Chasing Shadows Read online

  “She is. But she’s good at what she does.”

  Avery cocked an eyebrow. “Which is what?”

  “Shaye oversees everything,” Cam said, sliding the keys out of the ignition and tossing them into her purse. “All the video production on the program. She plans and coordinates various aspects of everything, like the script, the directing, the editing of the film, and of course she made all the arrangements to get the crew here and find those vans and arrange accommodations. She has some production assistants,” Cam added, “but she does most of it. It’s a big job.”

  “Sounds like it.” Avery gestured with her bandaged hand. “She’s waving at you.”

  Cam recognized it as Shaye’s ‘we need to get this thing started’ wave. She waved back and got out of the car to hurry over to the porch. She couldn’t resist a quick glance up at the window on the second floor, the one where she’d seen the apparition the last time she’d been at the house. Thankfully, no one was there, although Cam could have sworn there was a slight twitch of the white lace curtain before she quickly dropped her gaze. Avery must have seen her glance up, because she gave Cam a brief but encouraging smile.

  Once on the porch Cam gave Shaye a quick hug before standing back and pulling Avery forward. “This is my good friend, Avery Smith. She’s an investigator for the Sheriff’s Department here in Brooks County.”

  “Hello, Deputy.” Shaye reached out to shake Avery’s hand. “Or should I say detective?” Not waiting for Avery to respond, she continued, “Either way, it’s nice to meet you. Are you going to be here for the investigation tomorrow night?”

  “Yes,” Avery nodded, casting a furtive glance at Cam. “I thought I would. Probably a couple of the other deputies, too, for crowd control and to make sure no one tries to crash the party.”

  Here goes nothing. If Shaye shot down the séance idea, they’d be back at square one. “I haven’t talked to you about this yet,” Cam said, “but I was thinking of conducting a séance.”

  “A séance?” Shaye frowned. “Really? But you’ve never done one of those before.”

  Hearing the uncertainty in Shaye’s voice, Cam spoke quickly. “I know, but I think we should take it up a notch this go round. We could do a proper one, with a table and candles…the whole nine yards. Maybe a Ouija board. And I thought that since this is my old hometown, I could invite some of the residents here in to help with the investigation.” Seeing the hesitation in Shaye’s expression, she hastily added, “We could livestream the whole thing on Twitter and Instagram. Think of the ratings.”

  Shaye chewed on her bottom lip for a moment and then rapped her knuckles on the clipboard. “I like it. Just regular folks.” She blessed Cam with a rare smile. “It’s a nice touch.”

  Cam exchanged relieved glances with Avery. “Great. We can even give them EVP meters and let them go around with a cameraman and see if they stir anything up. You know, this house gave the real estate agent who’s listing it a heart attack.”

  “Really?” Shaye’s dark eyes sharpened behind her wire-rimmed glasses. “Do you think he’d be willing to talk about that on camera?”

  Avery smirked. “If it would help Chuck Jackson sell this house and make a big commission, he’d take off his clothes and dance naked in the town square.”

  Cam shook her head, “I think you better be careful. Mildred’s beginning to rub off on you.” She laughed at the expression on Avery’s face. “I’m teasing, Avery. But I think you’re probably right.” Turning back to Shaye, she took the clipboard away and looked down at it and the row of neat checkmarks by almost all the items. “Looks like you got this under control. I think I’ll take Avery inside and do a quick walk-through.”

  “Okay,” Shaye said, “I think the EVP recorders are still packed up, but the EMF meters are in the hallway, if you want to do some preliminary sessions with them. I’m working on your opening script. Mostly I think you should just ad lib—talk about your hometown and how it feels coming back, yada, yada, and then introduce us to the investigation.”

  Cam nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “Okay. Well, see you after your walk-through.” Shaye looked over at the vans and yelled out, “Hey, Josh, watch that! Those boxes have our digital cameras in them, damn it!” She shook her head and darted off the porch, no doubt Cam thought, to kick some prop man’s ass.

