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Suddenly, the inferno seemed to withdrawal
back into the hearth, dwindling itself back into a fire. Sighs of
relief escaped them, realizing that nothing, not even the insulated
tiles that patch worked the ceiling, had caught. Sidney quickly
checked the blank e-mail left open on the computer--nothing.

“Try it again, we have to catch her!” he
shouted. Several sets of hands pulled at the door handle in a final
combination of strength and effort, then the door flew open with
the force of two magnets being pulled away from each other.

Chapter
Thirteen

She reached the top
of the stairs and felt the upper level of the house shaking. She
watched as objects were thrown to the floor, windows broke, and her
kitchen cabinets tottered and wobbled precariously close to
collapse. The breaking glass, the pounding, the slamming, all
noises blended together in an endless cacophony. She didn’t care
anymore; she wanted out. She snatched the keys to her jeep from the
countertop and fled.

The cool October air struck her as she broke
free from the front door, drying the beads of sweat on her face
with its cool wash of wind that reunited her with reality. She ran
up the sidewalk, opened the door of her jeep, and hopped into the
driver’s seat. Her tires screeched as she pulled away from the
house.

* * * *

Sets of feet stormed up the stairs in single
file, cautious not to tumble backward down the narrow enclosure.
They reached the upstairs and glanced around at the havoc that had
been wrought, the near devastation of a once tidy, well kept,
domicile. Kitchen chairs were overturned, papers were strewn, glass
was broken, and a door on one of the kitchen cabinets swung away
from its hinges, falling to the floor. The quivering cabinet range
almost followed.

Then, quiet, settling like an
after-shock.

“Tracy!” Susan shouted through the house, but
they were well aware that Tracy was gone. Her goodbye note was the
front door as it remained wide open, still creaking from the air
outside that pushed it to and fro.

They looked out the front door and saw the
team’s van and Susan’s Taurus behind it, but Tracy’s jeep was
gone.

“She’s taken off,” Dylan said.

“We’ve got to go get her!” Sidney’s angst
sounded a warning bell.

“Wait,” Dylan said, moving his eyes around in
surveillance. “It stopped...listen.”

They looked around the ransacked mess as the
trembling ceased amid a settling quiet, as though it had never
occurred. The turbulent pounding and booming that had rocked the
house now left them in a muted aftermath, interrupted only by the
sounds of the creaking door and the broken pieces of plaster that
fell to the floor.

“I’ll try her cell,” Leah said, dialing from
her own handheld. After one ring connected, a loud beep, the kind
used to alert medical professionals, belted from below them. Tracy
had left her cell phone behind, and it rang out from the table
downstairs where she’d left it, along with her purse.

Minds merged on the same wave length; now it
was even more imperative that they find Tracy, and quick.

“All right,” Dylan said, “let’s try to figure
out where she would have gone.”

* * * *

Tracy looked back at her house as she’d
pulled away from the driveway. She didn’t see any of them, but she
knew they would come looking for her. She had to get away. The
insurmountable stress had been building, erecting a mountain upon
her shoulders and buckling her. Her freedom, if only momentarily,
was a must, and she needed a drink.

Had she acted rashly in asking them to handle
the situation? Maybe she needed more time to herself before having
all those people in her house, trying to make contact with David
and God knows what else. What if she’d just said nothing: would all
of this be happening? Some part of her wondered why she didn’t just
accept the way things were. What was she so afraid of in the first
place...David?

Delusions of what life would be like consumed
her: she in the living, and David in the beyond, coexisting
together until such time as fate saw fit. She thought of the evil,
taunting specter that disrupted everything. Crazed thoughts
clustered her mind and fear rampaged her body, but ahead, relief
gleamed in the form of a neon sign.

Ted’s Bar-N-Grill blinked in red, announcing
itself against the night time backdrop, with an equally neon arrow
pointing to the entrance. She and Marcia came here often to dull
the day’s edge that came from working at the hospital. The gravel
crunched under her tires as she pulled into the parking lot.

* * * *

“I think she definitely went for a drink,”
Leah said.

