Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga
Chapter 22: Part-Time Ghost
Louisa looked at her friend, her eyes wide in horror. Her father wasn't home and the footsteps were too heavy to belong to Dottie. Jasper had gone on a hunting trip for the weekend with his brothers and wouldn't be back until Sunday night. Which meant that whoever was in her house with her wasn't supposed to be there. And she had let him know that she was in the building.
Her heart rate began to accelerate, her skin turning hot and tingly as adrenaline began to flood her veins. She could hear Rosalie hissing at her to stop moving, but she ignored her, creeping into the kitchen while she pulled her mobile out of her pocket. Her fingers fumbled over the screen as she attempted to dial 911 and she was shaking so badly she nearly dropped the device. She slid a knife out of the knife block on the kitchen counter and held it in front of her with one hand while the other pressed her phone tightly to her ear, waiting impatiently for the call to go through, her breath coming out in shaky rattles. She knew that adrenaline made time seem like it was passing slower so she counted slowly to one, five, ten. Still, nothing. She pulled her mobile away from her face to look at the screen.
There was no signal, she realised, her horror growing. Of all of the times their house decided to turn into a dead zone was when she was in the house with an intruder. Fan-fucking-tastic. She turned back towards Rosalie, only to find that her friend had moved to the base of the stairs and was peering up them intently, her head tilted to the side as she tracked the movements of the intruder. The common sense part of her brain (which was suspiciously starting to sound more and more like Jasper) was screaming at her to get out of the house. Surely she would be able to call for help when she got out of the house? That would be the smart thing to do.
An almighty crash sounded from upstairs, shaking the walls and rattling the windows in their panes. A picture frame fell to the ground, glass shattering on the wood floor.
Let it be known that Louisa never claimed to be smart.
At the sound of the glass breaking, she was jolted out of her stunned reverie, and, without thinking (obviously), charged up the stairs towards the sound. She made it up to the landing, brandishing her knife in front of her, and her head swivelled around, looking for the source of the sound, ears straining to detect the slightest of movement. She didn't have to look too far as her eyes landed on her bedroom door which was standing ajar, something she was positive she hadn't done when she left earlier that morning. Rosalie had beaten her using her not-teleportation and had sunk into a defensive crouch, a low, guttural sound emanating from her throat.
"Who's there?" Louisa called out, her voice eerily calm, even to her own ears. When there was no response or even a sound of movement, Louisa inched towards the door, knife held out slightly in front of her, her knuckles blanching white from how tightly she was holding it. She glanced at Rosalie who had straightened up, eyes narrowed and staring at the bedroom door in confusion. Louisa stepped around her friend and hesitantly pushed open the bedroom door, prepared to step into the room only to pause, a startled gasp escaping from her lips.
Her room had been, for lack of a better term, destroyed. Every book on her bookshelf had been pulled off and tossed to the ground, pages torn from their spines covering the hardwood floor like snow. The drawers on her desk had been pulled out, the contents dumped. Bedsheets were flung across the room, her mattress resting crooked on the bedframe. All her clothes had been ripped out of her wardrobe, piles of socks and pants sitting discarded, the drawers that had contained them halfway across the room. But most distressingly, was that her laptop computer had been smashed to pieces.
A chill ran down Louisa's spin when she saw that, save herself, her room was void of any other living being. Louisa spun around and stalked throughout the rest of the top floor, looking for the intruder, only to find similarly empty rooms, which, oddly had been left untouched by the trespasser. Louisa lifted her phone to her ear again and tried to call for the police, but once again, the call wouldn't connect.
"We're alone," Rosalie confirmed, her voice laced with confusion.
"You heard it too, though, right?" Louisa asked.
Rose nodded, grabbing Louisa by the elbow and leading her down the stairs. "We need to leave. It's not safe for you."
"This isn't a ghost, is it?"
"No," Rosalie replied. "I could hear their heartbeat. It was definitely a human."
"How can we hear them in my room, only for them to disappear when we came up the stairs?" Louisa asked, trying to tramp down on the wave of panic that was welling up in her chest. Now was not a good time to break down, she thought, blinking back tears. She needed a plan. Her phone wasn't working so they couldn't call the police, or anybody really, for help.
