“Ok,” I said at last. “He can stay. Let’s do this.”
Here we go again, I thought, staring at the flickering candles. I focused on them until I couldn’t see the faces and cameras around me, using their irregular pattern to help steady my thoughts. It was easier once I made myself forget I was being recorded. This was just a séance, something Gabrielle had done so regularly she’d become famous for them. This was no more difficult than playing a musical instrument once you’d learned how.
After several minutes of focus, my heartbeat slowed and my muscles relaxed. I was ready to begin.
“Everyone, please join hands.”
I felt, more than saw, my companions comply. Kit had traded places with Daphne, and I gripped her cool, dry hand with my left. Graham’s held my right, and the purring Striker sat in my lap. As everyone connected, an unexpected hum of energy coursed through me, startling me and nearly making me drop Graham’s hand. I hadn’t felt that before at Gabrielle’s. Was I feeling it this time because I was taking the lead?
“Clear your minds,” I commanded sharply, suddenly afraid. I envisioned our circle as a ring of light, a glowing electrical current only kept in check by our collective focus. If anyone’s mind strayed, I imagined an arc of lighting might bolt outward and pull who-knows-what back into this space. Breathing deeply, I concentrated on strengthening and steadying the ring before continuing.
“Think about Richard Franklin,” I told the team. “Picture his face in your mind.”
Try as I might to see him as the young, prep-school expellee from the photo we’d shared with our guest psychics, all I could picture was a face made of leaves and dust and wind. It was the same face Richard Franklin had shown me through a window while he was attempting to cave the cabin’s roof in from the outside.
Much as the memory made my palms sweat, I latched onto it, forcing myself to remember the way it’d made me feel. He had transformed debris into his image and twisted the darkness into a grin, and I’d never felt so defenseless in my life. I needed to lean into that vulnerability. I needed to lure him in, and just when he got close, he’d find out how much I’d changed since the last time I’d been here.
Back then, I’d only been thinking about him for a few moments before he arrived. That’s how hungry he was, how rabid. This time, the minutes ticked by until my legs ached from sitting on the hard floor, and I tried not to wonder how long we should sit here before acknowledging defeat.
Striker growled. My heart skipped a beat.
This is what you want, I reminded myself.
Is it? my gut countered.
This wasn’t the time for internal conflict. Richard Franklin knew what I was up to. He’d been eager to manifest himself before because he knew we were unarmed. Easy pickings. But this time, we’d prepared. We’d brought backup. It’d been foolish to assume he’d just waltz right out and let us banish him. I had to find him, find him and drag him out of whatever metaphysical cranny he’d hidden himself in.
An idea popped into my head from somewhere deep in my memory. Shortly before my mom had died, I’d been having an anxiety attack. To calm me down, Mom sat beside me, rubbing her hand back and forth across my forehead. Her touch had lightened until it disappeared completely, but I’d still felt the direction of her fingers—left, right, left, right—above my eyebrows. She later explained that she’d been sending healing energy through me, and her own life force was washing away the negative energies that clouded my mind. I’d fallen asleep within minutes.
I realized the electrical current I’d imagined coursing through our joined hands a few minutes ago was more than just a mental image to guide my thoughts. The nine of us were truly connected. Could I pull on that energy? Use it to bolster my own ability? Was that the true benefit of a group séance?
“Everyone, lend me your strength,” I said aloud. “I’m going to try something… something I’ve never done before.”
“Are you okay?” Graham asked.
Still keeping my eyes closed, I squeezed his hand. “I’m fine. Just focus—send your energy my way, okay?”
My mental image shifted. The current no longer swirled around us in a clockwise circle. Instead, I pictured a beam of energy flowing from each participant’s heart directly to my own.
Richard Franklin, I called silently. I know you’re here. This is Mackenzie Clair. Come forward. Show yourself.
