Jarvis Street Chapter 7
“Hey, James, do you have the cash for the utility bill?”
Shit, James had completely forgotten that the bills were due this week. He had already transferred rent over, but the utility bill had escaped him.
“Fuck, no, sorry,” he said as he slipped out of his shoes and walked into the kitchen of the apartment.
“No big deal,” Graham said, and to James’s relief, it sounded like he meant it. “I’ll send it in tonight and you just get me the cash whenever.”
“Thanks, man, I really appreciate it.”
Graham shrugged. For a twenty-nine-year-old man, he suddenly looked extremely young. “No problem,” he said. “We gotta look out for each other.”
Normally James might write that off as just Graham being a little sappy. But there was something in his eyes as he said it that made James pause. “You okay?” James asked as he pulled a couple of beers out of the fridge.
“Yeah,” Graham said, gratefully taking one of the beers and popping off the lid. “I’m fine. I’m just nearly thirty and realizing I hate my job, but I have no idea what to do about it.”
James could sympathize with that countdown to thirty, despite the fact that nothing had really changed for him after his own thirtieth birthday. In his late twenties, he’d happily single and well established in his career, just like he was now. And even if he wasn’t fulfilling the dreams of grandkids, he had plenty of cousins to do that instead. So it wasn’t like there was pressure on him to go down that route.
But despite the lack of missing milestones, there had been a few little sparks of panic when he’d been staring down thirty. So as he looked at Graham’s wistful expression, he understood where it was coming from.
“Are you thinking about quitting?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” Graham admitted. “I feel like I should. It’s so much work, the pay is shit, and I’m really not interested in the classes I’m teaching. And I’m honestly drowning in student loans already so it’s not like I want to take out more to get a doctorate, which is really the only way things are going to improve.”
James took a sip of his beer. “What’s holding you back?”
Sure, he sounded like a high school guidance counselor, but so what? Graham didn’t seem to find it condescending. Instead, he laughed and took a long swig of his own beer. “Fear, I guess?” he said. “I don’t know what else I’d do.”
Graham had been teaching psychology undergrads for a few years now. James didn’t know much about the subject matter, but from the way Graham talked, it all seemed to be very basic classes.
“Might be worth looking,” James said. “Not to freak you out, but you’re going to turn thirty anyway, you know?”
“Who’s turning thirty?”
James turned to see their other roommate, Chris, leaning into their tiny kitchen, hands pressed to either side of the door frame. Chris was a little older than both of them, probably in his early forties. James didn’t really know his story. Earlier in the year, they’d put out an ad for a roommate and Chris had come with good references. He was friendly enough, but kept to himself mostly, which made it a surprise to see him in the doorway now.
James motioned to Graham, who toasted at Chris.
“Happy birthday,” Chris said.
“It’s not for a month, but thanks.”
“Thirties are great,” Chris said, walking past them and over to the refrigerator. “My thirties were better than my twenties, no doubt.”
Despite the fact that he was so tired he might actually fall asleep at the table and then wake up to go immediately back to his job, James actually kind of had to agree. It must have shown on his face, because Graham nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I’ll believe you both.”
Chris took a tupperware container out of the fridge and closed the door. Then, with a wave, he walked back out. A moment later, James heard his bedroom door close.
“Is he eating cold soup in his bedroom?” he asked Graham in a low voice.
Graham shook his head. “I don’t even know,” he said. “But maybe I should just quit and find something else. The pay is crap and my boss sucks. I’d go full time at my side job but they’re not hiring and the building is haunted as shit.”
James looked up from his beer. “Haunted?”
Graham laughed a little nervously at James’s interest. “I mean, I know it sounds stupid.”
“No, no, what are you talking about? What’s going on?”
Graham hesitated, then seemed to go for it. “It’s not too bad,” he said. “Just a lot of sounds and stuff we can’t explain. It’s in a converted mansion and some of my coworkers will hear footsteps when they’re there alone. I’ve heard people talking in the next room, like I swear someone was there. But then no one was and there was no one else in the building that could identify it.”
James nodded. “Has anyone been hurt?”
Graham shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “It’s just creepy. We could all just be imagining it, but it’s pretty weird. Anyway, I have to get going. I’ll be back later.”
He grabbed his bag and headed out the door moments later, leaving James alone. He was pretty sure Graham worked closer to Boston for his side job, so it was out of their jurisdiction anyway. So instead of considering how best to investigate, he was going to go to bed.
James’s bedroom was at the end of the narrow hallway next to the kitchen, beside Chris’s. He opened the door and tried not to groan at the hot, stale air inside. The air conditioner would cool it off some, but it couldn’t work miracles. So while it chugged to life, James stripped off his shirt and tossed it in the pile of dirty laundry by the closet.
