Spirit - Part Nine
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
Aiden and I approach the ruins of the fallen farmhouse in silence. Walking slowly, keeping close together.
The golden beams of our flashlights pick up the fine, misty drizzle. The sky overhead glitters darkly like an endless sea of amethyst, with a full moon at its height.
We both stop when the farmhouse falls into view.
Summer is slowly beginning to send out its warmth, but tonight, in the misty drizzle, it’s cold. Our breaths melt into swirling frost on the air as we stand gazing at the ruins before us.
So far as I can tell, everything looks the same as it did the last time we came here. The stone chimney standing tall in the middle of the rubble, the husks of long-gone furniture, the thick emerald moss climbing over everything. The toolshed where we discovered that the saw was missing - the proof that John Botswick purposely flattened this building - is dark and silent.
Everything is very quiet, which only sharpens the few sounds to break the hush of night. The raindrops sprinkling onto leaves and drumming softly against bark, the distant chirp of crickets. The sound of my own breathing, mingled with Aiden’s.
The forest presses in on all sides, close and dark, leaves wet and whispering from the rain.
A chill runs down my spine and goosebumps prickle my arms, the back of my neck. My anxiety showing itself, yes, but also maybe my Vision trying to get my attention. Trying to let me know that there’s something to See nearby.
Aiden spreads his hand and releases an upward-flowing cascade of glimmering golden fireflies. They rise up from his palm and disperse on the breeze, scattering around the farmhouse.
I bite back a sigh of relief. The ruins look way less intimidating in the familiar, gentle glow of Aiden’s Heliomancer light. Still mysterious, but now less - desolate. Like someplace that could be haunted, yes, but also a place where magic could happen.
Aiden gently folds his hand around mine, the blue flames sparking in his eyes. “Ready?”
I take a deep breath, squeeze Aiden’s fingers, and let the connection fall open.
His energy spills into me, rushes over me like a soft oceanic wave. The dreamy sensation steals my breath away, makes my heartbeat spike and my toes curl in my Converse.
I open my eyes and find Aiden gazing steadily down into them. His gaze is sweet and patient, warm and waiting. His hand clasped around mine supplies gentle, constant pressure. The broad plane of his muscled chest rises and falls slowly with his calm breaths.
I stare up at Aiden, the image of love as it exists in my heart and mind. The remaining anxiety drops away as soon as my gaze meets his.
Yeah. I turn to face the haunted farmhouse again, full of rising determination. I’m ready.
~~~~
Aiden and I let the connection gently take us away, the way it always does.
Sometimes it feels like the warmth of sunlight dappled on my skin when I’m sitting in cool shade. Sometimes it feels like campfire warmth, sometimes like cozy blanket warmth, and sometimes like stinging hot shower heat. It all puts different flavors of soothing sensation into my body, in slow increments, until I’m completely caught up. Drifting mindlessly and serenely through it.
It’s easy to forget what we’re here to do. But I can feel the cool spring air against Aiden’s face through the connection. I can feel it against my own, too. We’re still in front of the farmhouse, and given the way time flies when Aiden and I have the connection open, I’m sure that any second now my Vision will be charged up. The ghosts on a plane further away will be visible to my eyes.
Aiden squeezes my fingers. You want to give it a try?
“Yeah, okay.” I slowly open my eyes, carefully not looking at the farmhouse. “Let’s do it.”
Aiden draws back, dark eyebrows raised in surprise. “Just like that, huh?”
“Yes, just like that. Very brave and sexy of me, I know.”
Aiden’s deep, huffing laughter is the last thing I sense through the connection before he gently eases it closed and lets go of my hand.
He slips his backpack from his shoulder, sets it down on the grass, and rummages around inside until he finds what he’s looking for. The folder that the Painstaking Research Department pulled together for us.
“Thank you, Floyd and Spencer,” Aiden murmurs as I flip it open.
I make a soft sound of agreement. The folder - a lovingly-done work of Spencer-Floyd care and thoroughness - has an information sheet and a printed photo of each person we’ve identified as being somehow involved in the Botswick case. Kasey wanted me to have a look before we kicked this off.
“To reduce the risk of misidentifying anyone from the ghost moments,” she explained.
There are some people involved we have no photo of, but that’s fine. I’ve seen Rose and Leyla in a ghost moment before, and I’ve seen Leyla once in real life. I won’t be mistaking their faces for anyone else’s.
John Botswick, the Faceless Man - we have no photo of him, of course.
But we have pictures of the others. I carefully flip through them one more time. Aiden helps me out by aiming his flashlight at the open folder.
First, there’s the boy, the son of the Stasi official - Charlie. His anxious little face is clear in the photo of him. So is the face of his father, and his bodyguard, Agent Scholz. We don’t have a photo of Agent Jahn - the other agent assigned to guard Charlie here in Port Sitka - so on the next page, there’s a picture of Joe Kemp.
