Spirit - Part Ten
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’s blue eyes grow warm with relief at the revelation about Charlie, but quickly turn troubled again when I recount what I saw in the ghost of Leyla’s memory.
“Shit,” he murmurs, flinching with concern and sympathetic pain.
“I know.” I take a careful step back from Charlie’s frozen ghostly form, so that I don’t activate it by accident. “But at least this little guy didn’t go down in the farmhouse, like Leyla thought.”
“That’s one more we can count as safe.” Aiden adjusts his snapback, shoulders heavy with relief. “I think, anyways?”
I think it over, then nod in agreement. If Charlie ended up with Leyla, I have to think he came through this night okay. I doubt that she would have let anything happen to him, and we know that she made it through, herself.
“Should we watch this one next, then?” Aiden nods down at the mossy forest floor behind the yellow cedar, roughly the place where Charlie is crouching. “I feel like you should watch all of them before we try to sort out what it all means.”
“Mmm… I think so, too, but I’m not sure which one to do next.” I lean around the cedar and take a look at the winding path leading away from the farmhouse, up to the road. “There’s also one in the middle of that path, and… here, you know what? Let me just activate that one. Let’s at least see who it is.”
Aiden follows me back to the path in thoughtful silence.
“Rose was still alive, though,” he says suddenly. “Right? She just - wasn’t here, when that memory happened?”
“Maybe this one will have the answer to that,” I say over my shoulder, already reaching for the ghost moment positioned about halfway up the path.
I back up as it spills out into a fountain of white light. I don’t want to launch it into movement yet.
“Finley said he can’t sell this land because people think it’s haunted,” Aiden murmurs, watching as my eyes light up with the white glow of the ghost. “I guess it is haunted, huh? Four ghosts, attached to this one place.”
“Seriously!” I blink hard as the memory forms into place before me. “Oh - more than four, actually. This ghost is two people, not one.”
“Really?” Aiden’s curious eyes try to follow my gaze to the right place. “Who do we have, this time?”
“We’ve got… Police Chief Joe Kemp.” He’s younger here than he was in the picture, but he’s still got that mustache, and I’d recognize him even without it. The other man, on the other hand. “I have no idea who this other guy is. I’m guessing a beat cop? He’s in uniform.”
Aiden glances at me in surprise. “Didn’t really expect one of these memories to belong to Kemp. What’s he doing?”
“Standing on the path with the other cop, looking at the farmhouse. Or the ruins of the farmhouse, based on the angle. Kemp looks, um…” I take in his expression, then turn back to Aiden, arching an eyebrow. “Like he’s really panicking, but pretending to be fine.”
“Not successfully, it sounds like. But we do know that successful sneakiness wasn’t exactly this guy’s thing.”
“No, definitely not.”
Kasey wanted us to try and get every detail we could from each ghost moment, so I lean forward, hoping to read the name on the badge of the officer. But it’s too hard to make out through the white glow. I step closer, then gasp and dart back as the memory activates.
“Oh, oops!” I sputter.
That’s all I get out before the cop starts talking.
“Somebody was driving past and heard the crash,” he’s saying to Kemp, around the gum he’s chewing. “Called it in a little while ago. The caller said the windows were dark when they went by, about a minute before it went down.”
Kemp rolls his cigarette between his fingers, staring in pale-faced silence at the collapsed farmhouse.
“Sorry to get you out of bed for this, Chief,” the cop adds, catching sight of the deeply unhappy expression on Kemp’s face. “But you said to call in any unusual stuff direct to you this week, and this-”
“This is Finley’s place, isn’t it?” Kemp interrupts suddenly.
“That’s right, sir.”
Kemp swallows, then makes a soft scoffing sound. “It probably collapsed because he wasn’t keeping it up. He doesn’t even live here, these days.”
“Yeah, no. Word is he had it out for rent.” The cop takes out a notepad and starts writing something down. “I’ll give him a call, find out if anyone was staying here. Or should I report it to the station first?”
“Save all that for the morning,” Kemp answers stiffly.
There’s a startled silence from the officer, who looks up from his notepad to stare at Kemp.
