Derek swept his flashlight over the ornate staircase and let out a low whistle. “Marsha’s right. This is a great place to hold a wedding.”
“It’s a beautiful house,” Chris agreed.
“Probably built in the ‘twenties. Very arts and crafts. I wonder how much of this stuff is original to the house.”
“Do you think Marsha’s family had oil money?”
“Back then, all the money in this town was oil money.” He checked the camera sitting on a tripod at the base of the stairs. “Okay, we’ve got six cameras and about a dozen voice recorders set up around the house.” He pulled a small handheld camera, barely bigger than a smart phone, out of his pocket and turned it on. “How do you want to do this?”
She squinted at the bright LED light shining in her face. “Off camera, preferably.”
“Come on. I’m not going to post any of this without Marsha’s permission. But the cameras might help the investigation.”
“I know. But do I have to be on camera? It’s distracting.”
With a sigh, he put the camera back in his pocket. “Fine. How about the infrared? Do you object to that?”
“No.”
“Good.” As he went to retrieve it from its bag, he muttered, “It’ll help us see where we’re going, if nothing else.” He returned with it and switched it on. “So where are we going?”
“We should start in Marsha’s room.” She started up the stairs without preamble, keeping the beam of her flashlight pointed down at the steps as she went. Her heart sped up as she climbed into the dark unknown, but Derek’s presence beside her gave her a little more courage. It wasn’t fear of what they might find that made her heart race—not entirely, anyway. As much as she knew it was impossible, as much as her instinct told her to dismiss the notion, she couldn’t get over Marsha’s suggestion that it was Chris’s mother who had been harassing her.
Ron had agreed that it was unlikely, if not impossible. “No way,” she’d said when Chris shared Marsha’s idea. “Mom wouldn’t be so petty and vindictive. She’d want Dad to be happy. Anyway, it can’t be her because she’s not around. If she was, we’d know. She would’ve made sure we know.”
Chris had at first been comforted by Ron’s conviction and had shared it. But as they reached the top of the stairs and shined their lights down each wing of the hallway, she thought of the entity that had hidden itself from her at the Hex House lot. It was possible that her mother could stay hidden if she wanted to. But why would she want to?
She thought of Derek’s brother, Jimmy, who had haunted Derek’s home for a full decade and a half without Derek ever being aware of his presence. But Jimmy hadn’t known how to make contact. He’d been stuck in a limbo not of his own choosing until Ron had discovered him and shown him how to make his presence known.
Chris’s mother, on the other hand, knew how to make contact if she wanted to. Chris was convinced of this. Her very first supernatural encounter had been with her recently deceased mother, who had come to her and Ron in the night, presumably to say goodbye.
Chris had to presume because she hadn’t actually seen or spoken to her mom, but merely felt her presence as she sat on the edge of the bed, felt her touch as she brushed back Chris’s hair. Ron had slept through it, completely oblivious to the visitation. But Chris knew in her heart of hearts that she had felt her mother that night, and she’d never felt that presence again since.
Right after that was when she’d started seeing the dead. She’d always wondered if her mother had somehow bestowed that ability on her, though she couldn’t imagine how, or why.
Still… what if she’d been wrong? What if it hadn’t been her mom but something else that came to her that night? What if her mom had been stuck, like Jimmy, this entire time? And in her frustration, she finally found the power to manifest, with Marsha being the unsuspecting target of her emotional outburst?
It seemed far-fetched. But also possible—enough so to keep Chris from dismissing it out of hand, regardless of what her heart told her.
Of course, her heart also really wanted to see and talk to her mom again.
“This way,” she told Derek, turning right at the top of the stairs. Marsha’s room was the second door on the left.
Derek let out a dismayed-sounding grunt as her light illuminated the mess of a room. “How much of this was caused by the spirit and how much was Marsha packing her stuff in a hurry?”
She trained her flashlight on the bed, where strips of white chiffon lay strewn in tatters. “Well, we know this much was the spirit.” At the sight of the shredded veil, Chris shuddered. Whatever had done that was filled with a lot of hate and anger. No matter how much she wanted to see her mom again, the mere thought that her mother could be so full of violent rage made her queasy.
“Are you sensing anything?”
“Other than mild nausea and a little bit of fear? No.”
“Okay. So what do we do now?”
“Now, I try to make contact.” She looked at him, finding him by the faint outline made visible by her flashlight and the little red indicator light on his infrared camera. “You wait outside.”
The red light moved back and forth as he shook his head. “No way. I’m not leaving you in here alone with whatever did that.” She didn’t need to see him pointing at the veil’s remains to know what he meant.
“I’ll be okay. You’ll be right outside the door.”
“And what if something won’t let me open the door?”
Chris frowned. She hadn’t thought of that. Also because this felt eerily like one of her arguments with Ron, except she was on the other side of it. It was reckless to send him out of the room. But she needed to do this alone, at least until she knew. One way or the other.
“If I get locked in, run downstairs and shout for Ron or Joe. They should be able to come in and help.”
“Yeah, unless that same something snaps your neck or caves in your head in the space of time it takes me to round them up. I’m staying, Chris.”
“Derek—”
“No. This is not negotiable.”
