Lancaster Green Chapter 13
James was back at Lancaster Green the next day. Yesterday, it had felt good to be out, getting fresh air in his lungs. He’d ended up walking for another hour and a half after running into Jolene. And when he got home, he did feel a lot better. He hadn’t been able to eat more than a few bites of dinner, but he slept through the night, so it was progress.
When he got back to work this morning, he’d actually felt pretty decent. And now, as he got to Lancaster Green with Bradley, things were going alright. So maybe the mental exercises and the physical exercise and all the rest of it were actually helping.
After a few days of cold, but comfortable weather, today was frigid. James had his heavier coat and the same blue scarf and black gloves he’d been wearing. Maybe it would look strange if he kept wearing them inside, but for now he fit right in with everyone else.
“It’s fucking April,” Bradley grumbled, pulling his own scarf around his neck as they got out of James’s car. “Why is it snowing in April?”
It was only a few flurries, but they were accompanied by a sharp wind. James hurried into the front lobby, where they were greeted again by Belinda. “The residents appreciate the cleansing you did,” she said as a final gust of wind blew through the closing door. “But there’s been another sighting and yes, it was another death.”
“Is there an unusual amount of death here lately?” Bradley asked.
“Actually, no,” Belinda replied. “That’s the strange part, and what makes me and the staff think it isn’t what’s causing the deaths. If you don’t mind me stepping on your investigative toes a little.”
“No, we’ve been thinking about that too,” James said. “We have a few theories we’re working on. But there was another sighting? Is there anyone alive who witnessed it?”
“Carol did,” Belinda replied. “One of the nurses. She wrote down a statement for you.”
She handed it to James, who looked through it as Bradley read it over his shoulder. It read exactly like the others. A large, floating cloud in the darkness of a resident’s room.
“Also,” Belinda said. “Betsy Giovanni said she’d like to talk to you.”
Betsy Giovanni ended up being a large, delightful woman, probably in her nineties. She came out to the rec room in a small electric scooter, buzzing over to the couch and getting off the scooter with an impressive amount of ease before either of them could help her. “You’re the boys chasing the ghost,” she said, her eyes glittering.
“We are,” James replied politely, with a look toward Bradley, who didn’t say anything
“Did you know some people can see it and some can’t?” Betsy asked. “Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know,” James said. “Maybe some people are just more sensitive to it than others.”
“I didn’t see shit,” Betsy said. “Shawn did. He told me he saw it in David’s room when he walked by.”
James had no idea who any of these people were. “He said it gathered,” Betsy continued.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it wasn’t just floating through the walls like a ghost should,” Betsy said. “I’ve seen plenty of ghosts in my life. Here too, so I know what I’m talking about. People who die here linger for a little while, like maybe they aren’t sure where to go next. But they all eventually head off. Shawn sees them too. But he said it was like little pieces of this ghost were all blown apart and came together. What do you make of that?”
“I have no idea,” James admitted. “But it’s useful to know. Has anyone else seen this? The little pieces thing, I mean,”
“No clue, baby,” Betsy said with a rasping laugh. “But Shawn’s sharp. I’d know that more than anyone. And if he says he saw it, then he saw it.”
“Do you think he’d talk to us?” Bradley asked.
She laughed again. “Shawn? No, sweetie, Shawn doesn’t speak to anyone. He lets me do all the talking.”
This was as good as it was going to get, apparently. “Thank you so much,” James said. “We’ll hang onto this information, it’s going to come in useful for our researchers.”
Betsy stood to get on her scooter and both James and Bradley moved to help her. She waved them off. “You’re polite boys,” she said.
Then she turned to James as she was settling in on the scooter. “Are you single?” she asked, resting a hand on his.
“What?” he asked, his heart suddenly racing.
“My granddaughter is single. You’d like her. You two should date, come back and I’ll introduce you.”
She roared off on her scooter as James stood in her wake. Date her granddaughter. She hadn’t said her granddaughter’s name, but it could be anyone. Anyone in the world.
“Let’s head back,” he said, keeping his voice level.
He headed out of the rec room and toward the door, Bradley following behind him, typing notes on his phone while he walked. Was he being controlled right now to date the granddaughter? What if her granddaughter was Adele? It was possible. Maybe that handshake when they introduced themselves had been enough to get him, even through the gloves. Or when she touched him just then. Could she have the control compound on her?
“Are you okay?” Bradley asked as they reached the parking lot.
“Yeah,” James said, walking in a straight line past the car. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
And then he was running toward the road. The street was empty. Of course it was, maybe seven people ever drove down here. He ran across it, ignoring Bradley yelling behind him as the wind slapped his face. If someone was controlling him, they’d never tell him to do this.
James tossed his coat on the ground as he reached the dock and ran, the old wooden boards rattling underneath his feet. He reached the end and dove, his body hitting the cold water with a shock that took his breath away.
James heard another splash as he resurfaced in the frigid water to reach the equally cold air. Bradley was nowhere to be seen, at least for a second before he surfaced beside James with a gasp.
“What the fuck!” he yelled through chattering teeth.
“Why did you jump in?” James asked, confused.
He swam over to the dock and pulled himself back up, landing on the boards in a shivering heap before turning and reaching down to help Bradley up too. His gloves were sticking to his skin and probably starting to freeze already as snowflakes landed on them. Bradley took his hand and pulled himself up as James helped. Then he was out of the water, his coat sticking to him as he gasped on the dock.