He needed to do that laundry soon. It had been at least two weeks and he was rapidly running out of clothes. The room itself was bare enough that he didn’t need to do much cleaning beyond the laundry. His desk was overflowing with papers and books he needed to go through, but that was it for clutter. And his sheets needed to be replaced. And he was sure he was slacking as much cleaning the kitchen at home as he was at work.
He’d deal with it all later. Right now, James had exactly five hours and twenty-seven minutes to sleep before work. He pulled off his pants, flipped off the light, then climbed into bed, kicking off the blanket and pulling up the sheet. The streetlight was shining through the window, but James wasn’t getting up to pull down the shades. The sun could be parked right outside his window and he wouldn’t be bothered to move, not right as he was finally laying down.
James was going to have nightmares tonight, he was sure of it. He’d see the wreckage of Robin’s car smoking in the moonlight. Or maybe it would be one of the ones where Robin successfully murdered Gabriella and they had no way of proving it. But hopefully he’d be lucky and they wouldn’t be as bad as that.
***
This abandoned school was cool. It was so fucking cool and all James wanted to do was go walk around in it for a little while. He didn’t even care if he saw a ghost, he just wanted to see the ruins. Maybe find a couple of stray pencils from the years when little kids were in and out of there all the time and it was just a normal part of life. Or see if anything had been written on the chalkboards while the school had been boarded up. There had probably been people sneaking in to explore or do weird shit in there for years, but he liked to think of the building more as a gradually degrading time capsule. And the idea of opening that time capsule was a thrilling one.
But no, here he was, sitting at the table trying to write a schedule for the next month while Amelia and Gabriella walked through the school, filming it in the daylight and looking for any signs of spirits. Amelia was holding the EMF detector and he could see it in her camera as she walked into what had clearly been a janitor’s closet at some point. It beeped, and the others looked up curiously.
“The power is out, so there shouldn’t be anything else that could interfere with it in here,” Amelia said as she raised the detector up toward the pipes hanging down from the ceiling, then ran it down the empty shelving unit. “It spiked here. Did you see it on your end?”
“Got it here,” Madelyn replied, and James glanced at the monitor beside the camera view. The EMF data was being transferred there and a slight chill went through him as he saw the spikes in the otherwise steady reading.
“Can you feel anything else?” he asked, forgetting his own work for a second.
“Not really,” Amelia admitted. “It’s not particularly cold in any spots. It’s actually hot as balls everywhere in this place, though we haven’t checked the basement yet.”
“Anything on your end, Gabs?” James asked.
“No,” Gabriella replied. “I saw some weird shadows, but my EMF readings are normal.”
“Don’t worry,” James said, getting up and walking behind Madelyn and Bradley to get a better view of the screens. “We’ll take a look at those shadows and listen for EVPs in the recordings. Can you show us where you were?”
He was overstepping, but the other two didn’t seem upset by it as he leaned down and steadied himself on the backs of their chairs. He watched as Gabriella retraced her steps in the dusty building. She was on the second floor, which was primarily classrooms. The camera was a little shaky, but he could see each room as she stepped inside and ran the meter around from the doorway. Every room had a chalkboard and apparently, someone on the demolition team thought they were hilarious when they used an old piece of chalk to draw a cartoon ghost in the corner of one of them. But beyond that, the rooms were empty aside from dust in the sunbeams. The shadows he could see didn’t seem weird to him, but he had her take some pictures and readings, so maybe those would show something there.
He went back to the schedule as the other two talked the field team through the basement. James was trying to focus on getting it done, but frustration kept distracting him. How the hell were they supposed to have twenty-four-hour coverage with just the five of them? They needed another person. Hell, they needed two more people minimum to cover the day shifts without anyone working overtime, even before touching the overnight shift.
Did other teams have this same problem? They must, there was no way that North County was the only one so under-prepared.
“No, that’s not it. Come on.”
The unusual hardness in Amelia’s voice over the speaker made James pause a little while later as he was trying to fill a night shift. He glanced up as Madelyn and Bradley looked at each other.
“I’m sorry,” Gabriella said softly. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know,” Amelia said with a sigh. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped. But that was like an hour’s worth of work that just got deleted.”
“Hey, what happened?” James asked, walking back over to the computers.
“I accidentally erased some footage,” Gabriella said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“Shit happens,” James said. “We’ll see if we can pull it up on our end.”
He turned to Madelyn and Bradley. “Is there any chance?”
“Let me see,” Madelyn replied.
She started looking through files on the computer while James turned back to the camera. “What was the footage from?” he asked.
“Third floor,” Amelia replied. “I lent her my camera because hers died.”
How hadn’t he noticed the fact that Gabriella’s camera view hadn’t changed in the past ten minutes? Had the others not noticed? Or had they known and he just missed it while dealing with his own busywork?