“Derek.” Her voice was firm. “You’re right, it’s not. I need to do this alone. Don’t ask me why.”
“If you want me to walk out of this room and leave you on your own, I get to ask why.”
Chris remained silent. Derek didn’t budge. Finally, she blew out a sigh. “I think it could be my mom.”
“Your… why would you think that? I thought you said your mom moved on when you were a kid.”
“I thought she did. But Marsha had this idea. And I don’t know. I guess it’s possible. And if it is her, I feel like this would go better if it’s only me. Okay?”
He sighed. “No, not okay. What if it’s not her?”
“Then I’ll scream as loud as I can and both you and the ghosts we brought with us will rush to my rescue.” She shined her light around the room and shook her head. “It’s not like I sense anything here, anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s what you said the other night right before the van put on a show.”
Chris didn’t say anything to that. She simply waited out the long stretch of silence between them. Finally, she heard rustling and felt him move closer. His strong hand cradled the back of her head as he pressed his lips to her forehead. Then he pressed his own forehead against hers. “I’ll be right outside the door. Anything happens, you scream bloody murder.”
She couldn’t suppress the smile that tugged her lips if she wanted to. “You bet I will.”
His lips found hers in the darkness, and then he let her go. She waited until he closed the door behind him, then settled onto the bed and turned off the flashlight.
She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “Hello?” she called. “Is anyone here with me?” She waited, listening, paying attention for any changes in temperature or in the general vibe of the room. She felt in front of her for a piece of the veil and held it up. “Are you the one who did this?” She held onto it, twisting it between her fingers. “You must be very angry. You can tell me about it, if you’d like. I can hear you. I might be able to help you. My name is Chris.”
She licked her lips and amended, “Christine. I’m Christine Wilson.” Her heart pounding, she closed her eyes and summoned the courage to ask what was really on her mind. “Mom? Are you here? It’s me, Chrissy.”
She waited, straining all her senses to catch something, anything. But there was nothing. She felt deflated as she blew out the breath she’d been holding.
And then she jumped at the sound of something crashing.
She was still fumbling for her flashlight when Derek burst through the door. “Did you hear that?”
“It didn’t come from in here.” She found her light and turned it on, shining it around the room. Nothing had changed, and the noise had sounded too far away, anyway.
“No, I think it was downstairs. We should go check it out. You good?”
“Yeah,” she said, but realized as she said it that she was trembling. She got up from the bed and steadied herself. “Nothing’s happening in here. Let’s go.”
Ignoring the uncomfortable mix of disappointment and relief she felt, Chris followed Derek down the stairs, pausing at the bottom to listen. To the left, she heard voices speaking in hushed tones. “This way,” she told Derek, following the sound into a formal dining room. Her heart pounded as they went, but it slowed as they drew close enough to the source of the voices for them to become familiar. Passing through an archway to a large living area, she found her sister and Joe in the middle of an argument.
Chris cleared her throat. They both turned to regard her, Ron looking irritated, Joe looking defensive. “It’s the rest of our team,” Chris told Derek before asking the other two, “What happened?”
Ron’s gaze traveled to something on the floor. Chris shined her light at the spot and illuminated the shattered pieces of something all over the floor. Judging from the cut flowers strewn among the pieces and the puddle of water soaking into the rug, Chris decided to go with vase as an educated guess
“Something startled me and made me bump into it,” said Joe. “Do you think it was expensive?”
”In this house?” Chris shined her light around the room, spying oil paintings—probably originals—sculpture and other works of art. “I’m thinking probably. But don’t worry. We can blame it on the angry spirit.”
“I don’t feel right about that,” he said.
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’ll have to pay for it.”
“It’s probably insured, anyway,” said Ron.
Derek crouched down and picked through the pieces. “This looks like Fiestaware. My mom used to have half a dozen of these.” He looked up at Chris. “What did this?”
“Joe.”
“Oh.” He stood back up. “Well, these things go for around fifty bucks on eBay. So it’s not like he broke a Ming vase.”
“Well, thank the Lord for that,” said Chris. “What was it that spooked you so bad?”
“He heard crying,” said Ron, then pressed her lips together sheepishly at the look Joe gave her.
“Can I tell the story?”
She made an “after you” gesture with her hand.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I thought I heard crying somewhere behind me. I spun toward the sound and knocked right into the dadgum vase.”
“Crying? You’re sure?”
He shook his head. “Not exactly. It was over before the vase hit the floor.”
“Did you hear it, too?” she asked Ron, who shook her head.
“Sorry. I was distracted by the vintage tile on the fireplace surround.”
“Okay then, I guess we should all keep looking. I think Derek and I can cover the rest of the house. Why don’t you guys search the grounds? That’s where most of the alleged sightings of this white lady have taken place.”
“Sure. Conveniently, there’s nothing we can break out there.”
“Yeah, that too.”
Ron sighed and tugged Joe’s sleeve. “Come on, honey. The air’s a little thick in here, anyway.”
“So what’s going on?” Derek asked as the two ghosts dematerialized. “Who was crying?”
“That’s what we need to find out,” Chris said, thinking about her mom, imagining decades of loneliness and still not sure what she hoped to find.