O’Toole House Chapter 2
When Gabriella got to work the next morning, there was already a stack of cases on the printer in the living room. She walked in, cautiously called out a hello to the silent house, then went straight over and began sorting them.
They were all legitimate, unfortunately. Everything was within northern Worcester County, everything had a paranormal element, and they were actually from within the past year. So unfortunately, they were all theirs to deal with.
“When did you get here?”
Gabriella jumped, dropping the stack of cases. She turned to see Bradley coming down the hallway, glasses on, hair slightly more askew than normal. “About three minutes ago,” she said as she crouched down to pick up the scattered papers.
Bradley knelt down too, handing her all the cases he picked up except one, a Bigfoot sighting closer to headquarters than Gabriella would prefer. He looked down at it and she could see his battle to toss it in the trash can. And as much as she would like one less case, that probably wouldn’t fly on a professional level.
But then, neither did cutting safety measures and work time down so much that their captain got attacked and mind-controlled by the subject of a case. So she wasn’t going to fight too hard if he tossed it out.
Bradley just scoffed and handed it to her as well. “Whatever,” he muttered.
He went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. Without asking, he poured one for Gabriella, added milk and sugar, and handed it to her. “You’ll need it today,” he said.
“Were you up all night?” she asked.
“I had three hours worth of overdue paperwork to finish,” Bradley said. “Then Franklin County called saying something crossed over the county line into our territory. Thankfully Brenna over there just said fuck it and snagged the thing, but I had to witness over comms because why wouldn’t I? And then I’d just fallen asleep on my lunch break when the Foundation called to tell me the sighting of that Adele monster was a false alarm. At three in the morning, because apparently they had to wait until then. Whatever, I was on the clock anyway.”
That was the third potential sighting of Adele in the past week, all of them false alarms. Gabriella had a bad feeling about both Adele’s ability to stay hidden (she had that creepy uncle and clearly plenty of money) and the Foundation’s inability to remain focused on finding her. She wanted to stay hopeful that they’d continue to care, but based on past experience, it was unlikely.
“Madelyn is in in fifteen minutes,” Gabriella said, glancing over at the handwritten schedule. James had never had a chance to input it into the computer system, so Bradley had just pinned it to the wall. “Want us to take the morning so you can take a break?”
She took a sip of coffee, winced, and kept drinking. “Maybe, but I have a meeting at ten,” Bradley said.
Oh God, if they had Bradley alone on meetings, that was when she knew they were truly fucked. And based on the grim look on his face, he knew it. “Amelia wants me to train you on some of my duties,” he said. “There’s too much to do while I’m taking her job. So come here, we might as well do it now.”
Last time Bradley had trained her on anything, she was about two days into working here and he’d told her about some guy getting his head ripped off by a monster because he didn’t exercise enough. Gabriella followed him over to the computer bank, again trying her best to ignore the missing computer. But it was like a knocked-out tooth and she kept glancing over as Bradley logged onto the computer across from it.
“I’m going to have you take over submitting some of the paperwork through the portal,” Bradley said as the system loaded. “It’s not awful, but there’s a lot of it and-” He interrupted himself with a yawn, covering his mouth. “-and they’ll crawl right up your ass about it if even a single thing is wrong.”
“Will they yell at you or me?”
Bradley shrugged. “Who cares?”
Gabriella wanted to tell them all to go to hell and send in as many misspelled reports as possible. But she imagined Bradley had about forty disciplinary writeups on his record already. And one in progress for calling their branch liaison, McGovern, a motherfucker and fighting with the reps at that meeting about disciplinary action for James. So she didn’t want to get him in further trouble.
Fang, the team’s old calico cat, wandered into the room, purring as she rubbed her body against Bradley’s leg. Bradley reached down and scratched her behind the ears as he waited. “I fed you already,” he murmured. “I think I did, at least.”
“I can top her off,” Gabriella offered.
Normally he’d say something about spoiled fucking cats as though he wasn’t the one who spoiled said fucking cat. But he just pet Fang as Gabriella went into the kitchen. Fang’s food dish was full, but her water was empty so she quickly filled it, making a mental note to check the litter box when they were done.
“I have templates for everything somewhere,” Bradley said through another yawn as she came back in. “That’ll save you a little time.”
Fang wandered off down the hall as he shook his head and refocused on the screen. James would have bullied him into a break by now. And she felt slightly like she was letting James down by not trying to do so herself. But if Bradley didn’t listen to James, he sure as hell wasn’t going to listen to her.
The system was finicky, and when he finally brought up the folder of templates, she could see how obscenely specific they were. “Why do they care about it being so precise?” she asked as she carefully input the date of a recent unsuccessful cryptid hunt for the third time.
“The official answer is that we need as much information as possible, and it needs to be easy for the archives and records staff to pull up,” Bradley said. “But they fired all of those people.”
