“Alright, I’m back in the first floor hallway, coming up on the same spot as yesterday,” Gabriella said over the comms. “Amelia, are you in the room?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to loop back around to you on the second floor, it should take maybe ten minutes unless something comes up.”

She said it so casually that she was almost impressed with herself. If something comes up, like maybe an endless time loop. She started off down the shadowy hall, ignoring the picture of Herbert Morgan on her left. Three steps in, Gabriella passed a darkened window and felt something drip onto her head as the lights flickered. Whatever it was, it ran slowly down the side of her face and she didn’t know if it was better or worse that she didn’t smell blood this time. But then another drop landed on her forehead.

She turned on the flashlight on her phone and looked up with dread, shining her dim beam toward the ceiling. It was coated in gore, as though blasted up there. “Amelia-” she started.

“I don’t see anything on my end,” Bradley answered before Amelia could say anything. “It’s another illusion.”

“It’s on my face.”

“Gross.”

“I’m going to, um, keep going.”

The lights were dimmer now, as though caught mid-flicker. And the hallway was freezing to where her breath misted in front of her. A quick glance at the EMF reader showed the levels were all over the place. “I’m catching all the readings,” Amelia assured her.

As she reached the stairwell, her relief was interrupted by the crash of something shattering behind her. Gabriella spun around to see a decorative vase in pieces on the floor. “I see it too,” Bradley said. “That one’s real. And the energy just spiked.”

“She’s here right now,” Gabriella said. “I can’t see her, but that’s Sarah doing this.”

“Why do you say that?” Amelia asked.

Gabriella bristled, then let it go before she said anything stupid and embarrassed herself. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think it’s a gut feeling that she’s alone.”

“It’s possible,” Amelia said. “Did she seem to see you in the room before?”

“No. But I don’t know for sure.”

She went into the stairwell, hurrying up the stairs as fast as she could, waiting for someone to grab her ankles as she went. The hallway she arrived at seconds later was fully lit, the lights yellow and warm, but bright. Possibly brighter than they’d been earlier, but by now she couldn’t trust her impression of it. She could feel the tension leaving her, just a little, as she reluctantly turned away from her and Amelia’ room and down toward the other end of the hallway.

Last hallway to get through, then she could go hide.

***

Gabriella was alone in their room a little while later as Amelia did her own rounds through the building. They were taking turns until ten PM, when they’d look at everything they had and make a decision about what to do. Amelia was leaning toward both another cleansing of the property and potentially trying to contact Sarah Morgan directly. If Sarah wasn’t doing all of this on purpose, then maybe it wasn’t her at all. It could be some other entity that had been attracted to her in life. And since she was still here in death, it was lingering on the site with her, causing chaos.

Gabriella still wasn’t so sure about that, but there were pieces here that she just couldn’t fit into place. If this was Sarah creating the phenomena like she had as a child, then where was the energy coming from? Houses didn’t have their own life source, no matter what kind of connection someone had with them. So maybe there was something else in the building and Gabriella just couldn’t sense it. Like her mom’s house, there had been plenty of people here through the years and any of them could be lingering as well.

But no, that didn’t make sense either, because they’d need an energy source for something so powerful.

Gabriella still wasn’t so sure about that, but there were pieces here that she just couldn’t fit into place. If this was Sarah creating the phenomena like she had as a child, then where was the energy coming from? Houses didn’t have their own life source, no matter what kind of connection someone had with them. So maybe there was something else in the building and she couldn’t sense it. Like her mom’s house, there had been plenty of people here throughout the years and any of them could be lingering as well. But no, that didn’t make sense either, because they’d need an energy source for something so powerful.

Which brought up the possibility this was demonic. And that brought her right back to Duncan O’Toole and his hobby of conjuring demons streets away from Gabriella’s apartment.

If nobody else was thinking along the lines of demons, then Gabriella wasn’t going to stress herself out with it yet. The fact that the activity only happened at night was part of Amelia’s multiple entities theory and James had agreed that it was plausible. There were no signs of a sealing anywhere near the Wildwood Hotel. So it wasn’t the same situation as Jarvis Street School, even with the illusions that still had Gabriella wiping her face every few minutes to make sure whatever imaginary gore had landed there was gone.

Father McEnerney had sent over his notes, and she was looking them over as she watched the cameras. They were reassuring on the demon front, so she could shelve that theory as she sat here with her Diet Coke and a screen full of camera views. Every few minutes, she’d see Amelia pass by one of the cameras, occasionally peeking into a room that hadn’t been open before.

