Spirit Breaker (8 page)

THE SCENIC DRIVE through the untamed canyons and folds of the Santa Ana foothills almost made Dr. Adira Austen forget the grim reason that brought her out here today.
 

Five weeks earlier Airblue Flight 191, headed from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, had gone down when the plane slammed into a cloud-covered mountain ridge. All 162 passengers and crew perished that day.
 

At twenty-nine, Adira was the youngest parapsychologist working at the Nexus Foundation, and her objective was to scan the crash site for signs of survival. Not survival in the traditional sense—the bodies of everyone onboard the flight had long been cleared from the debris field. She was searching for evidence that human consciousness could survive after death.
 

She was hunting for ghosts.

In the past, most of Nexus’ research had focused on the study of reincarnation and near death experiences, where subjects could be interviewed and records compared. Investigating hauntings and apparitions had been beyond their reach until recently. Ghosts were far harder to measure and quantify. But scientific breakthroughs—helped along by the generous backing they were receiving from their billionaire benefactor, Simon Casca—had super-charged the investigative tools at their disposal.
 

To Adira’s mind, it wasn’t a question whether ghosts existed. She’d barely survived a haunting when she was a teenager and knew that spirits were all too real. Her hope nowadays was to produce scientific proof that would convince the rest of the world.

The Jeep she was traveling in slowed, and Adira knew they would soon reach their destination. There were no throngs of onlookers, no signs of news vans or satellite trucks anymore. After a month, both the media vultures and the world had moved on, busy reporting on newer, more pressing horrors.

The Jeep rumbled up the tire-eating dirt lane, crested a peak, and reached the top of the hill that overlooked the site where the plane had gone down in a giant fireball. A chill rippled up her spine as she took in the gouged black earth before her. A section of the forested hillside had been decimated by the vast explosion. Death permeated the air. In her mind’s eye, Adira visualized a debris field of twisted wreckage, smoking fuselage, and scattered luggage, but the area had mercifully been cleared. The barren stretch of land was the only reminder of what had happened here. The place felt like a graveyard.

162 souls had blinked out in the prime of their lives in a terrifying flash of disintegrating metal. There had been no time to prepare for death. This raised a question: Had some of the passengers failed to cross over into the afterlife? Nexus was hoping Adira would find the answer. The Foundation was targeting areas where sudden deaths had occurred as these psychic hotspots shared a higher likelihood of producing spectral activity.

The head of the Nexus Foundation, Dr. Richard Mason, was a quantum physicist with a keen interest in the paranormal—and one of the smartest men she’d ever met. He believed that there were two worlds: the world of the living and the world of the dead. Sometimes they overlapped. His words echoed in her mind as she studied the site.
 

“If, when we die, our memories, fears, feelings of bitterness and vengefulness, are too strong, we can become earthbound. Trapped. Once separated from our bodies, consciousness might grow clouded. There is no difference between a day and a hundred years in this state. Some of us will be doomed to live out our last moments over and over again. Tied to the place where we died, not even aware that we’re dead.”

She remembered the chill she had felt after those words. The theory was terrifying. Death, like birth, might be an imperfect process. Sometimes consciousness…souls, if you will…failed to phase into the next world and became trapped in our plane of existence.
Did anyone still linger in the mountain clearing? That was for her to find out.

The driver parked the Jeep and Adira got out. She climbed a grassy shoulder, which offered a better view of the immense wasteland that stretched out before her. Dry, gnarled vines and trees framed the black swath that had been carved into the earth. A few lonely crosses and wreaths of flowers left by family and friends of the survivors served as the only sad reminders of the lives lost here.
 

Adira fought back the shiver of apprehension crawling down her spine. The symbols of grief stirred memories she’d rather not dwell on. Personal loss had driven her into the field of parapsychology, a need to come to terms with the ghosts of her past that still, well,
haunted
her.
 

Taking in the fallow land, she couldn’t help but think of how horrific the scene must’ve been for the first responders and rescue workers when they initially approached the broken plane. According to reports, black smoke pouring from the fuselage had risen a mile into the sky, a funeral pyre for those killed in the crash.

Adira eyed her two assistants. Chan was Japanese-American, in his mid-twenties, and an amateur bodybuilder, his bulging muscles straining under his T-shirt. Steve fit the cliché of a paranormal investigator a little more. Pasty and overweight, the 32-year-old man possessed an open mind yet had a precise, steel-trap intellect and was willing to apply the scientific method to the unexplainable. Both men also crushed on her hard, but she felt flattered instead of creeped out by their protective attention.
 

Chan scanned the area with an EMF reader designed to pick up fluctuations in the electro-magnetic field. The presence of spirits could produce spikes. This was ghost-hunting 101; the EMF readings were more of a warm-up exercise. The Nexus Foundation had developed new technology that made these old ways of measuring paranormal activity feel almost quaint.

Adira nodded at Steve. “Let’s do it.”

Steve lowered the metal case he was carrying to the ground. He snapped open a latch and removed a sleek electronic device from the foam lining. It was shaped like a black motorcycle helmet. He eyed the gadget almost lovingly before handing it to Adira. He sure was attached to his toys.

“Don’t worry. I’ll let you take a peek when I’m done.”

A smile lit up Steve’s face.
 

She slipped on the helmet and tapped a button located on the left side below her ear. An electronic view-screen filled her field of vision as the para-spectral visualization system came online, painting the crash area in a reddish light.
 

Steve proceeded to link an iPad with the helmet. Everything the micro-cams inside the helmet’s goggles recorded was now being relayed to the tablet, allowing her assistants to follow the action in real time. The typical human eye could only pick up a limited percentage of the light spectrum. It responded to wavelengths of about 390 to 700 nano-meters. Anything beyond that, like ultraviolet and X-rays, remained invisible. The necro-helmet was designed to make up for these physical limitations.
 