But she didn't need to, she remembered. Chief Swan lived just down the street. He was a police officer and he had a phone. Without thinking, Louisa broke away from Rosalie, much to the vampire's annoyance, and took off sprinting the four hundred meters to the chief of police's house, praying that he was home. He was, and he looked rather alarmed to see her on his front doorstep without a coat or shoes and still clutching a kitchen knife.
She did her best to explain what had happened, though she was certain that in her shock, she was completely unintelligible. Rosalie wasn't much help explaining either, choosing instead to call someone, probably a family member, instead of talking to Chief Swan. The man stepped aside, letting the two teens inside and ran upstairs to grab towels. Louisa used the time to try to call her father, knowing that he would probably want to be informed of the break-in.
"Someone broke into the house," Louisa said, launching into the previous half hour's excitement before her father had the chance to say hello.
Her father swore colourfully before telling her to stay where she was and that he was on his way. He hung up and Louisa stared at the device for a few seconds before turning to face her friend. Rosalie was talking so quickly that her lips were a blur and Louisa couldn't register what was actually being said. Finally, her friend snapped her phone shut moments before Chief Swan bustled back into the lounge, which was probably a good thing, considering that she had been doing something decidedly not human. Chief Swan handed them the towels and ushered them into the kitchen where he sat down at the table.
He attempted to question them, but when Louisa saw that he was putting on his boots and coat, she jumped up from the table. "I'm coming with you."
"Louisa," Chief Swan said in a voice that was probably supposed to calm her down but only really served to agitate her further. "It's a crime scene. I can't have you there."
"Bullshit," she snapped. "The Forks police department is too small for you to spare someone to babysit us and you'll need our statements."
"We can stand outside of the bedroom and talk to you," Rosalie supplied helpfully when Chief Swan began to protest, rising and standing behind Louisa. "We won't go in. We'll let you deal with all of the evidence."
Chief Swan gritted his teeth and sighed noisily but conceded and the three trudged through the heavy rain back towards the Collins residence. He was already taking their statements by the time two uniformed police officers showed up. Louisa led them up towards her room and watched with a sense of detachment as the doorway was sectioned off with yellow police tape. Rose must have sensed her dissociation because she placed a hand on her shoulder to ground her to reality. Louisa looked up at her friend with a wan smile, and Rose returned it, her face wrinkled with concern.
Together, they stood and watched as Chief Swan and the two officers donned blue disposable gloves and white-footed jumpsuits. Louisa personally thought that the two officers looked overwhelmed as they began to place tented markers around the room, but chose not to comment and explain what exactly had transpired between walking in the front door and going to get Charlie. Louisa wondered if her story sounded as insane to the police as it sounded to her. Judging by the glances the two officers where sharing, it probably did. After all, how did a person disappear into thin air?
"Lou," Rosalie said once it seemed that Chief Swan had run out of questions. "Why don't we go downstairs?"
Louisa knew that doing so would be a good idea though she was reluctant to leave the scene of a crime— it just wasn't in her nature to. Even so, she let her friend lead her down to the lounge, where Louisa sank slowly into the couch. She expected to feel exhausted at the very least, but as the seconds ticked by, she still found herself numb. Rosalie sat down next to her and fiddled with her phone. Louisa wanted to ask her why she was still using a flip phone in 2018 but figured that it would elicit an annoyed glare and an accusation of trying to change the subject.
"I've called Jasper and left a message for him. I don't know when he'll see it, but he'll be back soon."
"I'm fine," Louisa tried to insist. "He doesn't need to hurry back. I was planning on spending the night at your house anyway."
"You're in shock," Rosalie pointed out. "Once you come out of this, you'll want him with you."
"He'll ruin tonight's sleepover," Louisa said. "It's supposed to be all girls."
"You'll have to convince your dad to let you stay with us tonight," Rosalie said. "He'll try to keep you close to him and if Jasper comes home early, my brother might do something stupid."
