His Haunting Kiss

by Heather Marie Adkins

  “I’m half-expecting he doesn’t make it back outside of a pine box.”

  We shared a laugh. Trevor and his contingent of high school buddies had a tendency to act a little wild. More than once, Vespers and I had bailed him out of trouble, jail, and the odd hotel room. It wasn’t that he was immature. On the contrary, Trevor had spent eight years in the Marines and returned to Tory to do freelance software work for various corporations around the country. He was so good at what he did that he was in demand. It was more that trouble seemed to follow him.

  “I have to work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday next week,” I told Vespers as I moved forward to the next hash mark on the audio software. “If you want to pick up any shifts at the coffee shop.”

  She nodded. “Good. I need the money.”

  Didn’t I know it. I spent at least three nights a week bartending for the only local dive bar just so I could make ends meet. I loved ghost hunting, but it wasn’t a way to make a living.

  For three hours, Vespers and I worked in silence, swapping computers or headsets whenever we needed a second opinion. It was long, tedious, and most often fruitless work, but when we got a genuine hit, it made the entire process worth it.

  Audio clip eighty-eight. My voice, “Do you stay here for Adam?”

  Disembodied whisper, “I miss my boy.”

  I jerked to attention, yanking the headphones off. “Ves. I got something.”

  As she listened, I enjoyed the play of emotions across her face, from intense concentration to wide-eyed shock to gleeful smile. “I love it. Love it. Do you think it’s Bonnie Morton?”

  “Without a doubt. I told you, I felt her there. She feels like cinnamon cookies and sunshine. Adam swore she loved making cinnamon cookies. I couldn’t see her face, but I felt her. And we have evidence!”

  It wasn’t that I needed validation. My powers were enough on their own to convince me ghosts existed — you couldn’t walk into someone’s house and catch glimpses or feelings of a resident ghost without believing. But capturing concrete proof on camera or audio? The right piece of evidence could be life-altering for grieving families.

  And for Adam, this could give him closure. Him and his father. Bonnie Morton died too young, and too tragically. The fact that I had something to give them made me feel like I could help, just that little bit.

  When Starbucks closed up at ten, we’d worked a total of four hours and had four pieces of evidence to prove Bonnie Morton was still living in her home, watching over her widower and son.

  Outside, the sky was clear and full of stars, but it was muggy, as Georgia usually was in late June. We paused on the brightly lit sidewalk as the lights inside the café turned off for the night.

  I grinned. “The Jeep’s packed. You ready?”

  “This place is gonna suck.”

  “That’s just ‘cuz you’re scared without Trevor here.”

  Vespers punched me. “Get in the car.”

  Chapter Six

  Albert Street at midnight.

  Albert was the oldest street in Tory. A more fanciful girl might expect it to look a bit ominous with dark, craggy trees or empty, vacant stares from the houses, seeing as it was the scene of the most infamous murder to ever happen in our little ole small town. But the street itself was pretty, lined with cypress trees draped in Spanish moss. Behind them, warm light spilled from period houses with perfectly manicured yards littered with gardening tools and toys.

  The only thing out of place on this idyllic street was the Albert Street Murder House.

  The house was completely black, white siding covered in grime and shutters peeling faded gray paint. The yard was mowed, so the city probably kept it cut for ordinance purposes, but nobody had lived in the house since the mid-nineties when Jack Lindsay did a hack job on his family.

  “Remind me again why we agreed to this?” Vespers sank into the passenger seat as if she wanted to hide from the dilapidated one-story ranch before us.

  “Because I’ve always wanted to go inside it.” I cackled gleefully, rubbing my hands together.

  Vespers frowned at me. “You’re sick and twisted, you know that, right?”

  I shrugged. “Chalk it up to a lifetime conversing with ghosts. Do you remember it? The murders?”

  She shook her head. “No. I was only five.”

  “I always forget you’re younger than me.”

  “How could you forget in the presence of this youthful face?” She cupped her cheeks and blew me a kiss.

