Slave: The Ghost of Cambria - Book Two

Chapter Thirteen

It wasn't merely that she had allowed herself to believe Valon would speak through the Ouija board, Kristen had expected to hear his voice. But as the evening continued, and Paula attempted her own fruitless invitations to the ghost, the stillness of the Ouija board became infuriating to the psychologist. Kristen knew Valon was in this house, and his silence aggravated her such that she could barely speak to the paranormal talk-show host when they parted ways.

"Also, the list said that you shouldn't store the planchette with the board," Paula said as she passed over the threshold on the way out.

"You got it," Kristen said as cordially as she was capable of and shut the front door a little too aggressively.

When the woman was down the steps, Kristen gathered the board game and folded it into the glossy cardboard box. She threw the message indicator in with the board, closed the box and chucked the whole thing in Tony's worksite garbage pail.

Kristen, at last, let Penelope into the house, stoking to a riot of joy from the lonely animal. She directed the Husky to the guest room, where Kristen closed the door behind them both and quickly undressed for bed. When they were both snuggled on the air mattress, Kristen used her tablet to start searching in earnest for the previous owner of the house, Pamela Hill. While most of the results in Google were for useless for-pay information sources, there was one link that seemed to promise a wealth of current information on the woman. Kristen then did something she had promised herself she'd never do again.

In the App Store, she searched for Facebook and tapped to begin downloading the program. Kristen had only tried Facebook once before when the social media application debuted a decade earlier. Within a week, Kristen had discovered how many of her clients were thrilled by the prospect of being her "friend" in the latest virtual world. However, the role of a psychotherapist is precisely not to be their client's friend, but rather their doctor - a guide to achieving mental health. Still, the desire to connect with someone who's job is to be on their side often proves highly desirable, even if true friendship is not possible. Kristen found that when she blocked certain individuals from her page, they were able to stalk her through the pages of her friends. Considering who some of those individuals were, allowing even insignificant interaction could place Kristen at risk. So, she pulled the plug on the social networking program and relied on friends to keep her up to date as the social media giant reshaped the very definition of communication.

When the application was up, Kristen began to create an account, only to find that Facebook still recognized her from her cellphone number. It promptly reinitialized her old page as if Kristen had never told it to delete all her information in the first place. I won't be on here long enough for it to matter, she thought.

When the page was ready, Kristen typed the name, Pamela Hill, into the search engine. Within seconds, seventeen women with the same name filled the screen. Tapping on the distance icon, the list resorted itself to place an eighty-six-year-old woman who lived in San Luis Obispo at the top. Kristen felt chills when she saw the woman's face. Her red hair was pure white, but the face was too similar to be anyone else. She had found Pamela Hill, and half of her postings were geo-tagged from a place called Sunset Villas Retirement Community.

***

The receptionist at Sunset Villas was a young blonde woman named Jessica who demonstrated visual signs of chemical addiction. She had a slender frame with the waste of a twenty-something, but her skin looked like she'd recently been turned into a zombie. Jessica's blue eyes were massively dilated, the skin around them was dehydrated with a sickly pallor, and she was fidgeting nervously through a series of unidentifiable tasks.

Methamphetamines, thought Kristen.

"Hey, hello, welcome!" the receptionist said with an explosive start.