Page 10 of Possessed By Shadows

“Gross,” Lukas said.

“Right. ‘Cause my boyfriend’s not hot? Whatever. Show me.” I took a few big bites of the sandwich, so happy for the warm burst of flavors covered in melty cheese. I had done a restriction diet under the supervision of my holistic doctor, and found that my only real intolerance was to high levels of processed MSG. So I didn’t have to eat the fake cheese stuff Micah did. Which was good, because cheese could not really be faked all that well, no matter how they tried.

“Show me,” I demanded again, stuffing the last few bites in my mouth.

He let out a long drawn-out and dramatic sigh, but that was the whole reason he was here. He tapped his phone a few times, then turned it toward me, and pumped up the sound. “This is from the stationary camera we had in the room.”

That explained why it focused on the bear, and only partially caught us. I really hated that bear. The sound of white noise filled the audio stream. And for the most part nothing moved. I was curled up against Micah, from what I could tell, my head on his shoulder, his tilted to rest against mine. It had to be when I had dozed. I couldn’t see either of our faces because the camera angle was wrong. The time said I must have fallen asleep for a while like that. When we had started our EVP session it had been almost one in the morning. The time stamp on the video was after three.

The bear’s lights flickered.

I remembered them startling me awake. Only in the video the bear did it a half-dozen times before the sound of a creepy little laugh echoed through the white noise of the camera. That was when I had jolted awake. It hadn’t been super loud, not like it was close to the camera, and not as loud as I remember hearing it when I was there.

“Did you hear…?”

“Yeah,” Lukas agreed.

Micah nodded. “Didn’t hear it while I was there. But now, yeah, that’s legit creepy.”

The bear’s lights danced again. Flickering and dancing, the bear shaking hard enough to move the chair. The sound of something in the hall too. Like footsteps or pounding on the wood. Something racing toward us. All the noise low but echoing in the white noise of the camera feed.

“Is this stuff on the digital recorder too?” I wanted to know.

“Yeah, louder,” Micah agreed. “Clearer. I turned it on when the bear started to flicker.”

“You didn’t fall asleep like I did?” I felt bad for that.

“I didn’t,” Micah said. “Too many ants.”

“You should have said something,” Lukas complained.

Micah said nothing, taking a sip of my tea instead. Had they been arguing about this the whole time I was gone? I wondered how many times Micah had mentioned it only to be ignored? The only reason he pointed it out to me, was because he knew I wouldn’t discount him like everyone else did.

“You could have woken me up.”

“I was going to, but then you jolted awake.”

“From the giggle,” I agreed.

“Which I didn’t hear,” Micah said.

I took the tea from him and had a long sip. The warm heat of it helped relax me a bit. Chamomile. Micah planned on us getting some sleep when my brother left. “Our sensitivity is different.”

There was another laugh coming from behind us, buried in the footsteps. Layers of sound making it hard to tell which direction they came from. The thudding of the footsteps got close, and I had turned toward the door. I must have been hearing it all. I could vaguely remember that second laugh near the door, and how it had sent chills up my spine. This was the kind of footage paranormal investigators thought was gold, begged for, and worked to disprove. I wish I hadn’t been the one in the middle of experiencing it.

The camera fell. I didn’t remember it doing that. But it twisted and fell, a bit like slow motion, landing at an awkward angle, the low battery warning flashing up even as the bear slid out of the rocker. Well, at least the bear hadn’t been thrown, like I originally thought. Though it seemed the chair itself had been tilted forward?

The room darkened. The battery on the camera low and flashing. Was that making it look dark? It shouldn’t have. It wasn’t how the digital ones worked. Dark masses pooled in the room, dropping one on another.

“Am I seeing shadows?” I clarified, wondering if I was nuts.

“Yes,” Micah agreed.

“Yes,” Lukas whispered.

“Do you remember them?” Micah wanted to know. “Did you see them then?”

“No.” I shook my head, thinking hard. “The room went really dark. Like I couldn’t see any light from the window or the screens.” I stared into Micah’s face searching for answers of what he saw. The room hadn’t gone dark for him. “Did you see them then?”