The Haunting of Westbane

Chapter Six - Clear the Air

Elijah

Jeremy abandoned me on the trip back, calling shotgun with Brendan after we finished showing the Edwards the evidence we had gathered in their house. The next thing I knew, Harley was crawling up into the van. She had showered back at the hotel and washed off the makeup from the investigation shoot, but she still looked hot. She was the kind of girl who looked good no matter what she was wearing, but I think I liked her face better without the paint. I kept stealing sideways looks at her as I was driving.

“So…” she propped her feet up on the dashboard. “That was crazy weird, right?”

“It was… something.” I could feel myself making a face. I was still kind of confused about it all. Not that I wasn’t excited, it was just…

“The reveal really freaked that couple out,” Harley carried on, as she adjusted the seat to make herself more comfortable. “You think they are going to sell their house?”

I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I don’t know. I hate that anyone might be so terrified of their own home that they would actually have to move out.” I felt a little stab of guilt that our footage only made them feel more afraid.

“If what Mayah says is true, maybe it’s for the best,” Harley suggested, and I glanced sideways at her, as she laced her fingers behind her head, waiting for the rest. Harley was a real straight shooter. It’s one of the things I liked most about her. If she said something like that she was sure to back it up, like a one-two punch. “If the spirit really is a jealous, vindictive mother, they might not be safe in that house.” And there it was. But then Harleyy scrunched her brow and told me, “Get that guilty look off your face, Eli, we did them a service.”

I blinked and turned my attention back to the road. “I do not have a guilty face,” I said defensively.

Harley snorted and reached out to fiddle with the stereo. “I never did like your music,” she complained, and she hit the “next” button repeatedly, trying to find a tune she did like.

“Is that why you broke up with me?” I blurted. “Because you didn’t like my music?” Oh jeezus, that came out all wrong. I chuckled awkwardly, trying to make it sound like I was joking. The truth was, I had been totally blind-sided when the relationship ended. I thought we were great together, and the next thing I knew she was playing the “let’s just be friends” card. As if that ever worked out for anyone.

She sighed heavily and retreated to her window. “Don’t be like that, Elijah.”

“Be like what?” I said, feeling irritation crawl up my spine. “If we are going to work together, don’t you think we should get all this stuff out in the open? Clear the air?”

“There’s nothing to ‘get out in the open’ okay? It was fun while it lasted, but the chemistry just wasn’t there.”

“Ouch.” I clenched my teeth together and decided not to say anything else. I had thought our chemistry was just fine. In fact, I thought it was hot as hell. My poor ego couldn’t wrap itself around the idea that she’d been bored in bed. I reached over and turned up the music, even though I now knew she didn’t even like it. Apparently, I’d been totally blind to everything in our relationship. Happy, dopey in love while she’d been unsatisfied.

“Look Eli,” she half-shouted over the riff of grunge guitar, “you are a great guy, and I still think you are an awesome friend. I just know you are not The One For Me, okay? And if you got your head out of your pants for two flat minutes you’d see that I’m not the one for you either.”

“Okay,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. But I wasn’t finished sticking my foot in my mouth. “Are you seeing anyone else?” If I hadn’t been driving, I would have smacked myself in the head. It sounded like I was still fishing for a second chance.

A small smile played around her lips. “Not yet.” I glanced at her again and tried not to scowl over the cheesy, dreamy look she had on her face. Ah, there it was. She had her eye on someone else. I couldn’t help but wonder if that had started while we were still dating. I also wondered if she had ever got that goofy look on her face when someone mentioned my name?

“So, what’s next,” Harley asked, an obvious attempt to change the subject. “Do you have another investigation lined up?”

“Not yet. Jay and I will have to go through all the editing and stuff for this footage first. Then I’ll check out my emails, and see if there is anything promising.” Viewers from my channel were always emailing me possible hauntings and offering pleas for investigations. “I feel like we should do a couple of smaller cases before we take on something big.” I scratched the back of my neck. “I don’t feel like we really have…” I searched for the right word. “Cohesion. As a team, I mean.”

She laughed out loud, “What you really mean is, that you have no idea what to do with Mayah.”

“Yeah, well,” I felt my eye twitch a little.

“That was some pretty freaky s.hit, the way she just nailed the timestamp on that apparition.” Her voice did not sound freaked out at all - all I could hear was excitement, and maybe a little awe. Which rankled, for some reason.

“A little too freaky, don’t you think?”

“Eli, are you trying to debunk your own psychic?” She was laughing at me.

I paused long enough to negotiate the on-ramp onto the highway. “I used to play with her when we were kids. She was always staring off into space, and she seemed kind of slow.” I shook my head. “I think she’s weird.”

“I think being weird is a job requirement for a psychic, isn’t it?”

“I guess, but… I don’t know. I feel like it’s all for attention. Like, look at me, I’m special, I talk to dead people…”

I turned to Harley with a smile, sure that she would appreciate the joke, but her pretty blue eyes bugged out at me a little bit instead, “But that’s what we all do, Eli. We are all out here trying to talk to dead people. She just doesn’t need a Spirit Box to do it, that’s all.”

I grunted at her, hating the fact that she had a good point.

She wasn’t finished though. “I don’t think you can disprove it either. Fine, maybe she made up that stuff that she was saying in the basement… that was kind of theatrical. But how do you explain the fact that she knew exactly where and when that ghost would appear? She wasn’t even in the house for the investigations.”

“Unless she rigged it somehow,” I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “She was near those rocks in the basement… could she have planted something there? A smoke bomb on a timer or something?”

But how the hell did you make the smoke from a smoke bomb manifest a face?

Harley shook her head at me. “I think you are trying too hard to play down what she did, Eli. Anyway, think of it this way: for the sake of the production, you need your viewers to believe that she’s the real McCoy. If you let on that you are a skeptic, that’s never going to fly. Besides, the evidence is all there on film. Who’s gonna argue with that, right? So why don’t you just relax, and go with it?” She leaned across the console and punched me lightly in the arm. “Calm down. What’s the worst that could happen?”