Perception (Apparition Investigations #1)

Case #2: Hell's Gate: Part 14

Camilla answered the door when we knocked. She looked breathless. Breathless and scared. Her hand shook on the handle and her eyes were rimmed with red. As if from crying.

"Thank God, she's this way," she said, pushing open the door wider. "Follow me."

We followed her down a hallway lined with family photos and crayon drawings.

Esperanza's bedroom was exactly as I pictured it: full of plants, brimming with stuffed animals, boy band posters, and clothes thrown over nearly every spare surface. The quintessential girl's bedroom: traces of childhood underneath new layers of teenaged obsessions.

She sat on the foot of her bed, her feet draped over the edge and her toes barely grazing the carpet. Her shoes had been taken off, showing a sharp line of the clean foot and muddied leg. All the rest of her was caked in mud and grime. Her long black hair, so immaculate in the picture we had of her, was frizzy, tangled, and greasy.

She stared forward. Unblinking.

Her mother sat on the bed beside her, a damp wash cloth in her hands. She cleaned the dirt from her daughter's fingers as Esperanza sat still.

The girl didn't move. Her chest barely rose and fell with each breath. Her eyes never strayed from straight ahead.

"Esperanza?" Rose asked softly, still lingering in the doorway.

I stood at her shoulder, watching.

She was wrong. The same feeling of unease hung about her. If anything, her vacant expression only added to it, making it stronger than the feelings in the woods.

"Esperanza?" Rose repeated. She took a tentative step into the room. When nothing happened, she took another. "Esperanza, can you talk to me?"

The girl remained still.

Rose turned to me, a distressed look on her face.

I shrugged. I couldn't order her to obey me—I didn't have her name. Or rather, she hadn't given it to me. I could only work with given names if they'd been given to me by their owner. Sure, if I had her true name, that would be different. But I didn't have a clue about finding out what that might be.

Rose turned back toward Esperanza. Then her eyes slid to Mrs. Gomez. "Has she said anything?"

Tears threatened to spill from the mother's eyes as she continued to wipe the mud from her daughter's hands. She shook her head once.

Behind me, Camilla let out a small whimper.

I turned to her. She chewed on one of her nails, her eyes fixated on her younger sister.

"Let's go make some tea," I suggested, putting a hand on her shoulder and gently nudging her back down the hallway. "It might help."

"She won't drink anything."

"Your mother might."

With a defeated sigh, she let me guide her down the hall. In the living room, she headed for the kitchen on her own. And I followed after her.

She began moving around on autopilot, getting down the tea, the kettle, the mugs. It gave her something to do, and that, in turn, gave her a piece of calm.

For a second, I hesitated to use my power. My mind thought back to the panic in Rose's eyes and the bitterness in Noah's tone. But I needed to talk to her. And I needed complete honesty. My power assured me that I'd get it.

I tapped into my power, layering my voice with authority, command. She'd given me her name when we'd first met. As had her mother. Funny how the one name I didn't have was the one I needed.

"Camilla, why don't you take in a deep breath?"

She stopped filling the kettle with water from the sink. Setting it aside, she gripped the edge of the kitchen counter with both hands. Her fingers tightened. Her head rolled back, so she stared straight up at the ceiling.

Her shoulders and chest expanded as she took in the deep breath. Held it.

"Let out slowly," I said.

And she did just that. Her eyes slid shut as she did.

"Another one might be good."

Eyes still closed, she took in a large breath, held it, then let it out through her mouth. The sound of her breath escaping filled the room.

"Better?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, eyes opening. She picked up the kettle and moved toward the stove. "I'm just scared. I've never seen her like this before."

"How did she come home?" I kept power in my voice. Not that I thought she'd lie or obscure the truth from me, but I wanted to make sure she told me everything.

She turned the stove on. "She just showed up at the front door this morning. She hadn't even knocked—my mother went out to get the newspaper. And she was just there. Staring at the front door."

"What happened next?"

"A lot of hugging and crying—none of it from her, though. She let us lead her inside and we took her to her bedroom. We kept asking her what had happened, but she wouldn't say. In those first few minutes, we didn't realize anything was wrong. Our relief and happiness just sort of clouded over the fact that she wasn't talking. That she wouldn't move unless he pushed her."

"But you realized?"

"After we set her down on the bed, yeah. She just kept sitting there. It freaked me out. She just looks...possessed."

"How do you feel when you're around her?"

Camilla scoffed at the question but she was compelled to answer it. "Scared. Nervous. Jumpy. Like that feeling when you're watching a horror movie, and you can tell something bad's about to happen because the music is swelling. What's the expression? A keg waiting to explode?"

"Something like that," I mused. I had felt that too. The wrongness, the discomfort. I'd felt it in the woods behind Hell's Gate and now I felt it coming from Esperanza.

Could one of the ghosts that had been out there possess her?

The kettle on the stove began to hiss. Camilla moved to take it off and then began filling the mugs she'd taken down earlier.

"Would you let us take her out to Hell's Gate?"

She whipped around so quickly, I thought she'd might knock one of the mugs off. Eyes wide, she stared at me. "Why would you want to do that?"

"We're not getting a reaction from her here. But we might get one from her there. It's worth considering."

"We just go her back from that place and you want to take her back?" Her tone held the first sparks of defensive anger. A true older sister, ready to defend her younger sibling.

I hesitated to order her.

But then her shoulders sagged before I could. Her eyes slid to the ground. "Maybe...maybe that could work."

"So, you'll let us?"

She set the kettle down on a coolburner. "Yeah. But I'm coming too."