  Grinning, Cam looked to Avery. “Ready to go hunt some ghosts?”

  Avery opened the front door. “Lead the way,” she said, making a grand sweeping motion with one hand.

  Cam walked inside the house. Despite the warm afternoon’s heat, a shiver swept through her as she crossed the threshold. Even if she hadn’t seen whatever the hell that had been upstairs that day with Chuck Jackson, the house itself gave off a vibe that could only be described as spooky.

  “So I remember the EMF meter from Jennifer’s house,” Avery said, stepping up beside her. “That’s the device that Mildred and Jane had, right?”

  “That’s right. Ghosts are thought to emit electromagnetic radiation or disturb the existing magnetic fields in a room. We use EMF meters primarily to record that type of radiation, but truly, they’re misused most of the time. We’ve had cases where people don’t realize that their fuse box is right below them and could be giving off huge electromagnetic fields. That can cause hallucinations or the feeling of being watched, and it’s a totally explainable phenomenon.”

  Brow furrowed, Avery nodded. “Now, what’s the other thing?”

  “EVP. It stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena. Basically, the investigator—in this case me—asks questions and calls out, then records what comes back. It can encompass any mysterious sounds or voices from spirits that happen to be in the vicinity. They’re little handheld, battery-operated devices. Most of the time we pick up creaks and knocks of old houses settling, sometimes the wind.”

  “So, you’ve never actually heard a ghost talk on one of those things.” It was more a statement than a question.

  “It’s been my experience that people hear what they want to hear,” Cam said, her shrug more relaxed than she felt.

  She looked around the shadowy foyer. Little had changed from the other day. Well, except maybe me…

  The look that Avery was giving Cam right then told her that she felt the same uncomfortable vibe that seemed to permeate the room.

  “And what are the chances of making this walk-through ghost-free?”

  The Cam of a week ago thought ghosts and shadows and sounds on EVP monitors were all just figments of the imagination. Now, however… “Based on the past few days? Slim to none,” she answered grimly. “Maybe we should try using at least some of the equipment.”

  Avery walked over to a table that held an array of ghost-detecting meters as well as a few cameras. “Digital cameras? Isn’t it too dark when you do your walk around for those?”

  “No, we have cameras with a night vision function. They’re essential for capturing everything from unexplained light anomalies and shadow figures to mysterious creaks, thuds, and footsteps.”

  Avery picked up one of them and sighted through it. “Night vision—cool.” She smiled, looking to Cam very much like a kid in a candy store.

  “We try to take a lot of photos,” Cam added. “You just never know what’s going to show up.”

  “Yeah, like what? Actual ghosts?”

  “No, not usually. But light anomalies. Mists every once and a while. The Holy Grail in the ghost hunting world is a fully body apparition. The chance of seeing one of those is what brings the viewers back for more, although they just never happen.”

  Avery angled a look at her. “Until now.”

  “Right. Until now.” Cam blew out a breath. “Now I’m having full-blown conversations with the spirits.” She sighed and rubbed a hand across her forehead, pushing back the headache that was threatening. “You know, maybe this was a bad idea.”

  “Hey,” Avery said softly, reaching out to touch Cam on the arm. “Just take one thing at a time
. Let’s get through this and then we can figure the rest out later. Okay?”

  “We, huh?” Cam glanced down at Avery’s hand. I kind of like the sound of that.

  “Well,” Avery cleared her throat and took a step toward the table. “First things first.” She picked up a device that resembled a handheld radio. “Show me how to use this thing,” she said, turning it over in her hand. “What is it anyway?”

  Cam reached out and took the device from Avery’s hand. “It’s called a ghost box.” At Avery’s quizzical look, she continued. “It’s kind of a catch-all term for a device used to verbally communicate with spirits. It continuously scans radio frequencies, creating what’s called white noise. The idea is the spirit can use that white noise to communicate in some way.”

  Avery frowned. “What do we do with it?”