“Exactly,” Gabriella said. “I was there, they’ve absolutely destroyed the archives. It was such a mess and-”
“Just follow the templates and you’ll be fine,” Bradley interrupted. “You start on that and I’ll get the morning resources set up. They’re…fuck.”
“What is it?”
“The captain’s report. They’ve probably been emailing McManus for it for a week now and it’s not like I can access his email.”
“Does Amelia have it?”
“No,” Bradley said. “Fine. Whatever.” He yawned again. “We’ll use the daily report template and if they have a problem with it, they can fuck themselves.”
This might have been the first time in her life that she agreed with Bradley on something.
***
When Madelyn arrived, Bradley finally relented and went to the back bedroom to take a break. Madelyn came in and sat down next to Gabriella, who was moving extremely slowly through the backlog of paperwork Bradley had dropped on the empty desk across from her.
“I saw James for a minute this morning,” Madelyn said, and Gabriella felt that familiar drop in her stomach.
“I saw him last night,” she said. “Same. Just for a second. Did he talk to you?”
If he wasn’t talking to Gabriella, he was even less likely to talk to Madelyn. Gabriella hadn’t been here when things went wrong enough that they realized he was compromised. But his actions toward Madelyn were what alerted the team that something was dangerously wrong. Gabriella had been at home, cleaning before her shift when the phone call came in from Amelia.
“Gabriella,” Amelia said, and the fear in her voice made Gabriella drop the broom she’d been holding. “James is compromised. It’s the case, I think whatever is at that fucking fair got him. Don’t answer any messages from him.”
She’d felt fear before, plenty of times. But none of it, not even the monster in her apartment or when Robin pulled out that knife, compared to what burned through her in that moment.
“What should I do?” she asked, and instantly regretted the way her voice sounded so small. “I mean, I can come in right now.”
“Don’t!” Amelia nearly shouted down the line. “What I need you to do is get in your car and go to St. Hildegard’s Medical Center. You know where it is?”
“Yeah.”
“I just talked to Dr. Oliver. She said there’s an antidote and it’ll come in two different parts. You’re going to go first, go now and get the initial doses. The second part takes longer for them to compound, so Graham is going to go later and get that.”
Alright. She could do this. Gabriella grabbed her car keys, not caring that she was still in her pajamas. She threw on her shoes and barely remembered to grab her coat on her way out the door.
When she got to St. Hildegard’s, Dr. Oliver met her in the lobby of the same building Gabriella had seen her in months earlier. “It’s okay,” she said as she handed Gabriella a tightly sealed package, though she looked afraid enough that Gabriella wasn’t fully encouraged. “Get it to Amelia, she’s got a plan.”
Gabriella nodded and it was like Dr. Oliver knew then what was missing here. “He’s going to be okay,” she added.
That had to be enough, so Gabriella brought the antidote bag back to her apartment, where Amelia met her as she pulled into the parking lot.
“I need you to stay here,” she said, looking more serious than Gabriella had ever seen anyone look in her life. “I don’t think James is going to come here, but if he does, do not let him in. He went to the fair a couple hours ago, but he’s probably going back to headquarters after. I think he’s going to try to hurt me when he gets back, but I don’t know for sure. If-” Amelia swallowed hard. “If you don’t hear from me or Bradley by six o’clock tonight, I need you to get in touch with the Foundation. You, Graham, and Madelyn are to stay far the fuck away from headquarters until me or Bradley calls you. Not texts, video calls. Got it? Whoever calls, you hear our voice and you see our face. Test us. Say-” Her voice broke again. “Say Adele wants to see us. If we react positively, call Dr. Oliver immediately. Do you understand?”
Gabriella nodded, as speechless as she’d been with Dr. Oliver. Amelia took the antidote, pulled Gabriella into a tight, sudden hug, then left, leaving Gabriella to do little more than pace her apartment for the next two hours.
When her phone rang, she answered before the first ring had even stopped. “We got it,” Bradley said.
She expected him to hang up immediately. And the fact that he remained on the screen, breathing heavily, surprised her. “He’s alright?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Gabriella’s knees finally gave out and she sank into her wobbly kitchen chair, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears she’d been fighting since Amelia’s first phone call. Then she remembered Amelia’s instructions.
“Bradley, Adele wants to see you.”
“Not on your fucking life.”
Oh, thank God. He smiled grimly. “Oliver says it’s a long process, but he’s away from her,” Bradley said. “Amelia has him now, he’s safe.”
“Good,” she managed to get out, again sounding young and scared. “Thank you.”
He didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. “Should I come to headquarters?” Gabriella asked.
Bradley hesitated and she thought maybe it was because James was vulnerable. And of course he wasn’t going to want her to see him like that. But this was Bradley she was talking to, so feelings weren’t going to be his first concern. “No,” he said finally. “Listen, this isn’t going to be hours. This is going to be days. And we’re all going to have to step up because based on what Dr. Oliver said earlier, these are going to be the worst days of his fucking life. I need you to be here at five tomorrow, and I need you to be rested.”