“Ah… shouldn’t…?” he begins reluctantly. “Shouldn’t we do it tonight, Chief? Shouldn’t we at least get some help and do a search? What if someone’s…?”
He trails off, nodding at the rubble.
“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that?” Kemp whips around to face the cop, a flaming glare suddenly blazing in his eyes. “Of course I know there might have been people inside!”
“Okay, then-?”
“Then nothing. Don’t question my orders, Malone.” Kemp stops himself, taking in the startled, bewildered expression on his officer’s face. He takes a deeper breath, then a steadying drag on his cigarette, then gestures at the farmhouse. “It’s just a waste of time. This was clearly an accident, alright? The rotted old place was bound to fall at some point or another. I highly doubt that anyone was inside at the time. The caller didn’t say anything about there being a car in the drive, did they? And I don’t see any bodies, do you? Do you hear anyone calling for help, trying to make noise?”
“Well - no, but-”
“Then I think it’s about time we cut out, Malone. Leave it for the morning. We’ll go through the whole procedure then.” Kemp turns around and starts up the path again, speaking to his officer over his shoulder. “I assume you’d rather rally with the boys at the bar than spend all night out here, anyways.”
Malone hesitates, then shrugs his shoulders, like he can’t really argue with that.
“Some real foxes are in town for their summer holidays, Chief.” He speeds up to catch up to Kemp, grinning widely. “Did I tell you me and Hinter saw a honey-blonde running full-tear up the street, barefoot? One hell of a babe, too!”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” Kemp says distractedly.
He’s not really listening. He steals a glance over his shoulder at the farmhouse, and even in this white, ghostly form, I can tell that all of the color has drained from his face.
He looks at the farmhouse with blank, bewildered terror in his eyes, then starts walking faster for the road. He opens his mouth to say something to his officer, but before he can, the two of them both melt into glowing, pooling white smoke. They gently blow away on the wind.
The column of shining mist reforms in the middle of the path.
“Oh, man.” I turn around to face Aiden, making a yikes face. “Kemp clearly didn’t know what he was bargaining for, agreeing to help out the CIA. He looks like he has no idea what’s going on, and he’s regretting everything.”
“Let that be a lesson for all of us,” Aiden laughs. “What happened?”
I catch him up on what he couldn’t see or hear. He listens with one eyebrow arched, then lets out a sputter of disbelief.
“Kemp decided to commit all-in to the cover-up, huh? Even knowing there could’ve been bodies under there.”
“Yeah. Jesus.” I turn back to face the moonlit ruins of the farmhouse. “Now we know why he was so afraid, afterwards. He wasn’t sure what exactly he was covering up.”
Aiden and I aren’t sure, either. We gaze uneasily at the mossy stone ruins in silence for a minute, the cold and salty Port Sitka breeze combing through our hair, our breaths turning to frosty clouds around our mouths.
Aiden’s fireflies draw a little closer to us, softening the landscape with their gentle glow.
I give myself a shake, dragging my eyes back to the ghost moment on the path.
“Alright, there wasn’t too much in that one, but I want to watch it again. Make sure I didn’t miss anything the first time.”
“Good idea,” Aiden rumbles, moving out of the way. “Let me know if I need to write anything down.”
I nod at him, activate the memory, and step back to watch it. Then I blink hard a few times, narrowing my eyes.
“Wait, what…? Kemp and Malone are less solid than they were before. Less bright, too.” And some of their finer facial features have disappeared, I realize when I lean closer. “Is my Vision not supercharged anymore?”
Aiden catches my chin, then guides my face to his so he can look into my eyes. I try not to blush as I meet his striking blue gaze.
“No, I don’t think that’s it,” he murmurs. “Your eyes are glowing the same way they were before.”
He briefly opens the connection, then adds - There’s still more than enough magical energy in you. I can feel that.
“Okay,” I answer slowly, glancing at the ghosts with baffled eyes. “But I swear, dude, everything is more faded this time. Less bright and less defined. I can’t hear them as clearly, either.”
Aiden wrinkles his forehead in confusion. “Is it still going?”
I shake my head, watching the white mist reform into a free-floating pillar in the center of the pathway. “No, it’s over now. Shit, we talked right through it! Hang on, I’ll start it again.”
I activate the memory again, then draw back in surprise.
