouldn’t consider woo-woo. They learned the child was nine years old. He had three sisters and two brothers. He was the youngest. He liked this house. He liked the people who lived here.
Desi waved at Buck to be quiet. Buck thought for somebody who scoffed at ghosts, she was certainly excited about talking to one. “Are you the one making noises?” She asked. One bulb barely flickered. “Does that mean you only make a little bit of noise?” A definite yes. “Are there others with you?”
Heaviness settled around Buck like a heavy velvet curtain. A feeling so oppressive, so…angry, it made him dizzy. The little boy’s spirit fled. Desi’s questions seemed muffled, as if sound waves had to swim through sludge to reach his ears.
Buck turned his head slowly. He spotted it in the corner by the bathroom door. A Dark Presence. His mouth filled with dust and his skin crawled. He kept his head down, not looking directly at the shadow within a shadow.
“Are you lonesome?” Desi asked.
Buck mentally begged her to shut up. If he warned her, it would notice him. It would know he could see and it would focus on him. It moved toward Desi. It flowed, absorbing the thin light as it passed the windows, slithering along the wall, powered by malevolence. They needed to get out of here. He could not let it notice him. Could not allow its dark attention to focus on him. Could not allow it to pick and probe at his mind.
The glow of the handheld camera vanished, plunging the room into darkness.
At the same time, Desi said, “You poor thing. Why don’t you come home with me?”
Chapter Two
Buck sensed the Dark Presence’s sick interest in Desi’s invitation. He stepped between it and Desi, clenched his fists and shouted, “Get out!”
It lacked face and form, but Buck felt its dark attention focus on him. Its dark energy surrounded Buck, pressed on his chest and head as if a giant vise had clamped him in its jaws. His muscles quivered.
“Get out of here! Get out! You don’t belong here.”
“I thought you weren’t scared of the dark,” Desi said. Metal clinked against metal as she shook dead batteries out of her flashlight. “Calm down. Take a deep breath.”
“I’m not talking to you,” he said. “I can’t believe you asked that thing to come home with you.” He faced it, blocking Desi from its malignant attention.
“Oh, please, it was a joke.” Her flashlight brightened. She rose from the bed. “You have to calm down. Do you need to go outside?”
It disappeared. The room felt empty, tomb-like. Buck struggled to control his breathing and racing heart. Relief weakened his entire body, and his joints ached with the sudden drop in adrenaline. Icy fear remained. It had seen him and it knew what he was. Knew he could be used.
A touch on his arm made him flinch. Desi folded her small hand around his forearm. “What in the world is wrong with you?”
Underlit by the flashlight her face was harshly shadowed and openly concerned. But she was not, Buck knew, concerned about the right thing. “Don’t you know what you just did? You’re supposed to be experienced. You’re supposed to know!”
She went rigid, fairly vibrating with anger. “I am experienced.”
He searched the shadows and listened hard with his inner ear. It felt gone. He prayed it was gone. “That was the stupidest thing you could have done. You have no idea what’s in this house!”
Footsteps clomped up the stairs, startling them both. Dallas called, “Desi? You aren’t answering the walkie-talkie. Desi? Buck?”
“Power drain,” she called in reply. She shot Buck a withering glare and left the room.
A T THE HEADQUARTERS of the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Team, in the windowless tech room, Desi rested her forearms on the back of Dallas Stone’s chair. Dallas and Ringo, with some help from other members, had spent the last week watching every second of footage from the IR cameras and handhelds, and listening to every audio recording from the eight hours the team had spent investigating the Moores’ house.
Desi thought the investigation had been a train wreck. After babbling about dark entities, Buck had left the house and refused to go back inside. A big bad cop, unafraid of the dark. Right. He’d spent the rest of the investigation in the command center van.
When he told Dallas the place had two ghosts, one friendly and one malevolent, Dallas had been so credulous, so accepting, Desi almost quit the team right then and there. Judging by the group e-mails shooting back and forth among the team members this week, everyone was excited about Buck’s claims. Where was the objectivity? Where was the proof? It disgusted her that Rampart teetered on the verge of turning into one of those freak shows that attributed every squeak, creak and feeling to ghosts.
She peered over Dallas’s shoulder at the computer screen. John Ringo sat on Dallas’s right. Pippin O’Malley sat in the chair to the left. All stared at the lines of spikes and waves on the screen.
“Play it again,” Pippin demanded. She pushed red curls off her forehead and she flashed a big grin at Desi.
Dallas touched the keyboard. Through the speakers Desi’s voice said, “Did you see that? It lit up.” A long pause, then “Can you make the lights go on again?” Childish laughter rang out, loud and clear. Dallas looped the recording, isolating the laughter. The laugh was so clear it could have been recorded on any playground.
“That gives me chills,” Pippin said. She scrubbed her upper arms with both hands.
Dallas looked over his shoulder at Desi. “What do you think? A ghost?”
All eyes on her, Desi straightened. After she and Buck lost every bit of battery power in the master bedroom, and even the IR camera cut out, Buck had turned on her. Her feelings still stung at his switch from nice guy to stern cop, chastising her about doing something so stupid as to invite a ghost to follow her home.
It was stupid. She’d been so caught up in the moment, so fascinated by the apparent responses on the K2 meter, the invitation had slipped out of her mouth without a single thought behind it. The lingering sting turned into fresh anger. Just because Buck Walker believed he had an in with the spirit world didn’t mean he had any right to tell her what to do.
He had no right to wreck Rampart with his woo-woo crap.
“It’s outside noise,” Desi said. “The old coal chute in the furnace room lets in outside noise and it goes straight up that heating vent to the bathroom. There could have been kids playing in the house next door. Or it might have been a television.”