Chief of Police in Port Sitka at the time of John Botswick’s murder. Floyd and Spencer went to the trouble of finding a picture of him from the ‘70s, when he would look closer to the right age. This is the man the CIA asked to keep an eye on Botswick, and to cover up any evidence he might leave behind. Kemp looks middle-aged in the pictures, with a push-broom mustache and an awfully stern expression for someone who took the occasional bribe.
I run my eyes over all of the names and faces again, then close my eyes and run through my mental list of everyone we know to be directly involved.
John Botswick - murdered.
Agent Scholz - returned to East Germany, immediately (perhaps forcibly?) retired from the Stasi.
Joe Kemp - died many years later, unrelated causes.
Leyla - alive, still in Port Sitka.
Agent Jahn - unaccounted for.
Rose - unaccounted for.
Charlie - unaccounted for.
Three people are unaccounted for. Three people we need answers about, and those answers might be here.
I hesitate for a long moment before I open my eyes again. Then, very slowly, I lift my gaze to the abandoned farmhouse and finally look at it with my supercharged Vision.
“Oh,” I say softly, staring at it with wide, startled eyes.
“What?” Aiden’s eyebrows drop low in concern. “Aw, man - don’t tell me there’s no ghost moments here?”
“No,” I answer slowly. “That’s not what I was gonna say.”
My eyes rove over the ghost moments spread out before me. Just like at the corner store, the ghost moments hang suspended in the air, each one a self-contained column of flowing, iridescent, glowing white smoke.
But there was only one at the corner store, and that’s not the case here.
“We’ve got options,” I tell Aiden, a little dazed. “Only problem is that I’m not sure which one to activate first.”
“Really?” Aiden’s blue eyes instantly brighten up. “Shit, that’s great!”
I tilt my head back and let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, it’s lovely.”
“You’re excited, too.” Aiden throws an arm around my shoulders, ruffles my hair as he playfully pushes my head forward. “Don’t pretend, Keane! This is good news, and you know…”
Aiden trails off, his deep voice fading slowly into silence. He lifts his gaze from my face and stares straight ahead, then turns his head to the right and stares intently into the dark tree line.
“Aiden,” I whisper, tugging on his sleeve. “What are you doing?”
“There’s something…” he begins, then fades off again, blinking in confusion.
I narrow my eyes at Aiden suspiciously. “If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not gonna w-”
Without breaking his gaze away from the trees, Aiden draws me up against his chest, then gently presses his hand over my mouth.
“Quiet for one sec, Linden,” he murmurs.
I hear in his voice that he’s completely serious. I go perfectly still, not even moving to push his hand away from my mouth. I strain to listen over the sound of my heartbeat suddenly hammering in my ears. Aiden stands motionless, too, his blue eyes trained on the trees lining the right-hand side of the farmhouse.
Very slowly, he lets me go, and I look up at him searchingly, my eyes full of questions. His brow is knitted in concentration, his ocean eyes bewildered, his head tilted to the side like he’s trying hard to listen to something.
Without a word, he takes a few steps toward the treeline.
I rush to catch up to him, full of mounting alarm. He catches my outstretched hand, then gives it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. But he doesn’t slow down, or break his attention away from the trees.
“What are you?” he murmurs, speaking to no one I can see.
I’m about to stop Aiden and insist on an explanation, but he comes to an abrupt stop before I can. He stares deep into the dark forest, his eyes roving the trunks and boughs of the trees.
“What the hell…?” He drops his gaze to me, baffled. “Dude, I sensed something out there. In the forest.”
“You - what?” I glance quickly at the forest, taking an instinctive step back. “What do you mean, you sensed something? A ghost? One like Kasey and Will?”
“No, definitely not that.” Aiden is staring over my head, his eyes searching the treeline again. “Not a ghost, and not a human. I don’t know what it was. I didn’t see it, I only sensed it. But I could have sworn that something just peeked out of the forest and looked at us.”
My eyes widen in alarm. “Did it seem hostile?”
“No.” Aiden speaks slowly and softly, thinking it through as he goes. “No, not at all. It felt - shy. I think we might have scared it away, trying to get closer. It sounded like something small.”
Oh. That definitely changes things. I turn in surprise to look at the wall of trees, roving the beam of my flashlight over them.
“Hello?” I call softly, in the gentlest voice I can manage. “Can you hear us, out there? Come on out, lil’ sprout! We’re not here to hurt you, we promise.”
Only silence from the trees, aside from the whispering of the falling drizzle. I glance at Aiden, and he shrugs his shoulders in defeat.
“I think it’s gone. Or maybe I imagined it. Probably that.”
