In the Shadows
Author: Kim Smith
Date: 2016-09-09 04:00:00+00:00

Thank you for reading, In the Shadows. Time is often at a premium in our fast-paced world and your attention to this work means a lot to me. I would love it if when you complete this short little story, you would go out and rate it. (Please and thank you!)

Ratings help authors build careers and are so important I want to put a zillion exclamation points here.

Instead, I will just say thanks, and I hope you enjoy this one.

Kim

If you enjoy this story, you can find other books in this series at Amazon.com at my Author Central Page. See back matter for specific links and information on upcoming releases.

About the author

Kim Smith is a lifelong Mid Southerner and loves to drink coffee and people watch at any place that has some good java. She’s written and published twelve works before this one, and has a lot more coming down the pike. She’s written fantasy, mystery, and romance, and hopes that whatever else is in her bizarre brain doesn’t stop any time soon.

In The Shadows

By Kim Smith

Copyright 2016 Kim Smith

Published by Kim Smith for Kindle

License Notes:

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person. Please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return it to Amazon.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Piracy puts authors out of work.

Cover Photo by Kim Smith – A1 Author’s Assistant, Book Covers by Kim

IN THE SHADOWS

A SHANNON WALLACE MYSTERY

SHORT STORY

BY KIM SMITH

Dedicated to my pal, Kristi Rose, who is a far better writer than I.

K, without your encouragement and friendship, this whole series would have landed in the garbage and never seen the light of day.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the love and support you have given to me through the years.

In the Shadows

When Dwayne and I started up our business, Video Angels, I took on the job of booking agent. People call, and I take their information and decide if it is a job we want to do. As a general rule, we will take on most anything that pays.

Have camera will travel.

One sunny day early in October, a man with the voice of a lifetime smoker called, said he was from The Manny Owens show, aired on network television. We had never done a big-time television show before, and so this was the most exciting thing to ever come our way.

The job required a shoot in a small town north of Memphis. Someone claimed to be living in a haunted house out in the country; I didn’t hesitate to accept the job. We agreed on a $200 per hour rate. If it took four hours, it would be Video Angels’ rent.

Telling Dwayne about our booking was a different story. Dwayne Brown has been my friend since college, and he’s afraid of ghosts. Not just a simple shivery fear, either. He won’t even watch scary movies without my previewing them first and giving him the all clear.

With a happy zing to my voice, I announced, “We have a job!”

He stopped his trajectory into his office and pivoted into mine. “What kind of job?”

“The Manny Owens show called. They want us to shoot a segment for them.”

He wrinkled his nose. “I’ve watched that show. Full of trailer trash and made up stories to get an audience. What do they want us to shoot?”

Here it was. The moment I’d been dreading. And I couldn’t lie. He’d find out soon enough, and then there would be hell to pay. I rubbed my eyes and tugged on my tee shirt while dredging up the courage to tell him.

“Okay, I don’t like the pause here, Wall-ass. What’s up?”

Uh-oh. His antenna was up.

“It’s a segment they want to do on hauntings. This old place up near Langfurd … the lady says …”

His face immediately showed the conflict between shooting for a network television program and marauding ghosts. “Uh-uh. I don’t think so.”

I stood and stretched. “Come on, Dee, it’s just another one of those garbage stories they are running to get an audience. You just said so yourself. You know there is no such thing as a haunted house.

He paced back and forth, arms crossed. “So you say, but as for myself, I don’t know.”

“What’s there to know? They’re a big name, cutting us a big check. Rent is due soon. It’s a j-o-b.”

“Hello? Ghosts? That’s what lives in a haunted house. And I do not do dead, Wall-ass. You know this. And ain’t Langfurd up near Bells? I heard stories about that Bell Witch. Uh-uh, I don’t think we should do it.”

“No, this is close to Bell Grove. It’s not the same place as the Bell Witch. And this is not for real, Dee. There is no such thing as ghosts.” I sat down and glared at him.

“What if this is the real deal for the first time in the history of that stupid show? What if there really are ghosts in this place? I believe in them, Shan. I truly do.”

