Marlo had her own gifts as well, although again, she’d never really brought them up to her daughter. Everyone has secrets, I guess.
Truer words never were spoken, Scottie said, and there was another crash as first Pat and then Lance hit the wall outside the doorway, skidding to a stop to stare at them, chests heaving. Scottie came up behind them, running easily, and Sapph hid a grin.
“Where is it?” Lance said. “Where’s the evidence?”
Gwen held up the book. “Sadly, this is all we have, other than personal experiences. But you guys, this place is the real deal.”
“What do you mean?” Pat asked.
“I - WE,” and Gwen gestured to Sapph and Amani, “just saw a full apparition. Like, full, Pat.”
He gaped at her. “Really? Full? You’re kidding.”
“Nope. A doctor, I think,” Gwen said. “But it looked odd.”
“Odd like in the fact that you saw a full apparition, or odd another way?” Pat asked.
Before she could answer, Sapph turned to Scottie. “When you see things, not through me, but on your own, do they look solid? Or are they transparent?”
He frowned, considering. “It depends,” he said finally. “Sometimes, especially if it’s more of a stone tape kind of apparition, it’s like watching an old movie on a projector. If they’re sentient ghosts, they tend to look more or less like a solid person. Why?”
“Just curious,” Sapph admitted. “Gwen asked me, and I’ve always interacted with them as full solid people. I’ve never actually seen a ghost not in the Ghostlands. It was…interesting.”
“But what did it look like?” Lance said.
“A doctor, like Gwen said. But it was like we were seeing him in the past.” Sapph paused, considering her next words. “I’m not sure if he was nodding at us, or it was more of a place memory. All the doctors had to have come down in here more than a few times.” She looked at Gwen and Amani. “Right?”
“I’d be leaning more towards residual myself,” Amani said. “There was something familiar about the whole thing.”
“Familiar?” Lance asked.
“Familiar as in, it felt like he’d done that many times before.” Amani shrugged. “I don’t think he saw us.”
“But what about the crash?” Gwen said. “We wouldn’t have turned around to see him if there hadn’t been a crash.”
“True.” Amani looked around her. “And we never did find out what that was.”
Scottie was looking around himself too, with the slightly unfocused stare that meant he was using his clairvoyance. “There’s so much here,” he said finally, shaking his head as if to reset his eyes. “So many people, so many memories - it’s hard to tell what’s residual and what isn’t.” He looked over at Sapph, and more importantly, at Bear. The little dog’s rumbling growl hadn’t stopped. “He’s not too upset, so maybe it’s just echoes. I don’t have your bag, though, and you aren’t dressed to walk.”
“Also, we need to formulate a plan of action.” Pat had gotten himself under control, although the brightness in his eyes indicated how excited he was. He pulled out a walkie talkie and said, “Pat to Knox. Come in.”
I can’t remember the last time I saw someone use a walkie talkie, Sapph thought, amused.
Well, not everyone can talk telepathically, Scottie reminded her. Some of us are mere mortals, after all.
“Knox here.” The voice from the walkie talkie distracted everyone else from seeing Sapph sticking her tongue out at him.
“Where are you?” Pat asked.
After a slight pause, Knox said, “Vincent and I are in the barn area, checking out some of the back rooms that we haven’t seen yet. What’s up?”
Pat looked at his watch. “The girls had some interesting phenomena show up in the records room. Want to take an early lunch so we can plan some more?”
“Absolutely. Especially since we just found some interesting things too. See you in five.”
It was more like thirty, since everyone wanted to clean up before gathering in the dining room. Gwen had produced the journal and was paging through it, Amari was busy taking notes in her notebook as Lance, Pat, and Scottie were looking at something on a tablet that Knox had brought out. Sapph took her seat next to her bodyguard, nodded her thanks as he indicated the soda in front of her, and then craned her head. “What’s this?”
Scottie tapped the screen, stopping the video. “Knox and Vincent brought this back. Watch.”
The audio was turned off, so the scene unfolded in an eerie silence. She watched as Knox walked across the main room of the barn to the back area, where a set of rickety steps climbed the wall to what she assumed was the hayloft. Dust danced in the air, the memory of hay long gone, as he climbed up. And then, the picture flickered, as if something had rushed between the man and the camera. It was barely noticeable at normal speed, and Sapph probably would have assumed Vincent had joggled the camera had she not been warned that there was something there.
“Why did you notice it?” she asked Vincent, as he came in from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel.
“I didn’t, at first,” Vincent said. “Keep watching.”
On the screen, Knox had paused about halfway up the stairs, cocking his head as if he heard something. Then, he gasped and pointed behind the camera, and Vincent had swung around. In the middle of the formerly empty main room, children’s shapes flickered in and out of the dust, as if they were playing tag with each other. For nearly a full minute, he captured the ghostly game, and then the figures faded back into the woodwork.
“Another memory, do you think?” Sapph asked, looking at Knox.
“Maybe,” he said. “But now that you’re here, we can share it properly.” He reached for the tablet and turned on the sound. Once again, they watched Knox mount the stairs, and the unexplained flicker, and his gasp. When the camera swung around, the voices of children came through.
“I do not like thee, Doctor Broadwell, The reason why – I cannot tell; But this I know, and know full well, I do not like thee, Doctor Broadwell.”
Over and over, as if singing in a round, the voices repeated the rhyme, until the ghosts faded. Then, just before the video ended, there was another voice that said, “Dr. Broadwell hated that game.”
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