I sat up in bed, drenched in sweat. I couldn’t remember going to bed, but obviously I must have. The last thing I remembered was talking to Luke and Liam about the ghost in my room - the old man who had disappeared when he seemingly got bored watching the two of them mess around with small dials on the equipment.

Whatever had just happened to me couldn’t have been him, I thought. The man had definitely been a little bit warped, and he hadn’t been overly friendly, but there was nothing about him that insinuated that he could be at all violent to anyone other than himself.

Shit, I thought, pulling off my t-shirt so I could better see the marks that had been left by the ghost. My shoulder looked perfectly fine, though, and when I rolled my arm around to test the socket, there was no pain at all.

My mother always told me that the scary people in the middle of the night were just nightmares made up by my own mind, but I never believed her. When you see ghosts every day of your life, it’s hard to believe that one you might see while you’re asleep wasn’t real. And none of those had ever touched me in the way this ghost had. In fact, I wasn’t sure that any ghosts, real or nightmare, had ever done more than lightly graze my hand. Despite their reputation, there are very few ghosts who are violent.

I took another deep breath, getting my bearings in the room. Maybe it was just a dream after all. All of this obsession with the ghosts must have been getting to me. Maybe all I needed was a hot shower and a cup of coffee.

***

I got out of my shower and had just enough time to get changed for Luke and Liam showed up at my door. Their hair was haphazard and they had huge circles under their eyes - it almost looked like they hadn’t slept at all once they had gotten back to their hotel rooms. They said hi quickly, then ran for the cameras. Luke brought in his laptop so they could move the footage over and start pouring through it. A couple of minutes later, Caitlin strolled in wearing a cute pink sweater dress with leggings, and carrying a drink carrier full of coffees. She handed one to me before heading over to the boys.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got you the same thing I always get - a vanilla latte with an extra shot of whipped cream. Generally good with allergens, but hopefully you can handle dairy.” I nodded my thanks and took a long sip. It was definitely just the thing I needed after battling whatever nightmares I had last night.

“Good, glad, you like it,” she replied to me happy drinking noises. “Find anything in the video yet?”

“Nothing drastic that we’ve seen yet, except for the sounds Andi’s making,” Liam said. “Did you know you’re a sleep thrasher?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Andromeda,” I corrected, “and I’m usually not. I had the weirdest dream last night.”

“Andi will go over better with our audience,” Luke explained. “‘Andromeda’ has too many syllables and it’ll be hard to spell in the comments. Andi is much easier.”

“There must have been something weird in our food last night, though, because I had a weird dream, too,” Liam said, although he was still clearly more interested in the footage than he was in the conversation.

“You did?” I asked. “What was it about?”

“You always blame the food for that sort of stuff,” Caitlin complained, plopping down on the couch near my bed. I wondered why my bedroom had to be the place where we all gathered, but ultimately, they were paying for it anyway, so I suppose it didn’t matter. “Could it have just been the fact that you were high as balls last night?”

“I doubt it, or I’d have bad dreams most nights. Just because you don’t like weed doesn’t mean it doesn’t do great things for everybody else. But,” he said, finally turning to me, “I had a dream that I was in a salon run by a sloth who was very interested in talking about the stock market. Did you have the same one?”

My excitement deflated about as quickly as it arrived. But, I suppose that was another point for my dream theory - if Liam had had the exact same one, there would be a good chance that it wasn’t a dream at all. “No, not the same one. Mine was about ghosts.”

“So tell me,” Caitlin said, gesturing at me with her seemingly now empty coffee cup, “what is it about you that makes everything related to ghosts? You talk to ghosts, you make ghost footage appear before our very eyes, and now you’re even dreaming about ghosts.”

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug, taking a seat next to her as the boys went back to analyzing the video as best as they could in a short amount of time, “I think I was just born that way.”

“Well, you might want to tone it down if you want our audience to like you,” she warned. “They want ghost content, and that’s ultimately what they clicked on the video for. But if it’s too centered on ghosts, then the audience is going to lose their interest really quick. It’s got to be somewhere in the middle, where you’re interested in ghosts and finding out information about them and all that shit, but you’re also willing to joke around with the boys.”

“I will when we actually get to the shoot,” I said, and I meant it. Yes, I would see the ghostly activity, but you have to keep in mind, for me, it’s not all that novel anymore. I’ve seen ghosts forever, and while it’s still kind of interesting (and sometimes annoying, when they won’t leave you alone - god, I hope whatever I saw last night actually was a dream rather than that sort of a ghost), you can only do it for so long.

“You better,” she said, grabbing another cup out of the drink carrier and taking a long sip. When she set it down, I saw it was the one labeled “Luke.”

“We might have found something!” Liam said, and both Caitlin and I shot out of our chairs. He pointed aggresively to the screen right next to the cupboard, then pressed play.

As far as I could tell, there was no ghost in the video, but Caitlin gasped, so when Liam played back the recording again, I tried by best to look at it a hard as I could. About halfway through the clip, you could see a slight mist on the screen, as though someone had taken a shower and it had gotten a little doggy inside the house. In all my years of being a psychic, I’d never seen a ghost look like that. Or, at least, I’d never seen something like that and assumed it was a ghost.

“Oh my fucking god, this is so amazing!” Caitlin squealed. “I can’t believe you caught something so huge in just one try!”

“Let’s fucking go!” Luke nearly yelled.

“I know!” Liam said, turning back toward me. “In all these years, I guess the only thing we were missing was you, Andi. Isn’t that amazing?”

Amazing was one word for it.