  “Get out of my car, whippersnapper.”

  The place was small and without power supply, so equipment was minimal tonight, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially without Trevor here to do the heavy lifting. We’d go in armed only with handheld recorders. Less time unloading and less time breaking down meant more time to investigate. Watching Vespers shiver beside me, I had a feeling she disagreed with my sentiment.

  We met the current owner at the door. He was a young guy the girth and weight of a fence post. Freckles marched across his cheeks, the latter so round and rosy he appeared to be no older than ten.

  “Boston Kane.” I offered my hand and a smile. “My partner is Vespers Malone.”

  “Geoff Hall. This place will raise the hairs on the back of your necks.” He shivered. “You guys ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Vespers muttered, gracing me with a Look.

  I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why she was acting so skittish. It wasn’t like we hadn’t investigated some pretty serious places in our years of doing this. One of our first jaunts had been to a famous mental institution in Tennessee. She’d been gung-ho about that one — set up the interview with the caretaker herself.

  So why now, three years later, was she suddenly fearful? The only thing different was that we didn’t have Trevor.

  Geoff gave us the obligatory tour, careful to only tell us what the rooms were, not what locals said happened there. I liked to go in with a clean slate — as clean as possible, considering we’d both grown up with the lore. Too much of what we perceived came from what we already knew, an outlook that carried over to other aspects of life beyond ghost hunting.

  When Geoff left, the front door shutting behind him with finality, Vespers and I stood in the foyer, staring at each other. We both opened our mouths to speak, and then chuckled.

  “You first.” Vespers waved a hand.

  “What’s going on? You’re acting like a newb.”

  She grimaced. “I know. I am.”

  “Why? Is there something about this house that freaks you?”

  Vespers ran a hand over her dreadlocked ponytail. She shrugged. “My brother got hurt here as a kid.”

  I froze. “Accident hurt or intentionally hurt?”

  “Not an accident. He swore someone charged at him from out of nowhere. Pushed him down the steps. Cole broke his leg in two places.”

  “Why have you never told me?”

  “I don’t know.” She threw her hands up in the air. “Before you got these… powers, I didn’t think ghosts could hurt us. But I know better now. My brother’s story is a little more real.”

  “So it was long a time ago?” I surmised. My powers hadn’t come into being until I was nine. Vespers’ brother, Cole, was almost ten years older than she was.

  “Yeah. I was only like four.”

  We stared at each other, her eyes wide and questioning as if she were begging me to tell her we were safe. I couldn’t make that promise. We did what we did knowing there was a possibility we could get hurt.

  “If you need to leave, I won’t judge you,” I told her. No judgment, no sarcasm, just truth. She was my best friend. I’d tilt the earth on its axis for her.

  “Why do you do this, Boston?” Vespers’ voice was low in the silent house. I swore I could hear her heartbeat.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Ghost hunting?”

  “Yeah. In places like this.”

  I glanced around. The room was black as pitch, empty of anythin
g but a sunken couch missing its cushions. I felt the heavy sensation of a spirit above us, hovering in the attic, probably, where we couldn’t see him. By the dirty feeling I got from him, I had a feeling it was the murderer.

  There was nothing good in this house. Nothing left. It was a shell, the remnants of a life that no longer existed. I spent so much of my time in places like this. It was amazing I kept my sanity.

  “Curiosity,” I finally answered, flashing a smile at my best friend. “The world is big and beautiful and just a little bit mad. I want to know it all. God gave me this weird-ass gift of seeing ghosts, so I’m gonna use it.”

  A loud bang shook the ceiling. As one, Vespers and I looked up at the cracked drywall.

  “You’re insane. You know that?” Vespers told the ceiling.

  I grinned. “Yeah. I know. Now let’s go see what that was.”

