The cameras had picked up so much poltergeist activity that Gabriella would have thought it was faked anywhere else. Had she seen this on the screen at home, she’d be throwing popcorn again. Every single hallway showed vases moving on their own, curtains blowing in a phantom breeze, or orbs sailing and colliding through the air in bursts of light. “Holy shit,” Gabriella breathed as she gratefully took the coffee Amelia had brewed in the little machine on the table.

“This looks similar to last time, but it’s more intense,” Amelia said, frowning at the images. “I want to show this to Madelyn later and see what she thinks.”

Gabriella’s disapproval must have shown on her face because Amelia laughed. “Not like this very second,” she said. “But seriously, last time she had surgery, she was barely awake from it when she was asking me about the case we were working on.”

Gabriella knew Madelyn got bored with desk work. From everything she’d heard, Madelyn had been an ace in the field before her injury. She was getting out on cases more often now, carefully and with lots of space for recovery after. But it wasn’t the same, and they all knew it.

Still, hadn’t she had surgery just a few days ago?

“Look at that,” Gabriella said, pausing the video.

In the empty hallway, there was a shape moving across the screen, something much larger than the orbs that she would have otherwise taken as bugs. “That’s the hallway where I was,” she said, then glanced at the timestamp and shivered. “When I was. I saw Sarah Morgan there.”

“In that room?”

Gabriella tried zooming in to see the room number, but the image just got blurrier. “I can’t tell,” she admitted. “But it’s that hallway. Or, the stretched out version.”

She should have been more freaked out about this, but now that she was safe and everyone around her was treating it like part of the case, she felt more secure in what they were doing. The plan for the post-midnight hours had been to take turns doing rounds while the other caught some sleep. That was likely to have changed, but probably not by much. There was too much to do. Gabriella was off for a little while tomorrow, but only until late afternoon, when she knew they’d be right back here.

Amelia took a screenshot of the blurred shape. “This is all the same phenomena as before,” she said. “Just…intensified. Bradley, you were here last time. Do you remember any time bending? We would have noticed something like what happened to Gabriella tonight, but maybe a small bend? Like when we were taking turns sleeping or something?”

“No,” Bradley replied over the speaker. “I think we all had strange dreams while we were there, though.”

“God, how did I forget that?” Amelia said as she drank her coffee. “The old woman kept tucking me into bed. I thought I was going to get crushed. We didn’t have any sensors in the room, so I can’t tell if she was physically there or if it was just in my dream. But it was painful.”

She shuddered. “I was…” Bradley trailed off for a second, clearly trying to remember. “I was in a garden. It was safe, but it was hard to breathe with all the flowers around me.”

“Was it the garden upstairs?” Gabriella asked.

“I didn’t even know that was there until you told me,” he said. “The Foundation sent us in with fuck-all preparation last time. Can you send me the pictures you took?”

She quickly texted him the few shots she’d taken. “Yeah, that was it,” he said. “Exact same thing. I remember those flowers.”

“I’ll ask Madelyn too,” Amelia said. “So keep that in mind if you end up sleeping here.”

Gabriella wanted to say there was no way she was going to get to sleep, but by this point in the shift, she knew that nothing short of a cryptid running through the room screaming would keep her awake once she had a chance to lie down.

***

Gabriella did end up sleeping for a little while. And like the others had said, she also dreamed vaguely of the garden on the roof. She was wandering down the dusty gray path between the large flower beds, trailing her fingers along their smooth wooden frames.

A feminine figure slipped between the trees ahead and Gabriella realized she’d done this many times already. “Sarah?” she called softly.

There was no answer, but peace and comfort radiated throughout the garden. It almost made her want to cry, but something was coating her throat as she called to Sarah again. It was too much. This space was lovely, but the care was crushing her.

Gabriella woke up to the sound of the air conditioner humming in the hotel room. She was lying on the bed, on her side under a thin blanket. She felt a little better after some sleep, but glancing at her watch, she saw that she still had about an hour until she was taking over so that Amelia could nap.

“So have you talked to her at all?”

James’s voice came over the speaker on the desk, which they’d moved to the other side of the room a little while earlier. She heard Amelia shift in her chair, then groan quietly. “I have,” she said, voice low in an attempt to be considerate of Gabriella. “God, I met her girlfriend too. She’s older than me and gorgeous.”

“Did you say anything?”

Once again, Gabriella didn’t want to eavesdrop, but their voices were just loud enough to hear from the bed. “Of course not,” Amelia replied. “What am I going to do, be like, oh, hello Rosa’s gorgeous girlfriend who’s really sweet and probably amazing in bed, I’m in love with your girlfriend?”

“I meant Rosa.”

“Of course you fucking did,” Amelia said. “I- no, I didn’t tell her. She’s not into me. If she was, she wouldn’t be dating Sarah.”

