Page 8

Chance

M y phone lit up on the table before me. Another text from my mother. To say she was displeased with my sneaky departure from yesterday’s luncheon would be an understatement. She was livid. And my phone blowing up was only the start of it.

It wasn’t just her trying to reach me. Blake had also been texting to ask where I was, Dakota had sent a few messages to warn me of the incoming storm, bless her heart, and even my stepfather joined in with his short, disapproving texts.

At one point last night, I actually thought their barrage of texts was going to break my phone. It froze for about thirty minutes before finally shutting itself off to cool down and reboot. If I didn’t need it so much, I would have just tossed it out the window for one of the other RVs to run over and be done with it.

A knock at the door pulled my attention from the little metal brick of emotional torture, and I gladly left it behind to let whoever it was in. Mikey stood outside, a lazy grin on his face.

‘You ready to go?’ he asked, but I didn’t know what he was talking about.

‘Go where?’

His smile dimmed, but he kept it mostly in place. ‘You didn’t get the text? I swear I sent it to you.’

I sagged a little at the realisation. ‘I’ve been ignoring my phone.’

Understanding dawned, and his lips thinned in compassion. ‘The Mom-ster at it again?’

I meant to say yes, but all that came out was a grunt.

‘Right, well, we’re taking the equipment for a spin. Heading up and down the highway to see if we can catch any readings along the way.’

I dipped my chin. ‘Got it. Which van are we taking?’

‘Ours,’ Ashe’s preppy voice preceded her before she rounded the rear of my van. ‘Hurry up, dweebs. My wife’s getting impatient.’ Then she spun on her heels and sauntered off back to said wife. I didn’t have a problem with Gloria; in fact, I really liked her, especially how happy she made my best friend. My annoyance was with her general impatience. I’d never met anyone who demanded everyone work on their timeline more than her, and I was raised around some of the most impatient people on this planet.

‘Go on,’ I told Mikey, watching him visibly relax. None of us liked to get on Gloria’s bad side. ‘I’ll catch up. Just need to grab a few things, then I’ll be right there.’

He shuffled away, dragging his feet like he always did in his scuffed-up sneakers. Mikey had been one of my best friends for a long time, but he didn’t like socialising even with me unless he had to. Our friendship was based on quiet, distant support over anything else. I knew he was there for me if I needed him, just as he knew I was here when he needed me. What more could a guy ask for in a friend?

I quickly grabbed my phone and stuffed it into my pocket, shoved on my boots, and snatched up my case full of equipment. We wouldn’t need any of the communication devices for now, especially with Gloria joining us, but we would need my EMF Metres and thermometers. I had multiple kinds to cover all bases, plus my excessively large stash of batteries. We could never have too many batteries. We’d learned the hard way to keep a stash of extras on one of our first hunts. Most of our equipment died, and we lost our shot at capturing evidence of that particular spirit after accidentally scaring them off.

I know, right? Us , scaring off a ghost ? What most people didn’t realise was that ghosts were pretty darned skittish. It was why catching evidence of them was so difficult, and why so many didn’t believe in their existence. That was the main goal of our team: to record enough evidence that would be impossible to debunk to prove the existence of the paranormal.

So far, we had been lucky. Over the past twelve years, my team and I had gathered enough evidence to back up our claims that we’d garnered international attention. Sure, it was small compared to other avenues of fame, but we were well-known within our field as legitimate and credible. Our hope was to create credibility for our field itself, and this job may just help us to achieve that.

I locked my van behind me, turning on the security to ensure no one tried to break in. There was a lot of expensive equipment in there that I didn’t want to lose. I could replace it if I had to, but it was a pain in the ass.

Ashe, Gloria, and Mikey were already waiting in the RV when I jumped in. I took a seat in the back, locking my case of equipment in the compartment beneath it before strapping in.

‘Finally,’ Gloria snarked. ‘I was beginning to think you were ditching us.’

‘Oh, hush, babe,’ Ashe admonished her wife with a light-hearted smack on the arm. ‘He gets enough nitpicking from his mother. Let the man be.’

Gloria sent Ashe a dirty glare, to which the latter merely grinned back unapologetically. ‘Ex-fucking-scuse me? Who are you married to, me or him?’

Ashe simply shrugged her shoulders and started the engine. ‘I’ll make it up to you tonight with lots of orgasms. I’ll even do that thing with my tongue that you like so much.’

This revolting exchange seemed to mollify Gloria, and she leant over the centre console to press a lingering kiss on Ashe’s cheek. However, before she pulled away, she sank her teeth into the soft flesh and licked a line up the side of her face. ‘I’m holding you to that.’

