Page 61 of The Witch

I hold my breath, waiting for something to happen. But the room is silent, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock.

“We don’t want to hurt you, Caroline,” he says. “I promise. We just want to talk.”

Again, we wait. We hear a whistle of the wind outside, but no voices. I’m sort of glad, because if I heard Caroline Eldridge speaking, I would have a heart attack. Or at the very least, I would pee in my pants.

“This is an intelligent haunting,” Dixon tells us. “Your specter is aware of your presence, but she is reluctant to show herself at this time.”

His gaze rests on the large walnut grandfather clock. Again, as he steps toward the piece of furniture, the light on the K2 turns to orange.

“That clock stops every night at 3:41 in the morning,” I say.

Dixon reaches out to touch the side of the clock, but before his fingers can get there, he pulls them away. “That time must be significant in some way. The time of her death, perhaps?”

“It couldn’t be,” I say. “She was executed. They wouldn’t have done that in the middle of the night.”

Dixon holds out the K2 again, walking toward the portrait on the wall of Archie and Molly Eldridge. As he gets closer, the device flashes the orange light again.

“This painting,” he says. “Is that her?”

“No,” Ethel says. “The man in the painting, Archibald Eldridge, was her husband. And the woman, Molly Eldridge, is his third wife.”

“Molly Eldridge was the one who brought the witchcraft charges against Caroline.” When I speak up, Ethel looks at me in surprise. “She married Archibald after Caroline’s death.”

Dixon steps closer to the painting as the lights above us flicker. I’ve always gotten a strange feeling from this painting, but now I have the distinct sensation that Molly Eldridge’s eyes are boring into me. As I stare up at the painting, the smile on Molly’s face takes on a devious edge, growing wider across her frozen lips.

The indicator flashes to red.

“She’s here!” he says confidently. “She’s definitely here.”

He takes another step toward the painting, and this time, the red light starts flashing. Slowly at first, then rapidly blinking. He looks down at the K2 in confusion and shakes it, which seems to be his primary tech support move.

“Sorry,” he says under his breath. “It doesn’t usually…”

Before he can finish that sentence, the red light indicator cracks right down the middle. And the entire machine goes dead.

The three of us stare at his second piece of defective equipment. A minute ago, I was thinking Dixon was conning us, but now I’m not so sure. The fear in his eyes when that indicator light cracked was unmistakable.

I look up at the painting. Molly’s lips have returned to their previous pleasant smile.

“Has that ever happened to you before?” Ethel asks him.

He shakes his head slowly. “I think,” he breathes, “that we’re making Caroline angry.”

I don’t know what to say to that. “So what now?”

“I’ll help you.” He looks between me and Ethel. “Of course, I’m going to help you. I can’t in good conscience abandon such a tortured spirit.”

“What do you suggest?” Ethel asks.

He crouches next to his duffel bag and starts sifting through it again. “I’ve got an electronic voice phenomena recorder in my bag. I can leave it here.”

“A what?” I ask.

“An EVP recorder picks up sounds that you can’t hear with the naked ear,” he explains. “A lot of the time, paranormal voices are outside the range of human hearing, but if you adjust the frequency and speed of the recording, and get rid of the white noise, you can often make out some words.” He smiles proudly. “I have special certification in EVP interpretation.”

I can almost hear Henry’s voice in my ear: From what fine university?

He pulls a small device from his bag—it looks like a small tape recorder. “I’ll leave it here and come pick it up in a few days. I’ll need some time to interpret the results, and then we can talk about the next step in handling this hostile spirit.”