  Chapter Seven

  “This is what I’m supposed to feel,” I murmured as we took the steps to the second floor. The erratic buzz of the ghost’s signature drew closer the further we went up.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That ghost at Horeland Estate. I can’t feel him out. He’s there, then he’s not. He’s good, then he’s bad. It’s like he only exists sometimes.” I didn’t mention the caress; it felt personal, somehow.

  Vespers stared down at the glowing screen of the heat signature camera. “But you were only there like an hour, right?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Sometimes it takes a couple hours for a spirit to come to you.”

  I shook my head. “No. Not true. For it to show itself or come near, sure. But I always feel them. Always. From the moment I walk in the door, I can tell you what we’re dealing with.”

  Vespers stopped in the middle of the hallway, the camera sinking down as she stared at me. “Okay, then. What’s here?”

  “Male. In the attic. Pacing.” I closed my eyes and reached for the spirit, feeling his energy out. “He’s frantic. I smell blood and metal. It’s the killer.”

  “The one who pushed my brother down the stairs.”

  “Not necessarily. That could have been the wife, who is currently a feminine energy in a room upstairs.” I pointed. “Or the son, who is a youthful signature in the kitchen. Where he died, if I remember correctly.”

  “How do you live with that?”

  I shrugged. “The same way I live with one foot slightly larger than the other.”

  Vespers punched me in the shoulder, then lifted her camera again. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  I held the EMF reader away from my body as we started through the downstairs rooms. As expected in a house that hadn’t had electricity in years, I didn’t get a single reading until we entered the kitchen.

  When the little boy looked up from the kitchen table and my EMF device ratcheted.

  He smiled sadly, but looked away without saying anything. He thought we couldn’t see him, like everyone else. Maybe Vespers couldn’t, but I could.

  “Hello,” I said, startling both the ghost and my best friend.

  Huge brown eyes swiveled back to me. “You…”

  “I can see you. Yes.”

  He was supposedly twelve when his father killed him, but he looked much younger. His brown hair was shaggy, his face long and thin with barely a hint of the man he never grew to be. His form was ethereal, nearly see-through. He was just a Shade, unable to make people see him or to affect reality.

  And he looked so damn sad.

  “Nobody ever talks to me,” the boy murmured.

  “Nobody can see you or hear you,” I told him gently. “Do you know why?”

  “My dad killed me. I’m dead.”

  I breathed an inward sigh of relief. I’d had to break the news to ghosts before, and it was never a pleasant experience.

  “I’m stuck here,” he went on when I didn’t speak. “I can’t leave. Can’t even open a door. Could you…”

  He didn’t finish his sentence because he didn’t need to. Maybe he saw the way my eyes saddened or the way my face fell five stories at Mach speed.

  “I can’t help you move on,” I said, hating myself. “I don’t know how.”

  Vespers laid a hand on my shoulder in solidarity. She knew how hard it was for me to be helpless for them.

  What good was a power to speak to, see, or sense ghosts if I couldn’t do anything with it? Years of the ability to do something but still no insight. It made me feel powerless.

  The boy shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  It wasn’t but who was I to argue?

  “Are you getting anything?” I asked Vespers. The EMF reader had bounced every time the boy spoke, but unfortunately that wasn’t enough to be hard proof.

  “Not really.”

  Turning back to the boy, I asked, “Is your mom upstairs?”

  The boy nodded. “She spends most of her time in the bedroom.”

  “She might have a stronger signature,” I said, then smiled at the kid. “We’ll be back.”

  “Why do you think he’s got a fainter presence than his mom?” Vespers asked as we mounted the rickety stairs.

  I shrugged. “It’s not like I know anything. More like I have theories.”

  “Alright then. Tell me your theory.”

  “I think the signature of a ghost has to do with the fullness of their lives. And I don’t mean just age either, ‘cuz I’ve met plenty of Shades who were barely there and eighty years old. Length plays a part, I think, but so does how happy they were and how accomplished they felt at their time of death.”

  “Does the same thing go for Earthbounds like Sherrie?”