“Why did I jump in?” Bradley demanded as he got to his feet. “Because you just went headfirst into the fucking water! I had no clue if it was three feet deep and you were going to hit your head on the bottom!”
“It’s like twelve, fifteen feet deep there,” James said, shivering so hard it hurt. “I used to swim in this lake all the time. I knew it was deep enough.”
“Oh, okay,” Bradley said, rubbing his arms briskly as he started to walk down the dock toward the shore. James followed after him, the boards creaking under his sodden shoes.
“Right, you knew it was fifteen feet deep,” Bradley continued. “Because you and your eighty-seven cousins used to swim here every weekend. You knew because you grew up here. Great, yeah, that’s great. WELL, I FUCKING DIDN’T!”
James jumped at the sudden intensity in Bradley’s voice, but apparently Bradley wasn’t done as he spun and glared at James, shoulders shaking in the April chill. “I had no clue. All I saw was you get upset when we were leaving, run across the street, and dive into the fucking water. And for all I knew, it was shallow and you were laying at the bottom with a fractured spinal column. So yeah, I jumped in too.”
They’d reached the grass now. “You’re not being controlled,” Bradley said as James picked up his coat from where he’d tossed it aside. “She’s gone. She is not controlling you. And you’re going to fucking hurt yourself trying to prove it when it’s already been proven. Give me the keys.”
“I can-”
“GIVE ME THE GODDAMN KEYS.”
James relented, digging into his dry coat with his dripping hand and pulling out the car keys. He passed them to Bradley, whose entire body was shaking as he snatched them out of James’s hand. Now that it was sinking in what he’d just done, James wasn’t faring much better. “You’re safe,” Bradley said as he got into the driver’s seat and James slid into the passenger side. “It’s over, she can’t control you anymore. Isn’t that what you told me?”
He was right. On what should have been a quick investigation trip several years earlier, Bradley had been caught and glamoured by a vampire who used him as a weapon against James and Amelia. James had killed the vampire and Bradley had come to his senses, terrified. His first instinct had been to back away from them so he didn’t hurt anyone. And that was exactly what James had said to him.
It’s alright, he’d said back then, faking as much leaderly confidence as he could manage. He can’t control you anymore.
Bradley started the car and the heat came on, cold at first but quickly warming up. James went to put his mostly dry coat around Bradley’s shoulders, but Bradley shook his head. “You take it,” he said. “But I mean it. She can’t control you anymore.”
They drove back toward headquarters in silence. “Do you want me to drop you off at your house so you can shower?” Bradley asked as he approached the turn onto James’s street.
“No, it’s okay,” James said, though he wanted to take him up on it. “I’m sorry, Bradley.”
“It’s fine,” he muttered. “Let’s just warm up.”
They pulled up outside the house and neither got out of the car, both apparently bracing to run through the cold air and get inside. “It’s over,” Bradley repeated, water dripping from his thawing hair. “You understand?”
James nodded, unable to speak and not just because of the cold. Without another word, Bradley got out the driver’s side and hurried up the walkway. James followed him in, running up the stairs and nearly slamming the front door shut behind them.
“You can shower first,” James said to Bradley.
“No, go.”
“Please go first.”
Bradley looked like he was about to argue, then relented. “Fine,” he said, peeling off his coat.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, which James realized with horror had gone into the lake too. Bradley attempted to turn it on, but nothing happened. “I’ll buy you a new one,” James said immediately.
“I’m going to put it in rice,” Bradley said, bringing it into the kitchen. “Maybe it’s not dead.”
James doubted it, but kept his mouth shut. Once Bradley had done that, he went straight to the bathroom and James went into the back bedroom for a blanket. He had spare clothes, but he didn’t want to get into them yet. Even if he dried himself off first, they’d end up smelling like lake water. So instead, he stripped everything off and dropped it in a pile to grab and bring home, wrapping himself tightly in a blanket at the end of the bed.
His hands were bare. The gloves had been frozen and he pulled them off to see that his hands were white and numb. He clutched the blanket tightly, sitting on the side of the bed, wondering what he should do next until Bradley came in, fully dressed. “You’re up,” he said.
James stood up, the blanket wrapped around as much of his body as possible, though his hands and neck were exposed. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
Bradley looked at him. “What do you need?” he asked.
This threw James off. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
Bradley looked like he wanted to say something else, but he just nodded instead.
The shower was a relief for the first time since everything had happened. The hot water soothed the chill in his bones and James stayed under the spray longer than necessary, letting it plaster his hair to his head. After he got out and dressed, he walked out to the living room to see Amelia waiting for him.
“Let’s talk,” she said.
He sat down on the couch beside her. “I just talked to Bradley,” she said. “James, do you think you might need some more time off?”
His first instinct was to say no. But he stopped and considered it. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come back.”
“I’m glad you’re back,” she said immediately. “I mean it. None of us have changed how we feel about that. Nothing that happened changed anything. And that goes for all of us. But holy shit, you dove into the lake? Today?”
“I knew that no one would tell me to do that,” James admitted. “I thought maybe I was being controlled again. And if I did something no one would ever tell me to do, it proved I wasn’t.”
“That makes sense,” she said. “And explains some things. But-”
“I know,” he said. “I want to say I’m fine. But I don’t know.”
“I think you should take a couple days off,” Amelia said. “Go home now, then take tomorrow and the next day off.”
He started to protest, but Amelia held up a hand. “I don’t care how long it takes to get things done,” she said. “They can deal. I won’t overwork anyone, including me. I promise. Deal?”
He nodded. “Deal.”
