Lancaster Green Chapter 9
The next day, James was back at work in the afternoon. He’d made it back in one piece the night before and when he arrived, Bradley had pulled rank, making James take a break with a firmness that was only fair considering how often James had done the same to him when he was captain. He’d honestly thought maybe he could sleep for an hour or two in the back bedroom, but instead he’d lain awake, staring at the ugly popcorn ceiling, then at the stack of textbooks Bradley had left on the desk. One was about logistics, one was about business management. Was that his official major? James had never asked.
When he’d come out of the room later, Bradley hadn’t tried to make James talk about what happened. He’d been laying on the couch, reading one of Amelia’s horror novels, some paperwork abandoned on the coffee table beside him. He’d kind of nodded at James, who went straight to the fridge to find the dinner he’d quickly put together that morning. James had eaten silently at the dining room table, his eyes now continuously straying to what used to be his office. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed at the table, eating small bites of the pasta and salad he’d brought, but when he got up to check the case printer and his email, Bradley had been asleep, apparently unconcerned about being vulnerable in headquarters with someone who had planned to shoot him in the head, the book open facedown on his chest.
The case printer was empty and James’s email had nothing useful in it, so he’d stolen the book and sat down on the other couch, which wobbled precariously under him for a second, something he’d have to remember to report in the morning. As James read the first page, he realized he’d started reading this book a few months ago. He couldn’t remember any particular reason why he’d stopped until he was about twenty pages in and remembered how boring it was. But apparently not boring enough to put him to sleep too, because he’d sat there reading it, wide awake and hoping the printer would stay empty, until about three, when Bradley had woken up with a jolt and sent James home.
Now he was back, finishing up a workout at the beginning of his shift. And his workout continued to go poorly. Or well, depending on who you asked. But he wasn’t happy with it.
“Hey, James!”
He had sweat dripping down the side of his face and had been taking deep breaths to brace himself to use the shower here instead of going home. But as he was heading toward the stairs, Jolene was coming out of the medbay.
“Hi,” he said, unable to fully meet her eye.
“I’m not sure I’ve actually seen you since you got back,” she said. “How are you doing?”
“Good,” he answered quickly, hoping she didn’t know about the night before. “Yeah, feeling better.”
James genuinely liked Jolene. Before this nightmare, he wouldn’t have considered them friends, but they were friendly colleagues who could definitely become friends. They’d dealt with the shitshow that was the Foundation’s captains training together, and he’d vouched sincerely for her when his teammate Jessamyn had been rightly hesitant to trust anyone involved in the Foundation.
And she seemed to like him too. But he couldn’t imagine, even as he took into account his current mental condition, how she could possibly still want to be his friend. She’d seen James through all of that treatment, and yet she still talked to him like he was an adult of equal standing with her. It had to be that she was trying to be nice.
“Good,” she said. “Good. Hey, do you have a sec?”
“I’m really sweaty,” he admitted.
Jolene laughed. “I’ve smelled worse,” she said. “I don’t know if Amelia mentioned it, but you guys are being switched to a different physician than the rest of my region. There’s ethical concerns about boundaries if you’re sharing work space with your team physician that the Foundation didn’t think about before assigning us to certain counties and then moving me here. But it’s taking forever for them to actually do anything about it and I’m pretty sure I know why.”
James didn’t know why, but he wasn’t about to ask. “But everyone’s physicals have to be updated and they’re not going to get you guys someone new before the due date. So I either need you to submit one from a different physician or have me do one this week.”
He hadn’t been to a non-Foundation doctor in about six years. Either Jolene or another doctor had done all of his exams. They were quick and easy and he’d never had an issue with it.
“Okay,” he said.
He needed to keep it together. Two meltdowns in twenty-four hours were going to cause problems.
“I know it’s not going to be easy for you,” she said, looking at his gloves. “So can we think of how we could make it easier?”
“What do you need from me?” he asked.
“It’s pretty basic,” she said. “Heart, lungs, reflexes. Any concerns that can be quickly addressed. I’ve got a checklist.”
“Right,” he said. “Um, how high can I be for this?”
He was almost joking, but Jolene shook her head. “I thought of that too, but it could impact your results.”
Jesus, he was that bad? “How about this,” Jolene said. “We’ll schedule yours last so we can take as much time as we need.”