Louisa was saved from trying to think of a response when she heard a car door slam outside. She didn't need to look out the window to know that her father had arrived home. She could hear him running up the front path and he burst into the house, calling out loudly for her. A moment later, he was standing in the doorway looking pale and confused. Rosalie scooted over to give Mr Collins room as he descended on his eldest child, dropping to his knees and pulling her into a tight hug. Louisa then went through the tedious task of explaining what had happened again. Okay, maybe Rose was right about the whole shock thing.
"Can I still stay with Rose?" Louisa asked. "Obviously, I won't be able to sleep in my room, and I doubt that they'll let you stay in the house."
It took some convincing but Mr Collins reluctantly agreed. Louisa wondered aloud if the police would let her take clothes with her. She ignored the way Rose and Mr Collins exchanged a concerned look over the top of her head. She tried to focus on her breathing and ground herself in reality, but it was like trying to catch a piece of thread in a hurricane. Everything felt distant and her memories felt woolly. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.
Chief Swan reappeared and began asking her more questions. Was anything missing from her room? Were any of the doors unlocked when she came home? Had she noticed anybody lurking around lately? It frustrated her to no end to have to admit that she didn't know. They were interrupted by the front door opening once more, this time by a tall, dark-haired man who strolled confidently into the house without even bothering to knock.
"Sorry, Chief," the man said, his tone carefree. "I only just got your message."
Annoyance flooded through her veins at the man's lackadaisical attitude. But annoyance was good. She could work with annoyance. It was a far cry better than the floating detached feeling that accompanied acute stress disorder.
Chief Swan waved away the newcomer's apologies and introduced the man as Sergeant William Todd. The man in question gave her a patronising smile and it took everything in Louisa's willpower not to insult him. Sergeant Todd was broad shouldered with dark hair and blue eyes, and looked to be around her father's age. He carried an impressive amount of arrogance with him, despite the fact that he only got his job due to lack of applicants. Louisa had to bite her tongue so she didn't tell him this.
"I can't say anything about shady characters lurking around the property," Louisa said slowly, a thought popping into her head with the appearance of the sergeant. "But I don't think this is the first time something like this has happened." Louisa sat up straight and focused her attention on her father. "A few weeks ago, Dottie saw the figure of a man in the doorway of her room. We wrote it off as sleep paralysis, but what if it wasn't?"
Mr Collins' brow furrowed but he was cut off before he could reply. "You think it was, what? A ghost?" the sergeant scoffed. "You heard about the little girl that was murdered hear and think she haunts the place, then?"
"Of course not," Louisa snapped, her mind spinning. "My sister said she saw the figure of a man. Keep up. And she wasn't a little girl, Sergeant. She was an eighteen-year-old young woman."
"You think that the figure your sister saw was the person who broke in today?" Chief Swan asked, partly to intervene before the two could argue.
"I had heard footsteps before she woke up screaming. I thought it was my dad or the house settling or something, but what if it wasn't?" Louisa said, her voice rising in excitement. "Dottie is always trying to convince me that this place is haunted, and I thought she was nuts. But she isn't the first person to report odd things happening in this house."
"The last owners fled after two months of living here," Rosalie supplied.
Louisa nodded. "What if there is some truth to what everyone has been experiencing? What if someone has been breaking in and trying to make it look like the place is haunted?"
"And you think that it was today's intruder?" The sergeant asked dubiously. "For the last ten years? Why?"
Louisa was too excited at the turn of events to even give the man a sassy retort. "He'd have to find a way to watch the house from a distance, though," she explained quickly. "There is no way he could keep it up for so long and not be caught."
"Look, kid," the sergeant said. "Things like that don't happen outside of movies."
"It must suck to be so unimaginative," Louisa snapped before turning back towards Chief Swan. "Listen. Lots of weird things happen in this house: cold spots, flickering lights. But all of that stuff can easily be faked if you know what you are doing."
"I've never seen or heard anything out of the ordinary here," Mr Collins interjected. "The strangest thing that ever happens is that the house turns into a dead zone."
Louisa opened her mouth to remind him of the time that they had heard the disembodied crying of a woman but paused. He hadn't been there. Thinking back, her father had always been at work when anything odd happened. In fact, only Louisa and Dottie had ever experienced anything that could be labelled as paranormal. But that didn't make any sense. Ghosts didn't take the weekend off or work between the hours of three and five in the afternoon. So why did this one?