‘And that’s quite enough of that,’ I said, thoroughly disturbed by the unwanted insight into their sex life.

‘Shut up, man,’ Mikey hissed from the seat on my right. ‘This is the most action I’ve seen in months. Don’t ruin it for me.’

Ashe immediately stomped on the brakes, throwing us all forward before we slammed back into the chairs. My seatbelt dug into my shoulder painfully, so I reached up a hand to pull it away and rub at the bruise that would no doubt be forming. Both women swivelled around to glare at our friend, who was now cowering as far away from them as the small space would allow.

‘This is a no perv zone, Mikey. You gonna shut it, or get out?’ Gloria snarled threateningly.

‘S-sorry,’ he stammered, his face turning an alarming shade of red.

‘Oh, give him a break,’ I teased, a smirk pulling at the corners of my lips. ‘It’s not every day a man gets a front row seat to his biggest fantasy. Let the man dream.’

‘He can dream on his own time,’ Ashe said, but cut the tension with a chuckle. She enjoyed teasing Mikey. He was easy to pick on, so I made sure to be the buffer between the two. Their animosity was usually friendly anyway.

Gloria, on the other hand… her mumbles and grumbles remained for the rest of the drive to the end of the highway. We were starting the trip further south at La Pine and making our way slowly up towards Bend, but each of us was perfectly positioned in the van. Ashe was the camera girl, so her skills weren’t going to be utilised just yet, hence the reason for her place behind the wheel. Gloria needed to be front and centre to pick up on any psychic readings that came her way and note their locations, which put her beside Ashe. Mikey was our tech guy, so he was in the back with me, keeping track of our readings while I pointed the devices out the window.

We always made sure to turn off anything inside the vans that could give us false readings. Ashe and Gloria didn’t have a microwave or other such appliances that could mess with the data, and we kept the radio off so we wouldn’t pick up on any radio waves by accident. It was Mikey’s job to keep track of those readings and point out anything that could be considered abnormal.

Our team worked like a well-oiled machine, each of us already understanding what part to play and doing so without the need for direction. We had our routine down pat.

In one hand, I held my TriField Natural EM Meter to try to catch any electromagnetic fluctuations, while in the other hand, I held the TriField 2 Meter to compare against the other one for man-made electrical fields. Both devices were connected to Mikey’s laptop, where he was deciphering the readouts in real-time. So far, only the latter was lighting up, but that didn’t mean much. It was likely just fluctuations brought on by passing by someone’s home or car with the radio on.

‘Over there,’ Gloria suddenly said, pointing a shaky finger towards an offshoot road to the right. ‘Something is happening over there.’

Ashe and I shared a glance that was both filled with excitement and trepidation through the rearview mirror as she immediately turned the van down the side road Gloria had indicated. The psychic herself was in the midst of some sort of trance, the kind that only happened when an entity was actively attempting to communicate with her.

‘He’s screaming,’ she said, her voice low and trembling. ‘He’s still being attacked...’

‘Who?’ Ashe asked, keeping her tone gentle and quiet so as not to disturb Gloria in her element.

‘I don’t know. He’s begging for help, but his voice… It’s getting quieter, like he’s being pulled away.’

We rounded a copse of trees only for Ashe to stomp on the brakes for the second time today. I leaned my body to the centre at the same time as Mikey to see what was going on, but we ended up butting heads in the process. He pulled away, rubbing at his skull, but I stayed put to see what was going on. Police tape cordoned off the area, and a uniformed officer was approaching with a scowl dipping low over his eyes, his lips pursed in displeasure.

Ashe rolled down her window before he could knock on it.

‘What are you folks doing here?’ he asked.

‘We’re following a lead,’ Ashe told him, keeping things vague. Most people scoffed at us when we told them we were following a psychic’s directions, so we avoided it when we could. ‘We’re paranormal investigators, and we got a hit over this way and decided to follow.’

‘Ghost hunters, huh? Just fucking perfect. Who leaked about the crime scene?’ he grouched, demanding an answer that would likely put a damper on our investigation.

Mikey leaned forward to take over. ‘No one, officer. Like my friend here said, we were just following a lead. We got a spike in our EMF Meter down this way, so we decided to check it out.’

‘EMF Meter?’ the officer asked, looping his thumbs through his harness as he settled in for a longer conversation.

‘It detects potential paranormal activity through spikes in electromagnetic fields,’ Mikey explained.

His eyes flickered to the side of the van where our team’s logo was blatantly displayed. ‘I see. And you think that gives you the right to drive onto private property?’ The officer pointed to a sign that clearly stated that this land belonged to someone, but this was the first sign we’d seen so far to indicate ownership.