“I’m afraid you’re right.” Susan’s voice was
a mixture of fear and regret. “I should have done more to stop her
from drinking, but I had no idea she was going to run out like
this.”

“None of us did,” Sidney breathed a heavy
sigh of nervous apprehension.

“Okay.” Dylan lifted his hands, a gesture for
all to wait and think rationally. “Since
we’ve
only known
Tracy for two days, where do you think she would have gone?” The
sharp sting of his question was directed at Susan.

“It’s hard to tell,” she said. “Tracy was
determined not to tell me anything.”

“Well, Doctor, that doesn’t seem to help us
much now, does it?” His irritability was a soft slap in her face,
and Leah spoke up.

“Now, wait a minute. Let’s not go blaming
anyone for this. We should have realized that this may have been
too much for her.”

“She shouldn’t have been drinking,” he said.
“I told you all something like this could happen.”

“What could we do, Dylan?” Leah’s voice
climbed a decibel. “It is her house, and we didn’t think she was
going to take off like that, nor could we predict the magnitude of
what just happened here.”

Dylan was at an impasse. Leah was so young,
but so often right. His eyes were cast down at the floor, and
everyone breathed and tried to focus. Sidney stepped forward and
spoke.

“What about this friend of hers, this Marcia
person? Could she have gone to her?”

“Marcia Ross,” Susan said. “It’s worth a try.
If she doesn’t know where Tracy is, she might know where she could
have gone.”

Sidney handed her the phone. “Call her.”

* * * *

The inside of Ted’s Bar-N-Grill smelled like
old fashioned, black licorice intertwined with the aroma of freshly
tapped beer, cigarette smoke, and the occasional Shirley Temple,
that classic barroom scent that took one back over a century. She
ordered a beer and sat alone at the bar. Ted was the balding, fifty
something proprietor who knew Tracy as a semi regular, in every now
and then with her friend and sometimes by herself.

“Nurse Tracy,” he said. “How’ve you been?” He
noticed her distant stare and that look in her eyes: the one of
fear, paranoia, and too much alcohol, and the bulging, dark circles
underneath that looked like sunken tea bags. “Everything all
right?”

She managed a slight grin.

“Oh, okay, I guess,” she said, smiling
curtly. She wasn’t about to reveal to him the details of her life
over the past few days, especially now as she struggled to contain
the slight slur that slipped from her tongue through the trail of
her tainted breath.

He had the look on his face of most
bartenders, the one where the voice asks an honest question of
concern, but the eyes secretly say, “Yeah right,” to the watered
down response.

“Just as long as the sun’s still shining,
right, Tracy?” He laughed, attempting to give the right answer for
her.

“Yeah, I guess.” Her smile masked the day’s
turmoil, concealed the inner frenzy she felt in resurging waves.
Cheerful voices surrounded her, and the juke box played along with
the occasional hoots and hollers, all normal sounds that made her
feel like reality had begun again, if only for this fleeting
moment.

She chugged the mug of cold draft beer almost
gone, and the foam set over her lips in a mustache, reminding her
of David. She glanced around the bar and realized that none of
these people had ever experienced what she was going through right
now, or had they? Maybe it’s why they were here: to drink away the
ghosts, the poltergeists, the old times, and the sweet memories
that bit and tore at the heart even worse than the hurtful
ones.

There didn’t seem to be any confusion, pain,
or unhappiness, just a continuous good time that went on and on
with good noises dubbing over whatever bad noises played in the
background. Reality had struck Tracy Kimball far worse than any
happy hour could erase. She looked at them all.

If they only knew...

She pulled the ten dollar bill from her
pocket to pay for the beer; it was all the money she had absent her
purse.

“On the house, Trace; it’s happy hour.” Ted
put a freshly poured mug in front of her and took the old one
away.

* * * *

They sat in the kitchen, listening to the
speaker phone dial Marcia’s number in a tone about ten notches too
loud. After five frustrating rings, she answered.

“Yes, Tracy?” Her voice boomed out, and Susan
turned down the volume.

“It’s not Tracy, Marcia. This is Susan. We
need your help.”