"This 'ghost'," Louisa said slowly. "He's been trying to make us think the house is haunted, right? But he can't do it all the time."
"A part-time ghost?" Sergeant Todd asked.
"A part-time anything, really," she corrected, her brow furrowing. "We're looking for a man who has a day job, but with flexible hours. One that would give him the afternoon off or one where his absence wouldn't draw any attention. He might even work from home," Louisa explained. "But something is keeping him away from here in the evenings."
"What if he has a family?" Rosalie asked. "Maybe he's got kids. They come home for dinner, he has to go back."
"It would explain why dad has never experienced anything out of the ordinary," Louisa agreed, kneading her thumb against her temple. "But that still doesn't explain how he has never been caught before. He's got to have some sort of way of watching us."
Louisa glanced at the chief of police to see how he was taking their theory. Not well, if the incredulous look on his face was anything to go by. He opened his mouth as if he was about to tell them that they were nuts when one of the police officers shuffled into the lounge and stepped up to him.
"We've got something weird," the man said in a low voice in Chief Swan's ear. He cast a nervous glance towards Louisa before continuing on. "We just found a camera hidden in the girl's room. In the air duct."
Louisa knew that it wasn't totally rational for her to feel so excited by this announcement. Indeed, both Rosalie and Mr Collins looked like they might vomit. Her father sank back into the sofa and buried his face in his palms.
She turned towards Sergeant Todd, her eyebrows raised. "You were saying?"
The room was so silent for a moment that, as cliché as it sounds, you probably could have heard a pin drop. Then the men were talking over each other. Louisa noticed Rosalie pulling out her phone as if to call someone, only to see her grimace to herself in frustration and snap it closed once more. The action reminded Louisa of something, and she found herself raising her voice to be heard over the din of men who were all but shouting at each other.
"If you want to hear my theory," Louisa said. "I'd be happy to share it."
Mr Collins turned to give her a withering glare. "No," her father said. "You're going to stay out of this, Louisa. Let the police handle it."
"Dad—"
"No, Louisa," her father repeated. "You promised you were done with this when we left Tacoma." There must have been some sort of guilty expression on her face because her father suddenly had his full attention on her, towering over her. He lifted a hand to her chin and forced her face upwards to look at him. "You haven't." It was an accusation, not a question.
Looking into her father's dark grey eyes, she knew she couldn't lie to him. "It just been paperwork," she admitted. "I've been trying to piece together a timeline."
"And you thought that you could do what the police couldn't?"
"For eleven years, Dad!" She found herself shouting and she had to take a deep breath to try to calm her pounding heart. "It's been eleven years and they are no closer to solving the case now than they were then."
"It's still not your responsibility, Louisa," Mr Collins snapped. "How did you even get all of the information, anyway?"
An awkward silence settled over the lounge as the elder Collins scanned the faces of the other occupants of the room. Sergeant Todd looked like a gleeful child who had just learned that he could eat cake for dinner. Rosalie's face was smooth and frozen like a porcelain doll's. Chief Swan, however, didn't seem to have quite mastered the art of a poker face and Mr Collin's glare turned to focus on him.
"Stephen," Chief Swan began quietly.
"The last case she worked on ended with her kidnapped, held hostage for nine hours, and watching a woman burn to death," her father snapped. "She is sixteen. She's not an adult and she doesn't work for the police. She has no business helping. I told you this."
"When she was twelve, she helped the police find three children who had gone missing from a Portland mall. When she was fifteen, information she gathered during an investigation aided the FBI's White Collar Crime program to arrest seven government officials suspected of money laundering."
"That's not an excuse!"
"If I thought, for one moment, that she would be in any danger," Chief Swan said. "I would never have given her the file. But Stephen, your daughter has a talent that exists only in novels. You just saw her predict that our suspect had some way of long-distance surveillance before we even found the cameras."
Her father took slow breaths, the kind parents always took when they really wanted to smack their children but knew they shouldn't. "And your case?" Mr Collins said through gritted teeth. "Even if she does help solve it, you are risking the case being thrown away in court. All the defence would have to say is that the evidence was mishandled."