“Or she has no idea?” James suggested.

“So why tell her now, then?”

She shouldn’t be eavesdropping. She really did want to just go back to sleep, even if it meant being in that weird garden again. But before she could drift off, she heard Amelia again.

“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “I’m being stupid.”

“Listen,” James said, “do you still want to be friends with her?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, even if she wasn’t interested. If there was no chance in the world?”

“Is there now?”

James laughed. “Who the hell knows?” he said. “But for real. You tell her how you feel, she turns you down. Would you still be her friend?”

“Yeah, of course.” Amelia’s response was instant. “I mean, it’d hurt, but of course. But what if she doesn’t want to be friends after? Like, okay, what if one of your friends came up to you and was like, I’m in love with you? And you didn’t feel the same, at all. How would you handle that? For real.”

“For real? I mean, honestly, I see like four people I’m not related to on a regular basis. Five if it’s a quality McGovern week,” James said. “I don’t think that’s something I’ll ever have to consider. I don’t see other people often enough for anyone to ever fall in love with me. But I think I’d be fine with it.”

Gabriella didn’t want to think about why that made her so sad. The other two were both quiet for a second as Gabriella wished she’d brought headphones so as to not accidentally spy on them. “I just want to stop being weird with her,” Amelia admitted, so quietly that Gabriella almost didn’t hear.

“Yeah, I understand.” James yawned over the line. “And maybe she will too. I’m going to go catch an hour of sleep before I kick Graham out. We’re going to stagger this a bit. I’m going out back for a bit, then Graham’s leaving. Bradley’s taking a break before the day shift and you two are going home for a little while in the morning. Everyone’s back on again tomorrow night for more fun.”

“I’ll let Gabriella sleep a little longer, then take my break,” Amelia said. “Alright, sleep tight.”

He laughed, and Gabriella heard the sound of the call cutting off. The comms were still on so that there was a connection to Headquarters, so Amelia must have been on her own phone. Gabriella stayed where she was as Amelia got up from the desk. Then she felt the other side of the king size bed dip down slightly as Amelia sat down and sighed. She stayed there for a second, then got up and walked away. Gabriella fell back to sleep a few minutes later.

***

They took turns sleeping and watching the cams throughout the night. As the sun came up, James had sent Graham home for a few hours. Now he and Bradley were half-engaged in antagonizing each other over the comms, but everyone was pretty quiet. Amelia was texting on the end of the bed while Gabriella absently watched the silent monitor.

“Hey, do you want to stop by my place and talk to Madelyn before we wrap up?” Amelia asked about twenty minutes before their shift was up.

“Are you sure she’d want me there?” Gabriella asked.

“She said it’s fine. She wants to see the pictures.”

Everyone on this team had an unhealthy attachment to their work. Not that Gabriella had room to judge. “Um, yeah, if she doesn’t mind,” Gabriella replied.

Amelia called Graham, who had now taken over for Bradley for a couple hours. “Tell her I said hi,” Graham said after she’d explained the plan.

Amelia gave Gabriella a smile. “I’ll be sure to do that,” she said, then hung up.

Amelia and Madelyn lived in Leominster, but on the other side of town from their headquarters. Gabriella parked in the space beside Amelia’s car, then got out and walked with her toward the front door. It was a large apartment building and Gabriella was reminded of the dorms at her college as they went through the foyer, passing a long wall of mailboxes with packages scattered on the ground below them. There was a stairwell beside the mailboxes and she followed Amelia up to the second floor.

“We’re hoping a first floor unit will open up,” Amelia said as they got to the front door of their apartment, which had a floral decoration on it. “But for now, we’re here by the stairs. Not ideal, but Madelyn says it could be much worse.”

The apartment was bright, the windows ideally located for the morning sun to stream in. As Gabriella followed Amelia inside, she immediately saw Madelyn lying on the living room couch, bundled in a cozy blue blanket underneath the open window. She looked like she was sleeping, but as they closed the door, she sat up slightly and waved.

“How are you feeling?” Amelia asked, kicking off her shoes and sitting in one of the two other chairs in the living room.

“Sore,” Madelyn said with a soft laugh. “Oh, hey, Gabriella.”

Gabriella smiled awkwardly, then came all the way into the living room. She sat down in the other chair as Madelyn shifted and closed her eyes again. “Beatriz is sleeping,” she said.

“Do you need anything?”

“Nah, I just want to hear about the case.”

Amelia detailed everything that had happened the night before, Gabriella occasionally pitching in some details as she discreetly checked out the apartment. The living room was colorful and cheery, and she assumed the rest of the apartment was the same. Against the wall beside the TV was a bookshelf overflowing with a mix of horror novels, college textbooks, and paranormal texts from Amelia’s many training sessions. Off to the right, she could see into the tidy kitchen. The bedrooms were probably off of there, making the entire apartment somewhat of a railroad flat.