I implored him again and again, pushing the words out into the ether with every ounce of my strength. Like an SOS call, I repeated the same message until the words followed the natural rhythm of my beating heart. Rich-ard-Frank-lin. Thud-thump-thud-thump. Mac-ken-zie-Clair. Thud-thump-thud-thump.
The surrounding temperature plunged. The muscles in my back tensed and my eyes shot open. Small puffs of steam from everyone’s mouths were just visible in the candlelight, and behind me, the floor creaked.
It’s nothing, my brain automatically decided. Just an old structure settling.
I was falling back into old habits by trying to rationalize away the supernatural. I’d seen more than enough evidence of ghosts and hauntings to know that sometimes, a creak is more than just a creak. Enough evidence to make me angry at myself for even attempting to explain away something during a séance as nothing more than naturally expanding wood.
Another creak sounded, and Striker growled again. Slowly, I twisted my torso until the fireplace behind me came into view. Wet, cold remnants of a few burned-out logs sat on the rusting grate. A bitter, weedy smell tickled my nose, but nothing else seemed out of place. Why, then, did every hair on the back of my neck feel like it was being yanked outward by an unseen hand?
Had I imagined it, after all? I turned back to the center of the circle, searching the faces around me for any sign that someone else felt what I felt. Everyone gazed back at me, their expressions ranging from Stephen’s mild interest to Yuri’s concern to Raziel’s naked disdain.
Everyone except for Daphne. From her position directly across the circle, she watched something behind me with wide, terrified eyes.
My skin rippled, goosebumps bursting to life up and down my arms. I hadn’t imagined it. Gripping Kit and Graham’s hands tightly, I twisted around again. At the last moment, out of some childish instinct to spare myself from seeing something frightening, I closed my eyes.
Are you crazy? I internally screamed, and I forced myself to open them.
A tall figure stood before me. He faced away from the circle, his head twisting back and forth between the half-destroyed fireplace and the window like he was trying to get his bearings. From his size, I knew I wasn’t looking at Richard Franklin. This man’s huge frame reminded me of a linebacker or a nightclub bouncer, and the breadth of his shoulders and tall, straight posture screamed, Don’t mess with me.
His clothing was strange; he wore a waist-length cape and a low top hat, like he’d just walked off the set of a Dickens play. But despite the oddness of his appearance and the clear feeling the figure didn’t belong here at all, something about this moment was familiar. A wave of déjà vu slammed into me, and I squeezed Graham’s hand to steady myself.
“Do you see something?” Yuri whispered.
“Yes,” I whispered back.
The instant the syllable left my lips, the apparition twitched. Slowly, he turned, but not the way someone might turn around in a narrow hallway, one foot at a time. No, he rotated, like a piece of cake in a diner’s dessert display.
Instinctively, I recoiled. But I couldn’t flee; not only was I sitting down, but my legs were numb from sitting on the hard floor for so long. My inactivity had trapped me here, leaving me no choice but to watch his face come into the candlelight one inch at a time.
In the flickering light, I had trouble making out his features. His brimmed hat cast his face in shadow, as though there was a light I couldn’t see above him. But two things stood out, even in darkness. The first was his mouth, which curled upward into a satisfied sneer, as though something had just made him both ver
y pleased and very proud. The second was his eyes, which burned a deep, haunting crimson.
“Hello, Mackenzie,” he said, his voice as deep and smooth as melted chocolate. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Striker moved, jumping past me and emitting a horrible, shrieking howl. Every candle went out at once, snuffed by some invisible force. I screamed. The circle broke. As soon as Kit’s hand slipped out of mine, the energy in the room dissipated.
“Sage!” I shouted, fumbling in the dark for the bundles in front of me. My left hand had just closed around a lighter when a spark burst to life at my side. Graham had been faster than me. He re-lit one of the fat black candles and used it to ignite two bundles of sage at a time. The air filled with the sweet, strong scent of the cleansing herb as Graham lit and passed more bundles around the circle.