"That's why she comes to me if she does find anything," Chief Swan said. "She did it tonight. The second she realised that someone had broken into your house, she came and got me. I deal with the evidence. She just points me in the right direction."
Her father still looked pissed, but she could tell that his resolve was wavering. Louisa saw an opening in the conversation and took it. "I needed to know, Dad. She died in my room. I've been having nightmares about it for months. I can't sleep knowing that whoever killed her is still walking around. It's like he walked through walls that day, Dad. All of the windows and doors were locked. If he could get into a locked house and murder Anna, he could get into a locked house and murder me."
Pathos. Appealing to the emotions of the audience. She doubted her English teacher had envisioned her using it to manipulate her father when they learned about it in class, but she couldn't deny that it was incredibly helpful.
Mr Collins suddenly looked so much older than his forty-two years. "If anything happens to her," he said, his voice trailing off.
"She doesn't work on this without my supervision. She can work on it a few days a week, down at the station. If her grades slip, she's off the case." A fair, if annoying, stipulation.
Her father was silent for a long moment. Then he sighed, and she knew that she had won the argument. "She stays with you," her father said finally. "If she goes to a crime scene, she is glued to your side."
It took every bit of Louisa's willpower not to sprint off up the stairs towards her bedroom. Still, she couldn't help the small grin that appeared on her face, which didn't disappear even after her father informed her that she was still grounded for a month for lying to him. At last, the group made their way up the stairs towards her bedroom, where Louisa ducked underneath the yellow tape and donned a white jumpsuit offered to her by a confused officer. Her father and Rosalie hovered outside of the room both watching Louisa's movements with scrutiny.
"My laptop is broken," Louisa noted. "It had most of my case notes on it."
"Do you think it was intentional?" Chief Swan asked, picking up the pile of plastic and metal and slipping it into an evidence bag.
"No doubt," she said. "If there was a camera in my room, he probably saw me working on it." Louisa tried to ignore what else (or, more specifically, who else) the intruder might have seen in her room. "Have you checked the rest of the house for cameras?"
An officer looked startled at the suggestion and scurried out of the room.
She continued to pick through her belongings, categorising what had been destroyed and possible motives for it. "He was angry," she said finally. "This sort of destruction is angry." It was an inelegant way to express her thoughts, something Sergeant Todd seemed to agree with if the snort of derision was anything to go by. "He didn't need to destroy my room this much, but he did."
"What do you think made him so angry?" Rosalie asked, her head tilting to the side in confusion.
He was scared, Louisa thought to herself. She could almost feel the nervous energy swirling around her ankles as she waded through the debris. But his anger was even greater and it made her skin practically itch at the thought. He had seen something while surveying her room, something that pissed him off royally. But, for the life of her, she couldn't figure out what it was.
"Can you think of anything else that might help us, Louisa?" Chief Swan asked.
Think of anything else? What more could there be? She swivelled her head around as if looking around her room, but her eyes were glassy and unfocused while she mentally catalogued her surroundings. Four walls, three built-in bookshelves, two tiny windows that barely let in any light (not that there was ever much to begin with in Forks), and one door. One door. That bothered her the most. If there was only one door, then how did the intruder get out of the house without being seen? They couldn't have used the window— he would have broken his ankles jump from the second story window, and besides, it had been closed when she entered.
Something was niggling at the back of her mind, itching and irritating, telling her that she knew the answer, only she just didn't know how she knew the answer. Even a brief jaunt into her memory library didn't yield anything besides the beginning of a painful headache. She reached out and placed her hand out on the wall to brace herself, trying to force her brain to bring a certain memory to mind, though without a clue as to what it might be. It was kind of like groping around in the dark for a light switch— she knew that what she wanted existed but she didn't know how to find it.
Sergeant Todd scoffed in annoyance and turned away, clearly finding her as irritating as she found him to be. She glared at the back of his head, wishing she had a useful power. Then maybe she could at least set his dark hair on fire. She could practically imagine the man rolling his blue eyes in derision at the idea that a teenager could assist the police. She was aware of her nails digging into her palms and she wouldn't be surprised if she looked later and found that she left marks.