“What happened?” She spoke the words flat
out, seeming certain that something would happen, but unsure of
what. Susan made a long story short.

“Tracy became extremely upset and stormed out
of here. She doesn’t have her phone, and she’s had more than a few
drinks. She’s in no condition to drive.”

“Well, why the hell didn’t you all stop her?”
Marcia scoffed, and Susan was about to reply.

“Look, we didn’t have time to stop her,”
Dylan said, interrupting with a clear lack of patience in his
voice. “We had some trouble here in the house, and she ran out
before we could stop her. We need to find her, now!”

“Who is this?” Marcia’s head nurse attitude
had returned. “What trouble? Is everything all right over
there?”

He apologized with a sigh and introduced
himself.

“Yes, everything is fine now, but we need to
find Tracy, that’s all. As we said, she is in no condition to
drive, and she may be drinking even more. We need to get her
home.”

Marcia mentioned the only place she could
think of: Ted’s Bar on Route 22.

They were closer to Route 22 than Marcia was,
they would get there faster.

“Thank you,” Dylan said. “We’ll try there.”
Then, Marcia’s voice shot out quickly before the disconnect.

“Do you need me to come over there?” Dylan
assured her they didn’t. “Then tell her to call me, as soon as you
bring her home.”

He said he would and pressed a button on the
speaker phone, ending the call.

“We’ll take my car,” Susan said, and Dylan
agreed.

“Sid, you three stay here in case she comes
back,” he said. “Also check out the downstairs, see if everything
is all right. We have our phones, if you need us.”

“Gotcha,” Sidney said. “Call us as soon as
you find her.”

He agreed and they drove away in Susan’s car,
leaving Leah, Sidney, and Brett to the house where the dead would
speak yet again, tonight.

Chapter
Fourteen

The three of them
looked around the house, their eyes estimating the small
catastrophe that left much of it in ruins. The mess created by the
earlier disturbance was only a minuscule fraction of what beheld
them now, as a quiet, calm, serenity hushed through the house. They
would never reveal how much this stark and freakish contrast had
frightened them serving as an omen of the dark, paranormal force
they were up against. This time, it came, it raged, it destroyed,
and now it was gone, leaving behind only a window display of its
capabilities. The fact that the poltergeist seemed to disappear
with Tracy was another fact they wouldn’t mention; their goal was
to help David, or so they thought.

Susan peeked outside through the front door
curtains, watchful if any neighbors had heard the noise or saw
Tracy’s flight from the house; she saw no one.

They trudged through the broken glass, dust,
and plaster, and made their way back down to the den. They’d left
the fireplace unattended amid the confusion, but now the fire had
dwindled down to a light on a single burning log. Leah had shot
pictures of the upstairs, and now the click of the camera and wince
of the flash were directed downstairs at the soot stained stones
above the hearth.

The blaze had raged here, then died, and the
water streaked walls showed only tracks like lakes on a map. The
carpet soaked in patches and spots of different sizes, but the
water was gone, ebbed as surely as it had flowed.

“I hope her computer is all right,” Brett
said, and sat down on the swivel chair. The blank e-mail that Dylan
had left up on the screen remained, and Brett touched a few keys to
test the keyboard. He examined the modem, the monitor, and the
electrical wires that remained untouched by the water. “Everything
checks.”

They sighed in relief, realizing that the
worst of the damage was to Tracy’s kitchen cabinets and some upper
cracks in the upstairs walls, but the foundation of the house still
seemed intact. The technical apparatus remained unaffected, and
Brett attended to one of the video cameras that had continued
recording.

He hit the playback button and saw what
happened after they’d left the den. He called Sidney and Leah over
to him, and they gathered behind his laptop, watching recent
history. The playback showed the vacated den when the sifts of
plaster from the ceiling, and the water dripping from the walls had
come to a sudden halt.

The camera had been poised at a direct shot
of the main computer area, and there, they began to see a white
formation move toward the screen. A giant smoke ring in appearance,
it began floating and twisting, then shaping into some cohesive
outline, moving as though human in countenance. The eerie semblance
had lingered over the computer, hovering and rotating, hesitant and
uncertain.