I paused to think. We had to take this job. I began running plans through my mind as to who could shoot in Dwayne’s place if he flaked out on me. Katie Henderson, my bestie, could handle a camera. I might have to coach her on how to handle a client though. She had a bad tendency to say what she thought sometimes.

He stopped pacing. “But let’s just say for the sake of this crazy thought, I agreed. How much money they paying?”

I grinned. Money would always change his mind. “I finagled almost a grand.” Well, it would be if I could make the shoot last a long time. I didn’t enlighten him on that score, however.

His mouth dropped open, but he quickly recovered and paced some more. “I don’t know, Shan.”

“Look, we just go in with two handheld cameras, shoot the areas where the lady says she saw a ghost, record her retelling events, and shoot some B roll stuff. Presto change-o, we are out of there.”

Maybe she would be a slow talker. I would have to find a way to make this shoot last four hours.

“Presto change-o, my ass. There’s a lot of distance between the lip and the cup on this one.”

The longer we discussed the possibility of ghosts the harder it became to convince him. “Come on, Dwayne. Don’t do this. You are a professional. This is a chance to make our rent. Can’t you overlook the subject matter and just do your work as usual? I mean if we got a job shooting an indie film and it turned out to be porno, you wouldn’t have anything to say about it, right?”

He whirled to face me. “I beg your pardon. I am a man of honor. I do not shoot porno. And I really ain’t up for damn haunted houses, either. Overlook the subject matter is easy for you to say. You don’t believe in nothing that don’t slap you upside the head.”

“That’s right. And have you ever seen a ghost?” It was time to get to the bottom of this.

“No, but I heard one.”

I leaned back in my chair. This would be good. “Ghosts don’t talk.”

“They can make a lot of noise when they want to, though.”

“Like what?”

“Like move chairs and break vases. They can open and shut doors— “

I interrupted quickly. “I thought they just floated through doors?”

“Naw, girl. They slam the damn doors.” He clapped his hands to emphasize. “Bam, bam, bam.”

“And you know this how?”

“My auntie. She had a ghost.”

“Her ghost was a door-slammer?”

He nodded. “Sure was. It broke a vase, turned over a chair, and slammed a door.”

“There is likely a reasonable explanation for all that.”

“My auntie said it was the ghost of the man who built the house.”

I fell silent. What could I say? He’d been believing this story since grade school.

He sat in my extra chair—reserved for clients—and raised his eyebrows.

“Okay look, this lady we’re contracted with is probably a whack job. There’s not going to be a ghost pop out and wave at our cameras. You said yourself that the Owens show was a bunch of trailer trash or other such stuff that nobody believes. This is no different.”

“How do you know that?”

Exasperated, I held up my hands. “Damn, Dee. I can’t promise you anything. It’s a paying job for a network television show. Do you really want to miss that kind of chance? Work with me here.”

He stood and paced again. “What if the ghost decides it likes us? And … and … I don’t know—attaches itself to us. What if we bring the thing home with us? I’ve heard of that happening. There was this man I met one time who has these dolls that are possessed, really scary sh--”

Oh, brother.

I interrupted. “If anything moves, speaks, or appears out of nowhere, we’ll leave. Deal?”

“I think we need some holy water,” he said in reply. The look on his face was deadly serious.

“Why?”

“Keeps spirits away. Really Wall-ass, you don’t know much about paranormal investigations, do you?”

“Like you do, Mr.-I-am-terrified-of-things-that-go-bump-in-the-night.”

“I don’t go out lookin’ for these things, I can only report what others have said, Ms. Skeptic. I’m goin’ for blessed liquids, no matter what you say. My granny uses it on my house every time she comes for a visit. Says I need a good dousing once in a while. If it’s good enough for me, well, it likely wouldn’t hurt someone with spirits flouncin’ around.”

I sighed and returned to my ledger book. “The client likely won’t approve of you tossing water all over her house, but whatever.”

He jingled his keys. “I’m going to that place over on Park Avenue. Psychic place. They’ll have holy water.”