"Rats," she responded quietly. "I can hear something moving in the walls sometimes."
"And the rats destroyed your room?"
"Sure," she snapped, her temper rising. "They whisper things to me at night. Mostly about what jackass you are."
"Louisa," her father ground out in warning.
She didn't spare him a glance, choosing instead to focus on the bookshelf that shared a wall with the door. His door, her mind supplied helpfully, though she had absolutely no idea what it meant. "My bed used to be against that bookshelf," she explained, pointing to the wall in question. "I moved it back in November when I was thrown out of bed."
"Those are some rats."
"That's enough, Todd," Chief Swan replied evenly. His eyes narrowed and he watched the girl in front of him intently. "What else, Louisa?"
The blonde crouched down to the floor, staring at the base of the bookshelf. Her fingers ran along the floor until they found faint scuff marks. "This is where my bed used to stand," she explained. "What do you notice about the marks, Chief Swan?"
The chief of police ignored the huff of annoyance from his subordinate and crouched down next to the teenager to get a better look at the faint scratches. They looked unusual, though he couldn't explain why. Still, he snapped his fingers for one of his officers with a camera to join them and document the scuffs.
"Now look around the area," Louisa said, her brow furrowed. "What looks similar?"
Charlie swivelled his head, trying to follow her instructions but it was difficult when the girl was so vague. He appreciated her help, of course, but he much rather that she would get straight to the point instead of wasting his time to find the answer to a question she already knew. He opened his mouth and was about to tell her this much when he saw it— or rather, didn't see anything. The destruction that surrounded them was missing from this area of the room. Indeed, the girl hadn't even needed to move anything to point out the scuff marks.
He stood up and stepped back to get a better look at the area. "The marks match," he said. "They push out from the bookshelf in an arc."
Louisa nodded and rose as well, her face grim. "This is his door, Chief."
A strangled laugh pulled him out of his reverie. Charlie turned to look at Sergeant Todd who was watching them with disbelief. "I hate to break it to you, Miss Collins, but that is a solid wood bookshelf. This isn't Hogwarts."
"Don't be ridiculous. Of course it isn't," she replied. "This is Forks, Washington. Not a castle in Scotland." She reached out to one of the officers and asked for a pair of disposable gloves. The woman, who barely looked old enough to be out of college, glanced at Chief Swan questioningly but supplied them to the girl when he nodded. She snapped them on with practised ease and stepped forward and gave the back of the bookshelf a knock. "It's hollow back here," she noted before beginning to run her hands along the shelves.
"And what, exactly, are you hoping to find?" Sergeant Todd snapped.
Louisa ignored the man and continued to run her fingers around the shelves. Chief Swan stepped forward to help her with the shelves she couldn't easily reach. Then, on the about halfway up, her fingers connected with a little indent on one of the partitions which gave way when she pushed on it. There was a click and the bookshelf swung forward.
She tossed a triumphant smile over her shoulder towards the surprised Sergeant Todd before stepping back, allowing Chief Swan to pull the bookshelf forward. Behind it, where a wall should have been, was a tunnel with a ladder that led down. Chief Swan pulled out a torch and shined it down the hole, illuminating muddy handprints that were smeared over the walls. An officer swore under her breath, which succinctly summed up what everyone in the room was thinking.
"Todd," Chief Swan said, his voice faint. "Go back to the station and call for the State Police. We are going to need some help."
"I will not let you go into the unknown alone." —Bram Stoker
A/N: How many of you were expecting that? What did you think of the chapter? This one was hard to write. I originally wasn't going to have Mr Collins find out about the case so soon, but then I thought he was sounding a bit on the neglectful side. Like, how could he not notice that she is disappearing all the time? But because of this revelation, it took a while to get the tone of the conversation right. I didn't want to post a chapter I wasn't happy with, you know?
Oh! Also! If you are interested, I'm reading a fun fanfic called Galveston by whatsnotbeentaken and it's pretty rad. You should go and read it because the more people who read it mean the faster the author might update. And I need to see where this goes, so do me a solid and check it out? Thanks!
Lots of Love, CheckAlexa
