The lights of Lakewood

"Have you seen him since...?" Alan asked, breaking the long silence hanging like a thick curtain between them. He glanced at his watch then at Lena again, his voice disturbing her reverie.

He had been observing her, puzzled by her quiet thoughtfulness. His eyes kept strolling to Lena from the screen of his computer, he couldn't focus on doing what he was supposed to be doing-- replying to all the comments and emails their ghost-hunting team received after posting their last video on an online video sharing platform. Thousands of their followers saw it overnight and the comments seemed infinite. Like every year, people were going crazy about ghost sightings this close to Halloween.

Finally, Alan forced himself to tear his gaze off his friend and typed another reply. His friend... He would have made her so much more than a friend and a colleague, if only she let him. But Lena only had eyes for Josh, the last piece of their ghost hunting trio, ever since the three of them met in the first year of university, a few years ago. And Josh... was Josh. For some reason unknown even to Alan, he refused to see in Lena anything more than a friend. It was typical of him to disappear without a trace for a couple of days each time they finished working on a case. Lena had nothing to worry about, but she just would not listen to him.

Lena sighed and shook her head in response to his question. She pulled her gaze off the window of their office, Alan's sitting room, sprinkled with cold, late October rain, meeting her friend's eyes.

"Josh called me when he got back yesterday. He was supposed to come over for dinner but then he changed his mind at the last moment." She shrugged. "You know him, he's always so... distant this time of the year."

Alan nodded. They were all 'sensitive' and could perceive paranormal activity, but Josh was the only true medium, the gifted one. The weeks close to Halloween, when paranormal occurrences were always stronger and more frequent, he was never quite himself.

Lena shivered and reached for the cardigan hanging on the back of her chair before she started taking another of her cameras apart, cleaning its parts, then reassembling it to keep both her fingers and her mind busy. The night vision infrared camera was a great piece of technology capable of taking pictures even in complete darkness, capturing paranormal entities.

She was the photographer and the presenter, the face and the voice of their team, like Alan was the cameraman and the gadget specialist, and Josh their location seeker and medium.

They both turned to the door the moment it opened, letting Josh enter the office.

"What? Did something happen?" He asked, looking from Lena's relieved expression to Josh, who smiled, shaking his head.

"See? You had nothing to worry about. Told ya..." Alan told Lena, but she did not hear him, her whole attention was on Josh.

"You did not sleep again." Lena muttered in a sigh, observing the dark rings under his eyes.

"I did. An hour, maybe two..."

For him, during this time of the year it was normal. As Halloween approached, Josh could feel the door between the realms of the dead and the living opening, letting those from the other side seep back into this world. Some were so strong that they could move between the worlds whenever they wanted to, but most of them had to  wait for Halloween, and a few days around.

Josh smiled at his two best friends warmly. No one ever wanted to believe him until he met Lena and Alan, in the first year of parapsychology. They had never separated since and now, nearly four years after their graduation, their three person ghost hunting agency was a blooming business, their income coming mainly from one of the television channels turning their adventures into a reality show, and a magazine popular nationwide buying their photographs and articles.