The Haunting of Shane Walsh
Morgan's vision had been accurate: as Beth and Daryl left the cabin, she felt stronger. There was a strange sensation flowing through her veins, almost like a newly ignited flame.
And it wasn't just the confidence from knowing that she'd managed to take a trip somewhere that those without Gifts could not travel; it was the knowledge that she'd come back, and that she'd found the ability to tap into the Gifts that lay dormant within her soul—she'd used it to her advantage and recalled everything that she'd been allowed to see. And now she was using it to help the Dixon brothers.
Hell, she almost felt like a real Witch. Could she be as powerful and Gifted as Eastman and Morgan one day? Or even Florence Newton?
Never, in a million years, could she have ever guessed that the prospect of becoming a Witch would be a real possibility for her—let alone that it would sound as intriguing as it currently did. Seeing Merle's murder, knowing for certain that there was some sociopath walking free who wanted to hurt Daryl, had sparked something to life inside her. She'd never felt quite so passionate about anything before. Sure, his eternal soul on the line and a murderer walking free was a major motivator, but she was starting to think that even if that weren't the case, she would still want to see Merle's soul put to rest.
She wanted to help. She needed to help. She'd never cared about something so much in her life. She'd never felt so in control and actually capable.
Should she look into getting a crystal ball? What would she call herself? The Farm Witch? The Witch of Senoia? No, no—it was way too early to be thinking like that. She was getting ahead of herself.
First thing's first, she needed to focus on using all her Gifts, and learning how to manipulate them to her advantage. She needed to awaken all the abilities that had been lying dormant within her soul for all these years.
Something was telling her that this was just the beginning of a long journey that would inevitably lead her through multiple stages of self-discovery… both inward and otherwise.
There was a very subtle difference in Daryl's posture as he rode away from the cabin. Beth told herself she was imagining it, that she was picking up on frequencies that didn't actually exist and searching for cues that were no more than simple niceties. Yet she couldn't ignore the way he seemed to relax beneath her grasp now compared to how stiff and tense he'd been after leaving her house. Even his hands seemed to be grasping the handlebars a bit looser, a bit more content.
He revved the engine every chance he got and pressed down heavily on the gas after every stop sign. She wrapped her arms a little tighter around his middle and he seemed to lean back into her grasp, though she couldn't quite tell if it was just from the force of the wind or not. Regardless, the ride back to the Sheriff's Department felt much more brief this time around.
They parked in the same spot as before and climbed off the bike. Beth took off her helmet and shook out her hair, silently hoping that she didn't have helmet hair and that the wind hadn't completely destroyed her ends by now.
Not that it really mattered—who was she trying to look good for anyway? Rick? Yeah, right.
Merle still hadn't reappeared by the time Beth and Daryl entered the Sheriff's Department and approached the front desk. She was beginning to think it odd until Rick showed up, popping out of a door from off to the left of the glass-enclosed desk. Walsh was nowhere to be seen.
"Oh, good—ya got here quick," Rick said, breathing out a sigh of relief. He stepped forward and opened the door fully, nodding toward them both in greeting. "Didn't have a chance ta text ya back. Nice ta see y'all again."
Beth assumed Daryl must've texted Rick before they'd left the cabin. Maybe that was a good idea, she reckoned.
"Yeah—we uh, found out some shit," Daryl said, gazing at Rick skeptically.
"Oh yeah?" Rick asked, furrowing his brow. His gaze flicked over to Beth and that's when she noticed the look of tepid confusion in his eyes.
"Yeah," Daryl said.
Beth gauged the sheriff's reaction as she added, "You might find it kinda hard to believe, though."
Rick's expression didn't change. He locked his gaze on Beth and said, "Whatever it is, I'm sure it can't be any harder to believe than the crap that's been goin' on around here today."
Beth glanced over and shared a look of confusion with Daryl.
"You talkin' about when Shane flashed us?" Daryl asked Rick.
Rick huffed out an incredulous breath. "Nah. Things got a lot weirder once you two left."