  “I guess so, but honestly, Earthbounds confuse me. Sometimes I wonder if they’re a completely different species from ghosts.”

  “Species?” Vespers asked wryly.

  “For lack of a better word.”

  I followed my senses to the wife. She wasn’t immediately visible in the room, though that didn’t mean anything because Shades faded in and out of existence all the time, but our equipment went crazy. The EMF reader shot up to dangerous highs and stayed there. I fumbled with my pocket camera, clicking Record and training it on the reader.

  “Damn it, I should have had this on before we came in,” I griped, staring at the EMF on the tiny camera screen.

  “Boston. Check it out.” Vespers’s voice was awed.

  I kept my reader and camera where they were and stretched my upper body to glance at the screen of her Flir. Plain as day in the middle of the screen was a cool-blue humanesque figure surrounded by a halo of purple and green.

  I jerked my camera to the Flir. “She’s right there and I can’t see her,” I remarked, confused.

  “Why do you think she’s so cold?”

  “The absence of energy,” I murmured, touching the screen. “Life is heat, death is cold.”

  “Morbid.”

  “Everything about what we do is morbid,” I said with a laugh.

  We waited around several more moments, me hoping that the wife would show herself and Vespers doing what I asked of her, as always. Eventually the human figure faded from the screen, leaving nothing but an empty room.

  I sighed, dejected. “You ready for the attic?”

  Vespers shuddered, shaking her head. “Never. But we’re gonna do it anyway.”

  I laughed. “Buck up, Ves. I’ll protect you.”

  “I just wish Trevor were here.”

  “Of course you do.” I rolled my eyes. “But it has nothing to do with this house and its ghosts.”

  “Yes it does!”

  The shrillness in her voice said otherwise. It was only a matter of time before she admitted defeat and ended up with Trevor.

  The attic was easy to find: a rectangular door cut into the hall ceiling upstairs. My grandmother had one just like it in her 1970’s tri-level. My cousins and I spent many evenings as kids pretending monsters were just above the door waiting for an adult to open it so they could eat us in our sleep.
If I hadn’t suddenly been neck-deep in ghosts a few years later, it probably would have given me a complex.

  I tugged on the red rope, pulling the door away from the ceiling.

  “I’m not okay with the thought of my head going through first,” Vespers whispered, her gaze on the attic but her hand shaking on my shoulder.

  “I’m going first,” I assured her. “Give me your flashlight.”

  The first step on the ladder bowed beneath my foot. I leaned on the tiny railing, putting my other foot one step up to test the next board. “Stairs are unstable,” I called over my shoulder to Ves. “Wait down here until I get up and off ‘em.”

  I took my time on the ladder, testing each step thoroughly before putting all one-hundred-forty pounds of me on each piece of wood. The house was already muggy from sitting empty and powerless, but when I poked my head above the floor of the attic, the heat hit me like a truck. Oppressive, wet heat, full of the ghost’s anger.

  I didn’t see anything at a quick glance, so I set down the flashlight and my recorder and braced myself on the floor to take another step.

  A strong, cold hand gripped my wrist.

  I froze, looking at it in the ambient light from the flashlight. Dirty nails, pale skin, a sinewy arm that curved into a broad chest beneath a solid, sneering face.

  “Earthbound!” I yelled, my heart pounding. “Vespers, run!”

  Chapter Eight

  I didn’t honestly think I would walk into the Albert Street house and get off scot-free. The place was notorious for disasters, leaving people with broken limbs and concussions. It made the papers at least once a year. “Accidents,” of course. Silly kids “falling down stairs.” So I’d come prepared.

  My trusty bright orange squirt gun.

  I yanked it from my waistband, turning the barrel on the ghost and pressing the trigger. Water streamed out, splashing across him.

  It wasn’t just any water. This particular brand of liquid was powerful against Earthbounds. It was filled with magnetic filings. A long-time running theory held that ghosts were nothing but electro-magnetic force. Magnets would disrupt their fields.