Free Ghost Camera by Darcy Coates

“do all ghost investigators own horrible paintings?”
    “Huh?” He blinked at her as though she’d disturbed him from an important train of thought. “You don’t like them?”
    Maybe he doesn’t see anything wrong with them, Jenine thought as Richard led them out of the foyer and into a dining room. Maybe he thinks they’re ironic or high art or something.
    The dining room was decorated in luxurious style similar to the foyer. A large mahogany dining table, a modern kitchen, and several large sculptures adorned the room. The sculpture nearest Jenine featured a mostly-nude woman with a snake wrapped around her torso. She was caressing the serpent lovingly, even though its fangs were embedded in her neck.
    “Wow,” Bree said, turning in a circle to admire the room. “If ghost hunting is this lucrative, maybe I should change my career.”
    Richard laughed. “Actually, I started out in the stock market. I got lucky, and now my investments pay the bills. Paranormal investigating was initially only a hobby, but now that I can afford to, I do it full-time.” He began pulling boxes out of cabinets on the wall. “This will just take a minute to set up. Would it bother you if I asked about the camera?”
    Bree was instantly defensive. “What about it?”
    “I take it you haven’t destroyed it yet,” Richard said with a heavy sigh. He pulled a large, old-looking machine out of one box and placed it on the table, then glanced at the purse Bree had tossed into the corner of the room. “Do you have it with you right now?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Go and put it in my study. Second door to the left in the foyer. It’s better not to have the camera anywhere near this.”
    Bree picked her handbag up, but otherwise didn’t move. “Why’s that?”
    “Remember what I said about the camera being like water that connects the paper?” Richard was plugging cords into the machine. “It’s a channel for hundreds, possibly thousands, of ghosts. Having it in the same room would be like trying to hear a whisper in a rock concert. Better to put it away, so that you can only hear the ghosts that are fixated on you.”
    “Fixated?”
    “The ones you photographed.” Richard turned on his machine, and it let out a high-pitched whine that subsided when he adjusted some knobs. “They’ve seen you, and now they’re following you. There are plenty of other ghosts around, but they don’t know you’re there until you take a picture of them, or until—” He stopped, coughed, then busied himself adjusting various sliders.
    “Until what?” Jenine leaned forward.
    “Never mind. It’s nothing to concern yourself with.”
    “Oh, no, I think it is,” Bree said. “How will the others be able to see us?”
    “Let it drop.”
    “No.”
    Richard let a sigh out between his teeth and frowned at her. “As this… curse , I suppose you might call it. As your curse progresses, you’ll move closer and closer to their dimension, until they’re able to see you, even without the camera.”
    Jenine swallowed. “Is that… bad?”
    “We’ll take care of it before it reaches that stage,” Richard said. “If this doesn’t work, you can take a few sleeping pills so you won’t have to feel them—or see them.”
    He broke off and stared into space. Something in his tone sounded like grief.
    Jenine took a stab in the dark. “That last girl, Becca, she didn’t take any sleeping pills, did she?”
    Richard jolted at the mention of the girl’s name. His face scrunched up as though he were trying to repress memories. “No, no she didn’t. I was with her at the end. There—” He took a gulp of air and moved to get another box out of the cupboard. “There wasn’t anything I could do to help. I’d tried, I’d made promises, but she still… I hope you understand that it has been very hard to help you ladies. After Rebecca—well, it’s a situation I’ve explicitly tried to avoid.” He paused then turned to Bree. “Please. Put the