Beth raised her eyebrows. Her first thought, of course, was Merle. What exactly had he been up to while they'd been talking to Rick and driving out to the cabin? What damage had he managed to cause?
"Well, you got a minute ta talk?" Daryl asked.
Rick nodded and stepped aside, gesturing for them to lead the way through the open door. "'Course I do. C'mon back."
Beth and Daryl stood hunched over behind Rick's desk, staring intently at his computer monitor with Rick sitting in his chair between them. They were watching recorded surveillance videos of the Sheriff's Department from a few hours ago while Sheriff Grimes explained the videos and expressed his immense confusion.
"Now see, this ain't so weird fer me since I know Shane's not the best at pickin' out a belt that actually fits—" Rick clicked the button on his mouse, replaying the moment on his computer screen when Walsh's pants were jerked down. Thankfully, the camera was angled behind him so they only had to see a second of his bare ass. "—but I mean, there wasn't anybody else in there with him, an' you two were on the other side of bulletproof glass. He's a moron though, so…"
He scoffed and shook his head, exiting out of the video and clicking a separate file.
Beth glanced over and saw Daryl smirking. Admittedly, she had a small smile of her own as she remembered how humiliated Shane had been. Though seeing it play out on the video like everyone else had seen it—without Merle's obvious presence—did make it look a little stranger than usual. His pants had come down with a bit of force, but Rick didn't seem to notice. At first glance, it could easily be played off as nothing more than a "wardrobe malfunction."
"But this…" Rick opened another video that he had to skip forward through. "Well, just see for yerself."
The camera was aimed down at the inside of a holding cell and its single occupant: a tall, slender, older man with a receding hairline and a thick dark mustache.
"This is Simon," Rick explained. "He's a notorious drug addict with a history of mental illness an' a tendency to forget to take the right meds. He's usually a non-violent offender; we gotta bring 'im in at least once a week fer disturbing the peace. We brought him in this mornin' 'cause he was walkin' down Main Street in his underwear. Scared the shit outta somebody's little girl. He was high off his ass on crack—last week, it was meth."
He held down the fast-forward button, skimming through several hours of Simon's inaction within the small holding cell. Simon paced a lot for the first few hours, fiddled with his jail clothes, picked at the walls and the floor and his nails. As was typical for someone who was strung-out and contained. Rick tried to skip past the times that showed Simon using the small toilet within his cell. He began to slow the video down once Simon resorted to sitting on the thin cot and restlessly fidgeting. It looked like he was beginning to come down from his high. Beth noticed the time stamp in the corner of the video: 12:42. She and Daryl had been speaking to Rick in this very room at that time.
"Anyhow," Rick explained. "He wasn't givin' us no trouble today. We were jus' gonna let 'im ride out his high an' give him a court date for indecent exposure since we got bigger fish ta fry. But a li'l bit after y'all left, he just started losing his fuckin' mind—started screamin' at us ta let 'im out, rattlin' the cell door, demanding that we send him to County."
"So what?" Daryl asked, unsure of why they were still watching some random drug addict sit quietly inside his cell. "He's a crackhead. Erratic behavior's what they do best."
Rick chuckled and shook his head. "Nah, this was different. If you knew Simon like we do, you'd know that he'd cut off his own dick before voluntarily goin' to County. There's a bunch'a guys he used ta run around with that're locked up over there. He's scared of gettin' shanked in the shower. An' once he comes down off the drugs, he rarely ever gives us any problems. When I finally went back there, his cell was a goddamn disaster."
He perked up and pointed to the monitor as the video continued to play. "Here—watch."
Beth and Daryl leaned down a little closer and watched. For several seconds, it was still Simon sitting quietly on his cot. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, dirty water began shooting outwards from the cell's toilet and directly into Simon's face. When he stood up and tried to step away, the thin mattress of his cot lifted and flew against the wall. The pillow hit the bars of the cell and bounced back to land on the floor. Simon scuttled over to stand in the corner, trembling, his hands covering his face defensively. Everything in his cell seemed to calm down simultaneously and after several seconds, he brought his hands away from his face and looked around cautiously. Then the sink next to the toilet abruptly broke, shooting a harsh stream of water directly at his face and knocking him on his ass. The video cut out and went black.