“So will the local Catholic church, but you apparently veer to the dark side first.”

He started toward me mouth already working up a reply.

I waved him away. “Bring me back a soda. And make sure you’re back before ten. Curfew for children, you know.”

“Smart ass,” he said over his shoulder, as he did an about-face and strolled out.

“Ain’t got a diploma hanging out yours, I see.”

The door shut with a loud click.

Later, when Dwayne returned, my curiosity overcame me. I wandered into his office to see what magical potions he had returned with.

“Well?” I asked by way of inquiry.

He didn’t take the bait. “Well, what?”

“What did you come back with? You went to visit the head shop over in Memphis.”

“Oh that.” He waved nonchalantly at the idea. Then, when I quirked an eyebrow at him, he pulled a small clear vial from his pocket.

“Holy water?” I asked.

He nodded and set it in front of him. Then he pulled open a drawer and produced a small Bible, a crucifix, and some pretty cool red prayer beads.

“Are we shooting a video or doing an exorcism?” I motioned at the display of objects in front of him.

“Don’t diss my protection, girl. You might just find yourself doing this one solo.”

I turned to leave. “What—and miss seeing you play Father Brown? Not!”

His grumbling followed me as I headed back to my office.

“Better find a place to stow all that stuff,” I yelled out at him. “We have to leave in a couple of hours.”

Shortly, he appeared in my doorway with a can of soda in his hand. “We’re going there in daylight?”

I nodded, taking the canned drink from him. “Well, yeah. We’re not going to a séance, Dee; we’re shooting video. We need all the light we can get, remember? You taught me all this stuff. “

He looked heavenward and shook his head. I could see the wheels working in his little pea-brain, so I decided to take a different tack.

Scowling, I tapped my temple. “Where is your mind? You’re the brains of this organization, aren’t you?”

I loved saying that to him because he always threw it up to me when he could find a situation that fit. And if I made him the lead on this job, he would be more pliable.

“Oh, well, in that case,” he said, patting his pockets. “Maybe I won’t even need any of this stuff.”

I saluted him with my can. “We’ll take the holy water any way. I might get thirsty.”

As he turned away, I grinned. He was like putty in my hands.

Driving to the haunted house, I recited some details about the client that the rep from the Manny Owens show had relayed. I watched the red prayer beads swaying from his rearview mirror. I guessed he came fully armed for ghosts.

“First, do not questions her about anything she says,” I said. “The story will be aired as a kind of question for the audience. You know, like, is it real or imagined – that sort of thing. If we go around grilling her about all of it, she might get off track. She might even get mad and we don’t want to get booted off this job.”

Dwayne nodded. “Right. I’m not talking anyway. You can do all the talking. Women like to gab. Let her gab at you. I’ll be too busy watching for anything spooky.”

“Secondly, “I continued, ignoring his insistence on the reality of this haunted house gig. “Do not touch anything. If we break anything she could hold the show responsible because as far as she knows we are their employees.”

“Well, duh, Shannon.”

I shot him a grieved look. “I mean it. If she says a ghost appeared in a mirror, don’t go over and try to see what’s up with the mirror. It’s our luck it’ll fall off the wall and we will have to replace it.”

“Not to mention the seven years of bad luck,” he said. Then, he added, “I won’t touch nothing. Hell, I’m not leaving your side. You know this.”

I could tell he was going to behave if only due to his utter terror.

“What else?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just be prepared for this to be real, I guess. If anything appears, just don’t freak out. We’re professionals.”

“Real? Oh, now that we’re halfway there you say it might be real?” He shot me a worried glance. “We ain’t professional ghostbusters, gal. And I won’t be freaking out. I’ll be too busy fainting.”

“Yeah. Don’t do that either.”

He straightened and a thoughtful look crossed his face. “The chances of us getting a byline for any of this is probably nil but you never know. Let’s do a jam-up job and make Manny Owens and his peeps drool over our southern shooting style. “

“I like the way you think, Dee. I surely do.” Maybe he finally had resigned himself with the haunted house problem. I sighed a breath of relief.