“What-? It’s got even darker, and less defined. They don’t even have faces anymore, or outfits that I can make out.”
Aiden’s warm eyes brighten with a sudden idea.
“Oh - Jamie, what if ghost moments have a set amount of energy? They’ve been here all this time, but no one who could activate them has ever found them before. Now you have, and you’ve already activated this one three times. We might be burning up the limited energy it has, and that’s why everything is fading away.”
I stare at Aiden, then slowly turn back to the ghost of Joe Kemp’s memory. It’s just coming to an end again. When it melts apart to form itself into a column of white smoke, the column itself is barely there, anymore. It could be part of the rain-softened mist around us, if I didn’t already know better.
I reach out curiously, trail my fingers through it, and activate it again.
The glowing white mist spills down and out to form into figures, but this time they’re transparent, featureless, like shapes dancing and flickering in smoke. The voices that come from them are faint whispers, barely discernible from the pattering of the raindrops on the leaves and pine needles all around us.
When the traces of silvery-white smoke melt away, they disappear with a sound like a soft sigh of wind.
I wait, but nothing happens. No pillar of glowing white appears. Not even a trace.
“Oh my god. Aiden.” I spin on my heel to face him, breaking into an enormous grin. “I think we just cleared somewhere! We dispelled a haunting!”
Aiden stares at me in surprise, then slowly breaks into a giant grin, too. “Seriously, it’s gone?”
“Gone!” I swipe my hand through where the column was, then beam at Aiden in excitement when nothing happens. “Fuck yeah, man, we just busted our first ghost! This means we level up as ghost hunters, right? Level two, now?”
“What - only level two?” Aiden laughs, then swats my shoulder, some realization lighting up his eyes again. “Oh, hey - we could clear this whole place, and then maybe Finley can finally sell it!”
“Oh my god, you’re right! That would be so much money for the soap business he wants to start!” I spin around and head back up the path towards the ghost of Leyla’s memory. “Let’s get these ghosts out of here, dude!”
Aiden’s body shakes with his rumbling laughter as he follows my eager strides. “Always happy to help, huh, Keane?”
I flash him a smile, then activate Leyla’s ghost memory. Aiden and I walk together down the road to where she stands frozen, and I launch her into movement.
“Why not clear ‘em, right?” Aiden hooks an arm around my shoulders, gazing off in the general direction I’m looking. “They’re not the same kind of ghost as Will and Kasey.”
“Yeah, no. These are sad ghosts. Ones made from fear and heartbreak. Hauntings.” I break my gaze away from Leyla’s terror-stricken flight down the moonlit road and let my eyes rove over the windswept forest, the lonely little path to the farmhouse. “This place is too full of the past. But it’s still alive. It deserves a future, doesn’t it?”
Aiden thinks about that for a moment, then fondly ruffles my hair.
Hand in hand, we follow after Leyla, walking slowly to the place where we’ll need to activate her ghost memory again. I don’t feel the need to follow her all the way down to the farmhouse. I’ve already watched that memory, and it makes my heart ache just to think of her reaction to finding the building collapsed.
The pillar of white smoke reforms right about when we get there. I activate it again, then turn right back around and head back to Leyla’s frozen figure on the road.
We repeat this until it’s barely there, almost completely transparent. It takes five times, for this one.
“This means we’ve got a limited amount of times we can watch these,” Aiden points out, as I set Leyla off running again. “We need to make sure we’ve got all of the critical information in the first few watches.”
“I think we have all we need from these two.”
“Mhm. Two more to go.” Aiden leads the way back to the farmhouse path, his warm fingers woven through mine. “Which one do you want to do next?”
I think it over as we go. The ghost of Leyla’s memory runs ahead of us, melting away into a flickering shadow as she runs.
“Let’s just see who the other ghost memory belongs to, before we activate Charlie’s.”
Aiden nods again. I can tell he’s wondering, too.
We draw to a stop at the beginning of the pathway. Leyla’s ghost memory is cleared. No white light left to activate. I trail my fingers through the place where it was, just in case, but nothing happens.
Aiden and I tread softly down the mossy path, now officially free and clear of ghosts. But one is waiting for us just outside of the farmhouse, glowing brightly. Waiting.
