The Tower by J. L. Bryan

Author:J. L. Bryan [Bryan, J. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychic, occult, haunted house, Fantasy, Detective, Mystery, Urban Fantasy, ghostbuster, paranormal, savannah, ghost, Horror
Goodreads: 36493804
Publisher: jlbryanbooks.com
Published: 2017-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

We set up new gear on the top floor, focusing on Vance's cult-hobby room with the fireplace. We left the Spirit Mirror sitting out among his texts with a camera ready to capture any images that turned up in it.

Then came the part I was really not looking forward to at all. Thurmond let us into his unconscious aunt's apartment. In contrast to the dark hunting-lodge atmosphere of Vance's place, Millie's apartment was more eclectic and colorful. Shelves were crammed full of knickknacks, like Hopi kachina dolls and ceramic animals. The paintings on the wall were impressionist in style, lots of bright psychedelic hues depicting natural and pastoral scenes. One of them showed a lady with an umbrella walking through a park, spattered by purple raindrops, the blooming flowers around her reflected in puddles on the sidewalk. There was a dream-like quality to the décor.

Unfortunately, there was nothing dream-like about the room where Millie lay.

The hospital bed had been parked in the middle of a parquet floor in a large room, surrounded by windows overlooking the city. It looked like this top-floor space might have been designed as a ballroom to host large parties, but nobody had celebrated here in a long time.

A heart monitor beeped periodically. A ventilator hissed as it kept Millie breathing.

I tiptoed toward the unconscious gray-haired woman, as if somehow absurdly afraid of waking her up, even though waking her from her coma was almost certainly impossible, and would actually be a positive thing if it somehow happened.

Her face was lined with wrinkles. It looked like she'd lived a rough life. Her gray hair lay limp around her head. She seemed frail and birdlike, small in her silk gown and sheets. I thought of her slender apparition; apparently she was still at about her seventeen-year-old size and weight, or had returned to it in the course of her long coma.

The only sound in the room was the regular beep of a heart monitor.

“Hello, Millie,” I said quietly to the closed eyes. “Pink Falcon. Is that you visiting the apartment downstairs?”

“She's not visiting anywhere.” An older nurse with dyed-black hair walked into the room, carrying a Bible bookmarked with a copy of Watchtower magazine. She sat in an armchair near the foot of the bed. “I can tell you that. She doesn't move.”

“Are you the regular nurse?” I asked.

“For this week, yes.”

“The service sends different people,” Thurmond explained to Stacey and me. Amberly had not come upstairs with us. “Nobody likes to stay on, especially not on the night shift. They say it's creepy.”

“Have you observed anything unusual since you've arrived?” I asked the nurse.

She looked at Thurmond in his Lincoln-green vest and matching Robin Hood hat with a tall red feather poking out the top. She glanced at a giant kachina doll, the size of a toddler, standing on a shelf in the corner holding a beaded staff, glaring with its square eyes and triangle teeth. “I suppose not,” she said.

“Okay. We're just going to set up some monitoring equipment.

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