He’d rather get it done as quickly as possible, but she had a point. “When?” he asked.
“I was hoping to grab everyone who will be here on Thursday. Will you be here?”
“Yeah, until five.”
“Okay,” she said, looking at him. His nervous posture must have been absolutely glaring, even as he wiped another bead of sweat off of his forehead. “Let’s schedule you last on Thursday. Sound good?”
“Yeah.” Absolutely not.
“Great,” she said. “Hey, I’m glad you’re feeling better. You look better.”
Did she just not know what had happened? Maybe Amelia hadn’t felt the need to tell her. “And listen,” Jolene continued. “Honey, I know it’s a cliché. But recovery isn’t linear. You’re going to have bad nights.”
God dammit. “Right, yeah,” he said.
“And even if I’m not your official physician anymore, I’m still here for emergencies. Or, you know, if you just want to talk.”
She smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder. Then she frowned, her grip tightening. “How much weight have you lost?” she asked.
“No idea,” James admitted.
“We can talk about it at your physical.”
Great. Would they notice if he took a sick day on Thursday? Yeah, they definitely would notice. “Alright, go take your shower,” Jolene said with a laugh. “Sorry to hold you up.”
He attempted to smile and look her in the eye. He was somewhat successful.
***
The next morning, James discovered that the sensors at Lancaster Green hadn’t picked up anything at all. He took a moment to consider the situation as he got back to headquarters. Maybe it was the new equipment. He wasn’t exactly familiar with it yet since it had come in while he’d been out on medical leave. But on the other hand, the readings he’d done there with a handheld energy reader hadn’t picked up anything unusual either. At first, he thought that it was a fluke. But the more he was looking at this lack of data in front of him, the more he was convinced that something was up.
It was frustrating. This was James’s first real case back and he wanted to do a good job with it. He wasn’t ready to be captain yet, or maybe ever again, but he wanted to be a benefit to the team. Not a detriment, not something that they needed to take care of. But now he was sitting here with his printouts from equipment that he didn’t really even know how to use, and he realized he had no idea what to do next.
He was distracted by the lack of data from Lancaster Green as the staff meeting started. Amelia was running it and she went to Graham first
“All right, cryptid specialist,” she said. “I got your report but can you tell me more about what happened yesterday? Like, what the fuck? Precisely?”
Graham sighed. “It was a mess,” he admitted. “So, I don’t have the name of the creature in front of me, but it was one of a few whose venom contains a compound that essentially will work as a truth serum. And it’s a gas, meaning you inhale this completely odorless, clear gas. It has a short half-life, but it’s intense. And it got into their house.”
“Where is it now?” Amelia asked.
“Creature Containment took care of it,” Graham told her, “And thank God, because I have no idea what I would have done with it if they couldn’t. Tommy caged it and told me about this gorgeous girl he fumbled last Halloween, while I told him about how I’m afraid that the Foundation is gradually taking over my whole life. But if I had to bring it back here, who knows what we would have ended up slipping and telling each other.”
There was a moment of quiet as everyone clearly thought about this. Amelia looked at Graham. “All right,” she said, “what happened at the house?”
“They both cheated on each other,” Graham said. “Neither of them knew and neither of them intended to tell the other. But it got in via the mail.”
“What do you mean, the mail?”
“I mean this had to be a setup. I can’t tell for certain who it was or what happened, but from the interviews, both of them said that when the package arrived, they opened it and out came the venom.”
“Holy shit,” Madelyn murmured.
“And suddenly both of them are telling the other that they cheated, while screaming at each other for cheating.”
“Do you have any theories?”
“Once I could get them both to stop trashing the other during my interviews, I got some decent information,” Graham continued. “Maybe it’s too much Love Villa with you guys, but I’m leaning toward one of the affair partners. Maybe they hired someone to put this in the mail after they were scorned.”
Nope. James wasn’t thinking about the plastic scent of Adele’s lotions right now. He looked down at his printouts, then looked up to see Bradley looking his way. Bradley raised his eyebrows and James gave a sharp shake of his head.
But then he looked over at Graham and Amelia, who seemed to be having their own silent conversation.
“Graham, let’s talk after,” Amelia said, her voice breezily professional.
“It’s not her.”