Someone else lit more candles, and the room brightened. I leapt to my feet and swept the room with my eyes, but the ghost had disappeared.
I rounded on Daphne. “You saw him too, right?”
Her face was pale, and she nodded as Stephen pulled her into a standing position. She swayed for a moment, rubbing her temples. “I need to lie down.”
She looked the way I felt, or at least the way my body felt. Exhaustion tugged on my limbs and the room fuzzed at the edges of my vision, but my mind clicked away at double speed, struggling to process what we’d just seen. My plan, which had been cracking at the edges since Raziel arrived, shattered completely.
“Was it him?” Yuri asked, switching on an electric lantern and holding it aloft. “The Franklin boy?”
“No. But whoever he was…” I stared at the spot in front of the fireplace where this new spirit had said my name. “He knows me.”
Chapter Ten
“You’re sure he’s gone?” Yuri eyed me over his glasses, a deep frown of concern on his face.
Yuri, Graham, and I stood in the cabin’s former kitchen. Striker snuggled in my arms, purring as though it was her job. Which it sort of was.
I watched Mark pack up the camera gear. He’d been reluctant to tear everything down, but I’d been firm. The night was over. Our plan didn’t make any sense anymore. A few feet away from him, Kit watched the footage from the seance on a small field monitor, already making notes on her sketchpad so she could dive into editing the minute she got home.
“Richard Franklin isn’t here,” I told Yuri. “I can’t feel him at all.”
His frown deepened. “I wonder who it could have been.”
“The man in the hat?” I whispered. I’d been wondering that, too. I wanted to ask Daphne if she recognized him. It was comforting knowing she’d seen him too. Had she heard him speak my name? But as soon as we’d switched on the lanterns, she’d stumbled toward the more intact of the back bedrooms to rest while we packed up.
“In the hat?” Yuri repeated. “What hat?”
“Wait, who’s the ‘who’ you’re talking about?”
“The psychic who came here and took care of Richard Franklin. Someone must have come here after Connor Miles’ team and banished the poltergeist.”
That made no sense to me. Now that I knew Nick was a fake, I couldn’t think of any mediums in the area powerful enough to handle Richard Franklin alone. And the ones from farther away, who travelled to Donn’s Hill just for the Afterlife Festival every spring, would have announced they were coming.
But Yuri had been in this business far longer than I had. His theories were worth considering, so as far as I could tell, there were three possible explanations for why I hadn’t been able to summon Richard Franklin during the séance.
First: Richard Franklin’s spirit was still here and I just couldn’t feel it. As soon as the idea entered my mind, I dismissed it. The last two times I’d visited the cabin, he’d been eager to show me his powers. The sadistic side of him couldn’t resist scaring us before trying to harm us.
No, he’d gone. No shred of him lingered here. I’d never been so certain of anything in my entire life, which left only two possibilities in play.
Could Richard Franklin have detached from the cabin on his own? Moved on or become attached to something—or someone—else? As I knew all too well, poltergeists could haunt a person just as easily as they could haunt a physical location. I didn’t find it likely that he would up and depart for the next plane of existence after having clung to this cabin for so long. But I could see him latching onto a potential victim and following them out of the woods.
The thought made me shiver. Graham pulled me into a hug and rubbed my shoulders. Striker continued purring between us, and I leaned my head into Graham’s chest, closing my eyes as I considered the third possibility: Yuri’s theory that a psychic had come here and done our work for us. They would have had to come here sometime between the night Connor Miles nearly died and tonight. And if they had, they’d kept it quiet.
Why would someone come here in secret? Because they didn’t want credit, like a humble hero in the movies? Maybe they were filming a competing television show, so they were keeping everything under wraps until the premiere. We always asked our clients to sign forms saying they wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened while we were there until after the episode aired, so it was very possible some other team and crew had done the same here.
“Are you okay?” Graham asked.
I bit my lip then nodded. Physically, I was fine. But I’d be lying if I tried to pretend this hadn’t all left me feeling extremely shaken.