For once in his life, he was not condescending to her. The words that could have been the most condescending thing he ever said were matter-of-fact. “Can you work from home?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes, my laptop is right here.”
“Alright,” he said. “Check your email throughout the rest of the day and keep your phone on you. I want you to be essentially on call today. Amelia and I are going to stay here and Graham is bringing the second part of the antidote in a little while. If there’s an emergency case, I’ll call you. Otherwise, you’re going to come in tomorrow and you’re going to be the one working most of the Foundation business, alright?”
“Got it.”
He must have seen something in her face because again, he didn’t hang up immediately. “How is he?” she asked.
“Sleeping.”
Other than “totally normal and nothing actually happened,” that was the best answer she could hope for. “Thank you,” she said again.
“Keep your phone on you.”
That had been about a week ago. Now she was putting together reports like intricate little jigsaw puzzles and probably still fucking it up. Gabriella forced herself out of her thoughts as Madelyn answered.
“He would barely look at me,” she admitted. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Me neither,” Gabriella said. “I just want to talk to him, but he wouldn’t open his door for more than a second last night.”
Graham arrived a little while later and within minutes, Bradley was back in the living room. James would have sent him back in. He was protective of Bradley in a particular way that he wasn’t with the others. But then, he had his own style with everyone, didn’t he? Gabriella saw the way he tried to balance keeping Madelyn as healthy as possible while respecting her autonomy. And yeah, it drove Gabriella nuts that he refused to let her see him vulnerable. She’d seen him at possibly his most vulnerable recently and he wasn’t going to forget that. But that didn’t matter to her, she just wanted to see him again.
Amelia was off today because if she didn’t take a day off, she was also going to end up on medical leave soon and they all knew it. So everyone who was going to be here had arrived and Bradley immediately started the team meeting.
“We have five fucking cases today,” he said. “I don’t have a powerpoint for them, but the packets are in your emails. The good news is that a couple of them are simple. I didn’t bother putting them into the scheduling software yet. But looking at them, it looks like two are solo trips to take some follow-up pictures. Who wants those?”
Graham shrugged and raised his hand. “Sure,” he said.
“Midland and Rogers files in your email.”
Graham opened one of the files on his phone. “Wait, is this Bigfoot?” he asked.
“No, because Bigfoot isn’t real.”
“This looks like a Bigfoot to me.”
Bradley opened his mouth to say something terrible, but some lingering respect from when Graham was his professor must have stopped him. Instead, he looked down at his list. “Madelyn, you’re on Davis.”
Madelyn pulled out her phone and scrolled for a second. Her face fell just enough to notice before she schooled it again. “Okay.”
“It’s a lot of phone calls this morning,” Bradley said. “You’re going to be pretty much solo on that. Do you think you can do the inspection this afternoon when Graham gets back?”
She looked like she wanted to be offended, but knew it wasn’t the time or place. “I’m not questioning your fucking professionalism,” Bradley said. “I’m questioning if driving out to Ashburnham alone is going to put you in the hospital. You’re the one who can answer that, not me.”
James would never speak to her like that. But James wasn’t here.
“I think I’ll be fine,” she said.
“Tell me if that changes,” Bradley said. “We can adjust.”
He looked at Gabriella and Graham. “That goes for everyone.”
“And you too,” Gabriella retorted.
Bradley ignored her as Madelyn nodded and set her phone down. “Gabriella,” Bradley said. “You and I are on the Bana case, which is one of the cases that got put off last week. It’s a demonic haunting at the O’Toole House in Fitchburg.”
That was unsettling. Both partnering with Bradley and the fact that this house was haunted enough to have its own title. “I spent some time with the file this morning,” Bradley said. “It’s an increased haunting in a property with a history of demonic activity. The Foundation has notes of previous activity in the forties, but no mention of its resolution. But the problem now is that a new family moved in about five months ago and the activity has fucking exploded. It’s bad enough that the Foundation didn’t leave the case to die or rot for a year in some box.”
Gabriella started looking for the case in her messy email inbox. “It’s demonic,” Bradley continued. “Or at least it’s pretending to be. The owner reports things like blood dripping down the walls and moaning in the basement. Amityville bullshit.”
“Amityville was bullshit,” Graham said. “Good movie though.”
Bradley looked at him. Graham smiled pleasantly and Bradley just shook his head. “I’m too tired for this bullshit,” he muttered. “Alright, either way. This one. The family consists of a mother, father, and one kid. The American dream, buy a house in the suburbs and have your family terrorized by the fucking devil. Sarah Bana is the one who brought it to the Foundation. She says she hired-” Bradley’s face twisted in disdain. “-a psychic who came out and cleansed the property for her. But the activity didn’t stop.”
