Page 48 of Stalked By Shadows

We walked a little further. Far enough that I was getting an idea of the area now. We’d have to make a choice on which way to turn soon. “If you’re okay with me hanging with you, maybe I could stay over. Pet your cat or something.” Man, was I awkward.

He laughed. “Jet loves you. He’s a great judge of character.”

“Doesn’t seem to like Tim much,” I said.

“I think it’s because Tim doesn’t like him. It’s like he senses it. Tim has never really been an animal person. I didn’t think I was either until Jet. No one really owns cats where I come from. It’s more like the neighborhood cat. Everyone feeds it and it comes and goes as it pleases. Can’t really do that here. It’s not safe for Jet and a lot of people are very cruel.”

That reminded me of the animal thing we’d seen in the cemetery. I didn’t want to think about it. I squeezed his hand and let him steer us toward his place. Despite being after eleven there were still a lot of people lingering. We walked by the shop and everything was closed and dark, the sign gone from the walk.

“I hope Sky got home okay in her queen dress,” I said. She had still been flouncing around in it when we had left for the tour.

“Lukas sent a text to say he was going to walk her home,” Micah said. “You must have missed that in all your people watching. Did you get any good pictures? I saw you take a few.”

“I haven’t even looked.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and flipped it open, sending Lukas a quick text to tell him I was staying with Micah tonight. Maybe he was finally making good with Sky. “Made it through the whole tour without freaking out,” I said. “Even after seeing a ghost. I’m pretty proud of myself.”

“I’m proud of you too. Usually it’s uneventful. Where did you see a ghost?”

“At the Market. Did you feel something at the voodoo place?”

“Yes, but it was mild.”

I flipped through the pictures. Sure enough, at the Voodoo Museum, in the picture of the window beside where Micah stood, there was something. I wasn’t sure what, but there was something. I tugged him to a stop and showed him the picture. “You see that? Or is it me?”

He examined the picture, brows knit together in thought that made me think I was seeing something in the picture he wasn’t seeing either. “Sort of looks like a person. Almost like those Slender Man stories. Though those are all from a fiction piece that started about a decade ago, so not really long enough to even be an urban legend. I sometimes wonder if it is people’s belief in things that create an alternate reality of some of these creatures.”

“So you do see something. In the window?” I clarified.

“Yes. Mostly an outline. We can post the picture to the Facebook group. Let them debate it. There are legends of voodoo spirit guides that linger near where the veils are thinnest. Some of them would fit the description and this photo, but it’s all hearsay. Stories of someone’s best friend’s brother’s neighbor’s wife… Did it feel dangerous to you?”

I had to think about that as we continued walking. “No? Not really. But the whole building seemed to glow.” Which none of the pictures captured.

“Spirit guides aren’t something that is supposed to be dangerous. Quite the opposite actually. I didn’t notice a glow. Did it show up on camera?”

“Nope.” Which irritated me. Did that mean my eyes were weird? Or my perception of reality?

“Did the LaLaurie Mansion glow?”

“No. It was dark. Black. Dead.” Like a wormhole dropping into nothing, I thought. “Made my stomach hurt though, even if I didn’t see anything.” It was really nice to actually talk to someone about this stuff and not pretend everything was normal.

“Hmm,” Micah said as he unlocked the gate to enter the garden surrounding his condo.

I got to the picture from the French Market. Yeah, there was something in that picture too. One of the ten I took, but clear enough to see the shape of a person in the distance. “Well, fuck. Maybe I am some kind of psychic live wire or something.” I showed the picture to Micah.

“Could be a person,” he said. “It’s pretty far away.”

“But you can kind of see the ground through the legs, right?”

He enlarged the picture and moved it around a little. “I guess. Another one for the group.” He gave me back the phone and we headed down the little path that would lead around the house to his place.

“I don’t know how you can be such a skeptic when you experience so much,” I said. “Therapists taught me to question everything, especially myself, and even I am at a loss for what this stuff is. Lukas says I don’t need to understand it to accept it. Is that how you look at it?”

“I try to not look too deeply at any of it. Focusing on any of it seems to draw them in.”

“But the idea of ghosts doesn’t scare you. You walk around town where all the haunted places are and point everyone toward things they wouldn’t normally see. And they don’t scare you at all?”

“Ghosts can’t hurt you. If that’s what they even are. Ghosts by definition are in the past. A memory, or an emotion, or an old history, it’s all before. The things people take pictures of are often the same. Repeating history? High emotion? I’ve done these tours for years and no one has ever been attacked,” Micah said.

Or vanishes, I thought. But the noises outside his house late at night scared him. Memories of a different kind, much like that night in the desert.