Page 40 of See Through

“What happened?” I say as I get over to him.

“The cross necklace I always wear.” He’s still shaking. “It felt like someone pulled on it, and then I felt someone grab it and yank it off my neck. I-I can’t find where it went, but I barely moved over here.”

“I’ll find it.” Just as I start looking around, I see Aubrey step out of her brother’s room, checking in on us.

“Are you guys okay?”

“Yeah. Cooper lost his necklace.”

“No, someone or something yanked my chain off my neck!” His voice gets more panicked by the minute. He’s shuffling all around, as if he’s trying to see something that isn’t there, so I try to loosen the tension in this very dark house with a joke.

“Whatever you say,” I make fun of him just as I find it. “Here.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Devil,” comes through the box, and just as the three of us look at one another, wondering if we heard that right, something bangs on the walls, and they don’t stop.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

It feels like the pictures still hanging on the walls might start falling off any second. Something doesn’t feel right. First, some of the answers were off, and now this?

My hands are covering my ears, the walls still shaking, and Dean rushes over to me.

“You okay?”

I nod.

“What’s going on in there?” Maven asks over the walkie. “There are temperature spikes all over the place! One of the cameras downstairs fell off the tripod.”

“She’s right,” Dean says as he swings the EMF reader around—spikes everywhere.

“He has to be here. I think someone else started coming through at the end,” I tell him. “But I felt him, Dean. I did.”

“I believe you, baby.” Just as he says that, the banging stops, and the three of us look around. I grab the recorder from off Adrian’s old bed and rewind it, wondering if I caught anything from him before the other voice came through. They sounded different; pairing that with the fact that some of the answers were wrong is making me think there are other spirits at play here.

I always thought there was something malevolent lurking here, but I never had proof. When Adrian and I were little, all the investigations we did were basically fake, but it wouldn't surprise me if something bad was in this house. It would explain a lot—including the way he died.

I know ghosts can’t technically murder someone, but they can do a whole lot of other stuff to push someone to an edge they wouldn't have been on otherwise. I don’t know what could have brought something bad into our house, but it would make sense with the way he died.

“What the hell?” Cooper says as he puts his chain back on. “Do you guys see this red spot on my chest, or is that just me going crazy?”

“We don’t use that word, Coop.” I walk over to him, shining my flashlight on him. “It’s really red. Does it hurt?”

“A little bit. It sort of feels like burning. It started when I put my chain back on.”

“Weird,” Dean says. “That happened during our last investigation. Aubs and I got scratched, and it burned like hell.”

“Something doesn’t like that you’re wearing that. Maybe that’s why the first voice told us to run.” Maybe that was my brother coming through before something else. Maybe he’s here, trying to warn us to get out before bad things happen.

Someone did say devil earlier. That was uncomfortable. We’ve never had something so…forward come through like that.

“Has that ever happened before? The banging and the walls shaking?” Cooper asks me. “I’ll admit, that kind of startled me.”

“It’s definitely unexplainable,” Dean whispers to the camera. “Aubrey, care to say anything to the fans?”

“While Adrian and I used to bang once or twice on the walls, what we just saw only happened one other time, if I remember correctly. I was fast asleep when he burst into the room, wondering why I kept banging on the floor, and when I explained I wasn’t, it started. I remember one of my favorite pictures fell off the wall and broke. When our parents wondered what happened, we couldn’t really explain it. We must have been, like, fourteen at the time. It never happened again after that.”