It forms into a man when I activate it.
He's tall and lean-muscled, in a suit. Standing just in front of the farmhouse. Staring down at the fallen ruins with enormous, stunned eyes, one hand clasped over his mouth.
“I’m - not sure who this is,” I admit, after a long moment.
Aiden tosses his head at his backpack. “You want me to go get the folder?”
“No. I’m saying he’s not in the folder.”
~~~~
Aiden freezes, his blue eyes widening.
“Johnny Bots?” he asks immediately.
I let out a startled laugh, swatting Aiden’s chest with the back of my hand.
“God, I forgot about that! But no, no - not him.” I take a closer look at the stranger. “Wrong suit. And he looks pretty shocked to find the farmhouse knocked over. John Botswick wouldn’t be, since he’s the one who did it. This is a big dude, too. Scary-looking. We definitely haven’t seen him before.”
Aiden catches my eye. We stare at each other in mutual bewilderment.
Unable to resist the growing curiosity about who the hell this is, I step closer and activate the stranger’s ghost memory.
He doesn’t move, at first. He stares in blank shock at the destroyed farmhouse, frozen to the spot. Then he starts panting hard, backing away, cursing under his breath.
Or… is he cursing? What is he saying?
I edge a little closer to him to listen, then realize why I can’t understand. He’s not speaking English.
I open my mouth to let Aiden know about this problem, but something in my peripheral vision seizes my attention.
I whip around to face the path down from the road, almost in perfect sync with the ghost of the stranger right beside me. He draws back instinctively, reaching for something inside of his suit jacket as another ghost comes tearing down the path.
The approaching man, the one running as if lost in sheer terror, gasping for breath - this man, I do recognize from the folder.
As soon as Agent Scholz and the tall man by the farmhouse lock eyes, their faces flare with mutual recognition.
The man in front of the farmhouse - Agent Jahn, I have to assume - lets out a hissing breath of relief, his hand dropping from his breast pocket.
“Wo warst du?” he snaps quietly, as Scholz rushes down the path to meet him. “Das Bauernhaus - der Junge-”
He breaks off, his eyes widening in alarm as Scholz crashes to a stop before him, heaving for breath and making no effort to be quiet. Pure fear is written all over Scholz’s face, and it spreads over Jahn’s, too, as soon as he catches sight of it.
Scholz starts speaking in rapidfire German, half-babbling in his rush, his voice wild and trembling. Jahn listens for a minute, staring at Scholz like he’s lost his mind, then seizes his arm and interrupts. He gestures frantically at the fallen farmhouse, speaking like he’s on the verge of a meltdown.
Scholz freezes, staring at the collapsed farmhouse as if he only just noticed it. He breathes even harder, then cuts into what Jahn is saying. He seizes Jahn’s wrist and tries to drag him to the path as he speaks, his voice rising with panic and urgency.
Jahn wrenches his wrist free and snaps something back in answer.
“Oh, no - it’s Jahn and Scholz, Aiden, but I can’t understand anything they’re saying! They’re having an argument, and it’s all in German!”
“Shit! We probably should’ve thought of that!” Aiden pulls his phone out of his pocket and unlocks it as I watch the argument swell in intensity. “Hang on, there might be something we can do. Pay attention to, um - the other stuff, this time around.”
“Both of them are panicking.” I glance back and forth between the two Stasi agents, both of whom are more and more worked up with each passing second. “But - maybe panicking about two different things?”
“Ich weiß, was ich gesehen habe!” Scholz is nearly shouting, his voice fracturing with panic.
“Gerade jetzt haben wir größere Probleme!” Jahn nearly shouts back, jabbing a finger at the farmhouse.
Scholz answers too rapidly for me to make out anything. Jahn fixes him with a murderous look, seizing hold of his suit jacket with both hands. He answers in a swift, low, seething hiss, his voice boiling over with rage.
Scholz shoves Jahn back and heatedly says something to him, stabbing a finger at his chest. Then he throws his hands up over his head in the universal gesture for I’m done with this, and begins backing away.
