Paranormal Summer (Indigo Moon Rising) (15 page)

The picture changed and the audio continued, "63 degrees on the front porch. 61..........61..........62 degrees in the big room. 59......59...58 degrees in the little room. Sonya, do you want to ask questions?”

“Hi. It’s us again. We have come back to talk to you. This thing I have in my hand will make a copy of your voice in case we can't hear you with our ears. Jillian has a camera to make a picture of what we can or can't see of you. [
Why?
] What Ryan has in his hand can measure your energy and temperature. So we are here to help you. Sometimes I can make things move or disappear. Can you do that? Can you make noises that we can hear?
[I don’t know.]
Can you just talk to us and tell us what happened and what we can do to help you?" They clearly heard a faint voice where Ryan had highlighted the 2 audio segments.

"60, 59,57,55,50,44, 44 degrees. The emf is starting to move. Thank you. You're doing it." Ryan's recorded voice was interrupted by the sound of the camera shutter. The photos changed and there were the ones that Jillian shot out of the wall into the garden of blackness. In the second photo you could just make out a mist, but by the 5th picture it had grown more solid.

"Everything was fine,"
said in a soft voice.
"
The rains were over and the sun was warming the earth for the plants to grow. Elizabeth was playing."

"And then you had a visitor." Ryan said as the recording continued. "You took her into the house and made something for her. She paid you. When you came out, you didn't see Elizabeth. You started looking around, thinking she was playing hide and go seek. But Elizabeth was nowhere to be found. You saw something moving in the woods. It was
that
man. The woman saw him too and ran. You looked everywhere for your baby. She was gone. You kept looking and looking, everywhere. When darkness began to fall, a mob of townspeople came here asking where Elizabeth was. What did it matter to them? They did not want you in their town. They weren't there to help you find her, either. They tried taking you back, but you ran and hid. No one knew the woods like you did. You loved every inch of the land. The husband that followed his wife here threw the lantern to burn the house down. Emmy, he did not take Elizabeth. That's what you were thinking. He had just followed his wife here. When you came back outside and you couldn't find her, he wanted to get rid of you and told the people in town that he saw you murder her.

"But his wife, she was here to get help. They wanted a baby so badly. They couldn't do it on their own. I gave her herbs to help them conceive. Pliney Howard tried to kill me?"  She started screaming "Elizabeth.....Mommy’s here. Please, where are you??"
 
The recording was so loud and frenzied, peaking the audio waves and distorting them. What made it even more chilling was that they knew that this was not Jillian's voice. The three sat fixated on the screen, eyes wide and jaws dropped in disbelief.

"Thank you Emmy, I think that is all we can do tonight." Sonya said.

Ryan said, "Did you hear that? I heard laughing, a child's laugh from there. Elizabeth, is that you? "And again you could hear the camera shutter. The following photos were of something moving across the doorway, and moving out towards the pond, and it was small. But after further inspection they decided it was a moth. A Luna Moth. Jillian didn't say a word.
That can't be Twila - that was just a dream
. The video was over.

"What do you think?" Ryan asked the girls.

"Oh my God, that's incredible. It almost doesn't even seem real." Sonya said.

"I can't imagine anyone debunking this." Jillian said. "Mists in photos, the evp's, the emf meter peaking and temperature dropping."

"What about the book and our personal experiences?" Ryan said, then pointing to the papers he had spread out. "Now here is something else exciting. See this; it is the original 800 acres AC had. Well, from some of these documents I can see where some of the acreage was handed down to family members, and some was sold off to other farmers. But see this." Now he was pointing to a current map. "This is GG's. Their land butts right up to it! How cool is that? So tonight I am going to try and ask whose land it is without giving anything away. I don't think they would approve of me being there."

Ryan was still looking down at the papers and said, "Are you needed in the house, Sonya?"

Jillian was still looking at the map and tried to focus outside of herself. She felt a 'presence.’ "Oh, I know someone is there. Is that Mrs. Baker? She feels...kind of stern, everything has its place, an order, kinda OCD?"

"You pegged her," Sonya said, thinking she had been the only one that could feel that from her. "I guess I had better get in," she said as Ryan put the copies from the library on the living room table and grabbed his laptop and jacket. Lucky jumped from the couch onto the table, making himself comfortable, sprawled out on the papers. Ryan and Jillian showed themselves out and he walked to the street. Here they had to go opposite directions.

"So now what do we do?” Jillian said looking down, thinking about the next few hours. Maybe they could go for a walk or get something to eat at his friend’s restaurant.

"I know we have to find Elizabeth so she and Emmy can cross to...wherever it is they need to go. I know it's up to the three of us to do this and the sooner the better. I don't know why they haven't found each other. Does that mean she's lost somewhere else? Let's plan on meeting up tomorrow and put a plan together. I'll talk to you later,” he said, turning his back and walking away.

"K, see ya," Jillian said, feeling an emptiness.
Well, now that didn't go as I would have planned.
Sighing deeply she thought
, Ah, maybe I will have time to look for Amanda before it gets dark.