"That's all I got 'fore the camera malfunctioned," Rick explained. "That's another weird thing—the surveillance in the cells has never given us any problems. Till now. We went ahead an' let Simon leave without any charges after 'bout half an hour of listenin' to him beg ta go to County. He was so shook up, he'd pissed his pants three times. Figured he earned a sleep in his own bed after all that."
Beth and Daryl were exchanging a knowing look, all wide eyes and pale faces. They both knew exactly what had caused this strange occurrence—but how could they ever explain it to Rick without sounding like drug addicts themselves?
And here Beth had been hoping that Merle was just kidding about "scaring the crackhead in the holding cell." He was starting to have a little too much fun experimenting with his newfound poltergeist powers.
"And that's not even the weirdest part," Rick muttered, turning his head and looking up at Daryl. "I wasn't gonna bother goin' back an' checkin' Simon's cell camera till the end of the day 'cause—ya know, he's unstable, coulda been makin' it all up… But then, right after y'all left, Shane came in an' claimed he's being haunted."
Daryl barked out a laugh but Beth froze. She pursed her lips and tried to hide any reaction that might've been showing on her face. She'd really, really hoped Merle had been lying when he'd said he scared Walsh half to death.
"No, I'm serious," Rick insisted, quickly turning back to the computer monitor and clicking on a new file. "I thought he was full'a shit, too. Figured he was tryin' ta cut out early so he could go see whatever chick he's been datin' this week. But he looked… pretty goddamn scared. I sent him home an' checked all the cameras. Simon's cell was jus' the tip of this weird-ass iceberg."
Another video began to play, this time from a camera mounted in the top corner of Shane Walsh's office. It showed Shane sitting at his desk with a stack of paperwork before him, reading glasses perched on his nose as he rifled through papers and jotted things down. He was the only one in the room and the door was closed. There was a music program open on his computer, barely visible on the monitor sitting on his desk, and he was bobbing his head lightly to whatever song that was playing. The surveillance video didn't have any audio, but the picture quality was good enough that Beth could squint and make out a playlist on Walsh's computer screen titled "Sexy Cop Hours." She stifled a laugh.
"I think this goes without sayin'," Rick said, lowering his voice. "But I shouldn't be showin' you any of these videos, an' I'd be awful disappointed if it ever got back ta Shane—I think he wants ta forget it entirely. He was real pale when I sent him home. Looked like he was gonna be sick, he was practically shakin' in his boots."
Daryl scoffed, smirking as his eyes remained locked on the computer screen. He almost looked excited. "Nah—we ain't gon' say nothin'. That's a given."
Just wait till you hear our little secret, Beth wanted to say.
Rick cleared his throat and pressed the button of the mouse, fast-forwarding through a few minutes of Shane doing paperwork. Then he slowed the video to normal speed and pointed with one finger to a particular spot on the monitor.
"Now, watch this," he muttered. "This is the file Shane was workin' on. It's sittin' right here on the corner of his desk, right? Ain't nobody else around."
Daryl grunted in understanding. He and Beth leaned a bit closer, squinting and watching very closely.
Shane lifted his head and turned to the side, opening a drawer to retrieve a new pen. When he did, the open file on his desk slid off and fell to the floor, scattering dozens of papers. It looked to have been pushed off by some unseen force, though it could easily be explained as falling off from the movement of the drawer being opened. Shane shook his head and shut the drawer, taking off his reading glasses and setting them down atop the paper he'd been working on before standing and kneeling down to gather all the loose papers back up and return the file to its spot on his desk.
Rick paused the video and quickly pointed to the reading glasses. "Here—watch his glasses."
He pressed Play. While Shane struggled to retrieve all the papers that were scattered across the floor, his glasses were lifted from the surface of the desk and carried through mid-air. Then they were set down very carefully in a new spot, hidden behind the computer monitor.