Jahn lowers his voice to a furious whisper, snarling something at Scholz, who shakes his head to indicate he doesn’t give a damn. He snaps one more sentence at Jahn, then turns and flees up the pathway. Jahn draws back, staring up at him in complete disbelief.
Scholz stops at the top of the path. He turns back to look at Jahn one more time, an anguished, desperate expression in his eyes. He hesitates, fighting with himself - then turns and takes off into the shadows, leaving Jahn alone.
Jahn stares after him until he disappears. Panting, all out of breath. His hands tighten into fists at his sides. For a split second, he looks like he might explode with fury.
Instead he draws a pistol from his suit jacket.
He sets off running up the path after Scholz, where he melts into white smoke and vanishes.
~~~~
“I hope we got it all, that time,” I tell Aiden, sitting tiredly on the grass in front of the farmhouse. “The memory is almost faded away. And this is embarrassing. I’d like to apologize to the whole entire country of Germany for the way I’m pronouncing everything. Oh, and Belgium, right? One of the main languages, there?”
“Yeah, and Austria, Luxembourg, Switzerland… you owe a lot of apologies, dude,” Aiden laughs. He glances up from his phone, looking at me with sympathetic eyes. “Nah, though, don’t be embarrassed. You know I lived in Berlin, and traveled all over. I’ve stammered my way through more than my fair share of bad German. At least you’re not doing it directly at the locals in like, Düsseldorf. Because let me tell you, they’re nice about it, but it’s still, um - humbling.”
I let out a startled little laugh, gazing up at Aiden affectionately.
“If anything, it’s more embarrassing that I can’t translate this,” he adds, his deep voice weaving through the rustle of the drizzling rain. “I could do a few words here and there, but it’s probably nowhere close to an accurate picture. Should we save it and put it in that really good translator app I have at the Archives?”
“Yeah, okay,” I answer brightly. “Let’s do that.”
I do love an excuse to visit the Archives, and this way the ghosts can be there when we sort out whatever Jahn and Scholz said to each other. I feel like they should get to be there for at least some of tonight’s discoveries.
The question at the top of my mind is begging to be asked, so I just do.
“Do we think Jahn was going after Scholz with that gun?”
“Hard to say until we translate this.” Aiden tucks his phone back into his pocket, tossing his rain-damp chestnut hair out of his eyes. “Start it again, right?”
“Yep.” I trail my fingertips through the barely-there pillar of white smoke. I’m sitting close enough to set it into motion immediately, but it’s so sparse by now that there’s not much to look at. “I hope I got most of that right, because nothing’s going to be left, after this.”
Aiden pats the pocket that has his phone in it. “Got the version where I tried to write down what you repeated, definitely the worst of the versions. Then the version where we changed my phone’s language to German and did voice-to-text. We’ve got three of those, in case there were mistakes.”
“Well, best we can do. This one is gone.” My eyes flit from the dispelled ghost to the yellow cedar. “I guess… that just leaves Charlie.”
~~~~
He’s been waiting in frozen, ghostly silence since I activated him.
His huddled little body makes it seem like he’s trying to make himself as small as possible. Getting closer to him, I can see dry tears and fresh tears alike on his terrified face. Broken pieces of plaster in his hair.
“Poor kid,” I murmur softly, looking up at Aiden. “This must have been such a scary night for him.”
Aiden’s pained eyes reflect what must be showing in mine. We put this off until the end because neither of us likes seeing a kid scared or in trouble.
“Leyla found him,” Aiden reminds me, his soft-spoken voice only just louder than the drizzle. “Whatever else happened, Leyla found him.”
I close my eyes for a second, take a steadying breath, and step closer to Charlie.
He leans around the side of the cedar, panting with terror, then gasps and freezes to the spot, his eyes falling on something.
I step around the tree to see Leyla’s ghostly figure back on her knees in front of the farmhouse. She stares with wild eyes into the treeline, until her gaze finds the sliver of Charlie’s face visible around the side of the tree.
“Oh - oh my god, thank god! It’s alright, darling! It’s me, I’m here!”
Charlie finally unfreezes as Leyla rushes for him. He lets out a sharp sob, scrambles to his feet, and flies across the remaining space to meet her. She sinks down to her knees and flings her arms open. Charlie throws himself into them, burying himself in her embrace with a muffled, sobbing wail of relief that half-forms into a word. Mom.