‘We would have turned around as soon as we saw the sign, sir,’ Ashe told him. ‘As you can imagine, we weren’t expecting to run into a crime scene. Can I ask what happened here?’

The officer sighed, seemingly put out, but surprised me by actually answering our question. ‘Another one of them drownin’s. Nothing to be concerned about. It’d be best if you folks went on your way and let us finish up in peace.’

‘Of course, officer. We apologise if we got in your way. We’ll leave.’

She rolled up the window as soon as he stepped back, but Gloria looked even more pale by the time we got back to the highway.

‘He’s gone.’

I frowned, confused. ‘Who’s gone?’

‘The spirit. The man who drowned. He was murdered, I know that much. His soul was restless, but he was still being hunted. Whatever we’re dealing with here, I think it’s somehow killing people’s physical bodies to gain access to their souls after death.’ She turned to Ashe with fear clear in her wide, bloodshot eyes.

‘Why would anything do that, though?’ I asked. ‘We’ve never come across a malignant entity that wanted to harm other spirits. It doesn’t make sense. What does it want with them?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gloria admitted gravely. ‘I don’t think we should continue this investigation. It’s not safe.’

‘Why don’t we head back to the campsite, and we can sleep on it before making any decisions?’ I offered, not wanting to shut things down before we could even get started.

‘I don’t know… I don’t feel comfortable continuing with this. If there’s an entity murdering living people, then we’re not safe.’

‘But if there is a malignant entity out there actively causing harm, don’t you think we have a responsibility to stop it?’ I argued.

‘And how do you propose we do that?’ she retorted.

‘We’ll figure it out.’

‘That’s not good enough. We can’t just go in half-cocked and rely on luck. People are dying , Chance,’ she pointed out hotly.

‘Exactly. We’re the only ones who have any possible idea what’s going on. If we don’t do anything about it, who will?’

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ Ashe cut in, glancing between me and Gloria as much as she could while still focusing on the road. ‘You’ve both brought up very valid points, but there’s nothing we can do right now. I agree that we should head back to the campsite and think things over. Chance is right that we’re the only ones who will be either willing or capable of doing anything to fix things. Plus, when our priest arrives, we’ll have another weapon in our arsenal. However, Gloria is also right. We need to seriously consider the implications of staying and continuing the investigation. This is serious.’

‘To the campsite, then,’ I agreed, and Gloria grumbled her acquiescence while biting her nails. The sound was grating, but her nerves were more frayed than my own, so I didn’t make a fuss about it. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like to witness the entities the way she did, let alone ones that were suffering. Usually, she avoided them as much as she could and asking her to stick around to face horrors only she was privy to was a big ask.

But at the end of the day, if there was something paranormal killing the folks of Klamath County, didn’t we have a moral obligation to do something about it? We dealt with death every day, but typically not when it was so fresh. Yet, death was still death, and we were still paranormal investigators. If we could help, shouldn’t we?

Except, these people surrounding me, my friends, my chosen family, they didn’t have the same mindset as me. They had something more to live for, whereas my reason for existence was torn from me seven long years ago. I was barely hanging on as it was, but could I drag these people into danger with me if it came down to it?

I didn’t know.

I already knew in my heart that I was staying, but I wouldn’t begrudge the others if they decided it was too much for them. I didn’t want them getting hurt. The decision was theirs, and whatever their choice, I would respect it.

My phone buzzed again inside my pants pocket, jolting me from my thoughts. I groaned as I pulled it out, dreading the name I would find flashing on the small screen. My eyebrows shot up when I saw who was calling, however, and I tentatively answered, my curiosity winning out.

‘Dakota?’

‘Chance, thank fuck. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for ages ,’ my sister-in-law’s voice came through harried and a little nervous.

‘Is everything okay? Has something happened?’ I asked, my thoughts immediately drifting to Kali’s cold case, but I quickly pushed those hopes down.

‘Yes. Well, sort of. I’m so sorry, Chance. I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t.’

I frowned. ‘Stop who? What’s going on?’

But as we pulled into the campsite, my question was already answered. There they stood, Dakota with Blake, Calvin on his other side. And standing right next to my mother?

Fucking Florence.

Dakota turned at the sound of our wheels crunching over the stones, her expression anxious and apologetic. Into the phone, she whispered low so the others wouldn’t hear her. ‘I’m sorry, Chance. I tried.’

My forehead smacked against the back of Ashe’s headrest as I sagged in my seat, already exhausted from this new development, but it was Ashe who vocalised what we were all thinking.

‘Well, that’s just fucking great.’