“I’ll stay with you, I’d like to see this side of things,” Sully offered quickly. After the ghost overload in the museum I couldn’t blame him.
“We should leave now, I’ll need to make a command center on sight,” Ryker said as he glanced at his watch. He looked me in the eyes and smirked. “It won’t be as fun as the sheriff’s office, but I’m sure we can find somewhere.”
“I don’t even want to know why you’re smiling like that,” Sully intoned. “But we’d be better off in the museum, unfortunately. They’ve got the most updated power grid. And there was a conference room we can repurpose in the employee hall.”
“Good idea, even if I don’t want to go back in there again,” Ryker said, holding out his hand for a fist bump. Sully squinted his eyes before returning it with a satisfied smile on his face. Pride swelled in my chest. He was fitting in so well and it was nice to see him learning the trade. I hated the thought of him not hunting with us full time but I hoped he at least joined us on more in the future.
Most of our equipment was still locked up in the museum so we loaded up into the SUV and made the quick trip across town.
Lincoln opened the door for me, unbuckling me and brushing a kiss over my lips. His dark eyes met mine before he called out to everyone else.
“Tomorrow night is a non-investigation night. We need a free night before the guys arrive anyway,” he declared. “The bar served food, so we could hang there or go out of town.”
“I vote for the bar, since we can walk there,” Ethan answered.
“Sounds good to me,” I agreed. The idea of greasy bar food, some drinks, and a night of dancing sounded fucking amazing. Mental note—set up some date nights. Forgetting to do our mental checkouts from the investigation would have us all tense and cranky. I’d promised myself we wouldn’t do that to ourselves.
Walking inside the museum had me hesitant at first, but as I glanced around I realized it didn’t feel heavy in here. Something I didn’t notice until they lifted me into the air last time.
We followed Ryker to the conference room so he had extra hands to help bring out the equipment from the storage room we’d claimed. When we were fitted with comms and a few different tools, we finally made our way out of the side entrance that led to the dock.
The sound of crashing waves was so loud here and I could feel the energy rising as we walked toward the large ship. Lincoln’s hand rested on my lower back, ready to save me if an asshole ghost tried to pitch me into the dark sea. I’d have thought it was overprotective if not for the fact they’d done anExorcistand lifted me in the air only a day ago.
“Does anyone remember the way to the machine room?” I asked as we walked into the living quarters and offices floor of the ship.
“Go down,” Ethan deadpanned.
“Cute,” I shot back at him with an eye roll before clicking on my glasses. “Hey Darklings! We’re back for another, likely exciting, night aboard the crashed ship. Ryker and Sully are back on command so it will be me, Ben, Ethan, and Lincoln descending to the mechanical room tonight. I’ve got a hunch that something more happened here than we’ve learned from our research, and I want to get to the bottom of it!”
“Here’s a ladder,” Ethan said. He was the first to head down and I quickly followed, taking the lead when I reached the lower level. Whoever had done the renovations on the ships had put signs up so we followed them, descending once more before I was back in the all too familiar hallway.
“This is the exact room I woke up in that strange night we wrote about on the blog. It was dark and creepy, I’m glad I’m not alone this time Darklings,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady.
The room was silent and I walked to the middle between all of the large engines before dropping onto the ground.
“We’re going to do some EVP and we’ve got Ethan on thermals, so shout out any questions you want us to ask in the comments and the guys will read them out loud to us. We’ll try and do a few along with ours,” Ben said as he settled next to me. When all of us were comfortable, or as comfortable as you can get on a cold metal floor with the rocking of waves throwing you off balance, we began.
“We are here to communicate with anyone willing to talk. I’m going to set a device down on the ground. Look for the red light and speak into it, we’ll hear you,” I called out as I put the recorder down in front of us.
After a few beats of pure silence Lincoln chimed in. “We know something happened to the crew. Can you tell us how you all died?”
“Not found.” The answer came from a deep male voice.
“Your bodies weren’t found?” I gasped. “For the record, Darklings, every single shred of information we found on this ship said the crew was dead long before the boat drifted to shore. It hit a few rocks when it got here. Navy investigators took over then but the boat was abandoned after, tied in red tape until it was auctioned off. Yet no one ever came to claim it and it became Haunted Histories’s property after years of resting on the shore.”
“No. Can’t go.”
“You can’t see the light?” Ben asked. “If you can, go to it. You deserve more than being stuck here indefinitely.”
The comm crackled in my ear as Ryker spoke up. “The comments are asking if they drowned.”
“Did you drown in the ocean?” I asked.
“No.” The answer was immediate. Whoever was speaking was also a male, just with a lighter tone, not the same as the first answer.
“Then where are your bodies?” I asked. Every single answer had us further from what I expected. Which also meant that vision wasn’t of them here in Serenity Harbor, it was them long before.
“Cave,” the deep voice answered this time.