Ezra made a beeline—albeit a wobbly one—for the bunkhouse when we returned to the ranch. Julian made a small show of calling CeCe in front of Yancy as if to reassure him we really were trying to leave, his problematic houseguests would be out of his hair soon. By the time Julian caught up to us in the bunkhouse, I’d wrestled Ezra out of his shoes and socks and gotten him to lay on the bed nearest the window unit so cool air would blow on him directly. He protested but was already drifting into a fitful doze.
Julian shut the door quietly behind him and watched me as I set Ezra’s shoes beneath his bed and brushed some of his wild hair back from his face. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and all but threw myself into Julian’s arms. “What the fuck,” I muttered. “What the fuck is happening?”
His arms tightened around me, and I felt a spike of relief—part of me had been afraid he’d be stiff with me or push me away. I knew I’d hurt his feelings by playing off his comments as a joke, as something we just had to deal with, but he did not know yet how to handle an audience, how to give information without hurting unnecessarily.
How to play the game, as they say. Whoever they were.
“I know you want to trust him, but I think Ezra’s… I think something is wrong.” I laughed wetly at Julian’s pronouncement, and he gave me another little squeeze, his fingers moving gently in my hair, soothing me. “You know what I mean. This isn’t just a dizzy spell or being tired. I don’t know a lot about neurology, but what he did last night, and again today? That’s not healthy brain activity.”
“I can hear you, you know,” Ezra muttered from where he’d buried his face in the bedding. “I’m fine. I just need a nap.”
“Yoo hoo!”
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered as Mrs. Carstairs knocked, then opened the door.
“Boys, Yancy said y’all had a bit of an awful morning in town. Now, this seems like a perfect occasion for a slice of cake and some coffee. Let’s head for the kitchen.”
It wasn’t so much a gentle suggestion as an order. She hurried us back into the house and got us settled around the table. Yancy had gone to tend to chores once it became apparent Ezra was going to live, and Carstairs was walking the pasture with a sheriff’s deputy after finding signs someone had been camping on their property near the creek. “I tell him every time, it’s just teenagers in town thinking they’re all grown and being sneaky. But every time he insists on calling out the deputies to look. I honestly don’t know what he thinks they’re gonna find. Some kids canoodling? Oh, do they say canoodle anymore? Well. Now, who wants cream and sugar?” Mrs. Carstairs asked, bringing a coffee tray over to the table. “Ezra, honey, want me to bring you a cup?”
We’d set Ezra on the living room sofa, and he was propped at an angle, trying to look engaged but looking more like he was barely awake. He shook his head before he answered. “No, ma’am. Thank you for asking though.”
She clicked her tongue but passed out the other cups and set a tray of sweets down in the middle of the kitchen table. “If you change your mind, you just holler, alright?”
Julian dosed his with an obscene amount of sugar and added enough milk to make it turn beige before nudging the tray in my direction. I dropped in two sugar cubes and hoped for the best—coffee had never been a favorite of mine, and I knew no matter how much sugar I added, it would taste bitter and acidic. Mrs. Carstairs hummed to herself as she sliced pieces from a loaf cake that smelled absolutely amazing. “It’s a lemon ginger poppy seed cake,” she announced proudly. “I came up with it myself after a little mishap in the kitchen when Deborah was, oh… ten? Eleven? I asked her to get me the lemon zest, and she grabbed grated ginger instead and, well… here we are!” She tittered happily, settling her soft bulk into the chair at the head of the table. “Now, boys, we’ve had way more excitement here today than the past six months combined! I feel like I should apologize for this morning. Between our… well, rather abrupt request, Enoch showing his tail like he’s doing… Well, it’s been a day, hasn’t it?” She sighed, tears welling up in her eyes and a quaver racing in her words. She glanced between me and Julian, her expression becoming wistful and a little distant as she reached out and laid her hands atop both mine and Julian’s and gave us a squeeze. “Now, don’t you think we’re some of those folks who get all sniffy about who you love, alright? I know you have it bad for each other—don’t deny it! I can see it in your face whenever you look at him. I noticed it at the party last night. Saw that sweet look you kept giving him and I said to myself, Karlotta, those boys are head over heels for each other.” She patted my hand and drew back a bit, her expression falling once more. “I hope you don’t think we’re all ignorant here. It’s a tiny town, but… Well, we’re not monsters.”
