The police sent one of their detectives out right away, and he concluded basically the same thing we had thought - that these were really old bodies that our group of reasonably young YouTubers had nothing to do with. So, he roped off the room after the coroner had come to take the bodies, but told us that we were allowed to stay in the rest of the prison if we wanted. He said the bodies were old enough, and the prison had been cleaned enough times, that us walking around wouldn’t hurt any investigation, if they did any investigation other than identifying the bodies.
I did end up telling the police that I was a psychic and gave him the names that the spirits had given me as a way to make their job easier, and I also gave them the story that Squint had told me. The detective wrote it all down in his notebook, looking incredibly bored through the whole thing. Whatever, I thought - whether he ended up using my information or not was none of my business.
We stayed in the prison until 5 AM when the caretaker came back. Caitlin took the caretaker to show him where the bodies had been, but he seemed frankly uninterested in the whole thing. I suppose I couldn’t blame him - he ran a haunted prison, after all, and we had inadvertently gotten rid of two of the ghosts.
And it was possible that we had gotten rid of the only ghosts that were even in the prison - throughout the rest of the night, I didn’t see any other activity whatsoever. Sure we got plenty for the video, including a particularly active spirit box session, so long as you used your imagination. In terms of regular ghosts, the building was clear.
We packed up the car as Caitlin talked with the caretaker again, looking infinitely more ragged than she had when we had first arrived. The caretaker looked equally unhappy to be up so early in the morning, after having been woken up in the middle of the night with a phone call about us finding bodies in the vents. He sipped on a large gas station coffee, not responding to anything Caitlin said with anything more than a grunt.
I was helping Tetris the camera equipment back into the car when Luke suddenly said “Shit.”
“Did you break something again?” Liam asked, shoving a camera bag into a perfectly sized opening. “If you broke another light and I have to clean it up again…”
“No,” he answered. “I’m just pretty sure I left one of our introductions cameras inside.”
“Dude, you said you grabbed everything!” Liam complained.
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“I thought I did!” Luke said. “I’ve got the bag, it’s just -” he held up the bag to us and opened the already unzipped flap - empty.
“I can run and get it,” I offered, handing him the two bags I was still carrying. “It’s right inside the doors, right?”
He nodded. “We sat it on the shelf pointed toward the receptionist's desk, in case some ghost came and decided to pretend to work in reception or something.”
“Alright, I’ll be right back. Don’t leave without me!” I joked.
“You might want to tell Caitlin that,” Liam joked back. “She’s the one with the keys, but she might be too busy talking to her new BFF Norman.”
I rolled my eyes and headed back in through the entrance of the old prison. I half expected to be greeted by Squint and Baby Face again, but the halls were silent. Sometimes, when you’ve helped out a spirit and they’re about to head into the light, they’ll take the time to thank you for the help you’ve given them. Sometimes, there’s no time for that. I smiled - it made sense that they’d both want to be out of there before the cops were called. I suppose all that mattered was that they got their happy ending. I grabbed the already dusty static camera off the shelf and twirled around, holding the camera up to get one last clip of the entrance. I kept it running while I walked out, thinking that a cool end shot could be us packing up the car on the way out - I’d seen a lot of ghost hunting shows, and I don’t think I’d ever seen any that actually portrayed the realness of what it was like to go on a ghost hunt.
I shook my head at my own line of thought - I still hadn’t been part of the group for very long, and already I was trying to make some of the filming decisions. I still didn’t love the idea of giving up everything in my life to move in and film videos, even if it would be a relatively steady paycheck, but if I wasn’t careful, that would be exactly what happened.
I pushed open the door, focusing first on Caitlin talking with the caretaker of the prison, but quickly turned it away because I wasn’t sure how much he would like being on film. Instead, I focused the camera on Luke and Liam packing up the car.
The camera wouldn’t get into focus for some reason, though. Maybe I knocked it out of autofocus when I was messing with it, I thought - it seemed to be focusing just fine before. So I focused it away and messed with some of the buttons. On the top, right above the photo selector, there was a button that just said “AF-ON,” and I assumed that had to be it. I pressed the button and the camera lens started whirring as it tried to focus on the grass. Content, I lifted the camera back up and started walking toward the car.
It took a minute for the camera to fully focus, but when it did, I nearly dropped it. Standing right between Luke and Liam, looking at the end of the car, was the little girl. I looked up from the screen for a moment, but it appeared as though nothing was there. My eyes flicked back to the screen, and I gasped - the little girl had turned, and was now focused on me. I stopped walking toward the group as the little girl slowly lifted her arm to point at me.
I started sprinting toward Luke and Liam - the sight of the girl chilled my bones to ice, but I couldn’t let myself think of that right then - what mattered was that I protect my friends from whatever was causing that.
Liam saw me first, his easy grin falling quickly as I flew toward them. “Andi, what’s wrong?” he asked, and I nearly collided with him as Luke finally looked up, his face generally unconcerned by my panic.
“The girl!” I panted, shoving the camera at him. “She’s here! She was right here!” From where he stood, the lens just started whirring again as it tried to focus on the taillight of the car. “She was in between you two,” I insisted, and Liam turned to focus the camera on Luke. He panned the camera up and down him slowly.
“Show me where she is so I can better focus on her,” he said, but I couldn’t. She wasn’t there anymore.