Page 3 of Christmas Spirits

Jade had warned me the opening in front of my shop led right to a Hell dimension and was probably the reason the demon, Xaver, had found me and made me his victim. If my hunch was right, that meant there was another tear in the veil nearby, too. And that was never a good thing.

A chill rocketed through me, confirming my fears. I’d been juggling my Medium gift long enough to know this chill wasn’t from the weather. The goosebumps rising under my knitted blouse and thick coat told me there was spirit activity.

I turned toward the building on the street corner. From the unfinished decking, crumbling front steps, missing roofing shingles, and boarded up windows, it was clear this old Victorian house had been abandoned for some time. Probably during reconstruction, which was a common thing in downtown Fairport. These old buildings costed a lot of money to redo, and most buyers didn’t realize it until too late. Then, they were left untouched. Left as shells.

From my sudden, uncontrollable shivering and the prickling energy skating over my skin, I would say, with certainty, that something big was happening in this one.

Something otherworldly.

If there was an opening in the veil and spirits lingering near the house, I needed to get away from here. Fast.

As a Medium, I appeared like a beacon to the dead. At least that’s how Jade had explained it. I attracted them, and I didn’t feel like having a spirit tagging along on my walk tonight. Some of them could be really pushy and mean.

A loud boom came from inside the abandoned house, followed by a choir of screams. My heart plummeted. People were inside? From the force of that crash, a wall could have toppled over, or a chunk of the ceiling could have fallen on top of them. Something similar had happened to a church in town during a spontaneous and tragic fire two months ago. It had even taken the life of a churchgoer. It was by some miracle—and by what the survivors had said was a visit from an angel—that most of them had managed to get out alive.

If something like that was happening now… If those people inside were hurt…

I didn’t move. Only listened. But I heard nothing else coming from the house. That only inflamed my worry. Not to mention the shivers cascading through me were intensifying by the minute. My teeth were chattering in my mouth.

I walked over to the front of the house. A beat-up truck was parked there with a running generator cranking in its bed and a bundle of cords leading into the house’s missing front door.

A terrible high-pitched scraping sound and another scream.

Before I knew it, I was hurrying up the steps, making sure to dodge the weak spots and cracked cement. Stepping through the door, I moved cautiously through the small foyer. The flooring was warped, some places having big gaps between boards. Wallpaper peeled from the walls and the dust in the air was so thick, it clogged my nose and stuffed up the back of my throat with every breath.

Here, the bundle of wires split. Most crawled along the staircase to the second floor, while some curved into other rooms on the first. My first guess was that the generator and the cords were supposed to provide power for light, but the place was dark. The only reason I wasn’t tripping over my own feet was because of the glow of the street’s gas lamps peeking in from outside.

So then, if the cords and generator in the truck weren’t for light, what were they for?

When soft whispers and giggles came from the room to my left, I froze in place. Those definitely didn’t sound like screams of fear or pain to me, but the supernatural energy was coming from in there.

I crept closer and peered around the broken column into the room. A group of five college-age kids stood in a close circle, their hands interlocked. Each had one of those expensive, small cameras attached to a band across their foreheads. They all wore the same purple shirts, too, and I squinted to see the wording scrolled along their backs. The only light in the room came from blinking LEDs on the stationary cameras, microphones, and speaker-looking things set up around the room. At least I knew what the extension cords were for now.

Because the group was chatting excitedly amongst themselves and the cloak of darkness, no one had noticed me peeking in on their meeting. When the young man shifted, turning his back fully toward me, I was able to make out what was on his shirt. Believe it or not, it read, “G. O. A. T.” which apparently—according to the explanation underneath—stood for “Ghost Operations Alert Team.”

In other words, amateur paranormal investigators.

I rolled my eyes. The craze to understand the dead wasn’t new, but technological advances and equipment, coupled with popular ghost-hunting television shows, made these spirit-chasing groups spring up everywhere. And since Fairport was a very old city and a central hub for a variety of supernaturals, groups like G. O. A. T. flocked here.

“Go on, Brock, say the prayer again,” a girl said to one of the guys across the circle. “Maybe it’ll happen again if we all follow along.”

Turning on my heel, I headed back toward the door to leave. It was clear I’d been wrong in assuming something had gone wrong here. I wanted nothing to do with this nonsense.

Right before I reached the door, the violent chills of a nearby spirit stopped me cold. At the same time, the chants from the group in the other room grew louder. The language they were saying was unknown to me, but from the melodic tones, it sounded more like a magical incantation than a prayer.

Slowly, I made my way back to my hiding place behind the column and peered into the room where the kids were gathered. Still holding hands, they continued their chanting.

The air around me thickened, the energy building and building. The center of the investigators’ circle, just above their heads, shimmered and wavered. No one else seemed to see the changes though. Only me. And what I witnessed paralyzed me with fear.

A crack formed, glowing eerily with a red light. I was instantly hit was a terrible, sickening feeling. Could this be one of the rips in the veil Jade had been talking about? Was their prayer or whatever causing another one to open?

A gust of wind blew from somewhere, tossing up my hair and making me shield my face. When the others felt the gust, too, they exchanged excited looks and raised their voices. The unseen crack in the veil above them expanded with every passing second.

They were splitting whatever little was left of the protective barrier between the living world and the nonliving dimensions, and they had no idea they were doing it.

When a terrifying, earsplitting screech filled the room, terror seized me. I knew that sound; I’d never forget it. It came from those ugly and deadly Halfling creatures that dwelled in Hell and followed their demon masters. I knew this bit of information because Xaver—the demon who had possessed Laurence, tricked me into getting pregnant with his half-demon baby, and then kidnapped me—unleashed his Halfling minions when Jade had tried to save me.

Just thinking about that night again made me shake all over for a different reason.

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