Julian gently set his cup and saucer aside and addressed her earnestly. “I appreciate it, Mrs. Carstairs. I grew up in this state and I know it’s come a very long way since… Well, even since I was in high school. And I’m not so naïve as to think everywhere is safe. But thank you for assuring us.”
“Karlotta,” she insisted, dabbing at her eyes. “After all of this, it’s the least I can do, let you call me by my first name!”
“Karlotta,” I repeated with a practiced smile. “I was wondering if I could ask you about your daughter. We, ah, we didn’t get much of a chance to discuss the issue this morning and seeing as how we’re staying at least one more night, maybe I could help you out.”
She looked arrested for a moment, her expression and posture frozen. Karlotta.exe has stopped running, I thought with a hint of hysteria. She relaxed, though, and her smile slipped into sadness. “Maybe… I should get David, though. Deborah was—is—his daughter and…”
“And we’ll get him in a moment. Whenever I do a séance, I like to speak with family members separately.” That wasn’t exactly true. I’d been known to do it if there was some question as to the motivation behind the séance—were they trying to do an end run around a will, perhaps? Or were they simply wishing to talk to a dead loved one? But for the most part, I simply did my job without theatrics.
Okay, with a tiny bit of theatrics.
Maybe a medium bit. I’d read the room before deciding.
Karlotta hemmed and hawed for a few moments, then sighed and threw up her hands. “Let’s do it. I don’t want to sound cavalier about my Deborah’s passing but… Well, at this point, we just want to know she’s okay. Or as okay as can be,” she added in a rush. “Oh, that didn’t sound right, did it?”
Ezra smiled reassuringly, lurching his way from the living room and attempting to lean nonchalantly against the kitchen door. He looked more drunk than casual though and I edged a bit closer, ready to catch him if he pitched over. “It’s alright, ma’am. We understand. Do you mind if we record the session? Just for veracity’s sake,” he added when she frowned. “In case there’re questions later.”
She nodded reluctantly, and Ezra pulled out his phone as Julian moved to help clear the table and get Ezra settled before stepping back. It wasn’t ideal as an EVP recorder, but we could pull the audio and run it through some scrubbers if we had to. We set up in the kitchen, clearing the table of coffee and cake before arranging the recorder and Ezra’s small camera to capture everything.
I wasn’t sure how much time we had before Carstairs returned and whether or not he’d have the deputy with him, but I was loathe to hurry. Rushing a séance never ended well—either the ghosts got snippy, or you just plain got no answers You’d think they’d be more easygoing about things, considering they don’t exactly have a lot of people to talk to who can talk back. So I took a breath, and settled into myself, letting that part of me that could interact with the dead open up.
Immediately, I heard the soft laughter from the party, the ghost who had seemed tickled at just about everything. She wasn’t urgent, just present. She moved through the room without manifesting beyond that quiet giggle. It was almost childlike, I thought, listening as it trilled again. She was amused about something, or maybe just happy. She moved away, an ephemeral thing, maybe no more than the remains of a laugh at her core. I took a breath and closed my eyes, the soft ping of the recording app on Ezra’s phone coming on signaling it was time to begin. “Now, Mrs. Carstairs. Karlotta.” I opened my eyes to find her staring at me intently, almost eagerly. “I understand from our earlier conversation there’s some question as to whether your granddaughter, Deborah, has… moved on?”
