“Did you notice the book she threw?”
“No.” He hadn’t even thought to look.
Nigel ran the tape back, then paused it. A slim book with a brown cover hung in midair between the shelf and Karen’s head. “I think that’s the ledger we found.”
“Huh.” The Vanderwalls left it behind…but they’d also abandoned or forgotten the other paperbacks on the table. “It might be coincidence, but if Gloria chose it deliberately instead of grabbing the first thing to hand, then we need to take a second look at it.”
Nigel paced a few steps, then stopped and retraced them. “So we have two ghosts powerful enough to move objects. Ullman with the toys, then Gloria with the ledger.”
“Can I just say, I’m not a fan of ghosts throwing things at us,” Chris said from behind the camera.
“Me neither.” Oscar rubbed his face, where he still bore tiny scars from being hit by straight pins during their first investigation with Nigel. “I’ll go ask over at the trailer and get the ledger back from Montague.”
Ethan was reading something on his phone when Oscar entered the trailer. Probably a book he’d downloaded, since they had no cell service out here. Looking up, he said in a low voice, “The ladies are napping at the moment to get ready for the seance tonight.”
“They’re coming?” Given it was the room where Robin had been shoved to her death, he’d expected them to stay away.
On the other hand, having them there might encourage Robin to make contact. Especially if they could keep Ullman away. Both Montague and Lawson would surely want to have a chance to speak with her, if only to say good-bye.
“So I’m told,” Ethan replied neutrally. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“The ledger we gave Ms. Montague the other day—it could be more important than we realized. Do you know where she put it? We’d like to borrow it for a bit.”
“Of course.” Ethan tucked his phone in his pocket. There were storage cabinets above the bench seats at the table; he stretched onto his tiptoes and hit the latch on the nearest one. It swung open to reveal a small selection of books on the Outer Banks, but no brown ledger. “How odd—this is where she had me put it.”
“Could she have taken it down without you realizing?”
Ethan stretched to his fullest to pull the cabinet door closed again. “I don’t think either woman is tall enough, but I’ll ask. And I’ll check other places in the trailer where it might have been put by mistake.”
Oscar walked back to the house empty-handed. The ledger had probably just been put in the wrong cabinet, or Ethan misremembered where he’d stored it. But he couldn’t shake the sense that more was going on than he knew.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Nigel scanned the seance room one last time. Everyone had a canister of salt beneath their chair, and Oscar wore a static discharge strap on each wrist, the ends with the alligator clips dangling free. If worse came to worst and he was possessed, it was Nigel’s job to attach the clips to the iron ladder and ground them. That should drain off enough of the spirit’s energy for Oscar to eject it.
Assuming Nigel was fast enough.
No, this was just a precaution. They’d all learned a lot since the disastrous seance in the Matthews house.
Also by way of precaution, Chris had liberated the fire extinguisher from the trailer. Open flame in an old house could be a recipe for disaster. They’d removed the melted candles from the candelabra and replaced them with fresh ones—white in this case, though according to Dr. Lawrence and his own research, the color didn’t actually make any difference.
As Nigel settled into a chair beside Oscar, Ethan went around shutting the remaining windows, to keep the steady breeze from blowing out the candles. With the sun down, the room shouldn’t heat up too badly in the time it would take to conduct the seance.
Tina sat on Oscar’s other side, followed by Chris, then Ethan, followed by Ms. Montague and Dr. Lawrence. Ethan hadn’t found the ledger, and neither Montague nor Lawson had touched it since it had been put away.
According to the first interview with the Vanderwalls, the ghostly manifestations began with items being moved, then turning up elsewhere. And in the second, Andy said Gloria had played in the woods with him, which suggested she could leave the house. She’d thrown the ledger; maybe it had some significance to her and she’d moved it back into the house.
Either way, Dr. Lawson said she’d laid down a line of salt at the trailer door, as well as the windows. If Gloria did turn out to be dangerous, that would at least keep them safely out of her reach.
A night vision camera and a thermal cam were both set up and recording. Oscar picked up the grill lighter from their seance kit and lit the candles. The small flames flickered a bit; the old house was far from airtight.
“Is everyone ready?” Oscar asked, glancing around the table. “Okay, turn off your head lamps and join hands.”
The room plunged into near total darkness, illuminated only by the candles. Nigel joined hands with Oscar and Dr. Lawrence, and immediately wished his palms were less sweaty. Dr. Lawrence’s fingers were dry and thin in his, the bones fragile as a bird’s. She trembled slightly; neither woman had said much since coming into this room, but both had stared for a long time at the boarded-up window.
“Everyone take three deep breaths. Really focus on them,” Oscar instructed. Nigel did his best to concentrate on his breathing, not the nerves that were trying to creep in now that the seance was actually underway.
