Page 28 of Into the Dark

“They’re staff photos,” he said, wiping off more dust. “Going by the date written in the corner, this was taken in 1870, only a few years after the asylum opened.”

Their eyes met, both having the same thought at the same time. The nurse might be in one of these photos.

Oscar peered closely at the Victorian-era picture, shook his head, and moved on to the next. The dates on the photos were somewhat haphazard, with decades passing between some and only a couple of years between others. At last, Oscar let out a gasp and pointed. “That’s her.”

Nigel peered at the photo, which bore the year 1932 on a small brass plaque affixed to the frame. A white man with a strong mustache stood in the center, dressed in a sharp suit. To his right stood the woman Oscar had identified. The rest of the nurses wore short sleeved, pinstriped blouses under their white aprons; she was the only one completely in white and with long sleeves. “Her uniform is different—I wonder if she was the head nurse?”

“Turn the picture over and see if anything is on the back,” Oscar suggested.

There was no information on the paper backing, so he laid the frame face-down on the desk. “Do you have a knife or anything?”

Oscar took out a small Swiss-army knife. “Always prepared.”

Nigel carefully slit the paper so he could remove the photo from the frame. Someone had written the names of everyone in the picture on the back, along with the date it was taken:September 25, 1932.

He scanned the lines—fortunately the person who’d written on it had good handwriting, which made the process a lot easier than most of the old documents he looked at.

“Della Young,” he read. “She’s standing beside Superintendent Dr. Herbert Wilkes.”

“She does not look any happier in life than she did last night,” Oscar remarked.

“She worked here during the period of high mortality. She might have reason to be unhappy if her patients kept dying.”

“Unless she was the one killing them.”

Nigel frowned. “Is that what you sensed from her?”

“Not precisely, but it would explain why she wants to keep us from talking to the other ghosts.”

“Good point.” Nigel kept hold of the photo. “Let’s take this with us, along with the binders. Maybe we’ll find a pattern. Something to help us move her along to the afterlife.”

They left the asylum and took their finds back outside and into the command center. The van and Chris were still gone, but Tina, Adrienne, and Zeek were there.

As they entered, Adrienne and Zeek looked up from where they sat together in front of their laptop.

“We should ask,” Zeek said to Adrienne.

She bit her lip. “I don’t know…Ms. Montague…”

“Look, we’ve already been collaborating a little bit.”

“Collaborating on what?” Nigel asked warily.

“I’m glad you asked.” Zeek beamed at him. “You know we work with mirrors a lot.”

“No. I’ve never seen your show.”

The wattage of Zeek’s smile faltered slightly. “You’re missing out, dude. Anyway, we do this mirror seance, where you sit in front of a mirror in the dark and sometimes ghosts show up in the reflection.”

“And your face starts to look weird,” Adrienne added with a shudder. “That part is just the human brain getting confused, though.”

All of it might be their brains getting confused, sitting in front of a mirror in a darkened room. Still… “Ghosts have been known to use mirrors as portals,” Nigel admitted.

“Bingo!” Zeek pointed at him as if he’d won a prize. “We want to do adoubleseance, with the mirrors facing each other, and us back to back. Mirrors that reflect in other mirrors make the best portals, right?”

Nigel wasn’t certain where this was going. “According to anecdotal data. But there hasn’t been any scientific investigation done on the subject, so…”

“Here’s your chance, then.” Zeek grinned. “See, if both of us are doing the seance, we won’t have anyone to do camera work. I mean, we’ll set up a static cam, but it’s not going to catch as much as someone moving around.”

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