Karlotta nodded. “Yes. She… she died over a year ago, close to two now. We never found her body, and the police stopped looking after a letter…” she trailed off, her complexion going an unflattering, concerning shade of red. “Well. There was a letter that was supposed to be from her, but none of us believed it. Dewayne, though, he’d always been awful to Leonard—that was Deborah’s husband, he passed when Enoch was… oh, three? No, two. And Yancy was already in middle school by then. Yancy was just inconsolable,” she sighed. “He was such a daddy’s boy.”
“And Deborah?” Julian urged gently. “What about her and Dewayne?”
She clicked her tongue. “Dewayne drove poor Leonard to his death, and we all know he’s the one who did Deborah in. He’d been coming ‘round and riling up the cattle, cutting up through the back forty like he always did from his place. I swear he just liked coming ‘round to piss us off. Pardon my language, boys.”
“No offense taken,” I soothed. “Why would he come bother Deborah?” The laughter was gone, and something heavy and oily was seeping around the edges of the room. Something threatening. The fine hairs on my arms and neck raised, my skin pebbling painfully as I waited for Karlotta to respond.
“Well,” Karlotta hedged, “I don’t rightly know. I tend to think he just enjoyed the drama of it, liked how he was still plucking at Leonard even with that poor boy gone.”
“And his sons?” I asked. “Yancy and Enoch. Did Dewayne bother them, single them out?”
“I don’t know what that has to do with Deborah,” Karlotta said cautiously. “Is she… does she say it does?” Her gaze darted around the kitchen as if she could see her granddaughter standing there if she just looked quick enough, catching her before she vanished again.
I shook my head. “Just getting the lay of the land. Now,” I said, briskly, “Tell me about Deborah.”
I felt a soft click somewhere in my brain. It was hard to describe, but it was a feeling that came when I’d hit on something, when I opened a channel that had been previously closed. Like a lock turning. That click popped as soon as I asked about Deborah specifically.
Someone was reaching out, a tentative tendril through the veil.
The stifling sensation that had been plaguing me since Bettina had lifted a tiny bit, enough for this tender little shoot of contact to work through, and I was terrified the doors would slam shut, and I’d be stuck with nothing for Karlotta. Nothing for us. I refocused my attention on Karlotta and prayed the tenuous connection would hold a little longer.
“Deborah was such a sweet girl. Sad, but sweet. You know how it goes,” Karlotta laughed nervously. “She was a quiet girl, always kept to herself. Loved helping me in the kitchen and had her own little garden patch ‘round back—we let it grow over after she… after she went. I couldn’t bring myself to touch it, and Enoch… Well, she loved her boys and they adored her, but Enoch was the baby, you know? He damn near watered the plot with his tears. David turned it under in the winter after she disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Two years next month,” she murmured. “Dewayne stopped coming ‘round about then, too. We waited for a while, sure he’d turn up to rub it in, torment us a bit. I don’t know why he hated us so much,” she added on a soft sob. “When he didn’t turn up and they found all that blood at his place…” she shook her head. “Please don’t make me.”
Ezra reached out and patted her arm. “Thank you, Mrs. Carstairs. Oscar’s going to attempt to contact Deborah now, alright?”
She sniffed wetly. “Alright.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, slowly. The weak ‘signal’ I was getting allowed me to reach out and call to Deborah or try to. Deborah wasn’t there. In fact, only that oily-heavy-gross presence lingered. It moved around me like a heavy cloak, wrapping and tangling, poking at my thoughts without giving me anything in return. Still, I spoke aloud and hoped for a response. “Can you tell us your name?”
The little red light on the voice recorder stayed steady. Nothing.
“I’m Oscar. The Carstairs family are very hopeful to hear from their loved one, Deborah. Deborah, would you like to say hello?” I went through the motions, the heavy smothering feeling once more settling over me, driving the breath from my lungs and ratcheting up my heartbeat. “If you’d like to say something—”
A sharp gasp from Ezra made me open my eyes. He’d gone pale again, as he had last night and again this morning. He was arching back in the chair, his neck bent to a near obscene angle and his chest heaving. Karlotta let out a tiny screech and scrambled away from her chair, clutching at her bosom and screaming for help. Ezra’s head snapped forward and he stared at me, unseeing. “If I had something to say, I’d say it.”