Dolores O’Donnell said her mother was deeply religious. She’d been raised in the Catholic Church and clung to it, especially after the events of her childhood. She’d blamed herself for what had happened. Even if she never said it, the way she’d hidden the truth from everyone except her daughter told Gabriella that this was something Sarah had wanted to keep secret. Dolores hadn’t even been sure that her father knew about the phenomena. It seemed like the kind of thing whispered between mother and child, in case it returned to the bloodline in the future. But Dolores’s testimony painted a picture of a terrified little girl surrounded by slamming doors and broken glass. And maybe her mother’s spirit was still that little girl, who might be comforted by a blessing.

And that comfort, combined with the cleansing last time, was enough for a little while, but the pain and fear always came back.

“This room is trashed,” Amelia said at one point.

Gabriella couldn’t see what Amelia’s camera showed, but Bradley could from Headquarters. “What do you see?” Gabriella asked her.

“It’s a single bed,” Amelia said as the readings on her sensor jumped on Gabriella’s screen. “But it’s been torn apart. There are these huge tears in the wallpaper, the paintings are on the ground. And it’s…there’s no blood. But whatever happened here was violent. I can almost feel the anger still, the air’s heavy with it.”

“Another illusion,” Bradley said. “There were never any murders reported in the hotel, right, Gabriella?”

“Nope. No crimes since the hotel was built. At least nothing on record.”

“I thought so,” Amelia said. “But it’s so real.”

Gabriella wiped at her cheek again, even though nothing was there or had ever actually been there. Amelia left the room and Gabriella glanced at the cameras to see her standing in the hallway, toward the far end. “Amelia, what…”

But it wasn’t her. Looking again, Gabriella realized it was Sarah Morgan, looking straight into the camera. “I see something on the camera,” she said. “First floor, left hallway.”

“Hang on,” Bradley said as Gabriella turned to check her cell phone. “Let me click back over and-FUCK!”

Gabriella turned back and nearly knocked her chair over as she scrambled away from the screen. Sarah was so close now, her unnaturally pale face right up to the camera as she smiled. But it was a sweet smile, a welcoming smile that didn’t have any malice behind it. She stayed there for a long moment as Gabriella attempted to take screenshots, knowing full well they had a fifty-fifty chance of showing the spirit. “So you see her too,” she said with a weak laugh.

Sarah disappeared abruptly, the empty hallway behind her coming into view again. “Holy shit,” James said over the comms. “We got it recorded. Hey, Graham, come here. I want to show you something.”

“Be nice,” Gabriella scolded, memories of childhood jump scare pranks returning in full force.

Graham’s yelp and subsequent threats to murder James showed he’d clearly ignored her. “I’m not sure I want to know what you assholes just saw,” Amelia said as Gabriella watched her come around the corner on one of the second floor cameras.

“Sarah Morgan,” Gabriella said. “She was looking right at the camera. But there wasn’t anything violent to it.”

“No, but it was scary as hell,” James said.

“You’re such an asshole,” Graham said. “I’m going back in that basement. Comms are on. Get fucked, James. Good luck, everyone else.”

“How’s that going anyway?” Amelia asked as Gabriella watched her walk down the hall toward their room.

“It’s fine,” Graham said. “The family said a small fire started there that no one could figure out, but beyond that it was a pretty straightforward haunting. I’m going back now to set up the recording equipment.”

“I’ll ask Father McEnerney about the fire,” James said.

“Does he ever get any time off?” Gabriella asked as Amelia walked into the hotel room.

“Apparently not anymore,” James said. “They just revoked his leave, which I didn’t even realize they could do.”

“Yeah, because you never take any leave,” Amelia retorted as she took off her cardigan sweater and tossed it on the bed.

“I took a week in January!”

“And none for years before that.”

“Oh, look who’s talking.”

“Is there anyone else like that at the Foundation?” Gabriella asked as James and Amelia laughingly bickered. “Religious leaders? Or exorcists or whatever? Do they have anyone else or are all these cases on him?”

“They’ve got a few on file,” James said. “At least from what he’s told me. But they’re contracted out, rather than on the Foundation’s payroll. So he ends up with the brunt of it.”

“There used to be a lot more,” Amelia said. “But they’ve gradually cut down the number of qualified exorcists they have.”

“And they’re all Catholic?” Gabriella asked.

“I mean, technically now the only one they have on their payroll isn’t actually Catholic,” James said. “But yeah, most of them have been. It’s not a requirement or anything, they just always tend to hire Catholic priests for it. I don’t know, maybe it’s a pop culture influence or something. Or availability. Boston’s a pretty Catholic area. It’d be nice if they hired outside of that, though, to get some other ideas in here.”

“Yeah, it’s always fun being a non-Christian in the Foundation when the topic of religion comes up,” Amelia muttered as she sat down in the rolling desk chair Gabriella had abandoned for the more stable one earlier. “I know far more about Catholic services than I ever thought I’d need to. And much more than I’ve ever wanted to.”

