“Dig in,” Cole says. “Then we can work through the plan for setting up our gear and where we want to begin.”
“Is no one going to ask the obvious question here?” Levi mumbles around a mouthful of pizza. “What the fuck was all that earlier?”
Most people have trouble telling the twins apart even though they tattooed opposite sides of their bodies. I don’t have that issue, of course. Their auras are enough for me to differentiate between the two.
“The entity…” Macklin pauses as if he’s waiting for her to smite him where he sits. “Uh…sorry…the female spirit…seems to be more powerful than anything we have previously come up against. Shattering light bulbs and slamming doors are one thing. Moving multiple cases and turning on a sound system with a totally relevant song is another. It should be interesting to see if she can manifest in other ways,” Macklin responds excitedly.
Leave it to our resident nerd to get excited about shattered glass and Taylor Swift.
“Mack,” Cole starts, and I already know what he’s going to ask before the words leave his mouth. “Do you think she could be the reason we were drawn here?”
The five of us are…different. Unusual in ways the world would deem impossible. We have no history. We were never born. We have no families. Don’t know our last names, if we even have any. We’ve lived for fifty years but don’t age.
Waking up one day under a bridge in Austin, TX with no idea who I was or what had happened to me, I had this overwhelming sense that I needed to find something. I journeyed across the country, following an unseen tether that constantly tugged at my soul.
In a crowded diner outside of Chattanooga, TN, I found Macklin. He had woken up in New York City and, like me, couldn’t resist the pull to hunt for something unknown. The second he pushed open the glass door of the diner, two missing pieces in the puzzle of our lives clicked into place. His aura was a bright blue, with a haze of yellow around it - telling me he was loyal, friendly, and held an intelligence that went beyond what was normal. This deep sense of brotherhood formed, and we spent hours talking about our journeys.
But the tug didn’t disappear. It was still there, insistent that we keep searching, but for what, neither of us knew.
We used his innate knowledge of anything and everything, a gift that is as useful as it is annoying, to our advantage. We scouted out routes and potential locations as we set off to follow our instincts.
Together, we found the twins in Chicago a couple months later. They hadn’t wandered like we had. Instead, they’d ignored the pull, following their guts, and stayed put, which is probably a good thing where they’re concerned. Their tendency to wreak havoc has caused us a number of close encounters with law enforcement throughout the years.
Where Thad’s aura was a deep red, tinged with a blackness in the middle, telling me he was strong and passionate with a hint of darkness somehow mixed in, Levi’s was a surprising indigo, slightly white at the center, an indication he was intuitive and benevolent, with a level of purity mixed in. Which all made sense once we got to understand them and their powers.
Not long after they came into consciousness, they had a run in with an aggressive spirit. When one of them attempted to bitch slap the thing, something only Thad or Levi would think was a good idea, they discovered they could force the spirit to cross over into whichever realm they were destined for. Seeing an opportunity, they quickly began offering their ghost exterminating services to those wanting or needing to get rid of undesirable guests. Their ingenuity and enterprising spirit, which we’ve come to understand is their default way of thinking, was much appreciated as they were able to fund our continued search while we criss-crossed the country. That was the start of our paranormal team and our cover for our supernatural abilities that would later become known as Valley Investigations & Paranormal Society.
Our rag tag group scoured locations for close to six months before we found Cole outside a poorly lit bar in Phoenix, Arizona. He was drunk, his clothes a tattered, bloody mess. His knuckles were shredded and bruised, obvious signs he had been in a fight. The twins managed to get him back to our hotel, where we forced him to sleep off the alcohol. When he came to, he was confused and angry with a cloud of unexplainable depression drowning him in his own misery. It all matched his aura which was a dark gray, with swirls of angry red. Determined to keep the urge to hunt buried under liquor and fighting, it had taken us several weeks to convince him to sober up and join us.
Even though we were no longer being pulled toward the unknown – the puzzle pieces all in their rightful places - there was still this sense of something missing. Something that would keep the puzzle from breaking apart ever again. Forty years went by until one day, the tug was back. The pull was diluted, different from the others, but persistent nonetheless.
After years of searching, we may have just found our glue.
“She could be the reason we were drawn here,” Macklin muses, his thoughts mirroring mine and drawing me back to the present. “I’ll start researching the estate as well as the surrounding areas tomorrow and see what I can come up with.”
“Make sure you tell the twins where you’d like to see the video and infrared cameras set up,” Cole states. “I want answers, so let’s make sure we document and log anything that could help us solve this mystery.”
I take another large swig from my glass. It’s coming. I can feel it. The question I don’t have any answers to. Uncertainty has my stomach in a vise grip, and I’m wondering if another glass of Jack will help or hinder the situation.
“Knox,” he says, eyeing me like he knows where my mind has gone. He probably does. He always seems to. “Tell us about what you experienced earlier. You said there was no aura. Explain.”
Jackass. He knew if he asked me, I’d skirt around the question with half answers and small truths. Instead, he simply demanded I explain. An innate part of me is unable to deny the command. Sometimes his power sucks ass.
“It started outside,” I begin, remembering the unnerving sensation that inundated me as I stood in the driveway. “All of a sudden, I was hit with this intense flood of emotions. It was live action, as if I was experiencing them as they were happening. And not just a general sense of the emotion. It was the real deal. Like they were my own.”
“And this has never happened before, right?” he asks, already knowing the answer but wanting me to acknowledge it.
“Never. Emotions are like rain. Normally, I have a figurative umbrella which shelters me from getting drenched. The rain could be pouring down, but it flows right off that layer of protection. I know the rain is there. I can see it. Hear it. Feel the pressure of it somewhat, but I remain mostly unaffected. With her, it’s like stepping straight out into the downpour without an umbrella. The rain drenches me in seconds. Invades every sense, leaving me vulnerable. And even when it’s dried and gone, I can still feel the aftermath throughout my body.”
“Damn. That’s deep, bro,” Thad snarks from his seat on the sofa next to his twin.
“Shut the fuck up, Thad.”
“Alright. That’s enough,” Cole commands. “We need to figure out what’s happening here and what this all means.”
“This is definitely an intelligent haunting, not a residual one,” Macklin states as he grabs his own slice of pizza. “She’s responding to our actions directly, not just reenacting her last moments over and over again. Her level of power is astounding.”