Maybe they knew the history of the building? If they did, Gabriella would love to know more about it when they weren’t all bone-tired.

“So it’s the same case as before,” Madelyn said, taking a sip of the tea she had on the side table.

“But intensified.”

“I remember the dreams too,” Madelyn said. “I…I dreamed about a darkened bedroom and the woman was smiling at me. She was being so sweet, but she wouldn’t let me out.”

She set down her tea and laid back down against the pillow, wincing as she moved.

Gabriella thought of the darkness behind Sarah Morgan in that time bending hallway. “I wonder if that’s connected to the hallway,” she said. “It wouldn’t let me out either.”

“But Sarah Morgan wasn’t a bad person,” Amelia pointed out. “She didn’t live the happiest life, but she loved the hotel.”

“I wonder if she kept a journal,” Gabriella mused out loud as she glanced at the overstuffed bookshelf again. “Talking to her directly would be best, but man, that would be way more helpful than the About section on their website.”

“Check with Lorraine, maybe?” Amelia said. “If you catch her in a good mood, maybe she’ll know.”

“Yeah, she wasn’t too thrilled about this, was she?”

“It’s the second round,” Amelia said with a shrug. “People don’t like to see us come back.”

They were interrupted as a woman walked out of the kitchen. She was probably in her fifties, tall and pretty with long, curly hair. She wore a green bathrobe and carried a cup of coffee. The smell made Gabriella desperately want one of her own. Who cared if she was going to sleep when she got home? The woman smiled at them, then said something to Madelyn in Portuguese. Madelyn answered her in a quiet voice. Gabriella couldn’t understand what she said, but the woman laughed.

“She should be resting,” the woman scolded lightly, smiling at them all. “She’s impossible, isn’t she?”

“We’re just talking,” Madelyn protested equally lightly, in a way that showed Gabriella this was a frequent conversation.

The woman, who must be Beatriz, laughed again. “Of course,” she said, then walked back into the kitchen.

“Here’s something to consider,” Madelyn said, shifting against her pillows and closing her eyes. “So poltergeist cases are theorized to pull energy from a living person, right?”

“Yeah,” Gabriella said. “The training modules go on and on about teenage girls.”

“Do you think a dead person can do this? Move things?”

Amelia and Gabriella glanced at each other. Madelyn must have been on heavy painkillers if she was asking that question. “Madelyn, do you want to rest for a while?” Amelia asked. “You really shouldn’t be working at all.”

Madelyn waved her off. “I’m not. And no, I don’t mean like the active spirits we deal with. I mean, do you think an intelligent spirit could create this kind of activity without realizing it? Like poltergeist activity manifesting from a dead person.”

“Sure,” Gabriella said. “Remember Jarvis Street School? James said the ghost would lose control and cause those problems. Like she was blacking out.”

“Yeah, but I mean…” Madelyn took a second to collect her thoughts. “Okay, so she was unhappy, right? But she clung to her awful husband and was really protective and loving of the hotel. To the point that the hotel was almost a part of her. What if her suppressed anger is manifesting like this? After her death.”

For someone on more painkillers than Gabriella had ever seen in her life, Madelyn had a great point. “So the phenomenon is coming from the spirit,” she said, her mind turning the information over. “But this is more than a standard ghost would be able to do. Where is it drawing energy from?”

“The hotel?” Amelia offered. “But we need to figure out if she’s aware that it’s happening. Is this something she’s doing to lash out or is it her own anger manifesting with some help from an energy source within the hotel?”

If this was Sarah Morgan’s conscious doing, then maybe they could reason with her, the same way James had with the ghost of the young teacher who had gotten trapped. ”We can try to contact her tonight when we go back.”

“I should go home for a few hours,” Gabriella said, reaching for her car keys. “Madelyn, let me know if you need anything. Oh, and Graham says hi, and he hopes you’re feeling alright.”

Madelyn opened her eyes. “He did?”

She did her best not to make her smile too obvious. “Yeah.”

“That’s nice of him. He should text me.”

Amelia walked Gabriella down to her car. “Get some rest,” she said. “If she’s unaware of what she’s doing, then she’s not going to be able to keep it under control. And if she is, then she may not want to stop. We need to be sharp tonight.”

“I’m falling into bed as soon as I get home,” Gabriella said.

After a short car ride home, she did almost exactly that. But first she was desperately grateful to her past self for the chili she’d thrown into the slow cooker hours earlier. She ate quickly, then laid down, staring up at her ceiling as she tried to settle in to sleep. A ghost with poltergeist powers, she wasn’t even sure who that proved right or wrong. But she’d dig into it more in the evening.

---

CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 7