  Cam lifted one shoulder. “We can listen for disembodied voices, or yell questions into the void and hope for an answer from beyond. Who knows, maybe it will work and give us a clue that we can use in the investigation. Are you up for it?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

  As they walked up the narrow stairway to the second floor, Cam couldn’t help but be nervous. She was a long way from feeling blasé about seeing spirits and interacting with them, even though she’d now seen a total of three ghosts and had even been taken over by one—a frightening experience she never wanted to repeat. Cam didn’t know what had caused her to gain this…ability?...but she was more than ready to lose it and go back to being normal again.

  Walking through the spooky old mansions, hotels, and hospitals that the show filmed at used to be fun. Sure, she’d encountered some cold spots on a few occasions, seen some light anomalies from time to time, even heard the random knocking. But all those had a logical explanation, one that was definitely not supernatural. At least not in Cam’s mind. She sighed and shook her head as she topped the steps. Shit had gotten all too real.

  Even though changes had been made to the outside of the Johnston house, inside it was just as before. With the shutters taken down, more light was allowed inside, though the filthy windows caused the light to be murky and dim. The walls of the rooms still needed painting, and now she could see dark blotches on some of them, where moisture had gotten in. A cool breeze drifted out of one of the rooms and wafted gently over the same short hallway as before, making Cam shiver.

  Coming up behind her, Avery touched the small of her back. “Are you okay? You’re breathing a little hard.”

  Cam took a deep breath and nodded, flashing Avery a smile that she hoped wasn’t as nervous as she felt. “Oh, I’m fine.” She gestured to either side of the hallway. “These doors here all lead to bedrooms. Two on each side of the landing.”

  “Okay.” Avery gave a curt nod. “Let’s get some of them open then and see if we can shake out some ghosts.”

  “Don’t joke about it. The last time Chuck Jackson and I were here, there was a young woman—just a girl, really—in one of the bedrooms. I thought at first she was some homeless person squatting here in this old, empty house, and we’d walked in on her. But when she came toward me…” Cam broke off, shuddering at the memory.

  “Hey.” Avery turned Cam so that they stood face to face. She stared at Cam, concern evident in her brown eyes. “I’m here. Nothing is going to happen to you. I promise.” Avery brushed Cam’s cheek with her knuckles. A shiver of another kind ran through Cam. “Okay?”

  Cam took a deep breath and then nodded. “Okay.”

  Avery reached out and took the ghost box from Cam. “Great. Now, let’s get down to business.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Given the amount of dark, shadowy places in the Johnston house, Avery was somewhat surprised by the lack of cobwebs. Whoever’d been working on sprucing the outside of the residence up for Cam’s TV viewers had apparently made their rounds upstairs as well.

  She eased open the door nearest to the stairwell and cautiously stepped inside.

  “You act as if you actually believe in all this,” Cam said, moving into the room behind her.

  Avery let her eyes sweep across the room, straining them in the dim light for any signs of life. Or afterlife, as the case may be. Seeing nothing, she tilted her head in Cam’s direction. “Seriously? You’re going to ask that after what happened last night?”

  Cam crossed to the other side of the room and pulled back the white curtains that lined the window. A stream of light filtered into the room, highlighting particles of dust that hung in the air. She turned back to face Avery and gave a small shrug. “You’ve just been so…I don’t know…skeptical up to now.”

  Avery had to admit she had a point. “Look,” she said, moving so that her back no longer faced the empty hallway, “in my line of work when someone tells me that they’re talking to people that no one else can see, the paranormal is not the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how good-looking they are. That said, I’d be a fool to deny that some kind of…” She paused and shook her head, searching for the right word, “…phenomena happened at Jennifer Morris’s house. The most important thing to me right now is that we use whatever this is, if we can, to catch her killer. I’ve been a cop long enough to see a lot of bad stuff, and it’s taught me one thing for sure—life is too short and too precious to be stolen. Your friend Jennifer was murdered, probably to cover up an old crime. Maybe the murder of the girl that used to live in this house. It’s my job to make sure that the killer—killers, maybe—are brought to justice.”