“Lawd, please don’t let there be no ghosts.”

Or not.

When we arrived at the house, I was a little let down. Manny Owens’ assistant had led me to believe this place was a nice cottage-style home with begonias planted in elaborate planters on the outside of it. In reality it was a 1950s-era bungalow with faded plastic flowers in fake moss sitting underneath the metal awnings.

We got out of the car, and the first thing I noticed was the driveway made of pea gravel. I wore sandals thanks to the lingering heat wave of summer. October in the Mid-South could be pretty unpredictable. One year it was like August, another like December.

Pea gravel drives and sandals often don’t make good companions. One step and I would be carrying tiny stones in my footwear. It would be pretty easy to skid on the petite stones too, so I doubled my efforts to take care. It wouldn’t do for the client to see me land on my derriere in her driveway.

I helped Dwayne unload our cameras and gear. We had monopods for the camcorders to aid in steady shots. He placed the cameras on them and handed mine to me. I gazed at him as he wrangled with his. Good thing we had brought the monopods. His hands trembled already. Either he had low blood sugar or else just the thought of entering a possibly haunted house was dousing him in its mojo.

I had also packed a video light just in case we had to go into a closet or attic area. I didn’t want our Manny Show folks to toss anything we shot due to poor lighting conditions. My naïve mind believed that they would call us again for another job in the future if we didn’t screw anything up. And bad lighting would be a definite screw-up.

I intended to shoot as much as we possibly could, even if it got cut. It was always better to have too much footage than too little.

Dwayne motioned for me to get up to the door and knock. I hefted my equipment and stepped onto the shallow porch. More of a stoop, really. It was painted concrete, and the paint, once a baby blue, was peeling in a big way.

While I waited for an answer, I examined the bushes lining the porch. They were bedraggled from a lack of water. Rain had been pretty scarce for the last few weeks. The shrub beds were void of any mulch or anything else either. No wonder they looked so scraggly.

After a respectable pause, I knocked again, glancing at Dee. He now wore the red prayer beads around his neck and I could see the bulge of holy water in one pocket and the crucifix in the other. Well, he was well-protected, at any rate.

When the door opened, a red-haired woman blinked at the bright sunlight and the strangers on her stoop. We stood eye-level, her hazel peepers behind wire frames.

“Hey there,” she said in greeting. “Y’all must be from Manny Owens. I’m Mary Keith.”

I nodded in greeting. She stepped aside and motioned for us to enter.

“Welcome to Hell,” Dwayne muttered under his breath.

I smiled at her and restrained my desire to punch him.

Long and shallow, the living room held a couch with lumpy cushions, a desk in need of refinishing, and a lamp whose shade was dented in on one side like it had taken a fist. The ceiling even demanded attention as it swooped into a strange design thanks to an added-on laundry room.

The jutting wall created an alcove of sorts and sported a shelved collection of glass dogs. One shelf was obviously empty.

I glanced at the shot sheet that Manny Owens’ assistant had faxed to me. “Is this the shelf?” I asked politely.

She nodded. “Yep. The ghost pounded on the wall there so violently that my glass poodle flew off. It ended up there,” she said, pointing at the floor where a threadbare rug lay.

“I’ll get this,” Dwayne said, turning his camera on.

“Narrate what happened for us,” I suggested to Mrs. Keith. As she told the story of a ghostly smoke floating up from the floor to the wall and the end result of shattered glass poodle, I couldn’t help but consider the possibility. A possibility made more real by the fact that this woman really believed the story she told. It showed in the way she clutched her arms around herself and stared at the spot where the event occurred.

I consulted the shot sheet again. “Where’s the bathroom? This is shot two,” I told Dwayne. She led the way to a small bath decorated in powder blue.

“The ghost refuses to allow towels to hang on that rack.” She waved at a metal towel rack nailed into the wall over the toilet. “I got tired of fishing them out of the commode, so now we just don’t hang them there.”

Dwayne taped the whole room coming to rest on the shot of the empty towel rack.

