By all rights, Seth should only have one thing on his mind: scare them off.
He didn’t much like the look of the first two. The small one with the austere black hair was definitely a skeptic, and the colorful one looked tough. He had seen their kind before. They came with their scientific instruments, intent to prove to the world that every haunting was just misunderstood natural occurrences. It made them harder to convince to run, but it was a game he hadn’t lost yet.
Through the years, it had taken him time to refine his scare tactics. The tools in his arsenal ranged from disembodied voices to moving objects. The only line he chose not to cross was violence, especially when those he chased off where of the female persuasion.
The key was to find a target who would make the others believe. The redhead who pranced around like a nervous spaniel would do nicely. Too bad he couldn’t bring himself to use her like that. When he was alive, she was just the sort of girl next door he would have mooned over. Hell, he was doing it now.
There was something about her. Whatever it was, it halted his usual determination to wallow in misery. It might have been her timid approach to his front porch or the way she ran in through the front door because of its settling groan. Or it may have been that her auburn curls reminded him of autumn leaves and her amber eyes glowed like apple cider that once warmed his body in the same way that her skittish gaze warmed his soul. He may not welcome the intrusion, but dead didn’t make him immune to her physical charms. It just left him without the means to make them lead anywhere useful.
He followed her as she moved around the table, gingerly perusing the instruments that her friends believed would reveal his presence.
“Tell me your name, beautiful.”
“Amanda, I’ve got camera one and two set up where we talked about. Bettina, would you like to come with me while I take some base EMF readings?” The blue-haired girl poked her head around the doorframe from the kitchen.
Loud modern colors aside, the blue-haired friend reminded him of the women painted on the sides of the planes he had occasionally seen on base—harmless reminders of home meant to keep the boys happy.
His gaze followed hers, interested to see which one would respond and conveniently provide his answer. When the little one draped in black looked up from her screen, Seth grumbled his disappointment.
“Go with Charity and she can show you how we do things.” From her answer, he assumed the one hiding behind the laptop must be Amanda.
“Um—sure, why not.” His red head looked between her two friends before continuing. “What do you need me to do?”
Bettina. He turned the name over in his mind as he watched her stroke the side of her flannel covered arms as if to ward off a chill. His gaze slid down her body, taking in the way her oversized flannel shirt grazed the tops of her thighs. The uniqueness of her name suited her equally distinctive beauty.
“Grab an IR camera and come on,” Charity ordered.
Bettina looked down again at the table full of equipment and frowned.
Amanda reached over and picked up a device, shoving it at Bettina. “This one.”
“Oh—thanks.” She took the camera, a shy smile quirked up the corner of her full lips. “You guys are going to have to be more specific with me for a while.”
Charity moved into the room and grabbed another device off the table, along with a flashlight. “You follow me with the camera on and I’ll take the readings. We can start in the basement, and I’ll explain things to you as I go.”
Flipping open the tiny screen, Bettina nodded and together the women started towards the back of the house. Charity moved like a cat. Based on the saunter and sway of her hips she was secure in herself. In contrast, Bettina moved more like a timid mouse, trying to sneak away from the cat without notice.
Seth took a moment to enjoy the view Bettina offered before following. Black cotton leggings clung to the prettiest legs he had seen in years. Bettina wore them tucked into worn leather boots that came up to her knees and hugged just as tightly as the leggings. The fashion of this decade really was an improvement. It would be a shame to hide all that under the layers of a loose skirt.
If he still lived, she would be enticement enough to turn on the charm, something he never felt the need to do after the war and his recovery in Paris. No, he had been obsessed with something else.
Seth had been wallowing in his anger for so long that he had nearly forgotten what it felt like. Maybe, she could stay a little while. It was nice not to feel that burden of anger hanging on his every step, like the chains that Jacob Marley brandished in A Christmas Carol. He had built that chain link by link though the last years of his short life.
Their silent passage to the back of the house ended with the squeal of hinges that hadn’t been oiled since he had successfully driven out the last owners of this house. Bettina shifted nervously behind her friend, device open and pointed over Charity’s shoulder to peek into the darkness ahead.
Charity traipsed down the stairs as if dank old basements were nothing to worry over.
His girl approached the open door as if it was a gaping mouth intent to swallow her. She took a deep breath and threw herself into the inky oblivion. The rapid thud of her footfalls racing down the stairs echoed up at him.
Seth chuckled to himself as he followed. He located her in the darkness through the glow of flashlights and her rapid panting. Someone should tell her that if she didn’t stop hyperventilating she would faint.
Having found her, this was as far as he could bring himself to wait before he touched her. Just a light touch, stroking the back of her shaking hand. He could say she needed the comfort but he would only be lying to himself. A selfish need to feel contact, muted though it was, drove his actions.
A sharp indrawn breath punctuated Bettina’s still rapid breathing.
Her friend swung the flashlight up at Bettina’s face. “You gonna make it, Red?”
Bettina slowed her breathing by small increments, but he could see her shaking like those autumn leaves her hair resembled, clinging for purchase in the wind. “I’ll be fine. Don’t let me keep you from what you need to do.”
No scream. Seth had expected more from a woman who seemed terrified by every step she took. But with cobwebs hanging from the floor joists above them, she may have discounted it as nothing.
Making her scream hadn’t been the point of the contact anyway, and that should have sent him back up the stairs away from her. No good could come from this fascination with her. After all of that, there was only tingling in his fingers; he hadn’t really felt her at all.
“You just need a distraction.” Charity’s voice was buoyant in the darkness. Clearly, she was in her element. “Have you ever watched one of those ghost hunting shows that talked about EMFs, EVPs—that kinda thing?”
Bettina shook her head in the darkness, sighed and then answered aloud, “Not really.”
“That’s okay, I can fill in the gaps. I just didn’t want to tell you things you already had a handle on.” Charity paused to scan a pipe with her meter and then continued on her circuit of the utilitarian space. “EMF stands for electromagnetic field and is man-made. So the point of what I’m doing is to establish what’s normal for this house, before we stir anything up by asking questions.”
“You’ve already stirred something up,” Seth said, although he knew they couldn’t hear. Sometimes he just needed the sound of his own voice to stave off his impending madness. It hovered over him in the endless tedium like a storm about to break.
Charity continued on her lecture. “Later if we observe a spike or a sudden drop we look for a reason. Sometimes it’s a light switch got turned on, but other times—let’s just say when we review the footage, we find something.”
“Do you guys usually find changes?” Bettina’s voice squeaked her question, like a mouse afraid to hear about the cat next door.
Charity shrugged, continuing to wander. “Not everywhere we go and this is the first time we’ve been able to get in here. Probably the last time too. Still don’t know how Amanda pulled that one off. Been trying to get in here forever it seems like.”
Hanging on every word, Seth pulled it apart for anything useful. He may have wanted them gone before, but now the idea that this could be their only time here chilled his already icy veins. He was just getting used to the idea that he could like having someone here, especially Bettina. That she would leave—that just couldn’t stand.
Seth reached for Bettina again, like a child stroking a favorite blanket for comfort. This time he stroked the blossom of her cheek, gliding his hand across her face and then lifting the curtain of her dark red hair to one side.
Her spine straightened and she glanced up, her eyes scanning the exposed joists above them. “Charity,” she whispered. “Something is touching me.”