Tattered tapes and messy paperwork scattered all over the rickety hotel room table as Benny settled in a chair to review footage on his laptop. Between his captures and those from Kylie's cameras, he hoped to find something that would validate what they'd felt in that house.

But though both cameras had caught the device shooting across the area and smashing against the wall, the angles didn't show Benny's hand well enough to ascertain that he hadn't done it himself. That, coupled with the voices on the recorder, wouldn't tip the scales in his favor; if anything, they would worsen his chances at convincing Kylie's bosses.

It had taken Kylie so much time to sway them into letting Benny onto the crime scene to work his magic. If he couldn't produce results... he worried she'd be fired. He worried she'd bet too much on him, and he slouched in his seat and sighed at the idea of her telling him. "Benny, your failure has caused me to become unemployed. Thanks for helping me lose my dream job." To see her eyes filling with such deception and her lips down-turning would hurt him more than he cared to admit.

More than once in their lifetime as friends, he'd heard defeat in her voice. There was that time when he'd dropped out of college, or when he'd confessed he was obsessed with the occult, and when he'd chosen said obsession over her, deciding to pursue it without remorse.

I can't bear to witness her disappointment again.

He rewound the tape he'd been working on and analyzed the moment the device turned off. That part was significant, as he'd been standing in a manner that showed his hand on camera, and how his fingers were far from the buttons. And yet he had an inkling it wouldn't suffice, either. Machines malfunctioned, batteries drained, and the FBI would rather believe in mechanical deficiencies than in someone turning the recorder off.

Again, he rewound the footage to a few seconds before the device flicked off. He zoomed in, curious to see how much detail he might have captured and hoping for the tiniest sign of something supernatural—and gasped.

"Oh... oh, no way." He leaned closer to his screen and his eyes widened as he paused the tape to better gauge what he'd witnessed, what appeared to be floating near the recorder. "Is that... a hand?"

In the video, the faintest trace of slender fingers wrapped around the device. It was a see-through arm with hard-to-discern limbs, but with a bit of manipulation and light changes and editing, he might be able to obtain a better view. So he pressed a few buttons and opened a few programs and got to work, desperate to prove Kylie's bosses wrong.

Before long, he had a clearer picture of the scene. A thumb was propped against the off button, attached to the fuzzy outline of a wrist, and an even fuzzier outline of an arm.

"That can be used," he said, patting himself on the back. "It's still not enough, but it's a start."

He jotted down a few notes to add to his official report—Kylie had begged him to type one up for her superiors—and swiveled his chair towards the bed, where he'd laid out all his research.

The story still baffled him. Jade's supposed suicide, muffled by her parents because they were low-key celebrities and didn't want to make a scandal. Stella's potential involvement in setting her own house aflame, killing herself and her own mother in the process. And Arielle, found in an abandoned home in a forest off the side of the road in Georgia—far from her Columbus, Ohio adjacent dwelling—her chest sliced open by mirror shards.

The whole thing was a plot straight out of a badly filmed horror movie. None of it made sense, especially since all three girls had no reason to commit suicide. They weren't traumatized or bullied or shamed, and all three seemed to lead decent, mostly happy lives. And yet, most investigators had turned their attention towards the notion of a suicide pact between three best friends, to be carried out at different times. Sure, Benny had read about such things—with teenagers. Arielle, Jade, and Stella were all in their early twenties, with established jobs and hopes and dreams.

Arielle's dad reported her missing a day after her last text message. "I know her," he'd said to the police, "and though I'm positive she's messed up because of Stella's death, it's unlike her to not give me news."

Though it took days for officers to take the situation seriously, they soon tracked Arielle's phone to her car, discarded in a rest-stop parking lot. The search expanded and grew more sinister as they prowled through the forest and stumbled upon the house. They fought to open it for several days, as the front door's lock was so stiff, so old and rusted that no regular equipment would destroy it. When the bolt finally gave in, and the officers entered... there lay the answer to Arielle's disappearance.

And yet her recovery had led to more questions.

Kylie told him the house wasn't even documented. No one knew it was there, as if no one had ever ventured into that woods and discovered a noticeable place of dwelling that lingered there. How had the state missed that? How were they unaware of it? Who had the former inhabitants been, and where had they gone? Where were they now?

It prompted Benny to wonder if the entire forest was haunted. If somehow, specters protected the area and didn't allow anyone to wander within to locate the building, to discover its secrets. Kylie had also mentioned that the officers scouting through the woods before finding the house had felt things. Gusts of wind whipping into their backs and nudging them in opposite directions, whistling whispers, areas charged with an icy quality that contradicted the usual mugginess.

