Jarvis Street Chapter 12
The next night, they were back at the school. This time, James was on comms with Madelyn as Amelia, Gabriella, and Bradley went into the school building. The EVPs had come back pretty normal, the recording catching only a little bit of whispering that no one could quite make out. So they’d determined that a simple cleansing ritual was the way to go. Again, James was looking longingly at the location as he watched everybody’s cams and he could see that Madelyn, though she was trying to hide it, was doing the same thing.
This was too much like last time, when he was on probation and stuck at the headquarters. Even that familiar guilty feeling was swirling around the outskirts of his mind, but that was probably stress more than anything
“Alright, Amelia, what do you think is the center of the activity?” James asked over the comm.
Amelia let out a breath. “I mean, we’re talking about a three-floor school, not a single-family house, so it’s a little trickier to figure out,” she said. “But what about the cafeteria on the first floor? It seems like the place with the most energy, even if it’s not centrally located.”
“Yeah, I agree,” James said, taking a swig of his third iced coffee of the day. “Okay, how about you head in there and get ready? I can see the cameras you set up on the third floor and everything looks normal for now.”
“Do you want the second floor set up as well?” Amelia asked. “I didn’t get any readings in those classrooms when I was here last time.”
It was extra time for something they probably didn’t need. But it was protocol. “Yeah,” James said. “We might as well have them up there just in case.”
“Don’t want to cut corners,” Madelyn added.
James turned. Her voice was gentle, and she didn’t seem to be making implications as she sipped her tea and looked at the screen. But James cringed all the same. And he could tell that Gabriella’s silence on the other end seemed to grow a little heavier.
“Gabriella, you’re with me,” Amelia said. “Get the camera stand out of my bag. I’m going to take this one upstairs and we’ll set them up at either end of the hall. It won’t get the classrooms, but if the Foundation wants us to get classrooms, they need to provide more cameras.”
From Amelia’s cam, James saw Gabriella nod and hurry over to the bag. “Bradley, you get things set up for the cleansing,” Amelia added.
“On it.”
“You know I went to this school?”
James turned at the sound of Madelyn’s voice. “No kidding?”
“Yeah, only for a year though,” she said. “They closed down like right after, and we were all transferred to a different school. I was really little, but I remember it.”
“Is it weird seeing it like this?”
“Yeah,” she said with a laugh. “I mean, I’ve seen the abandoned building for most of my life, so that’s gotten normal. But seeing the inside? Like, hang on.”
She pointed at Gabriella’s screen as Amelia and Gabriella walked down a long hallway. “Right there,” she said. “That was my classroom.”
“Get out of here,” James said, leaning forward to grab a quick screenshot.
“I dreamed about it last night,” Madelyn said. “I was back in the classroom, sitting on the rug, singing with my class. It must’ve been still in my mind after work.”
James smiled. “You can buy one of the condos when they’re finished.”
She shrugged. “Maybe someday, but I think between it being school and work, I’d never actually relax. Plus, those stairs were hard enough as a kid with a functioning body.”
“Fair.”
A few minutes later, the cameras on the second floor came to life in small boxes on the bottom of Madelyn’s screen. “Madelyn, can you confirm visuals?” Amelia asked.
“Confirming,” Madelyn said, running the cursor over each small box. “I’ve got one, two cameras aiming down the hallway.”
“Perfect,” Amelia said. “Alright, we’re going down to meet Bradley and start the cleansing.”
Through Bradley’s camera, James could see the salt circle laid out and incense lit. “I’m set,” Bradley said to Amelia. “Let’s get this over with.”
James stood back a little as Amelia ran through the cleansing ritual with the other two. This was common, everyday work. She was fine, she didn’t need James hovering over her as she recited Latin verses she knew by heart. So he stepped back for a moment to answer a gruff email from Accounting about the lack of budget.
Shit, he’d forgotten to set up that meeting with Bradley again to go over it. Should he just approve everything or would that make things even more difficult? Maybe Bradley would stay a few minutes after. Or was he scheduled overnight tonight? Then James could stay late and they’d get it over with.
He stood up to go check the schedule pinned to the wall. But before he’d even gotten three steps, the sound of something crashing over the comms sent him flying back over to the computer.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded. “Is everyone all right?”
“We’re fine,” Amelia said, her voice solid and calm in a way that James immediately recognized as forced. “The, um, whatever this is does not want us here.”
“And they’re just deciding this now? What happened?”
“It threw a bookshelf.”
“Jesus Christ,” James muttered, pressing a fist into the headache that had been lingering all day. “Are you in the salt circle?”
“Yeah,” Amelia said.
Another crash made both James and Madelyn jump. “Don’t panic,” he said, exchanging worried looks with Madelyn. “It’s fine. It can’t get you in the salt.”
“No, but the bookshelves it’s tossing around might,” Bradley snapped.
“How far into the ritual are you?” James asked. “Can you close the circle?”
“We just started,” Amelia replied. “I don’t think anything even opened before this started up.”
“Okay, close it anyway,” James said. “Do you all have helmets?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Keep your helmets on, close the circle, then I want you to absolutely fucking book it out of there,” James said. “Leave the cameras, we’ll go back for them in the daylight.”