Spooks could materialize to regular people for brief moments, while those with greater sensitivity to the paranormal like psychics could somehow tune into these frequencies in a natural way. The para-spectral goggles and speakers were designed to enhance the visual and auditory range so that a normal human would be able to see and hear ghosts the way a psychic did.
 

“The helmet is online and ready to go,”Adira said and began to walk across the vast field. Her hands were trembling, yet somehow she managed to take one step after another.

This latest research project was another stepping stone toward fulfilling Dr. Mason’s vision. He wanted to eventually form a strike team that would not only help lost souls move on but also hunt down dangerous entities. What had once been a crazy pipe dream was becoming more and more a potential reality with Casca’s financial support. How the man planned to profit from their findings or even recoup his investment was beyond her.
 

The reason she was here today wasn’t to gather evidence that ghosts were real. What the Foundation hoped to achieve was to develop a way to help these lost trapped souls successfully make the transition into the next world.

Adira grew still as a flicker of static slashed over the helmet’s view-screen. It was followed by movement near the edge of the dense trees that framed the field. Reality shifted as more static frizzed. Adira swallowed hard and her nails dug into her palms.
 

She wasn’t alone any longer.
 

Some poor spirit lingered in this place of death. Without her help, how long would the entity remain trapped here? The crash site was isolated. It could take years, decades, maybe even centuries before the ghost would grasp the nature of its predicament. The possibility made her shudder again.
 

A creepy silhouette materialized from behind the row of crosses, as revealed by the crimson tint of the necro-helmet. Adira stared, mesmerized by the horror of the situation. She wanted to back away, but her legs wouldn’t obey her. She was frozen in place.

The figure burst toward her in jerky jumps. It was an outline of a man. His features and body remained blurry, almost as if he was vibrating at some higher frequency. There was something both human and utterly alien about the apparition on the helmet’s view-screen. Pure energy willed into human shape by a mind incapable of letting go of the memory of once having been alive.
 

A keening sound crackled over the helmet’s audio system. Words emerged from the sea of static, and goosebumps exploded over her skin.
 

“Where am I?”

The words faded in and out but kept repeating like some broken transmission that was reaching her across time and space, from between worlds. Over and over again, the question repeated, fueled by mad desperation.
“Where am I? WHERE AM I?”
 

Demanding an answer, voice rising into a shriek, the apparition lurched toward her, instinctively sensing that she could perceive its presence.
 

Adira tasted salt and realized she was crying under the helmet. Part of her wanted to scream out,
You’re dead. The plane crashed. You must let go.
 

There was a strange wobbling distortion of reality, and then the figure was gone. A chill settled over her as something reached for her from behind. She spun, the entity now right in front of her.
 

“Who the hell are you?”

She killed the audio and tore off the helmet, unable to continue. Her surroundings returned to normal. There was no sign that the specter was present except for a lingering cold sensation. Adira gasped for air, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. Tears were streaming down her face as the sun burned down on the desolate field. The crosses and flowers loomed before her in the dry heat.

She’d thought she could handle it, that she could face a ghost again…

“Are you okay, Doc?”

She nodded at Steve. Both he and Chan eyed her with concern.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured them. They didn’t seem convinced. Even to her own ears, her hollow voice lacked conviction.

“What do we do?”

“How do you tell someone they’re dead? A degree in psychology never covered that one.” She managed a weak smile, hoping to lighten the situation.

“There’s something else,” Steve said. “I have a call for you. Dr. Mason wants us to head back immediately.”

“What? We can’t leave him like this!” She gestured to where the specter had been moments before.

Steve handed her the phone. “You better tell him that yourself.”

She gathered her thoughts, regaining her composure somewhat, snatched the phone and said, “Dr. Mason, what’s going on?”

“Adira, you need to come back now.”

Her hands were shaking, this time with rage. “Listen, there is something…someone…out here who needs help. But it’ll take some time. I just managed to establish contact.”

“I’m sorry, but it will have to wait. I need you and your team to call off your current investigation. We have a far bigger problem.”

“What are you talking about?
“I’d rather not explain over the phone. Let’s just say our benefactor needs us.”

To Adira’s mind, the purpose and mission of Nexus wasn’t to serve the private whims of some billionaire. Simon Casca was signing the checks these days, and she should have known that the money would come with strings attached.
 

“We’re still in phase one of the Spirit Breaker program,” Dr. Mason said. “We’ll figure this out and return to the crash site. You’ll get another chance.”

Another chance was fine… but would she be able to go through with it again? The sight of the ghost had struck a primal chord of terror in her. She had chosen this path to exorcise the past, but now she wondered if she might have made a terrible mistake. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for fieldwork.

“Mason, I saw something…and I think it will haunt me for the rest of my life unless I face it right now…”

She broke off, strangled by emotion.
 

“I’m sorry, but I need you and your team to head to Ampton, Ohio, right now.”

This caught her off guard. “What’s in Ohio?”

“I’ll send you more information to review on your flight. Get your mind straight. I’ll need you to be on your A-game out there.”

The line went dead. Adira sighed.

Dr. Mason was a brilliant man, but he demanded a lot from the people he trusted and respected enough to be part of the Spirit Breaker program. She was still reeling from the phone call. Mason had sounded almost…afraid. What could possibly be waiting for them that could frighten even the great Dr. Mason?

“What’s going on?” Steve asked.

“He wants us to head for Ohio.”

“What?”

“My thoughts exactly. Some sort of emergency,” she said and shrugged. “Let’s pack up the gear.”

She soaked in the clearing one last time before she turned toward the Jeep.
 

“What about the-?” Chan said.

She merely shook her head. She peered out at the field where she knew the spirit lurked.