“Could we sort of re-enact the towel thing?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “Yeah, guess we could give the production people the choice of using it or not.”

Dwayne backed out and prepared to re-shoot. I took the small blue hand towel hanging in its new home over by the sink, and draped it over the haunted towel rack.

He turned his camera on. Before I could slowly pull the towel off for visual effect, it slid off the rack all on its own, barely missing the toilet.

We stared at it.

I spread the towel over the rack and turned my camera on. The towel once again slid off. This time hitting the toilet seat lid which was thankfully down.

“Whoa!” Dwayne moaned. His eyes were wide as a five-hundred carat diamond.

Mrs. Keith stood in the doorway. “See? Never fails.”

We quickly left the bathroom. Dwayne needed to take a trip outside to breathe some fresh air and find his happy place. Mrs. Keith joined him for a smoke.

I returned to the bathroom and hunted for another towel, settling on an oversized one that could be used at the beach. I draped it over the rack and stepped back to watch.

The towel stayed put. I rearranged it a couple of different ways.

It never moved. I yanked it off and put it back where I had found it in the tiny alcove used for linens.

“Sure,” I said aloud. “Be picky about what size towel we use, how about it?”

The assumed apparition didn’t answer. Another reason not to believe in such goofy goings-on. Ghosts didn’t talk. I checked my mascara in the mirror over the sink. Nothing strange stood behind me, glaring evilly like ghosts did oftentimes in the movies.

“Bah, humbug.”

Later, once Dwayne had time to analyze his feelings, and do a little deep breathing, I consulted the shot sheet and asked, “Okay, where is the area where the ghost rattled pots and pans?”

“In here,” Mrs. Keith said, leading the way to the small kitchen. Next to the sink stood a dented washing machine nestled right against the wall.

She tapped the copper pots hanging there. “It knocks them down every other night seems like.”

I waved Dwayne away, and he pretended to be interested in a flyer spread out on the table. If he had ears that swiveled, they would have been turned in our direction.

My camera shot slowly panned from the pots to the woman who related the story behind their strange nightly musical. Dwayne got the same shot from a different angle.

“Makes a terrible racket when they fall on the washing machine. Always happens after we’re gone to bed. I think the ghost likes scaring me out of a sound sleep.”

I stifled a laugh. “Didn’t you say you caught the ghost in a picture?”

Dwayne glared at me. He didn’t want to see any evidence.

Mary moved back to the front room, and we followed. She pulled a small photo album entitled ‘Mom’s Brag Book’ out from under the end table.  “Here you go.”

She handed it to me. I flipped through the images. Dwayne came to stand behind me, curiosity getting the better of him. I paused my perusal of the images to peer closely at a photo of a tabby cat staring at the camera.  In the foreground, the photographer’s finger could easily be seen. A thin stream of blue smoke floated between the cat and the photographer.

“I took that just last week.”

“Oh?” I asked, politely. To Dwayne, I said, “Turn your camera on for this.”

He lifted it and shot down at the image.

“Show me where the ghost is in this,” I instructed.

She moved to my side and pointed at the smoke. I tried hard not to make a derisive sound.

“That’s the paranormal ectoplasm.”

“I see,” I said.

She believed that because smoke was on the image, it was a ghost. I would bet a dollar to a donut she had been smoking while taking the photo. I gave Dee time to get his shot and turned the page to another one of the cat.

“Where is this cat?” I asked, pointing at the image.

She glanced around. “She’s here somewhere. Doesn’t really like strangers. Her name is Fluffy. I would call her, but she won’t come to it. And I mean, really? Do cats even do that?”

I shrugged.

She took the photo album and flipped forward a few pages. “I bet Fluffy is with Becky.” She tapped a photo, and I leaned over to look. A freckle-faced kid in pink was grinning for the camera with the tabby in her arms.

“Becky is your daughter?”

She nodded. “See? The orbs are over her head in this shot.”

I followed where her lime-green polished nail pointed. “Most of these pictures with Becky have orbs.”

“Dwayne,” I said, turning to face him. “Come over and look at this.”