Another thing The Foundation was going to get pissy about, but whatever. He wasn’t sending anyone back upstairs to get some cheap cameras while some entity was throwing bookshelves at them.
He could hear crashing around them as Amelia began the closing ritual from the confines of the salt circle. It was dark beyond their flashlights, but he knew that the cafeteria had been used for storage and much of the old shelving was still down there. So there were plenty of things that could hurt them on their way out the door.
Finally, the psychic doorway was closed, but the noises still continued. “We need to leave,” Amelia said. “Alright, count of three. One. Two. THREE!”
The camera views got shaky as the three of them ran out of the cafeteria. James held his breath as he watched, heart pounding as they tore down the hallway, doors slamming open around them. Finally, they shoved the front door of the school open and ran outside. As soon as James saw the shadowy trees on the front lawn of the school, he could breathe again.
“Status,” he said.
“We’re good,” Amelia said. “Didn’t finish the cleansing, obviously.”
“We’ll mark it as ongoing. Any injuries?”
“Gabriella caught a chunk of wood,” Amelia said.
“You okay, Gabs?”
“Fine,” Gabriella said, slightly breathless. “Just a scratch.”
“Good. Come on back and we’ll touch base.”
Amelia yawned. “Sorry,” she said. “Yeah, sounds good.”
James waited until they were in the van before turning to Madelyn, who looked grim. “So much for wrapping this up tonight.”
***
The others got back and James was relieved to see that they had been telling the truth about being unharmed. Gabriella had a scratch over her right eyebrow, but it only had a little blood beaded on it and the other two weren’t injured at all.
As Gabriella went into the kitchen to dig out the first aid kit, Amelia and Bradley waited in the living room with Madelyn. Once he was sure Gabriella was fine, James went out to join them.
“I couldn’t see much on the cameras,” he said as they sat down. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”
“Everything was quiet, and we really weren’t getting any readings,” Amelia started. “Except for some really deliberate footsteps above us, I don’t even know if I’d think the place was haunted.”
“Except for the readings you got before,” Madelyn said.
“Of course,” Amelia replied quickly. “I’m talking about tonight. It was so calm that we thought the cleansing would be enough. Even if there was a spirit coming through, they wouldn’t be connected to the negative energy the Foundation was talking about.”
“Obviously we were wrong,” Bradley muttered.
“Did it start up immediately after you began the cleansing?” James asked.
Amelia nodded. “Maybe I did something that pissed it off,” she said. “I’m not sure.”
“We didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, though,” Bradley said.
“True. But apparently it didn’t like it.”
“So everything was standard?” James confirmed.
“We didn’t cut any corners, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Bradley’s tone was light, but there was something a little dangerous in his eyes. Amelia turned to him. “Bradley,” she hissed.
James rolled his eyes and hoped that Gabriella was out of hearing range. “No, you asshole, of course I’m not asking that,” he said. “I’m just trying to rule out any possibility I can.”
“We started the ritual, I got maybe a stanza in, and then the room started shaking,” Amelia said before Bradley could say anything else. “It was like a minute after that that the bookshelf flew through the air.”
“At you?”
“Near us,” she said.
James nodded. “How far would you say it flew?”
“Six, seven feet?” Amelia said. “Gabriella, what do you think?”
“Yeah,” Gabriella replied, coming back into the living room.
She had a small bandage over her eyebrow as she approached them. “And then when we were running there were things being tossed at us.”
“So those were targeted?” James asked.
“Absolutely,” Amelia said. “There were a few pieces of wood that grazed us. Honestly, we got lucky.”
Gabriella nodded in agreement. “What are we going to do from here?” she asked.
Good question, James thought. Out loud he said, “I need to go over our options. I think tomorrow we need to do a little more digging and see what we can find. Then we’ll make our plan.”
***
“Now what?” Amelia asked him.
Fifteen minutes later, the two of them were standing in the hallway by the bedrooms, taking a moment to assess the situation in private. James shook his head. “I guess we go into negative, intelligent entity mode,” he said. “We’ve done it before.”
“True,” Amelia said. “I’m not loving how they’re pushing for results so quickly, though. Like, I got a text on the way back asking for updates.”
“You did?” James said with a frown. “Who the hell is emailing you asking for that?”
“It’s automated,” she said. “I signed up for information alerts from the Foundation and apparently they just put me on this list too.”
James had forgotten to sign up for the alert texts. He’d meant to, but he also lived ten minutes away from headquarters. So if it was snowing, he’d figure it out real quick, and it wasn’t a hassle to get here. But they were hounding the team for updates now? That was too much.
“They’re going to just have to deal with it taking more time,” he said. “We need to do both halves of it, so we need to take that time. I’m thinking we dig into the history of the building more, see if there have been any problems before. Just because it’s only been abandoned for twenty years doesn’t mean there’s only been paranormal activity in there during that time.”
“Good call,” Amelia said. “I’ll start getting prepared for a more intense cleansing. Maybe call Father McEnerney to see if he’s got any suggestions.”