“Did you see anything?” I asked.
“No.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “But I was scared. Your scream…. I’ve never heard you make a sound like that before.”
“Can you tell us what you saw?” Yuri urged gently.
“Wait!” Kit shouted. She set down the field monitor, wrestled a camera back out of its case, and hurried to my side. “Turn on your lav.”
Yuri sighed. “Kit, for goodness—”
“Hey, are we paranormal investigators or not?” she demanded, attaching the camera to a tripod. “Our psychic saw something. We need to record her experience while it’s still fresh. For science.”
Finished with the camera, she walked over and grabbed my shoulders.
“You get it, right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”
“Good.” She clapped me on the back, and we ran through a quick audio check before she gave me a thumbs up.
I took a deep breath and recounted what I’d seen, describing the man, his odd clothes, and his red eyes. As I spoke, Graham wrapped his arms around his torso and stared at me. When I got to the part about the man saying my name, he shivered.
“He knew you,” he whispered.
I bit my lip. “Maybe. I was putting my name out there, thinking it over and over to get Richard Franklin to recognize me. This other spirit could’ve just picked up on that. But…”
“What?” he asked.
“Well, it’s weird. He seemed familiar, but I can’t place from where.”
I had a suspicion about it, though. When I was a child, dozens of ghosts had visited me, none ever staying for very long. My mother had dubbed them “The Travelers.” I’d been so young… I was sure I’d forgotten more of them than I could remember. Could one have found me again? If so, was it by chance, or had he really been searching for twenty years? The thought gave me the chills.
“Here.” I handed Striker to Graham. “Do you mind cajoling her back into her carrier? I want to finish cleaning up and get the hell out of here.”
He nodded, and I returned to the living room. I was kneeling on the tarp and packing up candles when Raziel reappeared from the cabin’s back hallway. He folded his arms and watched me put the last few unburnt bundles of sage into a large plastic tote.
“That was some performance,” he said.
I stood and dusted my hands off on my jeans. I was exhausted and more than over this arrogant party crasher, so I didn’t bother trying to hide the irritation in my voice. “Why am I
not surprised you’d call it an act?”
He smirked. “Why am I not surprised you’d pull out all the stops?”
“All the stops?” I nodded toward the tarp on the floor. “Yeah, this is a real classy affair. The caviar and champagne will be here any minute.”
Raziel rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
“Sure, you’re masking it under this rough-and-tumble camping vibe, but all the elements are here. The candles, the sage, even the general air of dilapidation that surrounds us. It’s stage setting.”
An exasperated sigh mixed with a low growl escaped my chest. “What are you talking about? This cabin is a hundred years old and nobody’s taken care of it in decades, so it’s not like I went to some special effort to get it to look this way. The sage is to cleanse the area and drive out the spirit. The candles—”
He cut me off before I could explain that each flame represented one of the spirit’s victims. “Let me guess: candles are just how it’s done, huh?” Raziel smirked and pulled a quarter out of his pocket, then held it in front of my face with his right hand for a moment before flipping the coin back and forth across his knuckles. “Let me explain something to you, since you didn’t pick it up outside when Nick ran off with his tail between his legs. You’re a scam artist, just like him. Know how I know? Because I’m a scam artist. I know all the tricks, all the strategies. It’s all about setting expectations.”
As he spoke, he continued to move the coin. Left to right, right to left. It was mesmerizing, like a swinging pocket watch. Despite wanting to glare at Raziel, I couldn’t look away from his hand.
“Once you’ve lured them in, once they’re transfixed on the thing you want them to be looking at…”
Raziel abruptly made a fist with his right hand, trapping the quarter inside. With his left, he snapped his fingers next to my ear. I jumped, startled by the closeness of the sound, and jerked my head to one side. I hadn’t even seen him move that arm. In his left hand, he pinched the coin between his fingers. I glanced down at his right; it was empty, palm open towards the ceiling.
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