Will climbed the ladder to the mezzanine of the barn. The building was probably fifteen years old. He’d found it strange that Rose would have a replica of the old barn built on the exact spot where such a tragedy had occurred, but perhaps it was her way of erasing the past and pretending it hadn’t happened.
In the few weeks he’d been here, he hadn’t managed to uncover any information about that night. Rose never spoke of the past, even when he tried to open her up by talking about his own stuff; beginning with the fact that his girlfriend of five years had kicked him out and he was homeless. All that had really got him was this space in the loft, where he was keeping his possessions until he had some other place to go.
Rose had already said he could stay on if he wanted. At least until they sold the farm. The real estate agent had come out that morning to go over some contracts and take information. In all likelihood the neighbouring farmers would absorb this place, leaving the house for Jena.
If she wanted it.
And that was a big if. Rose hadn’t made mention of it to her, and from the way Jena had been behaving since she’d got here, he wasn’t sure she’d welcome it. She could always sell. It was none of his business.
He crossed to his filing cabinet and dragged a drawer open, pulling out a sheaf of folders and taking them to his makeshift office – thankfully the moving guys had helped drag this stuff up here – spreading the folders across the desk set at one end of the mezzanine.
Benedict. Jones. Sylvester. Young. Charleston. Vincent. All families who’d been involved in strange incidences across the region. It was a longer list than others might have made, but he had a knack for squirrelling information that didn’t make it into the police records; for learning the rumours and gossip, and he wasn’t prepared to toss out any of these just because no one else could see there was something more going on.
And then there was his file.
He flipped it open, looking at the photos of his mother, some from when she was younger and happier, and others that he’d taken leading up to the time of her death. The shadows under her eyes, the strange glimmer in them and the way her body had seemed to morph over that last week, shoulders hunching, limbs seeming longer because of all the weight she’d lost.
Everyone had said that she was just too sad to go on. That losing his father in the car accident had broken her somehow. But he knew that wasn’t it.
She hadn’t killed herself. At least, not willingly.
Something else had happened, and maybe one day he’d know what. The skin on his neck crawled and he turned, but there was no one there. Nothing. The place was as empty as it had been since he’d arrived on the farm.
Yet he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was going on. Something that was crawling around the edges of his vision.
Something that had stirred when Jena got back.
He’d chosen this spot to set up his gear because it was where the fire had been. As soon as he’d stepped inside this place, he could feel it. A thrum of energy in the ground. A sinister vibe, a holdover from that night. It was warmer than it should be, like residual heat was held in this place.
Either that, or he was just obsessed and desperate to pretend this was all real. That’s what his ex, Rebecca, would have said.
Sometimes he wondered if she was right, but he could never quite convince himself to stop looking.
He’d set up some equipment in case there was any paranormal activity – an EMF meter, digital thermometer, EVP devices, and of course video and audio recorders set to trigger at the first sign of movement. But nothing had happened so far. Not a trace of a ghost or dark energy. Nothing to suggest anything weird had happened here. The only footage he’d captured was of himself coming and going, and the occasional bird getting through a gap and flitting around the rafters.
He grabbed the Benedict file and spread the pages out on the table, staring at the faces of Jena’s family even though he saw them every day in the hallways and on the mantles in the house. He pulled out Mark, Rose’s son-in-law, and pushed the rest of the images away. It had to be him. Didn’t it? Or was it something to do with Jena?
Or both.
The files said that there had been blood on Jena’s clothing, but they didn’t identify whose it was. She’d been attacked by birds, so it could very well have been her own. There were traces of soot on her hands and feet too.
He riffled through the papers to find the photo taken of her after the incident; she looked dishevelled, exhausted. Empty. But not in the dead, soulless way his mother had; in a way that said she’d been stripped of everything she cared about. Jena had just been a kid, and he didn’t think it could have been her. In fact, Rose had said that morning that it wasn’t Jena’s fault.
He knew this, because he’d left a recording device in Rose’s room, set to start whenever someone spoke. But that was all Rose had revealed. Jena only had more questions, no resolution, and there was nothing he could do to help her with that. Not without giving himself away, and if he did that now he’d never find out what had happened.
He skimmed over the rest of the notes; the police had done a shoddy job, putting it down to an accidental fire caused by an electrical fault or something. The only reason Rose gave for them being in the barn in the first place was that they were having a campout, which wasn’t unreasonable. Camping in a barn sounded like something he would have got a kick out of as a kid too.
But the blood ….
And why was Jena not in the barn? And how come no one else had managed to make it out alive?
It bugged him so much that no one had bothered to dig deeper. Rose had put up a barrier, sending Jena away so that she was out of it, refusing to comment on that night herself, effectively shutting down the investigation. It was a terrible accident. A family tragedy, and anyone who tried to pry deeper only found a well of sadness. He knew Rose was sad, but why wouldn’t she tell anyone what had happened?
He shoved the papers into a pile and tapped them against the table to line them up before putting them back in the folder, more annoyed with himself than anyone else. He was here. Right where it happened. Rose was getting on in years, and between the pain medication and the return of Jena, he’d thought she’d be letting things slip by now. But her mind was a steel trap.
And Jena. The elusive Jena, she was here too, and he’d barely managed a single meaningful conversation with her.
He had to do better. He had to find something or Rebecca would be right – he was just throwing his life away on the spooky stories of his childhood. Looking at the files again, here in the barn where it had happened, he wondered what it was that had so sparked his imagination as a kid. Why had he been sure something more had gone on here?
He put the files back into the box, so frustrated that he didn’t even bother to arrange them in alphabetical order. And then he did the rounds of his equipment, checking to make sure that everything was still operating and the extension cords hadn’t crapped out again.