“Okay…” I take one more long look at the forest, then turn back to Aiden. “So… should we deal with the ghosts, then?”
Aiden breathes out a soft laugh as he leads the way back to the farmhouse. “Weird night.”
“Kind of, yeah. I mean, we’ve had weirder.”
“True,” Aiden admits, around another laugh. “So. You said there are a few ghost moments here for us to look at?”
I run my eyes over the crumbled farmhouse again, doing a count-up.
“Let’s see… there’s one ghost moment near the center of the farmhouse, I think right outside of where the front door would be. There’s another one by the treeline to the left of the farmhouse, right… there.” I point to a yellow cedar in the midst of the tree line, its bluish-green leaves and ridged bark softened to my eyes by the glow of the ghost beside it. “There’s one more on the path to the road, about halfway down. And… wait a second…”
I walk back up the path away from the farmhouse, Aiden following at my side. Further up the bend in the path, there’s one more ghost moment. I just barely caught the glow of it from the farmhouse. It’s right at the very start of the path, almost on the road.
“One more, right there.”
“Well, shit.” Aiden puts his hands on his hips, his eyes roaming over the locations of the four ghost moments. “How do we know what order they go in?”
“Guess we’ll have to watch them and figure it out.” I set off up the path again, heading away from the farmhouse. “But my instinct is to start with the one by the road, right?”
Aiden gives me a nod, soothingly stirring my hair with his fingertips as I stop in front of the ghost moment. “You’ve got this, Keane.”
I take a deep breath, then extend my hand towards the flowing column of white mist at the edge of the moonlit road.
At the touch of my fingers, the opalescent light swirls into movement. It grows richer and brighter, losing its transparency, transforming into white silk. It spills down from where it was suspended, a waterfall of shining white light that breaks into one sweeping, outspreading wave upon impact with the earth.
It draws back together to form a shape - a person. Someone frozen in mid-movement, a little further off down the road.
“Who is it?” Aiden murmurs softly.
I glance at Aiden, caught by surprise. “Can you tell I’m seeing it?”
“Ah…” Aiden shrugs his shoulders sheepishly, a small smile turning up the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t want to tell you before, because I thought it might freak you out, but… when you’re watching ghost moments with your supercharged Vision, your eyes - change.”
I stare up at Aiden blankly, then arch an eyebrow. “Change how?”
He hesitates, unsure of how to explain. I wrinkle my nose at him in confusion, then pull out my phone. I open the camera, flip it around to face me, and -
“What-?” I sputter, my eyes widening. “Oh, my fucking god.”
My eyes are completely, glowingly white. Full of sparkling, swirling white fire that softly shines on my cheekbones. No pupils, no irises, just light.
Aiden breaks into an affectionate grin, looking at me in the view of my phone’s camera. “It’s pretty cool, honestly. Badass. I like it.”
I break into a wide grin, too. “Is it? Do you?”
“Get to work, Keane,” Aiden groans, half-laughing, a vivid blush coloring his cheeks.
“Yeah, no, I am!” I quickly stuff my phone back in my pocket, still in disbelief. “You know what, though? I’m glad I didn’t live in the olden days, because I would not have done well. Pretty sure nobody would even let me just chill quietly in their town. Gay, red-haired, ghost-seeing, eyes glowing-”
Aiden nods, like he totally gets it. “Asthmatic, two-showers-a-day-needing, caffeine-addicted-”
“That’s not what I meant!” I groan, pushing Aiden’s face aside, his laughter breaking against my palm. “People would probably hear you call me Little Demon and take it one hundred percent seriously, that’s what I was saying! I guess I would’ve done okay with like, the Druids. Nobody else, though. Would you be cool living with Druids?”
Aiden huffs out a surprised laugh. “Wait, I’m there, too, in this scenario? And you’re still my Little Demon?”
“Yes,” I answer instantly, then blush a little. “What? Always. Yeah. I don’t know. Why wouldn’t you be there, if that’s where I am?”
Aiden pauses, blinking hard. He doesn’t answer for a moment. Only stares at me, one hand adjusting his snapback, his eyes blinking hard.
He lets out another soft rumble of laughter, then turns me back to face the ghost moment. “Stay focused, Linden. As much as I love the fumfering.”
There’s a pleased, happy warmth in his voice that sends a wave of reinforcing warmth through me, too.
I set off further down the road, to where the ghostly figure is frozen in place. Aiden follows me in silence at first, but after a moment he comes back with the question I forgot to answer.
“Who is it?”
I stop in front of her, my eyes widening with worry. “Leyla.”
Frozen in place in the middle of what must have been a flat-out sprint toward the farmhouse. The wind is flying through her hair, pressing her clothes flat against her, and her feet are bare.
