Page 22 of Rattling Bone (OutFoxing the Paranormal #2)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Holy shit, I saw it!” Chris whispered, aiming the camera at the spot on the floor where Jeff’s broken body lay. “Like a mist?”
Oscar’s heart thumped, and he shook his head, though not in disagreement. “I see more. Stay here, both of you.”
“I have my salt ready,” Nigel said. “And the EMF reader.”
“Put it on silent, so it won’t interfere with an EVP,” Oscar instructed. “And wait here.”
The grime of years—dust, paint flecks, rust—ground under Oscar’s boots as he crossed the concrete floor. A trickle of snow came through a few broken panes in the skylights far above. He took a deep breath, tuned his awareness to the ground under his feet and the physicality of his own body.
“Jeff Corbett,” he said, thumbing on the digital recorder at his belt as he did so.
A flicker—and the figure was back on the catwalk.
“I’m Oscar—we spoke last night,” he said, unsure how much, if anything, a ghost remembered from day to day. “Can you speak to me?”
But words weren’t how Jeff chose to communicate with him.
A sensation swept over Oscar, so wildly different from anything he was feeling at the moment that he knew it came from outside of himself. A sense of covetous pride swelled within him. This was his triumph, built by his family piece by painstaking piece. Everyone who worked here, the very lifeblood of the town, depended on him. He could do what he wanted—it wasn’t as if the sheriff was going to haul in the man who employed half his family.
Then a wave of dizziness, a sharp blow, pain—
Oscar let out a sharp breath and envisioned his shielding, building a barrier between himself and Jeff’s feelings. The broken body lay there again before him, before dissolving and returning to the catwalk above.
“Oscar?” Nigel asked.
He held out a staying hand, then returned his concentration to Jeff. “You used to be something in life,” he said, and managed not to add “a privileged asshole” on the end. “But that time is gone, has been for seventy-five years.”
Jeff fell again, and Oscar tried not to flinch. “This is no way to spend an afterlife,” he said. “You asked me to help you, and I want to do that. You don’t have to stay here.”
The body on the ground flickered—then stood in front of him. Its skull was half-crushed from the impact, but its remaining eye watched him hopefully.
Oscar envisioned a silvery doorway in the air to one side, just as he had back at the Matthews house all those months ago. “Can you see the door?” he asked, pointing. “Go through it, and you’ll be free. No more falling; no more pain.”
The ghost’s face changed, from shattered to whole. His eyes fixed on the doorway, and a sense of relief washed over Oscar from him.
Then he stepped through and was gone.
“The EMF meter has dropped back into green,” Nigel murmured in a low voice.
Oscar nodded. “Yeah. He’s crossed over.” He turned back to his friends. “One down, two to go.”
* * *
Dread crept up Nigel’s spine as they neared the powerhouse.
Jeff Corbett had crossed over easily enough, though given his terrible afterlife and his earlier request for help, that was no real surprise. He certainly had never come across as a violent ghost.
Unlike his father, Edwin, in the powerhouse.
Edwin had menaced them earlier, drained every battery he could get his hands on, shocked Tina, and burned a hapless moth to ash. Their presence on the property would have only offered up more ambient energy to feed off in the meantime, coupled with what he’d grabbed from the batteries last night.
He was very angry and very dangerous. And that combination chilled Nigel to his core.
They paused in the turbine hall, close to the stairs. Oscar scanned the room, looking for something Nigel would never be able to see. “I think he’s still in the switching room…for the moment.”
“Let’s set up here, then,” Nigel said.
They unfolded the Faraday tent; thankfully, they’d practiced setting it up back when it first arrived, and were able to do so now in less than a minute. After what happened at the Matthews house, Nigel was paranoid about rips, and gave it a quick once-over to make sure it didn’t need a patch from the extra netting crammed into his backpack. Satisfied, he stepped back so Oscar could unzip his own backpack and take out a dozen or so extra batteries, which he heaped in the center of the tent.
With luck, the electrical feast would get Edwin’s attention, he’d slip through the open door of the tent and set off the EMF meter Oscar put beside the batteries. The moment that happened, Oscar would spring into action and zip up the tent, trapping Edwin inside. From there it would be a matter of convincing him to move on.
Nigel touched the side of the tent, then pulled off his own backpack. “I have an idea,” he said, pulling out a length of the spare Faraday netting.
Oscar looked at him askance, but followed his instructions to tie one end to the metal railing surrounding the open stairwells, and another to a pipe running up the wall. “Are you going to share with the class?” Oscar asked when they were done.
“The silver thread in the netting will act as a conductor,” Nigel explained. “Since we tied it off to ground, if Edwin passes through it on his way to the tent, it will drain off some of his energy and hopefully make him more likely to go straight for the batteries to recharge.”
“Smart,” Oscar said. “I see they didn’t give you that PhD for nothing.”
Nigel’s cheeks warmed at the compliment. “Similar techniques of using grounding to drain spectral energy have been tried before. I’m just employing what we have on hand.”
Oscar turned toward the door to the switching room. “Okay, I’ll go in. You two wait here.”
“No.” Nigel held up his canister of salt when Oscar opened his mouth to object. “I agreed to split up when we were looking for Agnes’s bones, and she stalked and terrorized you. I’m not going to do so again.”
“This could be dangerous.”
“I know. That’s why I’m going with you.” He shook the salt canister for emphasis.
Oscar nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
Nigel’s nerves drew tight as they crossed the turbine hall. The door to the switching room seemed too small, a tight space meant to trap anyone inside.
No, no—he needed to be calm, damn it. His fear was just giving Edwin more energy to feed off, to use against them.
Oscar stepped through the doorway first, followed by Nigel. They didn’t go far inside, in case they needed a fast exit.
“Edwin Corbett,” Oscar said in an authoritative voice, “you’ve lingered on this side of the veil long enough. It’s time to move on and finally be at peace.”
Even Nigel could feel what happened next. A static charge seemed to build in the air, prickling at the fine hairs of his arms. There was a brief scent of ozone, that gave way far too quickly to the smell of burning, rancid meat.
Oscar’s nostrils flared. “The distillery is gone, Edwin,” he said. “I’m the last of the family line, and I’m telling you to let go. You don’t need to suffer being trapped here anymore.”
An eerie blue glow appeared at every point of metal, dancing across the switches embedded in the wall.
Saint Elmo’s fire—the precursor to a lightning strike.