Page 46 of See Through

“My static cameras were still in there.”

“I’ll buy you some new ones. Consider it a gift for all the shit I put you through on the job,” Aubrey tells me. “I know how particular you are, so you’ll come with me to pick them out.”

“Thank you,” I say as I hear sirens getting closer. “Never again?”

She nods. “Never again.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It’s going to take me more than a few days to wrap my head around what happened, but I need to start coming to terms with it. The fire that burned through the house was faster than any of the firefighters have ever seen. There was no accelerant used. They could barely find where the fire started, just a general idea of where it could have.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that where I grew up was different, but that’s always what I thought was special. Adrian and I experienced the same thing when we were kids, and I’m honored to have shared that with him for the short amount of time he was here with me.

“Are you ready?”

“I’m ready.” Dean shifts his computer so I can see it, and we start our usual run through of the investigation, only this time, Maven and Cooper are here too. They were a part of it. It only felt fair to invite them to the debrief. “Are you guys ready?”

“Mhm.” Maven nods. Cooper just waves his hand, and Dean takes that as he’s ready to go, because he pulls up the first few videos and recordings. There’s nothing too crazy at the start, but by the time we get to Cooper’s chain falling off, things start picking up quickly.

It all sounds and looks about the same way I thought—until we get to the end.

“This might be a little brutal to watch,” I whisper to them.

“I can turn it off if you want,” Dean says.

“It’s okay.”

I watch as Dean’s head turns to where he thought Cooper’s voice came from. He flips over to the camera Coop was holding; he thinks he hears a voice, but neither Maven nor him are speaking.

“I really thought I heard you call my name.”

“A mimic,” I tell him. “Some ghosts can mimic human voices and appearances to create confusion and lure victims in. Adrian was actually the one who taught me about those when we were younger.”

“That’s some freaky shit,” Maven sighs. “None of us were saying anything.”

“Yet I heard screaming.”

“Oh, you’re never going to hear the end of this, my friend.” Cooper smacks Dean on the arm.

“Switch it back to the other camera, after you leave.” He does, and I start pointing things out. “Dean set his camera down in the perfect spot. You can see where I’m sitting on the bed, and there’s a great view of the entire room. In a second or two, you’ll see me look around the room as if I heard a voice.” I wait for it to happen; once it does, everyone is locked in on the screen.

You can’t hear what was said, but as soon as I stand and head for the door, it slams shut. You see me banging against it, trying to open it with everything I’ve got, until I sway where I’m standing.

“At this point, I was getting really dizzy. Spots were dotting my vision. I didn’t feel like I could even stand. Watch this.”

Dean’s finger points at the small anomaly that appears out of nowhere in the corner of the frame, following it all the way up to my head, where it disappears on the video.

“What the…” Maven wonders as he replays it.

“Is that how you ended up in the corner?” Cooper wonders, but I hold my hand up, hushing him. In a few seconds, he’ll see what happens.

I fall to the floor on the video, and I swear, I can still feel the way my legs felt in that moment—weak, shaky, like I was standing on quicksand. Something grabs my hair, and you see me reaching up to smooth it out, only, whatever has its hold on me won’t let go. Then I’m dragged around the room, my body hits the bed, the wall, and I’m basically slid into the corner until Dean kicks the door down.

“Oh my God.” Maven’s hand is against her mouth. Cooper is speechless, tears streaming down Dean’s face. He already knew about it. I told him the next night about what happened to me. I woke up screaming, just how Dean has so many times during a storm. He calmed me down how I have always calmed him down, and then we fell asleep on the blankets he put on the floor.

It was a rough night, one of the roughest I’ve had since Adrian died, but Dean was with me through it all, just how he’s always been.

“This is the weird part, though.” I grab the computer from Dean and move over to the audio recordings. “When I listen back to the conversation I had with my brother before all this occurred, the audio is patchy. I swear, it came through clear as day in the moment, but playing it back makes it sound all weird, as if another voice is trying to come through.”