The next day, Steve awoke refreshed and ready to begin. His hope for conversations with more locals had begun to get answered the evening before at the diner.
Apparently, word was getting around that he was in town to do a TV show. Some folks even recognized him. A few actually stayed to talk after a greeting.
He hadn’t gotten any truly useful information, but he felt that might come eventually. It was difficult right now because he didn’t want the whole community to know whose house he was investigating. That might hamper his work, but worse, it might upset the Castelles to become front-page news before there’d been a solution.
He got it. They didn’t want people all over town discussing whether their daughter had a mental problem or whether they sucked as parents. Who would?
He didn’t yet have anything to legitimize their experiences. That was a bad way to go public. The Castelles had every right to expect better of him. It would be different once he had some answers for them, but he didn’t need a warning announcement that they wouldn’t be happy if they ended up with neighbors camping outside because of curiosity. Or teens being drawn because it was cool there might be a ghost.
Or Viv facing teasing from classmates.
It wouldn’t take long for one nightmare to become a second.
He ate breakfast at the truck stop because it was conveniently across the road from the motel. And maybe because it gave him some thinking space to be in a place populated mostly by transients. Nobody here was likely to want to talk to him about much, if anything.
* * *
BEN WITTES LEARNED that the guy he’d seen was the ghost hunter. He was delighted with the possibilities. He could speak for the spirits who lingered so unhappily. He called the show’s producers to see if they would use him.
The spirits had been clamoring for attention for weeks now, as if they knew who was coming. They surely wanted Ben to speak for them, the voiceless who couldn’t begin to speak for themselves.
Ben was the only voice they had, and it made the inside of his head awfully noisy. It’s not like he could simply turn them off. Yeah, he could get them to tone it down, but he knew they were desperate. He felt guilty sometimes for not listening more or better.
Lately one voice had become louder than the rest. He wasn’t sure who exactly it was, but he kept listening for information.
In the meantime, Ben had a bigger worry. He often woke in the morning with dirt on him, under his nails and on his clothes. Why was he dressed and what was he doing at night? He had no idea, and that frightened him. What if one of the spirits was taking him over?
They had no limits on what they could do, not anymore.
Heaven and hell no longer bound them.