Page 9 of See Through

I’m about to whisper something to her, but I’m cut off by a noise.

Thud.

“Can you try and move this pillow at the end of the bed?” Aubrey jostles it, showing whatever she thinks is with us how to do it.

Nothing happens for a few seconds, but as I focus my camera on the pillow, it moves the tiniest bit, so much so that if I had blinked, I might have missed it.

“Thank you for doing that.” She smiles. “Can you speak into the device I have on the bed? We would love to hear from you.”

More silence before she grabs the recorder, presses a few buttons, and holds it up to her ear. Her face is neutral until she starts tapping her foot. She heard something.

“We can extract that and insert it into the video.” She shoves it up to my ear as she takes my camera. Normally, I don’t like being on camera, but lately, she’s been doing this—putting me on the spot. She told me she wants to lean more into the fact that she believes and I don’t. “What do you hear?”

I try to make something out, but all I can hear is muffling.

“Nothing.”

She shakes the camera the same way she’s shaking her head. “Boring.” She hands it back to me, and it takes a second for the camera to focus back on her. “We’ll play that for you guys, and you can let us know in the comments what you think was said. Now, we’re going to head up to the operating rooms and see what all that thumping around is about. You ready, Deany?”

“After you, Aubrey, darling.”

That earns me an eye roll as I follow her up the stairs, the air feeling thicker as we get closer and closer to whatever was making those noises.

CHAPTER FIVE

“It feels different up here,” I say to the hallway in front of me. I know there’s a camera straight ahead that Dean set up to record the hallway, and there’s one in the room we’re about to go into—the operating room where the last surgery happened. I’m mainly excited to hear if more thumping or heavy noises happen like when we were downstairs. “What do you think, nonbeliever?”

“I feel that too,” he whispers, doing a sweep of the hallway. “And don’t get that excited look in your eye. This is probably the only time I’ll say that to you.”

“I’m sure.” I tilt my head toward the door to one of the rooms, quietly pushing it open as we walk in. “Now, this is the exact operating room where that botched surgery happened. If I had to guess, this was the room all those sounds were coming from.”

Dean takes a sweep of the room, stopping as soon as he’s pointing toward the operating table.

“What’s up?”

“My camera won’t focus.” I hear a soft click. “And now, I have to switch the battery, because it just went from full to almost dead.”

“Huh,” I say. “That usually means something is present. As we know,” he holds his hand up before switching his battery, “when that happens, a spirit is trying to get power to communicate. Can I have⁠—”

Dean hands me the REM pod before I can even finish my sentence.

“Thank you,” I say as I place it down on the operating table. “Now, let's see if whatever is in here with us wants to talk.”

I switch it on, running my hand over it to make sure the light still works before I step back.

“Now, this will detect if anything is in close proximity to the table,” I tell the camera. “We heard you earlier. You have our attention. We would love to hear from you again.”

There’s silence. No movement from Dean and I, nothing lighting up the pod in front of us. Weird.

“We just want to talk, nothing more. It seemed like you wanted us to hear you when we were downstairs. There’s an object in the center of the room. It will light up if you go near it. If you light it up once, we will take that as a sign you want to talk.”

More deafening silence. I wait a few more seconds, hoping the pod will light up, but it doesn’t. I look at Dean, and he just raises his eyebrows at me.

“Don’t,” I whisper to him.

He puts his other hand up in defense.

“Do you need me to show you how it works?” I walk over to it, waving my hand, the pod lighting up. I do it one more time, just to be sure whoever is with us—because I know they’re here—saw it. I take a few steps back before I speak again. “Were you a part of the disastrous operation that happened here?”