Page 16 of The Devil Went Down to Laughlin
But she’d been in creepy spaces before, and she certainly wasn’t going to turn around and walk out because she had the heebie-jeebies. Besides, she knew that ghosts…with a few notable exceptions…couldn’t cause any real harm to the living.
She set her purse down on the counter and surveyed the space. If the golden oak cabinets and laminate countertops were any indication, the kitchen had probably been updated in the early 1990s but hadn’t been touched since. Now the room was ripe for another remodel, although she knew she shouldn’t be worrying about that.
At least no one had touched the original wood floors, which looked to be in surprisingly good shape. She hoped whoever bought the house would keep them, even if the new owners ended up making a lot of other changes.
Even though she had no real idea that Alba was listening, she knew she had to keep going.
“I just want to take a look around,” Delia continued. “But if you want to reach out and communicate in any way, I’m listening.”
Almost immediately, one of the cupboard doors swung open. She had been standing at least ten feet away, so she knew she couldn’t have had anything to do with the sudden activity on the other side of the room.
Was Alba trying to send a signal of some sort?
It wasn’t the first time Delia’s had seen a spirit interact with the physical plane, so rather than running out of the house screaming, she walked as calmly as she could over to the cupboard in question to take a look. Unlike the buffet in the dining room, which was stuffed full of fancy china she guessed no one had wanted, the cupboard was empty, and she thought that Aaron’s parents or possibly someone else in the family had come through and cleared everything out.
Or at least, almost everything.
She almost overlooked the mark. It was small, not much more than an inch high, and at first she thought it was simply a scratch, a careless blemish left behind when someone was putting something inside the cupboard.
But then she realized the mark she’d found had an intentional design of some sort, although she had no idea what it was supposed to be. While at first glance it looked something like a cross, all four arms were equal in length and had a sort of curved lozenge shape to them, and a small circle seemed to be superimposed where the arms connected in the middle.
Maybe it was some sort of Christian symbol. Delia hadn’t been brought up in any particular religion, so she’d be the first to admit that she didn’t know much about the different types of crosses that various denominations might use.
Then again, Pru had told her that Alba attended the local Catholic church. Delia didn’t know what this symbol was supposed to be, but it sure didn’t look like a crucifix to her.
Well, she’d take a photo and upload the image to Google search and see what it said.
She got out her phone once again and moved as close as she could without the cross-thingy turning too blurry. Then she took a series of shots and hoped that at least one of them would be serviceable.
Actually, several were, so she uploaded the most likely candidate and waited to see what Google had to say on the subject.
And waited…and waited….
The screen appeared to be frozen, even though Verizon claimed she had three bars of 5G. That should have been plenty to upload a simple image, especially since she’d only sent a medium-sized photo, not the high-resolution one.
Frowning, she closed the browser and reopened it, hoping that might have jiggered things loose. Once again, she attached the image to the Google search bar and waited.
And once again, nothing happened.
Okay, fine. She’d send the thing to Caleb and ask him to try looking it up. After all, just because Verizon said she should have sufficient bars here, that didn’t necessarily mean the company’s assessment of the local situation was accurate. This wouldn’t be the first time she thought she had a strong enough cell signal to do whatever she needed, only to have her service provider demonstrate otherwise.
She went back to their message thread and typed, Can you check on this symbol and let me know what it is? My cell service is kind of shaky here.
And then she attached the image and pressed the screen to send the text.
Again, nothing. Or rather, it looked as if the message had gone off into the ether the way it was supposed to, but there was no sign that it had been delivered. Since both she and Caleb had iPhones, she always got that confirmation when they were communicating this way.
Today, though?
Bupkiss.
For a moment, Delia wondered if she should go out onto the porch and ask Aaron if he usually had issues with sending attachments or surfing the internet on his phone when he was in this neighborhood. It could have been a dead spot, despite what the bars on her phone showed.
Something inside told her not to do that, though.
Instead, she kept her phone out and peered inside the rest of the kitchen cabinets. No other strange symbols, unfortunately…at least, that she could find.
The space opened onto a service porch that held a Kenmore washer and dryer that looked almost as old as the cabinets and Formica counters in the kitchen. A pair of cupboards was mounted to the wall above the appliances, but when Delia peered inside — using her phone’s flashlight to illuminate the interiors as best she could — she didn’t see anything except one abandoned dryer sheet.