“Ezra…” My heart, which had been rabbiting against my ribs a moment before, felt as if it had stopped. “Ezra, what’s going on, mate? Talk to me.” Julian moved forward. I had almost forgotten he was in the room; he’d been standing so still and quiet behind me. Now, he was at my side as if he could stop whatever was happening to Ezra.
“People don’t listen. I’ve been trying to talk to you for years, but you just don’t listen.” The accent, the sound, was Ezra, but the cadence was wrong. The intonation was sharp and angry, not my friend at all. He slammed his hands down on the table and growled at me. “They love to put on airs about it, don’t they? They can see me, they know I’m there. But hell, trying to get one of them to goddamn listen!” Ezra’s hands came down hard again and the pain made him gasp, the sightless stare snapping out of his eyes, replaced by wild-eyed fear. “Oh my god,” he breathed. “Oh my god…”
“Ezra?” My voice was tiny, shaking. “Ezra, talk to me.”
He finally focused on me. “I wasn’t possessed,” he swore softly. “I was in my head the whole time, I swear. I could hear him talking, hear me talking, but it was like I was standing to one side and… Oh my God…”
“I believe you.” He looked too afraid for it to be a lie. “What happened, Ez?”
“Whatever happened last night and this morning… They were trying to do this again. Talk, use me to talk to you…”
“Channeling,” I muttered. “They can’t or don’t want to use their own voice to reach out. Why…”
He laughed shakily. “Is because they’re an asshole one of the reasons?”
Karlotta shrieked as the front door banged open. Carstairs, and a man in a police uniform, trundled into the kitchen, both of them scowling. “Found evidence of some encampment by the creek,” the deputy announced. “Looks pretty recent. Not much we can do about it other than clear it out and keep an eye on the place, folks.” He turned his gaze on us. “Deputy Mayhew, Budding Sheriff’s Department. Who might y’all be?”
“This is Oscar Fellowes and his friends Ezra Baxter and Julian Weems. They’re on television,” Karlotta announced a bit proudly. Julian murmured a hello, shaking the deputy’s hand and doing one of those chin up nod things all the men seemed to do there. Ezra just nodded, still pale and shaking. I started to smile but thought better of it—who knew what expression my face would make? I didn’t trust myself to move just then. Ezra, being used as a conduit was not only new, it was terrifying. Most ghosts weren’t strong enough to use a human conduit, much less a conduit who hadn’t been prepared and willing.
The deputy swept his gaze between Ezra and me, before turning his attention back to Carstairs. “I can’t spare the manpower to keep someone on duty here twenty-four seven, but I’ll make sure to stop by when I can. In the meantime, get one of your boys out there to keep an eye on the back fence. Looks like that’s where they got in.” He nodded to Mrs. Carstairs and gave Carstairs one of those bro-slaps on the back before letting himself out.
Carstairs shook his head, padding over to join us in the kitchen. “I’ll be praising Jesus in the streets the day they finally tear down the Hicks place.”
I thought of the dark, empty farmhouse we’d seen just yesterday, the one we’d laughed about looking like something from a horror movie. “Is the Hicks place that one about a mile up the road? With the overgrown fields?”
Carstairs nodded. “That’d be the one. Why do you ask?”
“We passed it on our way here. I’d wondered why it was just sitting empty.”
Karlotta made a nervous clucking noise in her throat. “No one wants to buy it. On account of it being… well… haunted.”
Ezra lunged to his feet, swaying and panting. “I need to go. Now. Now, now, now.”
Julian made a grab to stop him, but Ezra was fast. He pelted out the front door and was halfway to the bunkhouse before Julian or I could stop him.