The Haunting of Westbane

Chapter Five - The Anomaly

Harley

Eli rented two hotel rooms at the closest economy hotel he could find. We were too low-budget to be able to afford separate rooms, so we rented one double room for the guys, and one double room for the girls. How very binary. But it worked out great for me and Mayah. We each passed out on our own separate beds.

Meanwhile, across the hallway, the guys weren’t quite as comfortable. Elijah had to share a bed with Jeremy. I had it on good authority that he was a complete bed hog and snored like a chainsaw. And poor Brendan complained that he woke up being spooned by Anthony. I wouldn’t have minded getting in on that… but then again, it wouldn’t have been a hardship to share a bed with Mayah either.

Sometime around noon, we dragged ourselves out of bed and set up our equipment to start analyzing all our footage. We spread out between both rooms to maximize the space, leaving the doors open so that we could call to one another across the passageway. Eli ended up in our room with Brendan. Mayah hadn’t been trained on how to sift through all the evidence, so we left her lazing on the bed while we put on our earphones and hunched in front of our laptops, bleary-eyed and nursing big cups of hot, strong hotel coffee from the “continental breakfast bar” that was offered to guests.

A couple of hours crawled by in boring silence, which was the way it often went with this part of the process. Every once in a while, someone would pipe up, “Hey come look at this” and we’d all come hunker around the computer to see what they’d spotted. So far, aside from the voices that Eli and Jay had captured with the Ovilus and the Static Box, there was a whole lot of nothing. I was out of my chair and peering over Brendan’s shoulder at what he thought might be a light anomaly. I shook my head and then grimaced because I was starting to get a headache. “Nah, it’s dust,” I said with certainty. Eli grunted in agreement.

I pulled off my headphones with a groan and a muttered curse. I had never liked this part of the investigation. “I’m hungry,” I whined, not caring if it sounded petulant.

“Me too,” Mayah piped up from the bed by the window. She was currently hanging her torso off the end of the bed with her head and shoulders arching backward in a weird way, like a little kid. Her long curly hair dangled down and dragged on the floor. Her wild curls were tangled up in a fabulous rendition of bedhead.

I looked at Eli, showing my impatience in a pout. “Why don’t you show her what to do? If we had an extra pair of eyes, this would go a lot faster.”

He gritted his teeth. I knew he really didn’t want to waste his time showing Mayah the ropes. I think he was just waiting for the opportunity to send her packing. He was too kind to embarrass her in front of all of us.

“You, uh, want to help?” he asked reluctantly, rubbing his temple and holding out a flash drive in Mayah’s direction.

She looked at him from her upside-down position, tilting her head cutely. “If I help, will we get to eat?”

Elijah looked up at the ceiling like he was praying for patience. “Never mind,” he grumbled, heading back to his chair.

She gave a heavy sigh and picked up her phone from the carpet, saying offhandedly, “3:21 to 3:27 on the basement camera. That’s what you are looking for. And when you’re done, how about Chinese? There’s a place a few blocks from here that does delivery.”

There was a moment of distraction as everyone started calling out their food orders, even the guys from across the hall. Eli made grumpy noises, but curiosity got the best of him, and he went ahead and plugged in the flash drive and cued up the timestamp that Mayah had just indicated. “No f.ucking way,” he muttered, sitting up straighter. I went to him and leaned closer to the computer to see what he was exclaiming about, placing my hand on his shoulder as I did so.

The night vision camera was aimed into the corner where the two rocks jutted out of the foundation. Everything was colored in hazy shades of green from the night vision. At precisely 3:21 AM, a kind of fog began to appear around the base of the rocks, as though it was oozing out of the seam where the cement touched the stone. At first, it was just a little, and I wondered if it could be some sort of fog anomaly caused by temperature changes in the rocks below the foundation. As I watched, the vapor continued to expand, taking on more form and shape as it thickened around the base of the rocks, slowly rising until it was a pillar fully obstructing the stones behind it.

“Is that…?” Eli started as, from that pillar, a humanoid form emerged, vaguely feminine in shape and size. There was no mistaking what it was. It began to move slowly toward the camera, seeming to shift from being completely transparent to being almost corporeal, and back again.

“You’re seeing what I’m seeing, right?” I asked. I had never seen anything like this before. Unless Eli had been working some serious special effects overnight, I was seeing an actual full-bodied apparition.

Eli said nothing, eyes glued to the screen, apparently as amazed as I was.

As it got closer, a face seemed to materialize from the fog, with distinct features: an undershot jaw, a pig-like, turned-up nose, and black, void holes where eyes should have been. Unintentionally, my hand tightened on Elijah’s shoulder and I felt my breath hitch.

The face emerged and then faded away again into the swirling mist, but the miasma continued to move closer and closer to the camera, filling the frame with a white haze. Suddenly, the face was back again, clearly scowling and very close to the lens, as though the entity was glaring purposely into the camera. And then it was gone. In one frame, it filled up the entire pane, in the next, it was gone, and we were once again staring at the two boulders in the corner. I checked the timestamp: 3:27 AM.

A few frames later, the camera lost focus, and the low-battery signal started blinking in the corner. I shot a confused look over at Mayah, but she had rolled over onto her stomach, stuck her earbuds in her ears, and appeared to be paying no attention to us. Eli bellowed to the others.

Brendan shuffled over with a bored look. “You got something?” He stifled a yawn and leaned over Eli’s other shoulder.

He backed up the footage and played it again. “What the fffff…” Brendan started slowly as he watched the gathering fog. He got more excited with each ticking second. “Oh my god! Holy s.hit, man! You guys! You guys, you gotta see this!”

Jeremy and Anthony appeared from the other room. They leaned all over me as Elijah brought up the clip for a third time. My mouth had gone dry, and I was almost unaware of the other’s reactions as I watched the phantasm manifest out of the rock for the third time.

There was no doubt in my mind that what I was seeing was paranormal. No one would be able to explain away that misty figure, especially when a fully formed face was glaring straight at you.

Elijah twisted in his chair to look at Mayah again, while the others played it back for a fourth time. She had moved, leaving her phone lying on the bed, and was now sitting back against the headboard with her knees drawn up against her chest, twirling a lock of her hair. She met his gaze with her dark, unreadable eyes, and a flat expression.

I could tell Eli was dying to ask the obvious question… how the hell could she have known the exact time stamp? He didn’t speak the question out loud, but it almost seemed like she heard him, as she lifted one shoulder and looked away.

“By the way… that missing money the husband was looking for….” She mentioned quietly. I’m pretty sure Eli and I were the only ones who were listening to her, while the others were still busy exclaiming over the footage. I lifted a brow to encourage her to continue. “It’s not in the house. The wife took it.” Her mouth quivered with a hint of a wry smile.

“That’s convenient… take the money and blame it on the house ghost,” I said, returning her half-smile.

She nodded and picked up her phone, and went back to scrolling like it was no big deal, but I could tell, from the way her shoulders hunched, that she was worried about how we were going to react to her unexpected contribution to the investigation.

Jeremy clapped a hand heavily against Elijah’s back. “Told you, man.” He said, wiggling his eyebrows at Eli. “She knows stuff.”

Eli had a constipated expression on his face. I could see the cognitive dissonance. He wanted so badly to discredit Mayah’s ability but, in light of what we were all seeing, how could he?

I thought it was cool.

Dead cool.