Perception (Apparition Investigations #1)

Case #2: Hell's Gate: Part 13

I awoke that morning to the smell of coffee and my living room having been converted to an FBI-level tech center. She had laptops connected to cameras, connected to power cords, connected to my TV. They snaked around the room in a web: black cords stretching across the floor and just waiting to trip someone. In the middle of it, sitting cross-legged on the couch with her laptop in her lap, sat Rose. Like a spider in the middle of it's web.

Sniffing, I glanced to the kitchen. Bronte's coffee maker gurgled out a fresh pot.

"Where did you find the coffee?" I asked, carefully navigating the cords toward the kitchen. As the resident coffee non-drinker, I had no idea where Bronte kept her stash.

"Cyril-or-Oliver pointed it out. Opened the cabinet with it. You know, I could totally get used to ghost roommates. Does he do dishes?"

"No, but I could," Cyril offered, his voice floating through the room.

"Thank you, but no, I can handle the dishes," I said, pulling out a bottle of water from the refrigerator.

I turned, thinking of heading to the couch, but stopped when I realized all the cords converged there. It was a veritable minefield of potentially broken equipment. No thanks.

She had a notebook within reach, a pencil tucked behind her ear, and, I noticed with a grin, was wearing some of Bronte's lounge clothes. "I see you made yourself comfortable."

Her eyes flitted down to her shirt. She shrugged. "Yeah, well, I figured she wouldn't mind. Especially considering the traumatic experience we went through last night."

"Traumatic?" I arched an eyebrow in surprise. "You were hopping mad that we forced you to leave last night."

"I'm glad we did," she said, waving at the TV screen. "Here. Watch this."

"It's concerning," Cyril warned as Rose replayed footage from the thermal camera.

The camera recorded audio. I could pick up our voices, arguing about leaving. Rose's pitch rose onscreen at the thought of being forced by my power to leave. Noah's hard tone sounded even sharper than it had last night.

And, on screen, more yellow forms appeared behind the first.

My breath caught as I counted. There were at least six more, bringing the total up to seven.

As our fighting continued, even more appeared.

Rose paused it.

Eleven. Eleven distinct yellow shapes hovered in the distant background. Some were close, just barely edging into orange. But there were clearly eleven. And it seemed as if they were all coming closer.

All in the few minutes it'd taken for us to bicker about leaving.

I looked over to her. She was watching my expression, and when our eyes met, she gave me a half-hearted grin. "Staying would have been bad."

My eyes darted over to the frozen screen. "Very bad."

She sighed. "I'm going to have to apologize to Noah."

"And buy him a cake or something. We would have been toast if we'd gone out there by ourselves."

She nodded, her own gaze swinging to look at the screen. "I wonder if they were there during the day. If they were the weird feelings you felt."