He moved to where we stood and peered over my shoulder. “Ah, hum.”

“Wonder if we can get some orbs in a shot, too?” I asked, hoping Dee wouldn’t skitter out of the house in horror.

“They’re always around my Becky.”

Dwayne lifted his camera on the monopod to his bony shoulder and nodded. He was so in—his utter curiosity overcoming fear.

As Mrs. Keith led the way to her daughter’s room, I said, “Well, listen, Mary, they won’t use this. They don’t want kids on this, or at least they didn’t tell us to shoot your daughter.”

Dwayne giggled.

“I mean,” I stammered. “Tape your daughter. Not shoot her…tape her.”

She nodded and smiled at me, and then opened the door. Afternoon sunlight illuminated part of the room and dust motes filled the light shard like snow. The bed was covered with a soft pink chenille cover and there were dolls scattered all over it.

I glanced around for Becky, who wasn’t visible.

“Bec?” Her mother called softly.

A little blond head popped up from the opposite side of the bed. “Hi, Mama.”

“These folks are from the Manny Owens show. They want to see the orbs.”

Chills traveled in prickles up my arms. Were these orbs true psychic phenomenon, and could they be called in at will? I wished I’d done more research. Orbs were in the images around the kid, but that could be failure or limitations or defects in the lens of the camera. That sometimes happened when people used those cheap disposable cameras from the dollar store.

At any rate, I didn’t think she should have been telling her kid about orbs—which might be ghosts following her around—but I wasn’t a parent.

The little girl, Becky, appeared to be about 8 years old or so. Dwayne quietly videotaped her every move. I flipped my camcorder on and shot straight at her with no video light. I didn’t want to watch the footage later and wonder if the orbs were the result of light refraction. No light, no refraction. She stood and brushed her shorts off.

She moved onto the bed, and Dwayne moved to the footboard, shooting all the while. I smiled to myself. He wasn’t going to miss anything, that was for sure.

I pulled my screen out from the side of the camera and perused the image I was capturing. It brimmed with orbs, but they were just sunspots. The angle of the sunlight coming to the lens was perfect to catch them. I moved the shot to the left and they disappeared.

I shut my camera down and motioned for Dwayne to follow me out of the room.

“Shoot the B roll, and I will wrap up.”

He strode toward the living room, without so much as a sniff or snort of derision.

When Mrs. Keith came out into the hallway, I asked, “Do you recall when the images in the brag book were taken?”

“When?” She gave me a blank stare.

“What time of day,” I answered.

“Oh, probably like now. Becky had just come in from playing outside, and I was trying to get her calmed down enough to take a bath.”

I nodded and led the way back to the kitchen.  “Is there anything else we need to shoot for the show?”

Before she could answer, Dwayne uttered a strangled cry, and we darted through the house. He sat on the couch with the tabby cat standing beside him on the cushion.

On the floor in front of them lay one of the porcelain dogs. Dwayne’s eyes widened, and his mouth flopped open.

“What happened?”

“G—ghost…” He placed his hand to his heart, moved to clutch the prayer beads, and pulled the cross out of his pocket with the other. Then, he closed his eyes and whispered, “I’m ready to go.”

I fiddled around trying to decide what to do or say, but he quickly stood, placed the cross on the couch, gathered his equipment, and fled the house.

I cleared my throat, glanced at Mrs. Keith apologetically and said, “I’ll be right back.”

I walked out and saw him at the tailgate of the car loading his cameras inside.

“Dee.” I strolled to where he stood.

He lifted a hand to stop me. “Save your breath. You probably have plenty of explanations for what’s going on in this house, but at this point, I’m leanin’ on my own. And what I think—no, what I know—as sure as my granny is white-headed, is…that this place has a bad vibe. I’m done.”

“If you would let me finish I could explain it all.” I gave him my best pout, but that worked like a feather on his hard head.

“There might or might not be a reason for this … this…” He waved at the house. “Whatever this is. All I know is my heart can’t take no more scares. That damn glass poodle came tumbling off that shelf with no help. Jesus help us. What have we stirred up in that house?”