  Pursing her lips, Cam gave a slow nod as she seemed to take in Avery’s words. “So,” she said finally, “you think I’m good-looking?”

  Oh, good grief. “Cam, now really isn’t the time—”

  A long, slow sound like a tired sigh echoed down the hallway, bringing goosebumps up on Avery’s arms. Wide-eyed, she exchanged stares with Cam before slowly turning back toward the hallway, afraid of what she might see there.

  “Did you hear that?” Cam whispered, moving closer.

  “Yeah, I heard it.” Avery swallowed, steeling her resolve. This is what they were here for, after all. “Let me get this ghost box on.” She flipped the switch that she hoped would make it work and instantly the hallway was flooded with the loud sounds of “white noise,” a mixture of sound waves extending over a wide frequency range. “So the, uh, spirit is supposed to use this to communicate with us in some way?” At Cam’s nod, she said, “Okay. Go ahead and call out to her, and let’s see what happens.”

  Cam took a deep breath and stepped toward the hallway. “If anyone is here, can you please tell us your name?”

  No reply except for the pulsing, meaningless noise of the ghost box.

  “We’re not here to harm you or disturb you,” Cam continued. “We just want to help if we can. Please tell us your name.”

  A brief snatch of sound came across that could have been “Roxanne” or “Roseanne,” or simply meaningless garble.

  Avery felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “Did she say Roxanne?”

  “Hard to say,” Cam answered. “We want to be careful of ‘matrixing.’ That’s our brains trying to make sense out of these sounds we hear. Our minds are wired to take in our environment and try to make something out of the sounds we can understand and then make them fit with the ones we can’t. It’s like I said earlier, sometimes people hear what they want to hear. A good rule of thumb with audio from the ghost box is that if we have to turn it up a lot, or listen to it again and again to make it make sense, then it’s probably not supernatural.”

  “Gotcha,” Avery said, nodding. “Let me try asking something else.” She raised her voice, projecting it around the hallway. “We’re trying to reach Roxanne Johnston…if this is you, we’re here to help if we can.”

  The staticky white noise of the ghost box seemed to grow louder and then, clear as day, a woman’s voice said, “Die,” over the box.

  “Okay, then, it’s time that we be on our way,” Cam said, brushing by Avery
to head back down the stairwell.

  “Now, hold on a minute.” Avery reached out and grabbed her by the arm. “Don’t think you’re going to get out of this that easy.”

  Cam bit her lip, nodding although she kept, Avery noted, one foot pointed in the direction of the exit.

  “Okay, let’s try it again,” she whispered to Cam, looking down the empty hallway. “Thank you for talking to us,” she called out. “Are you saying that you died in this house?”

  Nothing but empty white noise pulsed back at them.

  “Can you tell us who killed you?”

  “Die!” came again, only louder this time and with a long, drawn out moan following the word. Cam gave a startled jump. Avery was sure that if it wasn’t for the hand she still had around Cam’s arm, the other woman would have bolted. The word, though, didn’t sound threatening to Avery, merely mournful and sad, like the person who was speaking was absolutely grief stricken about it.

  “Roxanne,” she said. “Roxanne. If this is you, we just want to help bring your killer to justice. We’d like to find your body to give it proper burial. Who killed you, Roxanne? Can you tell us who killed you?”

  An even longer silence and then finally a whisper of sound. They had to strain to hear it.

  “Buddy.” Then again—“Buddy.” Once more, and louder this time. Almost a scream. “Buddy, don’t!” They looked at each other and Avery started to open her mouth to say something, but before she could, a loud shriek ratcheted through the hallway, so loud and so frightening that Cam screamed and pressed closer to Avery, hiding her face against Avery’s shoulder.

  Avery was tempted to cut and run herself but decided now was not the time to let Cam know that she was scared shitless. “So, I think it’s safe to say the ghost box works.”