“Oh, sweet thing,” Leyla stammers, holding him tightly, her tears spilling down into his hair. “I’ve got y-you. Oh, god, I’m s-so happy to see your little f-face, you have n-no idea…”
She rocks back and forth, holding Charlie tightly, finding her own breath again. After a moment she draws back, sniffling. She takes Charlie by his chin and makes him look up at her, keeping her other arm wound around him.
“Are you alright, darling?”
“Ja,” Charlie sobs, swiping his hand over his wet eyes. “Aber-”
He stops abruptly, looking guilty and helpless.
“I’m sorry,” he stammers, tears welling up in his dark eyes again. “I’m t-trying, but I’m s-so-”
“Nein, nein, ist okay!” Leyla answers hastily, thumbing the tears from his cheeks. “Mach dir darüber keine Sorgen, nicht jetzt! Erzähl mir was passiert ist.”
Charlie struggles to drag in a few jagged, tearful breaths, then launches into an answer.
“Okay, good news and bad news,” I tell Aiden. “Bad news is, it turns out that Leyla also speaks German. I guess we should have thought of that, given she was a Cold War secret agent.”
“I feel like we’ve said ‘we should have thought of that’ too many times for one night,” Aiden groans. “We really might only be level two ghost hunters. And why is this bad news, exactly?”
“Because it means that this ghost moment is in German, too, so I need to pronounce things again,” I groan, cringing with my whole face. “Oh, god. Sorry, everyone. Germany, Belgium, Austria…”
Aiden lets out an amused little rumble of laughter, which grows deeper when I flash him what I had hoped was a dark, intimidating glare.
“So what’s the good news?”
“The good news is…” I turn back to Leyla and Charlie, my heart flooding with relief. I watch as Leyla gently holds Charlie in her arms, listening closely to what he has to say. “Charlie’s upset, but not hurt. He looks pretty damn safe, actually. Now that he’s with Leyla.”
In fact, right as Aiden broke into a relieved smile at this news, Leyla broke into a sudden, startled smile at something Charlie said.
“Wirklich?” she asks, then laughs shakily when Charlie nods his head yes. She affectionately pokes his stomach. “Ich bin so stolz auf dich!”
Charlie blinks at her, then lets out a startled, trembling laugh. Leyla nods at him, encouraging him to keep going. He takes a deep breath, then rushes on with what he was saying, his smile falling away.
Aiden is setting up a new note on his phone. “Do you want to just start right now?”
“Yes, please. Charlie is talking really fast. This is gonna take a few tries-”
I break off as Leyla’s expression suddenly freezes in horror, her eyes widening at something Charlie just said. He stares up at her with equal distress, like he knows exactly how bad the news he just gave her is. He bites his lip helplessly, on the brink of tears again.
I didn’t hear what he said, and I couldn’t have understood it if I had. I only caught one word, and that word was Rose.
Leyla lowers her gaze to the grass and sits frozen for a few seconds. Her breathing picks up, growing sharper and rougher - then all at once falls to an unwavering, soft, nearly silent steadiness.
“Okay,” Leyla says quietly. She raises her eyes to Charlie’s face, takes him by the back of his neck, and stamps a kiss onto his temple. “Okay.”
As she gets to her feet, flames of determination spark, flare, and then blaze in her eyes. The shivers and the tears melt away, leaving Leyla standing still, but with so much intensity in her gaze that I half expect her to start smoking. Suddenly the last place I would want to be is standing in her way. She looks like she could breathe fire, even standing motionless.
Charlie can see the difference. He stops crying, staring up at Leyla with awed eyes, the print of her lipstick on his temple.
Without looking down at him, Leyla gently takes his little hand. She turns and begins striding swiftly for the path that leads away from the farmhouse, drawing Charlie with her. Her unfaltering gaze is fixed straight ahead, her honey-blonde hair streaming behind her in the breeze, her chin tilted up.
“Let’s go, darling. Everything’s going to be alright.”
“What are you going to do, mom?” Charlie asks softly, trotting to keep up.
“I’m going to take you someplace safe,” Leyla answers, with perfect calm. “And then I’m going to save her.”
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