I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Fine. I’ll finish up.”

He shut the trunk and shoved the vial of holy water into my hands. “Take this. And if you don’t come out in fifteen minutes, I ain’t comin’ in for you. Better keep your finger on speed dial for 911. I’ll be in the car.”

This was not going like I wanted it to. I tossed the vial into the bushes as I passed by, and muttered and huffed and puffed all the way back inside.

I apologized to Mary Keith.

“It’s okay, honey,” she said. “The ghost likely just doesn’t care for the cameras being all around. No biggie.”

I stifled a rude comment about her ghost. Then, I grabbed my camera and reshot everything we had done before, all over again, as if I were the only cameraperson. I was pretty sure Dwayne’s would be unusable if he was as scared as he seemed to be. He probably trembled throughout the whole event. Likely the footage would be so shaky I wouldn’t even be able to watch it.

I grumbled and mumbled silently, calling him names I would never utter audibly.

When I finished shooting, I interviewed Mrs. Keith on-screen using the suggested prompts on the shot sheet. In a short while, I was finished. Between all the footage taken from beginning to end, there had to be something that the Manny Owens people could use.

I tapped the trunk to get Dee to open it, stowed my equipment inside, and flopped into the passenger seat. “Let’s go.”

The digital clock on his dash showed we’d only been shooting for two hours. Well, four hundred dollars was better than nothing.

Dwayne was silent for most of the way back to the office. I didn’t know what to say. It would serve no purpose to irritate his sore spot. He was scared of anything considered paranormal. There was no way to change a lifetime of being indulged in such idiocy. The porcelain dog likely had been too near the edge of the shelf and vibrations from our moving around in there sent it off the edge. Or wind from Dwayne’s passing could have done it…or the cat could have done it. The fact that he didn’t see the cat drop down from the shelf only made me shrug my shoulders. Who knew?

Ghosts? R-i-ight.

I didn’t believe in all that tripe. I always said to anyone who talked about sightings and such that I would have to see it with my own eyes before I would believe in it. And even this job, in a supposedly haunted house, hadn’t changed my mind.

The owner of that house was a kook.

When we got back to the office, I took all the SD cards and prepared to transfer them to the computer to get them in some sort of decent order to burn disks for our client. It was the most normal part of the day to me.

Dwayne lounged in my doorway, leaning against the wall. “I bet those orbs were from the cat. Bet that damn cat is possessed.”

“Close,” I told him. Now was the time to explain stuff. “The cat was why stuff happened, I bet. I mean, that broken bric-a-brac totally could be explained that way. The cat could have been dragging the towel off the rack, the cat could have been playing on the washing machine and knocked the stuff off the wall. It’s plausible.”

He shrugged. “That cat didn’t make that glass figurine fall off that shelf while I sat there. But that’s beside the point…don’t matter one bit. I was glad to leave.”

I shook my head and gave him my best shaming look.

“Can’t help what my gut says, Wall-ass,” he replied, ending my chances to make him see reason.

Dwayne took off to get food for us. I suspected he would return with chicken from the Cluck and Go down the highway. Humming, I watched the footage slowly float across the screen as it downloaded into our capture software. It was like watching it in slow-mo.

When I saw the towel slide off the towel rack, I laughed. That was no fault of a ghost. That was plain old gravity. A blink later, a faint shadow darted across the screen. I sat up straighter. What was that? A cat maybe? I nodded at the potential. That cat was the ghost.

I changed disks, and as I prepared to capture it, Dwayne returned. The smell of fried chicken wafted in with him as he strode to his desk. I laughed to myself. Boy, we were like an old married couple.

“I brought you fingers and fries. That okay?” he yelled from his office.

“Sure,” I yelled back.

We ate a lot of fried chicken these days. I would have to spend more time on the treadmill if this continued. I needed to drop a few pounds before Halloween anyway. Candy was my downfall. I opened my middle desk drawer at the thought of it to check to see if I had any mini-bars.

Nothing. Drat.