“I’ll call tonight,” James said.
Amelia raised her eyebrows, then James looked at the clock and saw ten o’clock staring back at him. “I’ll call tomorrow,” he corrected.
“Are you okay?” Amelia asked.
Wow, he must look bad. “Yeah,” James replied. “I’m good.”
“You know you can talk to me, right?” Amelia continued, clearly disbelieving him.
James sighed. “I’m fine, I swear,” he said. “I’m just really stressed out. The Foundation tossed a whole lot of new shit on me without sending the training they promised.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Keep being functional in the field,” James said with a bitter laugh. “You take that and I’ll focus on the stupid bullshit.”
Amelia didn’t seem to be completely convinced, but thankfully, she let it go. “I’m on tonight,” she said. “So you can go home whenever. It’s me and Bradley.”
“Actually, I need to talk to Bradley,” James said. “I’ll go let Madelyn and Gabriella know they can go. Oh, can you believe that my plan after everything went successfully tonight was to tell you all about the Foundation cookout I just got an email for?”
Amelia laughed. “A Foundation cookout?” she repeated. “Have they ever done one of those?”
“No idea,” he admitted. “Maybe we just never heard about them. But I got an email today about an end-of-summer cookout.”
Amelia shook her head. “Listen, you want to go, I’ll cover your shift. But I think I’d rather go back into the school and kiss that ghost right now than go to a Foundation social event.”
“Same,” James said. “But I was thinking some kind of social time would be a nice way to kind of help everyone de-stress a little.”
“I mean, maybe? Not with the Foundation, I feel like that could get ugly. But maybe just us. If there’s ever a chance.”
“We can talk about it after this case is settled,” James said. “I know it wouldn’t solve everything, but it could be a nice break.”
Amelia gave him a thumbs up, then made her way toward the back bedroom where there was a comm setup on the desk. She was going to talk to that woman in the Hampden County branch, wasn’t she? No wonder she was fine with having so many overnights. James made a mental note to tease her about it later, then headed back to the living room.
Madelyn and Gabriella were sitting on the couch. Gabriella had her head in her hands, her long hair spilling over the sides to cover her face. Madelyn was looking at something on her phone.
“Hey, you two can go whenever,” James said.
Madelyn nodded and stood up slowly. She caught her balance and started walking toward the door. Gabriella gave her a minute, then followed with a tired goodbye to James.
James walked into the kitchen and saw Bradley brewing a pot of coffee at the counter. “Hey,” James said.
“Hi.”
“Listen, do you have a minute to go over the budget?”
“We’re going to need more than a minute.”
James legitimately couldn’t tell if Bradley was still mad at him over the schedule or if he was just acting like his normal self. “Right,” he said. “Do you have time right now?”
“Apparently.”
Nope, James still couldn’t tell. He stood awkwardly back as Bradley took out two mugs from the cabinet. He poured coffee into both, then held the other out to James. James hadn’t been planning to drink another cup of coffee today, but he took it anyway.
Bradley walked past James and into the living room. James splashed some milk in his coffee, then turned to hurry and catch up to him. As he got into the room, Bradley was already sitting down on the couch with a piece of paper on the coffee table in front of him.
“Is that your printout?” James asked.
“Yeah.”
James turned it around so that he could read it. That was a lot of expenses. Why were they responsible for paying for the internet in this place? If the Foundation was still paying it, couldn’t they just get a business package or whatever? Especially if they were so obsessed with saving money.
“We’re shockingly not short this month,” Bradley said as James looked over the list. “I staggered a couple payments last month, but got them covered. If we’re lucky, maybe we can keep it up.”
James pointed at one of the lines of expenses. “Computer repairs?”
“Yeah.”
“When did we get the computers repaired?”
“Two months ago. It’s the one in-” Bradley shook his head. “It’s in the office.”
Right. They both turned to look at the closed office door. It hadn’t been opened in the past month. For all James knew, the computer had melted in there after the repairs.
“When are you going to move in there?”
James’s head whipped back to Bradley. “What?”
“The captain’s office. When are you going to move in? You can’t just spread your shit out in the living room forever.”
James paused, unsure what to say. Was he supposed to say he was still having nightmares, that those nightmares had bled into his waking hours, and he was pretty sure that if he opened that door, Robin would be there waiting for him? There was no way to say that and not have Bradley report it to whoever handled mental health services for the Foundation. If anyone actually did.
“Soon,” he said instead.
Looking at the list without the codes, the budget was so much easier to understand. It was extremely tight. He could see the expense, plus the amount that the Foundation allocated for the expenses. And it came down equally almost to the penny.
“Jesus,” he muttered as he scanned over the list. “I knew we were tight, but this is insanity. How do you make this work?”
He was either completely overtired or he detected the slightest hint of pride on Bradley’s face at his words. But he just shrugged. “It’s my job.”
“Well, thanks for doing it.”
“Yeah.”
After a few minutes, James felt comfortable approving everything on the list. If this was going to be the standard, he could handle this. Now he just needed to figure out how to send it in according to the program, but he’d figure it out tomorrow.
Tonight he was going home to get a few hours of sleep.
