“Oh, right, of course.” I dug through my bag, retrieving my wallet.
Nico reached for my ID, but Rae grabbed it first. Our fingers brushed, her nails lightly dragging against the back of my hand. It was the slightest tickle. My eyebrows knitted at the lingering sensation. I massaged my fingers as she ran my license through some app on her phone.
“What’s that?” Nico asked in a low voice as he studied the phone alongside her.
“You have a record?” Rae looked at me, but instead of worry, intrigue colored her eyes.
I winced at having forgotten to warn them. “I was eighteen with a delayed pull to rebellion.”
And newly dead parents who’d left me with a modest inheritance, a (then) absent older brother, and a selfish filmmaker boyfriend who wanted to “push the envelope.” Life had been lonely…and boring.
“It was silly. Just some trespassing.” I laughed, trying to lighten the mood, but they stared back with blank looks. I cleared my throat and added, “Nothing I condone, of course. Nothing I’d ever repeat.”
“Trespassing. We do it all the time,” Rae whispered to a suspicious Nico. He grunted but seemed willing to bend.
“Two grimy rooms primed and ready for service,” December announced with a bright smile as she joined us. “The lady at the front was so sweet. She gave us gift baskets.”
I frowned at the mention of the front desk lady and the sight of two large, plastic-trapped gift baskets in her hand.
“Looks like breakfast.” Rae approved, eyeing the assortment ofmuffins and oranges.
I swallowed, trying not to let the tightness in my chest jade my perspective of the baskets. They were just baskets. The lady at the front had just been a hotel clerk. These people standing before me were just freelancers who made a profit from ghost stories. And I was just a rancher with a problem that would be fixed by the end of the week. There was no need to catastrophize.
“Have we seen the footage?” December asked after pawning the gift basket off to Nico and passing out the room keys.
“We were getting there.” Rae nodded to me, granting permission.
I struggled to keep my hands steady as I grabbed my camcorder and turned it on. My skin burned under their curious gazes. I mumbled an apology as I tried to rewind the tape.
“You want to set it on your hood?” Nico asked when my shaky hands made it nearly impossible to keep the screen steady.
“Yeah.” I nodded, grateful for the idea and the chance to put some distance between myself and the camera.
They gathered around, remaining silent as I pressed play. I moved out of the way once the image of my bedroom came on screen. I’d lived through the moment once; I had no interest in doing it again. No interest in going back and forth, wondering if it had truly happened. Wondering if my mind created some fantasy to go along with Wilson’s claims that we were being watched by something on the other side.
Rae and Co. filled my space, blocking my view of the bedroom bathed in moonlight and my sleeping body on the four-inch screen.
I counted the number of doors on the first floor of the motel when the candle on my bedside table blew out. Iwondered what type of biohazards the green-tinted pool at the far end of the motel held while the door of my closet creaked open. And why two men in sweatshirts and swim trunks seemed totally oblivious to said hazards as they dipped their toes into the water and took long drags from e-cigarettes. The sound of footsteps ventured out of my closet and to the foot of my bed, where my blanket had been torn off. I narrowed in on the motel’s flickeringNo Vacancysign, red burning my retinas.
Once the footage stopped, Rae turned away from the camera first.
“Alright, initial thoughts?” she asked her team.
“If not a wildly skilled prankster…” Jonah said.
“Then definitely a spirit,” December finished.
Nico reached for the camera, trying to rewind it. The noises of one of the most unsettling nights of my life played as background while Rae asked, “Is there even the slightest possibility this is someone you know messing with you?”
I shook my head. “There’s no one in my life who’d go through the trouble. And it’d be tough to get away with considering we live in the middle of nowhere.”
“None of your workers have a terrible sense of humor?”
“I only have one worker right now. Esther. She doesn’t smile much—part of the reason I hired her.”
Rae laughed a little. I was taken aback by the gentle vibration. A buzzing pride bloomed in my chest.
“Esther lives in town with her family and only comes on site during the day. My brother and I are the only ones who stay in the house at night. And though Wilson can tell a decent joke, he’s paralyzed from the waist down. My room’s upstairs.”
