Instead of screaming, Jordan reached out and grabbed hold of Lane’s hand. If he weren’t so fixated on studying the room, he would have noticed an impossibly beautiful girl had impulsively woven her fingers between his. Instead, he took a step forward after Luna. He was compelled to solve this mystery, but Jordan held him back.
“Don’t go in,” Jordan pleaded in a hushed voice.
Lane suddenly became aware of his recent attachment to Jordan and touching her soft, snow-white skin; “Oh, I’m…” Lane stammered. He forgot how to… um, word? SPEAK. He forgot how to do that thing with his mouth. Staring into Jordan’s brilliant blue eyes, he also failed to notice her expression change from frightened to weirded out.
Then came a flick on the back of his head.
Luna.
His sister’s sing-song French lilt chided; “Come now, loverboy, we’ve got a job to do.”
Lane squeezed Jordan’s hand gently and slipped out of her grasp. Luna was right: stay focused on the task ahead of them. There was a haunted room an arm’s length away that needed to be dealt with.
Apollena strode forward into the bedroom. Her eyes scanned the floating objects and searched the mess that had been piled up in the centre of the room. “Strange: I’m not seeing any significant build-up of ectoplasm. Activity like this usually takes a lot of effort, or maybe they weren’t being manipulated for a long enough period of time? Kind of placed here… haphazardly…?”
Luna bent down and pushed through the pile gingerly with a pencil.
Lane started on the edges. He moved slowly, counterclockwise around the room. The open closet, the bed that was stripped of its sheets, and finally the wall and window that overlooked the street. Lane stooped down to pick up the lamp that had been knocked on the floor. There was a little slime running off the side of the lampshade. Ectoplasm: a sort of coagulant or mucus side effect produced by some spirits pushing through their plane of reality into ours. It was and will be forever disgusting to touch.
Fortunately, Lane had stumbled upon a clue.
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