As she walked up to the house, she started thinking about what it must have been like growing up here, with six kids.
Noisy probably,
she thought.
But what about family picnics, or Halloween? Christmas in the enormous living room... They probably cut down
a
10 foot tree every year and the kids got to do all of the decorating.
Sledding down Cemetery Hill or skating on the pond in winter. The meadow was probably beautiful then, and they had horses and goats and chickens. Not a working farm like where dad grew up, but it must have been great.

Grampa Seymour was a pharmacist and Gramma Adeline was an herbalist.
What a perfect combination,
she thought. She could remember gramma in a red and white checkered dress, red lipstick and red hair; she was wearing a white sweater and white sandals dancing with grampa a few years before they passed away. Grampa Seymour always wore a bow tie, any color in the rainbow, but never black. And one of those pocket protectors.
My grampa, the hippie geek,
she thought! They used to sit in white rocking chairs on the wrap around porch for hours drinking sassafras tea. They would allow the grandkids to run wild, knowing that they would all be going home soon.

Jillian walked in the back door. Silence. She realized no one was home.
That's okay,
she thought.
It's getting dark, and I wanted to check out Amanda's room tonight anyway.
She walked through the house and stood at the bottom of the beautiful wooden banister, looking up the stairs. She started climbing and stopped at the first floor. She looked down the hallway to the right, knowing that her aunt and uncle’s bedroom was down that way. These hallways were also lined with frames. Sighing, she headed up to the second floor, not remembering if she had ever been up there before. At the top of the landing, she looked both directions and had to decide which direction to go. As she stood there, out of the blue she thought she heard piano music, but not from the library this time. It was from down the hall to the right.

As she looked into the first room she came to, she found it filled with furniture covered with sheets, kinda ghostly like, maybe another suitable place to investigate later, so she closed the door. As her fingertips touched the next doorknob it seemed to open on its own. Here was a young girl's bedroom!
Oh yes
, Jillian felt it. It had a single bed with a white crocheted coverlet on it. Hanging in the windows were white lace curtains and a window seat with pillows. One of the walls housed a beautiful built-in bookshelf, full of books and small knick-knacks. There was a small table with three chairs, and it looked like a tea party was about to begin. On the floor was a large, blank canvas, and there were hand painted pictures on the wall. One was a close up of a sunflower. Another had the ocean and its crashing waves on the right, and a girl with a white horse on a cliff on the left.

S
itting on the bed was a stuffed rabbit. Jillian picked it up to read the engraved heart shaped pendant around its neck, "Mirabella." On the antique white and gold trimmed dresser were ribbons and awards. There was a picture of Amanda in a beautiful white dress sitting at a shiny, black piano, her feet dangling, unable to touch the floor. There was also a cassette player sitting there. Jillian pushed Play and a beautiful piano ballad began. As Jillian stood there taking this all in, she noticed a journal on the bookshelf. The spine was dark red with gold lettering. MY STORY, the same as what Jillian's mother gave her for her secret birthday gift, the one she was using to record her dreams in. She picked it up and opened to the first page. In amazement she turned a few pages and read. Turned a few more pages and read. Her jaw dropped. She began to wrinkle her brow and shake her head. She swallowed hard and said “But….what…how?”

"Oh there you are!" a voice said that startled the bejeezus out of her. Uncle Tim was standing in the doorway "We brought home dinner... you get to be a guinea pig. The What Not Shop gave us some samples of their snacks tonight."

Holding her chest and catching her breath, Jillian nodded. "Okay, okay I'll be down in a minute," she said turning to shut off the cassette player.

“You okay?” Uncle Tim asked, not knowing if it were funny or not.

“Oh yeah, it’s all good!” she said as she stuck the journal in the back of her pants and followed her uncle down the stairs a minute or two later. She stopped at her room and put the journal under her pillow, picked up Tiffany Marie and took her to dinner.

Later on she crawled into bed.
Boy, I wonder what all that organic and healthy stuff is gonna do to my dreams. Oh, Amanda's journal!
she thought and pulled it out from under her pillow. "Tiffany, do you want to talk about my day, or do you want me to read to you?" she asked.

"Meow," Tiffany said.

"Oh, we should talk? Okay. Now, tell me why, when I dream, I perceive the animals talk in... human?” she asked, staring at the tiny kitten. Tiffany stared at her and began to purr.

“
Aahh, you are still a kitten, and the only language you know is happiness, how to purr! That explains it all! Well, something else I learned today, a piece of useful information, actually from three people, or ghosts...I need to treat them with respect because they were once people, too. They still have feelings, even though they don't have bodies. It seems like some might have a purpose with us that are still living, to help us. Some might want to teach us or share. But they can hurt as much if not more than we do. It must be awful to die and have unfinished business. Emmy has been agonizing over the loss of her daughter for who knows how long? A hundred years? Has Elizabeth been roaming around looking for her mother all these years, too? I know we will help them find each other." As Jillian said these words, Tiffany Marie took her respective position on her chest and began to purr loudly. Jillian smiled.
This right here is my heaven,
she thought, not knowing where her next adventure might take her.