"Oh, shit," Daryl whispered out.
"You saw that, right?" Rick asked, his wide eyes glued to the video while his finger hovered over the button of the mouse.
"Was there… a window open?" Beth suggested weakly.
"No!" Rick scoffed. "Those damn things floated. Now wait—that ain't even the weirdest part. Keep watchin'."
There's no way to explain this, Beth thought, her veins filling with dread. Except the truth.
Nonetheless, she kept watching: Shane returned to his seat and settled in, prepared to get back to filling out paperwork. He quickly realized that his reading glasses were not where he'd left them. He checked the top of his head and the front of his shirt first, then glanced around at the floor and the area surrounding his chair. He lifted a few papers, moved a few folders, checked behind the keyboard. Finally, he located them behind the computer monitor. With a subtle shrug of "huh, weird" to himself, he slipped his glasses back on and grabbed his pen. But then, just as he touched pen to paper, the same file he'd just gathered back up was lifted into mid-air and forcefully slapped against his face before flying off the desk and onto the floor. A few other files flew off as well, all at the same time. Shane rubbed his cheek for a second, stunned. Then he shoved his chair back in shock and put his hands up, looking around wildly.
"Y'saw that part too, right?" Rick asked. "There was no wind, wasn't no window open—we shut the central cooling off last week. That one file literally slapped him right in the face! There's no reason fer all those damn files ta be fallin' to the floor like that. It looked like they were pushed."
Because they were, Beth thought. She bit down hard on her lower lip and kept watching. She could see Daryl smirking from the corner of her eye.
Nothing else happened for a few long seconds. Shane sat frozen in his chair, hands still held up as if in surrender. Then he slowly took off his reading glasses and stood up, setting them down atop the desk once more before leaning down and beginning to clean up the mess of papers all over the floor.
"And watch this—" Rick pointed to the mouse of Shane's computer sitting beside his keyboard, perfectly still. "—y'see his mouse, right? Jus' sittin' there, he ain't even close to touchin' it."
As he finished explaining, Beth and Daryl watched the mouse to Shane's computer being yanked from its cord by an unseen force and chucked across the room before hitting the wall and falling to the floor. Shane leapt up in surprise and looked around, trying to figure out what just happened. When he couldn't find the source of the noise, he went back to picking up papers—though he was much more tense and he kept glancing around warily.
Rick pointed to the reading glasses sitting atop the desk again. "Watch those damn glasses this time…"
The reading glasses lifted up from the desk just like they had moments before, floating through air and settling atop the computer monitor. Shane hadn't noticed though, because he was too busy gathering up all the files from the floor and placing them back on his desk. Once he was done, he returned to his seat and attempted to get back to work. He picked up his pen and quickly realized his glasses were once again missing. He glanced around for a second before spotting them atop his computer monitor. He reached out and snatched them up hesitantly.
For the next couple of minutes, the video was just Shane doing paperwork while looking very uncomfortable.
"Keep watchin'," Rick whispered, as though they were watching a movie and his favorite scene was about to come up. "This's where it gets real weird."
At that, the reading glasses slid off Shane's face and fluttered in mid-air before hovering at eye-level across the desk. Shane stared, frozen and bewildered. He reached out a hand and tried to snatch his glasses back but they were jerked away, out of his reach.
Beth could practically see Merle wearing the glasses and cackling maniacally as he teased Walsh, even though he was completely invisible on camera.
"Alright—y'all definitely saw that, right?" Rick said, tapping his finger on the monitor excitedly. "Shane was jus' thinkin' it was a side-effect of his allergy medication, but we got that shit on tape."