To Benny, that meant a haunting.

Once they pried into the house and discovered Arielle's body, her father flew down to Georgia and begged officials not to rule her death as a suicide. "My daughter would never. She's been through too much, she's been too strong, to take her own life."

Detectives and agents were wary, but Benny believed the man. He'd done extensive research on Arielle before leaving Ohio, and even spoke with her father, who gave him access to her personal space and belongings. She wasn't as settled, as fulfilled as her two friends, but she wasn't unstable enough to end her existence. And despite losing many people in her family and close entourage, she wasn't the type to discourage, to give up.

Arielle did not kill herself.

"Plus, the shards..." He picked up the paper from a coroner who'd certified there was no way Arielle had drilled the sharp mirror pieces into herself. The velocity, the angle of the stabs, the amount of wounds; she couldn't have done such things on her own.

And still... the FBI wouldn't change its mind. Kylie had pushed and pushed for further investigating, and beseeched them to consider other options. To consider a more unreal yet more and more plausible paranormal explanation. To hire Benny.

He smiled at the memory. She'd thought of him, and that filled his chest with hope. Not for the investigation, but for them. Despite their differences, despite their distant friendship and the bitterness from how they'd left things, she'd thought of him. And she finally believed in what he did for a living—she finally agreed that he was legitimate.

He wasn't sure how she'd pulled it off, how she'd eventually coerced the FBI into barricading the area for him, permitting him to step into an active investigation and set up all his equipment and disrupt their progress. But so many times, in the past few days, he'd thanked her under his breath. He'd craved to hug her, kiss her, show her his true gratitude, but he never crossed any boundaries. This case would make or break his relationship with Kylie, and he'd do nothing to jeopardize his chances.

And the cherry on top of it all was... his own career was on the line. If he could shed light on the situation, if he could prove Arielle was there, and that she hadn't killed herself, that her friends hadn't killed themselves... he might become nationally recognized. He might show the world ghosts and the afterlife exist. And that had been a goal of his for as long as he could remember.

A Polaroid picture on the bedspread drew him out of his dreams of grandeur.

The house.

It was a faded white and red building with a brick foundation, and stood out in a sea of tall trees, well-maintained considering how old experts assumed the building to be. Kylie claimed they'd said it was built in the late sixteen hundreds or early seventeen hundreds, and it might have been deserted after a few murders occurred there. The historian she'd gotten the information from was bewildered by the structure and how preserved it was, despite how long it had remained concealed under thick beds of leaves.

"There could definitely be ghosts from those days, too," Benny said to himself, discarding the picture. Any time he dared a peek at it, it made him shudder.

He returned to the table and glanced at his notes. Stretching his fingers, he arched his spine and sat up straight as he began to type everything up.

"... heard a scream while we were upstairs," he shivered at the recollection, "... sensed a presence all over... cold and dreary, not necessarily negative but ominous..."

As he typed, flashes of the day flickered to life in his mind. His knees had been wobbly when he first passed the threshold of the house. Almost at once, he'd sensed a depressing vibe in the atmosphere, a hanging dread, and a lot of unanswered questions. A tug in his stomach had drawn him upstairs, and with every step deeper into the building he'd fought nausea and an overwhelming pull to run, to leave, to never come back. But he'd battled that urge; he'd never walked out on an investigation before, and certainly not one like this, that could determine the longevity of his career.

And then the device turning off, and launching out of his grasp—that was a highlight of his experience. It had spooked him and traumatized Kylie, but it was so significant, so meaningful. "Maybe I'll get the spirit to do it again tomorrow," he said, concluding his report by typing the date at the bottom and shutting off his laptop.

He took a quick shower—struggling not to think of Kylie doing the same thing in her hotel bathroom—and threw on some sweats before slipping under the scratchy, Motel Six-style blankets. The digital clock showed one AM, and he yawned as he settled against the pillow. This would have been a perfect moment to investigate. Under the moon, when the ghosts awoke, when the world was asleep, and things meandered about in the dark. When the gloomy witching hour was close, and activity was at its peak, and creatures ventured out of their hiding spots.

He had half a mind to steal Kylie's car keys and sneak over to the house. But now that he knew there were cameras all over, he wouldn't have lasted long before FBI agents stormed the place and hauled him out by his hair.

No... I'll wait. But soon, soon I'll get us some answers.