“Just to make sure, Nancy, you didn’t do this as like a part of a Halloween party or something, right?”
Nancy shook her head, staring at the mess before her. “I assure you, I haven’t had this place open for Halloween yet - too much risk before all of the floors are fixed up. Besides, I would never do something like this.”
Luke and Liam had nearly pulled us up to the third floor. They had gone upstairs to mark off the area where they couldn’t walk in an effort to keep any of us from falling through the floor. When they were almost up to the third floor landing, however, they started to notice some coloring on the wall that wasn’t there before.
On the wall in front of us was what I would call a loose interpretation of a mural. It looked as though someone had splashed green paint across the wall, and written across the paint splash was the word “mine.”
My bones chilled to the core. Yes, it was a pretty common word, but I couldn’t help but think of the dream I had had the previous night, and whatever creature was the main character of it. Suddenly, I felt a light touch on my hand, and I yanked it away. Beside me, Liam was looking at me curiously, his hand lightly outstretched toward where mine was, which put me at least a little at ease - at least it wasn’t the creature from my dream immediately come to light. Liam raised his eyebrows at me in a blatant “are you okay” gesture, and I gave a light nod. He looked at me for another second, debating whether or not to believe me, but ultimately turned back to the conversation.
“Well, it can’t have just appeared here,” Nancy insisted, gesturing at the paint. “Someone has to have done it, and I can’t think of a better reason than for internet fame.”
“Nancy,” Caitin interrupted, “you can’t possibly be insisting that Luke and Liam would do this, can you?”
“Well,” the old woman started.
“You know them! You know they would never do such a thing, especially not to you. And if they did, do you really think they would have immediately come to show you?”
“I just don’t get how anyone else might have done it,” she huffed.
“Maybe the doors aren’t as secure as they seem?” I suggested. “Have we checked all the windows to make sure they aren’t unlocked or broken? Or maybe someone snuck off from the last group of explorers you had in here.”
The old woman still grumbled a bit, still complaining about people having wrecked her already condemned building, but ultimately she must have decided to trust us, as she handed Caitlin the key to the large lock on the door and told us that she’d be back in the morning with cleaning supplies to clean up the mess. She asked Luke and Liam to not sensationalize it in the video, which they surprisingly agreed to - even if, in my opinion, it seemed a lot more likely that a person broke in and did that than a ghost, I would have thought they definitely would have wanted to put it in the video. For people who can’t see ghosts, it seemed like anything that could potentially be considered evidence was taken as gospel.
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So, with that, the boys took a couple minutes to finish blocking off the troublesome area upstairs, and then we started the investigation. They set up a couple of chairs in a long dark hallway and rehashed most of the history that Nancy had shared with us, including the bit about Grady and his apparent death from a farm accident. They also talked about some of the ways that the building was supposed to be haunted - whispers in the hallway, things going missing, and even sightings of some of the more famous spirits.
“I forgot to ask Nancy,” I said when they had wrapped up, “but you didn’t mention anything about the little girl that’s here.”
“Little girl?” Luke asked, as all three of them looked at me confused. “As far as we know, all of the ghost sightings have been either Grady or shadowmen.”
“I saw a little girl on your video as well,” I said. “She was standing right behind Luke, but she didn’t seem particularly active. Definitely not as active as Grady, which might explain why he’s seen more prominently.”
“Holy shit,” Liam said, his jaw dropping as if the fact that I was able to see ghosts was not the sole reason why they had me come with.
“Turn the cameras back on, Cait,” Luke insisted. “We need to get her saying that on camera. That’s the first new ghost information to come out of this place since we’ve started investigating.”
“Imagine us being able to capture video of the full apparition of a little girl,” Liam said, still acting like he was in shock.
“You’d be better off trying to catch an image of Grady himself,” I said, sitting myself in the chair Liam had just been in. Luke stayed in his chair, looking like he was set up to interview me. “He seemed a lot more aware of what was going on around him. The little girl just looked at Luke and asked him to help her.”
“So the ghost that you saw was interacting with me?” Luke asked
“More like trying to,” I said with a shrug. “Obviously you didn’t respond back.”
“And you’d be able to see her if she did come back, though, right?”
“Of course.”
Liam paused for a beat too long, then turned to Caitlin. “Did we get that?”
“Every word,” she said with a huge smile. “That’ll be a great introduction, especially if you end up seeing one of the ghosts that are here. Even more so if you happen to see the little girl.”
“I can’t promise anything,” I warned her, but she waved at me dismissively.
“We know that you can’t control the ghosts, just like we can’t control if something shows up in our videos. But from everything I’ve seen, it seems like Grady is still around, so I have no doubt you’ll be able to see him as the night goes on. We might not catch anything on camera, but if we have you pointing and saying that you see something, that’ll still be significantly more than any of the other channels have had lately.”
Caitlin started packing up the camera. “I think that plus the introduction in the car will be plenty. Shall we start the actual investigation? I was originally planning to start in the basement, but now I’m wondering if the third floor is the place to go.”
“Do you honestly think that a ghost did that with paint?” Liam asked, folding up the chair I’d been sitting in.
“No,” Caitlin said, “plus we promised that we wouldn’t be sensationalist with it, anyway. But if there’s even a small possibility that it involved one of the ghosts, then I think it makes sense for us to start there.”
“Might as well,” Luke agreed. “Then we can save the spookiest part for the witching hour! Maybe we’ll get some extra activity then!”
I didn’t bother correcting him.