They watched as Shane reached out and grasped for his glasses again and again only to have them jerked away at the last second. On the fourth try, he finally got them. Though he was clearly shaken, putting them back on warily and gazing around. That's when the bottom-right drawer on his desk flew open, like it was being yanked out by a rough hand. Shane jumped and looked down as the middle drawer flew open, then the top drawer, and then the bottom-left drawer and both drawers above it. He shoved his chair back and jumped up, stepping away from the desk in fear and confusion. Then his reading glasses flew off his face and across the room, shattering into pieces against the far wall. Shane stepped back until his back was pressed up against the wall behind his desk, searching around wildly for the source of the disturbances. His keyboard was yanked from his computer by an unseen hand and chucked to the floor, hard. Shane trembled. The playlist on his computer screen had changed: Beth squinted and read the title of the song that was playing.
Rick pointed to the spot that Beth was currently studying and said, "Shane said his computer started playin' some other weird song on its own at this point. It was Somebody's Watching Me by Rockwell. He doesn't even have that on his playlist."
Beth couldn't help but smirk.
The sound of the music seemed to be making Shane tremble harder, though he remained frozen with his back pressed against the wall. Then all the files and papers flew off his desk at once, creating a small storm of paperwork that drifted to the floor in a scattered mess. At that, he hauled ass towards the door. He yanked it open and darted out into the hall, and the door fell shut behind him. A stack of boxes in the corner of the room toppled to the floor. Then everything went still.
Rick let out a befuddled sigh and closed the video. Beth and Daryl stood up straight and took a step back, and Rick spun around in his chair to give them both an expectant look.
He could already see it on their faces: they weren't nearly as stunned as they should've been.
"Now tell me that ain't the weirdest goddamn thing ya ever seen in yer life," he said, eyeballing them both with skepticism. "I've seen all those Paranormal Activity movies, but this? These are surveillance videos—ain't no movie. I thought Shane was full'a shit or losin' his mind, but I've watched this damn footage at least twenty times by now. There's just no explanation. Not logical, at least."
Beth and Daryl exchanged a look that made the skeptical frown on Rick's face deepen.
"Wasn't nobody else in here today," he explained. "If that's what yer gonna try ta tell me. Basset's off today, everybody else is out workin' their beats. 'S just been me an' Shane an' Simon in this building since eight this mornin'."
Beth raised her eyebrows but kept her lips tightly shut, unwilling to return Rick's scrutinizing gaze for longer than a few seconds at a time. She kept glancing to Daryl, who was shifting uncomfortably where he stood and diverting his gaze towards the computer monitor on the desk.
"One more thing," Rick said, spinning back around and clicking his mouse to open both videos. He kept them paused and minimized the windows so he could show the bottom right corner of both frames at once. He pointed at the timestamps. "All hell broke loose in Simon's cell… and then not five minutes after it ended, that other shit started in Shane's office."
"So…?" Daryl croaked out.
Beth shot him a look and he gave a discreet shrug in response. Rick spun back around, blue eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"So… if it was a haunting, it'd have ta be the same ghost," he said. "Right?"
Beth could no longer keep her mouth shut. She burst out, "You think it's a ghost? Like—an actual haunting?"
Rick blinked and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. He stared at Beth incredulously. "Shane's glasses were hovering. in. mid. air… What else could it be?"
"Well, shit," Daryl muttered.
He and Beth exchanged a look and the corner of her mouth tugged up into a surprised half-smile. Suddenly, she didn't feel the need to communicate silently.
"Maybe this'll be easier than we thought," she said.
"More'an maybe," Daryl agreed, looking back to Rick.
The Sheriff had already opened his mouth, a very confused expression on his face. He asked, "Now what the hell're you two goin' on about? What's gonna be easier than ya thought? Why aren't y'all as absolutely shook about this damn poltergeist as I am? Christ, I'm gonna have ta bring a priest in here or somethin'!"
Daryl sighed and shook his head. Then he said, rather matter-of-factly, "Nah, you won't need a priest. The haunting was, uh… it was Merle."
Beth's jaw dropped open. She hadn't been expecting Daryl to be quite so blunt about it.
Then again, she reckoned this was probably their best opportunity to be blunt. If Rick was ever going to hear them out, this would be the time. He was clearly open-minded to the prospect of dead people sticking around and causing trouble.
Although she couldn't say whether he'd be quite so open-minded once he heard the whole story.
to be continued...