This ghost moment is a little clearer than the one at the corner store was. I can make out some of the details of Leyla’s face, besides her very red lips.
I can make out some of her expression, and -
“She looks terrified,” I tell Aiden softly. “She’s alone. She’s - crying, I think. And it looks like she was running in the direction of the farmhouse.”
There’s an unhappy, uneasy silence. Aiden bites his lip, and I can tell that we’re thinking about the same thing.
Rose said that John Botswick was going to do something terrible, unless they stopped him in time. We still have no idea what it was, but we do know that Rose and Leyla were in love, and that they wanted to keep Charlie for their own. Despite the fact that Leyla is our main suspect in the murder, I can’t help but hope…
I’m hoping that ruining their little family wasn’t the terrible thing that Botswick would have done. Or maybe did do.
I hesitate for one more second, then take a step closer to the ghost of Leyla’s memory. Slowly getting close enough to start it.
“We’ll have to keep up with her,” I tell Aiden softly, over my shoulder. “Get ready to run.”
~~~~
I take another step closer, and the ghost memory springs into motion.
Just like that, the Leyla made of white light is racing down the road. Barefoot and breathless, her hair whipping in the wind behind her.
Aiden and I set off with her, racing past the walls of western redcedars and hemlocks along the blacktop road. I think the road must have been mud when Leyla really ran here. Her ghost feet go slightly through the pavement with each step she takes.
She’s fast, and she’s running like her life depends on it. It takes some work for me to catch up to her. When I do, I realize she’s whispering something under her breath. Over and over again, in a frantic, desperate voice.
“Rose - Charlie - Rose - Charlie-”
Like she wants to scream their names, scream so that they can hear her - but she can’t risk it.
She races around the curve that leads down to the farmhouse path. Aiden and I sprint with her, on either side of her. Her long hair whips across and then through my chest, sending a spill of coldness and shivers through me. But I force myself to keep up, until I jolt to a stop as Leyla does, too. As soon as the farmhouse fell into sight.
Leyla stands frozen, staring at it, her shocked eyes perfectly round.
All at once, tears flood them and spill down her cheeks.
“No,” she breathes, and then - “No!”
She sets off running again, racing for the farmhouse so fast that I nearly slip on the mossy path trying to keep up with her.
She rushes to the front of the farmhouse and stops there. I can tell from the way she stares down at the ruins that the farmhouse must have collapsed, by this point.
Breathing hard, trembling with her whole body, Leyla frantically holds her hands out over the rubble, at a loss for what to do.
“No,” she sobs again, dropping to her knees, her eyes glazed over with shock and pain. “Charlie! Charlie! No, no no no…”
I watch with my hands pressed over my mouth in dismay as Leyla begins crawling over the rubble, pushing invisible rocks that aren’t there anymore aside, digging and searching and sobbing -
She freezes suddenly, going motionless so fast that I blinked and missed the moment it happened. She stares off into the treeline, panting with jagged breaths, her eyes wide and blinking very fast.
Leyla’s face lights up, her eyes landing on something. She whispers something I can’t hear, then gasps in a sharp breath.
“Oh-” she sobs, overcome with relief. “Oh my god, thank god! It’s alright, darling, it’s me! I’m here!”
She leaps to her feet with a panther-like grace I’ve only seen before in Calla, then sets off sprinting towards the treeline. I take a step to follow her, but -
She melts into pearlescent smoke, spills into a glowing pool of light on the grass. It spreads out and dissipates, melting away into the air like fog.
The ghost moment is over, and the column of white smoke must be forming again at the edge of the road.
I stand there panting for a few seconds, then let my eyes follow the path that Leyla was about to run. It leads directly to the yellow cedar in the treeline where another ghost moment is waiting.
Aiden is watching me curiously, his head tipped to the side. He must have seen the white light go out of my eyes. He knows it’s over. He’s waiting for me to say something.
Instead, I slip my inhaler from my pocket, use it a few times, then silently cross to the yellow cedar.
“What are you d-?” Aiden begins, but I’ve already swept my fingers through the flowing white mist.
I step back as it grows stronger and brighter, more solid. It sweeps into movement, melting to the ground and spreading out - then forms into something on the far side of the yellow cedar.
I take a deep breath, then step around the ridged tree trunk to see what’s on the other side.
My eyes land on the frozen, ghostly person hidden behind the tree. The ghost moment waiting to be activated. Crouched down on the moss-laden forest floor, twisting around to steal a glance around the side of the tree. Big dark eyes wide with terror, shoulders drawn in, one trembling hand spread on the cedar.
One more person accounted for. One more person we can mark down as still alive.
My eyes must be glowing again, because Aiden murmurs - “Who is it?”
I slowly lift my eyes to meet his, full of relief.
“It’s Charlie.”
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