Page 111 of The Haunting of Lockton

He was focused on something behind me.

Low humming sounded from less than a foot away. The sound was wrong. Muffled, as though underwater. Or like an old-timey radio being tuned into a station, the volume rising and falling and cutting in and out.

Every hair on my body stood straight up. I was too afraid to turn around. Ghosts had never scared me in the past. Then again, in the past, we hadn’t seen much more than floating orbs and the occasional blurry apparition.

“What are they doing?” I asked through a tight voice. My heart was pounding so hard I heard the rush of blood in my ears.

“He’s staring out the window,” Julian answered.

The humming continued. Eerie, broken notes that flowed in an indecipherable melody. Something prickled at the back of my mind. A memory. Paxton had mentioned a patient who liked to sing, hadn’t he?

“George?” I asked.

Silence. He had stopped humming. Was he still behind me, peering out the window? I watched Julian for any signs,which didn’t help me feel better at all. Especially when his eyes widened.

The air stirred at my nape. “My name.”

Dear fucking god, the voice was even creepier than the humming. But there was something sad about it too.

“He’s right behind you, Sky.”

“Yeah, no shit. I can feel him.”

“You know my name,” George said, his voice fading in and out.

Beneath my uneasiness, I felt… oddly moved. How many years had George stared out the window, humming to himself as the outside world passed him by? How long had it been since someone, anyone, had acknowledged him? And it was with that thought in mind that I turned around to face him.

His appearance shocked me. Mainly because, like Alan, he looked so human, if for only a moment. His features, like his voice, started to distort, as though he struggled to hold a solid form. What Icouldsee though? He was shorter than me, with scraggly brown hair and a gash going down one side of his face. No facial hair. If I had to guess his age, I’d say late twenties, maybe thirty.

“I do,” I told him. “I heard you don’t like to talk much, but you love to sing.”

George’s body blinked in and out, more solid one moment and nearly all the way transparent the next.

“I like to sing too,” I continued. “When I don’t have the words to say, singing helps me release all the shit in my head. It gives me a way to express myself when I bury my emotions and don’t know how to let them out. Is it like that for you?”

George didn’t answer with words. Instead, he reached out and touched my wrist.

Chills spread along my arm with the sensation of his icy fingertips. He held my gaze, and it was the strangest fuckingthought ever, but in that moment, I felt like I understood him better than anyone else probably ever had. Because he was like me, using music as an escape. He’d been sent to the asylum and mistreated. Maybe he was mistreated before then too. And when the world had taken his voice, he’d found it again in another way.

He released my wrist and turned back to the window to continue humming.

I slowly walked over to Julian, casting glances at George as I went. He faded from sight seconds later.

“That was amazing, Sky. You actually connected with him.”

Unsure what to say, I tucked my hands into my jacket pockets and looked toward the hallway. I felt strangely emotional. Guilty too. Ever since we’d started our show, I had viewed ghosts as a way to make a quick buck. Alan had changed my perspective. So had meeting Roy. And now, George.

They really had been people once. Their dreams had been ripped away and their lives cut too short. All they had in death were the memories of those broken dreams. For some, they didn’t even have their memories. They just had the echoes of grief and loneliness with no way of easing either of them.

“Let’s go downstairs,” Julian said, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Downstairs? As in, the basement?”

“Whatever you want to call it.” He moved his hand around. “But that’s where they held those in solitary confinement. I want to try reaching out for Owen.”

“He wasn’t in a cell when he died though, was he? Callum said he left the cell and stormed the asylum. His soul might’ve moved on. He may not even be here.”

“Maybe not,” Julian responded. “But I still want to try.”