As the footage crawled across the screen, I watched the events in the little girl’s room. Becky stood and brushed her shorts off. When she moved to the bed, a shadow figure stood underneath the orbs. The figure had long dark hair and wore a very flimsy dress. She moved backward and disappeared into the wall.

I slapped at the keyboard trying to find the shortcut to stop the capture. My heart pounded in my chest taking my breath away.

What the hell was that?

My feet shoved my chair backward as hard as it could go, and if there hadn’t been a wall there, I would have kept backing.

There was no freaking way. “No way, man.”

Dwayne, whistling some silly tune, strolled into my office about that time. “Yes, way. Here’s your—what’s wrong?” he asked dropping the bag on my desk. “What’s the matter? You look like you’re about to puke. Did you eat some of that spaghetti in the fridge because it’s older than...”?

I shook my head and swallowed. I couldn’t tell him about the footage. I couldn’t tell him his worst fears were true.

“N-no. I saw a s-spider.”

He bent down to look under my desk. “Where?”

I rolled my chair back to the desk and pulled up my computer desktop so he couldn’t see what I was looking at. “I don’t know. I think he went toward the door. I was too scared to do more than scramble away from him.”

That much was true anyway.

He looked all around the office before declaring it was clean of all arachnids. Only he did it like the weird woman on the old movie, Poltergeist, which freaked me out even more. I saluted him with a chicken finger, terror making me silly. At the moment, I’d do anything to remain normal.

I restarted the capture, watching closely. Hoping to see a cat that paraded around like a shadowy little girl.

Ghosts? For real?

I wiped my hands on a napkin and took calming breaths. The bathroom scene came up, and I watched as no shadow blurred the room this time. What the hell?

Trembling, I ejected the disk, and inserted it again, then restarted the capture for the third time. The little girl’s bedroom appeared. When Becky stood and brushed herself off, I tensed, like when you pull a bandage off a particularly painful cut.

This time, the shadowy figure wasn’t standing in the shadows beyond the sunbeam. I leaned forward to take a better look. I tried and tried to see it by replaying and re-capturing the footage over and over. She never reappeared.

I sat pondering the whole thing. Surely I hadn’t mistaken the events from earlier viewings? I know I had seen a fleeting shadow cross the imagery in the bathroom. And I fore sure saw a little ghostly girl in the bedroom scene.

I was not losing it.

But what if Dwayne’s ghost stories were true? What if ghosts are real? Was this little shadow girl trying to make me believe?

A creak in the floor and a pop at the window made me look up in terror. There was nothing there. We were on the third floor of the building. There was no reason for those sorts of noises.

If Dwayne is right about the existence of such things, then, could he also be right about us bringing something back with us? If a ghost showed her face on video just to scare me, could she also appear to me in person?

Trembling started in my shoulders and went down my neck and back.

I gave up trying to make her appear on tape. I ejected the disk and slid it into a plastic case before shoving it as far as it would go into the back of my desk drawer. I would not send Becky’s footage to the Manny Owen’s show.

I would tell them it was corrupted.

Maybe we could still collect our money. At this point, I didn’t care. I’d face eviction before I would touch that footage again.

Dwayne could never know that the house he’d been in had been haunted for real. I wish I didn’t know about it, either.

I glanced at the window and saw the shade grow dim. Night was coming.

Or was it? The clock on my computer said seven PM. Daylight savings time didn’t start for another week.

Cold air like a puff of ghostly breath spread over my arms making me break out in gooseflesh. Then, like something from an old horror flick, the room dimmed as if a filmy, dark smoke was filling it from the inside.

I fled from my office screeching like the hounds of hell were on my heels.

Now I believed.

THE END … or is it?

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SEE MORE BOOK INFO ON THE FOLLOWING PAGE

Links to other books in the SHANNON WALLACE MYSTERY series:

DISK OF DEATH, BOOK ONE

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YEW TO A KILL, BOOK TWO
https://amzn.com/B01FGUFH6U

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DANCE WITH ME (SHORT ROMANCE)

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LOVE INN(ROMANCE)

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