Shade

Chapter 11 - Radio Static

Alessa Langston-Clarke's hands were bandaged. She kept a roll of gauze in her purse.

"I'm fine," she kept repeating. "It happens sometimes. I'm a medium. The spirits use me to tell their stories."

She was, in many ways, in better condition than me. I was thoroughly spooked. She had cut her hands just as I had in my vision at the lake. It was a detail I hadn't mentioned to Hector when we corresponded prior to his arrival. She had mentioned Molly and Arthur by name. While Alessa was unassuming, wacky even, I no longer had any doubts of her abilities.

I wasn't sure where Jonas stood, but Evelyn remained skeptical.

"It's probably fake blood," I heard her whisper. "Corn syrup and food-coloring."

We walked back towards the house as the sun started to set. Evelyn led us to her firing pits. She stood in front of them, her arms folded and full of contempt as if they had personally offended her.

"So, yeah, the only thing weird that for sure has been happening," she said, "is my work keeps coming out of the firing with a distinct skull burned into the side."

She reached onto one of her shelves and offered a vessel to Hector to hold. He took it and scanned it with his emf reader before handing it off to Alessa. She closed her eyes and felt its weight in her palms.

"Mmm. Mmm hmmm. There's definitely a heaviness with this," she said.

"Yeah, it's ceramic," replied Evelyn.

"Not a physical weight, but rather, a spiritual pressure." Alessa began to walk, making a perfect rectangle around the pits. "I see a woman, or something with the form of a woman in a dark dress. Pale skin, sunken eyes, blonde, wispy hair. There was a structure here... A shed. People died here. And now there are only ashes."

She stopped in her tracks. The evening wind stirred her hair.

"What is it, Alessa?" asked Hector.

Her eyes opened suddenly. "I think it's a demon."

"Maybe Andras again?" suggested Hector. "He does like to sow the seeds of discord."

He pulled out a leatherbound book and flipped through some pages before settling on one with an illustration. "Andras," it read, "The sixty-third spirit, The Great Marquis of Hell." The picture was of a naked man with the head of an owl riding a dark wolf. It felt too absurd for me to take it seriously.

"No," I said. "You kind of lost me. I don't think there's a demonic presence here. If anything, I feel like there's a memory being shown here, like a stage play and sometimes we get to watch it."

"Sometimes we get to be in it," added Jonas. I was happy to have him back me up.

"That's demonic possession," said Alessa. There was resolution in her voice. She wanted it to be a demon.

"Actually what Kit's referring to sounds a bit like a Shade," replied Hector. "Which is sometimes defined as a memory of a traumatic event that lingers in a space."

"Yes. That," I said with excitement. "What do we do about that?"

"Unfortunately, you just have to let them play out," he said. "There's no spirit involved to help move beyond or demon to exercise."

I shuddered. That wasn't at all what I wanted to hear.

"I think we should pull out the ghost box to be sure," said Alessa.

"Ghost box?" asked Evelyn. "Do I even want to know?"

A ghost box, as it turned out, was an old-fashioned radio that Hector had modified to constantly shift between stations and signals.