“I’ve got salt,” Jack confirmed, and I nodded.
“Then I think we’re set to depart. Let me go over the rules for tonight. If this is a demon that the Ouija board has released,he’ll be on the offensive. He won’t want to go back, which means that what we have seen is child’s play so far. He’ll toy with your emotions, making the atmosphere difficult. A demon can manipulate everything around them, and he will do just that so he gets to stay.”
“What about possession?” Madi asked.
“That can happen, but our defences are in place. Denying a demon access means he can’t forcefully overtake your body for a long time.”
“But demon possessions?” Levi said and frowned.
“For a demon to possess you, you have to be willing. If you’re only a tiny bit open, it can sneak in. Assuming you are against it, it cannot force you. A demon will use tricks to worm its way in as well as threats. We have our crosses, which are blessed, and we all know the Lord’s Prayer. We have items like Holy Water, a blessed Bible, salt, incense. And those little pouches I gave you all? They contain protective spells, which I get renewed every few months by a very dedicated white magic practitioner.”
“White magic?” Levi snorted, and I glowered at him. He blanched and nodded.
“White magic isn’t all mumbo jumbo; their herbology is legendary. Some of the latest medicines on the market have been around for years in their herbal forms. Pharmaceutical companies are looking to old-style healing for new ideas,” I stated.
“That’s true,” Madi said, nodding.
“Okay, it just seemed weird. The paranormal is hard enough to deal with, now magic?” Levi replied.
“Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean you ridicule it. Would you mess with a Manbo, a voodoo priestess?”
“No!” Levi exclaimed, and I nodded.
“My point is proven. Come on, time’s ticking on,” I said and led the way to cellblock seven.
???
I frowned after several hours of nothing. We’d all taken turns trying to reach out, but the cellblock was unresponsive. There wasn’t a whisper of a haunting at all.
“Well, this one’s a dud,” Jack said from where he sat with his REM Pod close by.
“Yeah, the intel about the Ouija board being done here is wrong. Even if one were executed. There’s no activity on this block whatsoever,” I replied.
“What’s the plan?” Sunny asked as his fingers made lazy circles on my back.
“I think we should go eat, leave some cameras running, just in case, and maybe head to the haunted guard tower?”
“Sounds like a plan. I want to take a walk on the grounds, especially near where the unmarked graves are rumoured to be,” Jack said.
“Did we get the go-ahead on cadaver dogs being allowed in?” I asked, and Jack shrugged.
“We had a team lined up, but Penn said no, which makes me wonder how false those rumours are,” Jack replied.
“Interesting,” I murmured, and it was. Why hide bodies that had been there for ages? It wasn’t as if they were recent ones. Strange.
“Okay, you check that out, and I’ll take a group to the tower. We’ve had cameras on it, which haven’t picked anything up yet, so maybe something will happen if people are there,” I said.
“Possibly. What did we get for dinner?” Jack asked, rubbing his stomach.
I rolled my eyes; Sunny chuckled. “Freddie’s cooked tacos. She’s taken the easy route again,” I complained, and Sunny laughed.
Freddie stuck to only a few dishes: stew, tacos, chilli, and casserole. In all honesty, they were delicious, but she couldn’t be bothered to cook anything else. We all took turns cooking. Even the security team, and once we’d gone through a rotation, we’d order takeout and then start again.
“Let’s fill our bellies and find some ghosts!” Madi said and clapped her hands. I grinned; Madi had taken the words right out of my mouth.
???
I sighed as the sun broke and I climbed into bed with Sunny. He was already there, and I curled into his big body. We had blackout curtains in the RV, so it was nice and dark in there.