“Got it,” Madelyn said.
“Thanks,” Gabriella said, sounding sheepish. “I’ll go up to the third floor and get more if we-”
“No, your camera’s dead, remember? It’s fine,” Amelia said. “Let’s just finish up and get back so we can go through it all. And next time, you really need to check that your camera is fully charged before we leave the house.”
James didn’t think it was necessary for Amelia to lecture Gabriella on this while everyone could hear, but he kept his mouth shut. This was her case in the field right now. And she was right, if overly harsh about it.
“I’m sorry,” Gabriella said softly.
“Where are those EVP files?” Bradley asked.
“They should be sent over with everything else,” Amelia said. “Are they not there?”
“Why would I ask if they were?”
“Because you hadn’t looked?”
“They’re not here.”
James’s head was starting to ache. Bickering was nothing new, he was prone to it himself. But God, he needed them all to just shut up. Just for a minute so he could think.
James stood up. “Right back,” he said, then hurried out of the room.
He went into the bathroom, letting the door slam shut behind him. At least it was cool in here, and the fighting was muffled. James splashed cold water on his face and stayed there for a moment, letting the droplets fall off his face and into the sink as he took deep breaths and let them out slowly.
This was exhausting. How could he possibly keep this up? And he was only a month in with no end in sight.
James took a sip of water, then splashed a little more on himself. Then, eyes closed, he pulled a towel off the rack and dried off his face.
He opened his eyes, looked in the mirror, and barely swallowed a scream.
Robin was standing behind him, peering over James’s right shoulder. He looked like he’d unfolded himself from his crumpled car and walked straight over here on shattered legs. His coat was matted with dirt and blood and his mouth was ripped wide open on one side, revealing a strip of bloody jaw against his partially crushed head.
Robin laughed from the mirror. “Not so easy, is it?” he rasped out of his mangled throat.
James spun around, but the bathroom was empty behind him. Then he turned back to the mirror, but the only reflection was his own pale face and wide eyes staring back at him.
That couldn’t be real. Even if Robin’s ghost was going to come back to taunt him, it couldn’t get into the headquarters, right? They had defenses up.
At least, James thought they had defenses up. He’d taken it for granted that they were covered. It had been a while since he checked and apparently he was in charge of those things now. Shit. Did he have to deal with the ghost of his murderous former boss on top of everything else? Or was he just losing his mind? He honestly wasn’t sure which was worse.
He stared into the mirror for another long moment, but Robin didn’t reappear. So he finally walked back out, trying to school himself to appear as normal as possible. Hopefully he didn’t look as bad as he’d looked in there seconds ago.
“James, we found the EVPs,” Madelyn called over as he walked back into the room.
“Great,” he replied, sitting back down at the table.
“They were just slow arriving.”
James nodded, his eyes darting around the room for any sign of Robin. He stood up and walked toward the back door, looking for the security measures the Foundation had put up years ago. Everything he knew about was in place. Same with the front door when he went up there to check. He went back to the dining room table and grabbed the spare EMF meter, turning it on silently. Knowing he’d have to answer for his weird behavior in a few minutes, he hurried downstairs. “Right back!” he called up to the other two.
There was no exterior door in the gym, so the basement’s back exit had to be in the unused medical bay. He didn’t want to go in there. Fuck, he really didn’t want to go in there. The last time he’d been in had been to look for gauze to bandage a minor training injury at least five years ago. And even then, the dusty curtains and empty boxes of medical supplies had been enough to creep him out. If an unholy ghoul in the guise of his old boss was going to be in the house, it was probably working out of that room.
But he was captain and it wouldn’t be right for him to send Bradley in there to get eaten instead. So he took a deep breath and turned the knob, grateful none of the others were there to see this. As he opened the door, the room was a little brighter than he had anticipated. Sunlight streamed in through small basement windows that were identical to the ones over in the gym, just grimier. An old shower curtain was shoved to the side of a rod weakly hung from the ceiling. Below it, a few boxes were scattered around on the floor. He carefully moved through them toward the door in the very back wall. This room was so dusty that even walking without touching anything was stirring up the dust and James had to block his mouth and cough a few times in the few seconds the walk took him.
The door was protected too. He didn’t know much about the satchels that the Foundation had sent over, but he knew they were powerful. And a quick flick of the deadbolt showed that the door was physically secured as well. James pushed it open and found himself standing in the sunken picnic area at the far end of the backyard. Fang was sleeping in a patch of sunshine and barely looked up at him as he cracked the door open, then closed it again.
The EMF meter was completely flat, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing. No ghosts, no monsters. Just James and his increasingly frail grip on sanity. And now he had to get back upstairs before any of the others noticed.