“Oh, Father McEnerney called me a little while ago,” Gabriella said. “I’m going through his notes now.”

Now the attention turned to her, and she slightly regretted speaking up. But she laid out what he’d told her, as well as what she’d found in his notes so far.

“Wow, that’s information that would have been useful three years ago,” Bradley said when she was done.

“They must have counted it as two separate cases,” James explained.

“But I requested all the information the Foundation had from the Wildwood,” Gabriella said. “Why wouldn’t they send me that report too? He had to consult his own records for it.”

“They probably just had the hotel name, not the street address,” Bradley said. “Or maybe the family gave her address, rather than the hotel’s. Any minor changes might mean they missed it. Or they fucked up and didn’t care.”

“Ridiculous,” Gabriella muttered.

“But it means a history of poltergeist activity,” James said. “Yeah, it calmed down for a while after the first priest and again for Father McEnerney, but that doesn’t mean demons. If the activity is coming from her, maybe the religious connection is what did it. But we need to end it for keeps, so a blessing isn’t going to help this time. Do we think there’s a way to get her to leave peacefully?”

“I doubt it,” Amelia said, just as Gabriella was about to say maybe there was. “At least without anything drastic. James, her anger has seeped into every room of this place. You guys should have seen the illusions the energy in here was causing. I know Gabriella saw similar things during her rounds.”

Gabriella wiped at her cheek for the phantom gore again. “Can you cast her out?” Graham asked from a little further away from the speaker.

“It might get ugly if we try to force the issue, but it’s a possibility,” Amelia said. “Gabriella, do you want to do the last round? Or do you want to stay here and get things set up?”

“I’ll go,” she said, once again regretting the words as she volunteered too easily. But Amelia had just gotten back from her own and she didn’t want to seem like she was trying to get out of doing her job.

“Before you go,” James said. “Um, Hillsborough called again. Saskia is apparently the interim captain and-”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Bradley interrupted, soft but still picked up on the comms.

“-And she said that the Foundation approved the transfer of that Nashua case to us. She tried to claim it and the main branch rejected her.”

“So we have to do it?” Gabriella asked.

“No, she’s on it. But I’m meeting with McGovern in about thirty minutes to discuss it,” James said. “It’s off grounds, we’re meeting for coffee this late at night because apparently there are some shake ups going on and he didn’t want to talk at headquarters. No layoffs. He told me already there are no layoffs. But this is one of the things he wants to discuss.”

Gabriella would worry about that later. “So I’ll be gone and Graham is going back to the McKinsey property to set up the cameras,” James said. “I know you guys are there until two. Graham, you’re off after this and you’re not coming back for ten hours.”

“I won’t argue,” Graham said.

“Amelia, Gabs, you stay on with Bradley. Shoot me a text when you decide which path you’re going to take. Good luck.”

Gabriella hoped Amelia knew the best option to choose for this case, because she had no idea. At first she’d hoped it’d be another cleansing, some Latin, bells, and smoke to draw the spirit out. Another very Catholic aspect of the work. But if that didn’t work, then maybe asking nicely would still get her to leave. After all, she’d seen the care and kindness in Sarah Morgan’s spirit, even if it was crushingly so at times. And that seemed to be the theme of her dream last night, as well as those the others talked about from last time.

“Did you dream about her?” Gabriella asked Amelia.

Amelia looked at her. “What?”

“Did you dream about Sarah Morgan when you were sleeping here last night?”

“Yeah,” Amelia said slowly. “She was holding me really tightly.”

“Did it feel malicious?”

“I don’t think so?” Amelia said as she considered. “But I didn’t feel safe either. Why? What are you getting at?”

“All the dreams,” Gabriella responded. “Me, you, Bradley, and Madelyn. She was caring in all of them. But they were all nightmares, right?”

“Right,” Bradley said over the speaker.

“Yeah,” Amelia agreed.

“I think it’s her,” Gabriella said. “It’s all her emotion, the good and the bad. And it was clearer in those dreams than it is when we’re awake. Whatever is happening is connected to her emotional state, whether it’s her or something connected to her.”

Amelia unhooked the comms harness from her chest and handed it to Gabriella, who put it on with a sense of dread in her stomach. “Did you bring night vision goggles?” she asked Amelia, briefly hating herself for her professionalism.

“Oh, good call.”

Amelia went to her bag and pulled out the lone pair of night vision goggles they had. The lenses were scratched and one of the straps was held on with duct tape, but it would make things clearer in those dark guest rooms. Whether they’d hide the horror or make every bloody inch of it visible, Gabriella would have to wait and see.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 12