Perception (Apparition Investigations #1)

Case #1: Villanova Apartments: Part 4

Oliver was still staring at his hand, long after the girls had left.  "She touched me."

"Yes, she did."

He looked up at Cyril.  "And Stella touched you?"

"Yep."

His eyes fell back to his hand, staring as though he'd never seen it before.  "She touched me."

Cyril plopped down on the couch beside Oliver.  "Yes, and as fascinating as that is, I believe it should be moved to Topic B of tonight's discussion.  Topic A, I'm sure you'll agree, should be the thing that breezed through here.  The thing that knocked over Stella.  That slashed up my shoulder.  Made me feel pain.  Actual, physical pain.  Like I had a body."

Oliver pulled his eyes away from his hand.  "Yes, yes, you're absolutely right.  It was—I've never seen anything like it before."

"What was it?"

He paused.  "It—it was..." his voice trailed off as he searched for the words.  Finally, with a frustrated sigh, he ran a hand through his hair and leaned his head back against the top of the couch.  "Horrifying."

Cyril shrugged and then winced at the pain of the movement.  As a ghost, he'd grown accustomed to not having a body.  Not feeling cold or heat, the pressure of something underfoot, or the softness of things he'd taken for granted.  He'd become used to feeling nothing.

Yet now that his form ached, old memories were flooding back.  Disinfect the wound.  Patch it up.  Keep it clean, keep it dry.

He wasn't sure anymore if that was knowledge he'd had when he died, or tips he'd picked up moving through the advancing world unseen.  They'd tried to patch up his wound, but the cloth had floated right through his shoulder.  They could pick things up with concentration, but that was it.  It was like applying lotion.  Instead of it rubbing on their skin, it just smeared, not being absorbed, for as long as they concentrated.  Breaking that concentration had the lotion smacking to the floor through their bodies.

Cyril settled into the couch, favoring his hurt side.  "Can you describe what it looked like?"

"It might have been human once," Oliver whispered with a shudder.  "But it was longer.  Like it'd been stretched out on some medieval torture bed.  Its knuckles dragged along the floor.  And it was easily eight feet tall—maybe more.  Everything was sharpened to a point.  It's hands, it's head, it's feet."  His eyes fell on Cyril's shoulder.  "I think that's what got you.  Some clawed, morphed thing that might have been a hand once."

"Anything else?"

He shook his head.  "That's all I saw really.  Just the vague outline.  I couldn't tell you anything else really, except that it was fast.  It crawled on the walls like a spider."

"You sound convinced that it was human."

"It was shaped like a human.  But it could get down on all fours like a dog, and move just as fast.  Mostly though, it was upright.  I don't know.  You know the feeling—back when you were alive, not now, obviously—but when a person came into the room versus when a dog or a cat did?  It felt human."

"Toward the end, I thought it might have been speaking."

Oliver studied him.  "That would fit with what I'm thinking.  It was human."

"Tortured soul, maybe?  Maybe he had been stretched on some medieval torture device?"

"No," Oliver shook his head, "I don't think so.  We don't bear the marks from how we died."

Cyril's eyes lingered on Oliver's neck.  "Then how would it get stretched like that?  And sharpened?"

"I have no idea."