“So we think the psychic was a scam?” Gabriella asked as she opened the file, which displayed a cute Colonial-style house with cream siding and moss green trim.
“All psychics are a scam,” Bradley said. “When that shockingly didn’t work, she was referred to the Foundation for help.”
She was just going to keep her mouth shut, that was a fight she didn’t want to deal with. “This could either be a simple case or it could drag on,” Bradley said, focused on Gabriella. “They didn’t give us a due date”
They wouldn’t dare to do that, not after last time. “I have to meet with those insurance jackoffs in ten minutes,” he continued. “Could you start by going through the file, then finding out everything you can about the property? We’re going to visit the house later today and set up cameras.”
“Yeah,” she said, suddenly distracted as some dusty old file tried to surface in her mind. “I might go to the library later and-”
It clicked. “Wait a minute,” Gabriella said. “The O’Toole House. What’s the address?”
“Pritchett Street, Fitchburg.”
“Motherfucker,” Gabriella muttered. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.”
She got up and went into the pink bedroom, going straight into the closet she’d taken over to store her research. There were boxes piled on the floor and she was not going to think of James, bleeding on a closet floor, adamant that he was going to kill someone and terrified to the point where he had to be sedated. This was a different closet and the scariest thing in this one was the inadequacy of the Foundation’s record-keeping.
She pulled out the notebook she’d been using to track Duncan O’Toole’s demon activities back in June. Almost a year ago, but she was pleased that her own organization system worked so efficiently. It only took a moment to track down the notes.
The Foundation had let the case lapse, eventually sending it over to Father McEnerney’s traveling demon show. She hadn’t asked the Father about it, things had been so busy and she’d been so stressed after the Wildwood case that by the time she had thought about it again, it was well past when it would have been appropriate to bring it up. And then she’d forgotten anyway in the next deluge of cases.
She flipped through to the initial information and sure enough, 47 Pritchett Street. Approximately three blocks from Gabriella’s current apartment.
She brought the notebook back into the living room. “I was researching phenomena at this address last year.”
Bradley stared at her. “Are you kidding me?”
“I wish,” she said. “It’s down the street from me, I’d like to never look at it again.”
“Well, bad news,” he murmured as she handed him the notebook. He flipped through a few pages, then looked at her appraisingly. “This is good.”
He didn’t seem quite as surprised by this as he’d been in the past. The little bit of surprise was still insulting, but whatever. “O’Toole attempted to summon demons to get revenge on his neighbors for something, I couldn’t quite get the exact details there,” Gabriella said. “But it’s kind of a little cult story. Not a cult, like a cult was there. But like, a few people have shared the O’Toole mystery around online and the story spread. The neighbors died in a freak fire after one of O’Toole’s summoning attempts and then O’Toole disappeared. He’d mentioned this demon stuff to other neighbors, so the rumors spread a little, but not enough to become some kind of international thing like the Conjuring House. The case went over to Father McEnerney. I was researching it when we were doing the Wildwood Hotel and we got so busy, and then I…”
She tore her face open. This was the group where she could describe it like that, but in light of everything that had happened, it didn’t feel right to talk about it so bluntly. But her hand moved almost automatically up to the rough scar running down the side of her face. “Anyway, my theory is that the demons ate him.”
“Reasonable,” Madelyn said.
Bradley checked his watch. “Do you want to call Father McEnerney or should I?”
The Father was one of the few people that Bradley could probably have a pleasant business conversation with, but Gabriella was curious about the final results of that case now. “I will,” she said. “Want me to do it after the meeting?”
“If he’s around,” Bradley said. “We’re almost done. Last thing.”
He sighed, eyes darting toward James’s empty office before returning to the group. “I got a call this morning that the sighting wasn’t Adele. She’s apparently gone off the fucking grid. I’m not sure what to do from here, but we need to talk anyway. Officially, it doesn’t look good.”
He had a point. They didn’t have the resources for a manhunt here in their branch, but the Foundation was going to stop looking eventually.
“Be careful, I guess,” Bradley said. “I don’t think she’d be stupid enough to come back after last time. But be smart when you’re out. And I can’t officially talk about what anybody does to investigate that particular case on their own time. But if you were to do anything outside of the Foundation, don’t be stupid about it. Alright, that’s it.”
He got up and walked toward James’s office without another word while Gabriella attempted to call Father McEnerney. He wasn’t around, so she left a message, then went down to the gym instead of the library. She already had a significant amount of information on the property, so she’d wait until after she talked to Father McEnerney and the homeowners and figure out her research needs then.
She had the gym to herself as she stretched and began warming up. If she did this for an hour, that gave her plenty of time to finish her workout, shower, and read through the case before she and Bradley went over to the house. It might almost feel like a normal day.