“James-”
“She doesn’t work in cryptids,” James said. “She told me what she does, it’s all potions.”
“It’s okay, we’ll discuss it later.”
“She doesn’t use cryptids for anything. She would have told me because she’d think it was funny,” James continued with a sick laugh, accidentally catching Bradley’s eye again before looking away quickly. “She did that. You know she told me not to sleep? Just because it was funny? I still have trouble sleeping, but I don’t think it’s that anymore.”
“James.”
“She’d do something like that. Or- or she’d make me put my hand in its mouth or-”
“James, stop.”
He looked up at Amelia, who looked far too concerned right now. “You good?” she asked.
“Fine.”
“Let’s move on,” she said. “Me and Graham can talk about it after the meeting.”
He nodded, looking away from her and meeting Madelyn’s eye this time. She held his gaze, looking worried. He looked away.
“I’ve got Lancaster Green next on the agenda,” she said. “We can go back to it.”
“No, I’m fine.”
If he was so fine, he needed to just look down at these printouts and focus. “There’s no sign of anything paranormal,” he said. “Nothing’s getting picked up on any of the sensors.”
“That can’t be right,” Amelia said. “There’s been so many events.”
“Maybe the sensors aren’t set up right,” James suggested. “I wasn’t here when they arrived, I could have messed them up.”
“Unless you broke it in half, you can’t mess it up,” Bradley said. “It’s a dot and an adhesive.”
His voice was heavy with skepticism and he looked irritated, but there was still something in his expression James couldn’t quite name. He didn’t actually give a shit if James lived or died, right?
Then James remembered the feeling of landing on the kitchen floor, terrified, but safe with Bradley pinning him there, and he was immediately ashamed of that thought. They were friends. What the hell was wrong with him?
“James.”
Amelia had said his name at least twice as he looked blankly at Bradley. He looked over and he could tell by her face that he didn’t look good.
“Do you need a break?” she asked.
“No,” James said immediately. “No, I’m fine. Um, whatever it is at Lancaster Green isn’t showing up on our sensors.”
“Alright,” Amelia said. “What do you think we should do next?”
“We should, um…” James forced himself to think. “Security footage,” he said finally. “We should try to get access to more of their footage. If they’re saying it’s showing up in, um, in pictures, then it should show up on video, right? We need to check it again.”
“Works for me,” she said. “Gabriella, you go with James.”
He did not need his younger cousin babysitting him. “I figure Gabriella can do a round of interviews while you do the security cameras?” Amelia asked James.
He needed to get his shit together and stop assuming the worst of his friends. “Okay.”
“Alright, we’re done.”
He was about to get up and try to be completely normal, but then Amelia was in front of him, close enough to touch, but giving him the courtesy of not doing so. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said quietly, looking serious enough that he had to take note. “I think you should go home and rest.”
“Amelia, no, I’m fine. I-”
She held up a hand and he stopped. “Or you can take an hour off. Go sleep on the couch in your office or take one of the rooms or something. Then go to Lancaster Green.”
He wasn’t going to win this one and he’d rather stay here. “Okay,” he relented.
Bradley was back in the back bedroom and James was pretty sure that Graham had just gone into the pink bedroom to prepare for his next round of interviews with the truth-cryptid couple. Leaving the gray bedroom, which James wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle.
“Are you going to be in the office?” he asked.
“Yeah, but take the couch.”
He was about to continue arguing for reasons he wasn’t completely sure about, but stopped at the look on her face. “Okay,” he said instead.
***
He actually managed to get a half an hour of sleep while he was in there, waking up to his alarm an hour later. He felt a little more with it by this point and apparently Amelia was satisfied, because she let him leave with Gabriella.
James could tell that Gabriella wanted to talk to him, but they were quiet as she drove to Lancaster Green. It wasn’t until they pulled into the parking lot that she spoke.
“Who am I interviewing?”
Shit, that was a good question. James pulled out his notebook and flipped through to his notes. Everyone they’d spoken to already was crossed out and there were only a couple names left.
Who, of course, ended up being out today. Belinda was apologetic and offered to call them to see if they’d be willing to talk anyway, but Gabriella smoothly waved off her offer. They’d come back, she said. Besides, they needed to see the security footage while they were here.
There were no cameras in any of the residents’ rooms, but someone had gone back and noted general times in the security footage where residents or staff claimed to have seen the ghost in other areas of the building. So Belinda got them set up on a computer in the back room behind the reception desk to go through them.
James could tell that Gabriella was watching him a little closer than usual, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be irritated. It was pointless. He was all too aware of how much she’d taken care of him lately. So he let it go as they started the videos.
“Wait,” he said after an hour of looking at empty rooms.
Gabriella stopped the video. “What?”
“Go back.”
She rewound a few seconds and started it again as James stared, unblinking at the screen. There was a quick flash of darkness in the corner of the rec room and both he and the old man on the screen stared at it.
“Did you see that?” he asked Gabriella.
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Go back again. Here, can I take it?”
She moved out of the way and he took the keyboard, carefully rewinding the video by about ten seconds. He moved slowly through each second of the scene, pausing when the blurry cloud appeared. There were only two seconds of it before it disappeared again, but it was there.
“Right here,” he said, pausing it again and pointing to the ghost on the screen.
Gabriella frowned. “I don’t see anything,” she said.
“Right here, the big shadow.”
“There’s no shadow there.”
James looked at the screen again. There was no way his brain was playing tricks on him. It was right there.
“Hang on,” she said. “Didn’t you say that some of the staff and patients saw it and some didn’t?”
“Yeah,” he said with relief.
She hurried out the door while he stared at the screen. There it was, some kind of life form that didn’t give any indication of its presence on any of their equipment. He could see it, his cousin could not.
“Yes, that’s it!”
James jumped and turned in his chair to see a young nurse standing in the doorway, looking at the monitor. “That’s the thing me and Mr. Charles saw,” she said.
“Can you touch the screen and show me where it is?” James asked as Gabriella watched.
The woman confidently pointed to the exact spot that James had. “Thank you,” James said, and she nodded and left the room.
“Thoughts?” James asked Gabriella.
“Not a ghost,” she said.
“Not a ghost.”
“But then what could it be?”
He smiled and could see the relief in her as she smiled back. “I guess we’ll have to find out.”
***
The next day, James could tell that Amelia was as lost as he was on what this thing could be.
“I mean, it’s always possible that there’s something our sensors can’t pick up,” she said as the two of them sat on the couch in the office.
She wouldn’t sit behind the desk when she was meeting with James in here. He could understand. He didn’t agree with it, because she was the captain now. But he could see the awkward position she was in.
“Maybe,” he said, reaching down and pulling Fang into his lap as she walked in through the open office door. She was warm and solid and not running away from him, even if she didn’t seem thrilled with the relocation. “I’m not sure if it’s a ghost, but it doesn’t seem particularly evil. There’s no heaviness to it, no sense of dread. Even the people who were dying didn’t seem harmed. One was afraid, but others were just, I don’t know, kind of fascinated? Or accepting, you know what I mean?”
Mrs. Richards had been so at peace after she saw it. Death didn’t have to be a villain, it was just a force of nature and she’d understood that.
“Alright,” Amelia said. “I saw in your notes that you’re planning to go back in a few days? Good, that gives us time to research some possibilities and see what other information we can get from them.”
He’d rather just keep going now, but they needed to let the data continue to collect. And research was fine. It would keep him occupied.
“I also had another idea,” Amelia said, and by the way she was looking at him, he could tell that this had nothing to do with Lancaster Green.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Do you remember that exercise we did to sever your connection with Robin?”
James’s fingers stilled in Fang’s silky fur. That had been nearly two years ago, but James remembered it well. He’d kept seeing what might or might not have been Robin’s ghost, and Amelia had suggested an exercise she’d learned at one of her many workshops as a possible solution. A peaceful, but intense guided meditation and a visualization exercise designed to help mentally disconnect from another person. It had left him vomiting into a little trashcan out in the living room when it was over. But it had worked.
Mostly. When he had needed it to work, it worked.
“Yeah?”
“I thought it might be a good idea to do another one.”
“With Adele.”
“Yeah.”
That panicky feeling was setting in again, but it was a good idea. At the very least, it might help with the nightmares. And the rambling outbursts in meetings.
“Okay,” he said. “No, I think that’s a good idea.”
She looked at the clock. “It’s noon now. Want to take lunch and then give it a shot?”
