Rollie and Angie stood side by side, holding each other’s hands as they watched a car make its way up the steep hillside and stop before them.  A man in his late forties got out and approached them.

“Angie Ramirez?” he inquired, looking at Angie.

The blonde nodded.  She gestured toward Rollie.  “This is my partner, Rollie Tyler.”

The man held out his hand, which Rollie shook.  “Neil Sinclair, Mister Tyler.  I understand you’ve got something interesting going on in this house.”

“Interesting is not exactly the word I’d use to describe it,” the Aussie said.

“So I understand.  Would you mind telling me exactly what’s been happening?”

Rollie’s eyes went to Angie, and she gave his hand an encouraging squeeze.  He returned his gaze to the ghost hunter.  “Let’s go up on the veranda.”

They walked up onto the covered veranda to where four old, weathered wooden chairs sat beside a low table.  The chairs creaked under their weight but did not show any sign of collapsing.  Slowly, Rollie began to tell the ghost hunter what had been happening since he first set foot in the Powell house.  Neil listened with great interest, asking questions often. His interest increased dramatically when Rollie got to his dream and waking up in the house.

“You have no memory of coming here?” the man asked.

“No, none.  The last memory I had was lying in bed, trying to get to sleep.”

“Yet you somehow got dressed, drove your car over here, and entered the house.”

Rollie nodded in confirmation.

“Hmm.  I’ve heard of people sleepwalking and doing other things in their sleep, but I’ve never heard of anything like this.  When you woke up in the house, what did you feel?”

“Other than sheer terror?  I felt . . . like the walls were closing in on me.  I could have sworn that the shadows were reaching for me, but I think that was just my imagination.  I couldn’t move.  I was completely frozen in place.”

“Did it feel like some external force was keeping you from moving or was it just the fear?”

“I’m not sure.  I wasn’t consciously aware of something holding me in place.”

“What happened next?” Neil asked, resting his chin on steepled fingers.

“I started hearing voices, screaming.  It was their screams, Hannah and the children.  And then. . . .”

“What?”

“There was pain.  At first, it was their pain, then . . . then it became mine.  It was like I was them, as if my body was feeling all the pain they felt.  It got so bad I thought I was going to pass out.”

Angie clutched at his arm, eyes dark with worry.  “Rollie, you didn’t tell me that before.”

“I didn’t want you to know that it got that bad, Ange.  You were worried enough as it was.”  Rollie returned his attention to Neil.  “At that point, I was finally able to move.  I ran out of the house and ended up over there in the garden.”

“Did the sensations end once you were out of the house?”

“Yes.  The pain disappeared, and I couldn’t hear the screams anymore.  But then, something else happened.  The fear was replaced with a sensation of peacefulness and contentment.  And then, I saw Hannah and the kids.  They were happy, laughing and playing.  Robert was there too, but I could only feel him.  In fact, Hannah looked at me and called me Robert, as if I was him.  At least it seemed like she was looking at me.”

“Hmm.  Very interesting.  What happened next?”

“I looked away for a moment, and when I looked back, they were gone.  I got out of here then.  I drove as fast as I could back to the motel.  I ended up getting sick in the loo.”

Neil was silent for a moment, apparently absorbing everything Rollie had told him.  “Mister Tyler, Ms. Ramirez told me about something you experienced,” he said at last.  “Did you find yourself taken over by a presence?”

Rollie glanced at Angie.  Under different circumstances, he might have been upset that she’d told this man about what happened, but the guy was going to have to know anyway.  He nodded.  “It happened yesterday.  I was drawn into the bedroom that the oldest boy died in.”

“Drawn?  How so?” Neil asked.

“I heard the sound of whimpering and crying, and I felt . . . compelled to go to the room, even though I had a bad feeling that it was dangerous.  When I got there, I was completely overwhelmed by the sounds and feelings in the room.  And then. . . .”  Rollie stopped and took a deep breath.  “Then I . . . ceased to be myself.  I became Nicholas.  I felt and thought everything that he was feeling and thinking, his fear, his anguish, everything.  I had no thoughts or memories of myself at all.”  He paused again.  “The last thing I remember clearly is seeing Robert Powell standing over me . . . Nicholas, with a bloody poker.  It was as if I was looking through the boy’s eyes.”  Rollie dropped his gaze to his clenched hands.

“You said that was the last thing you remember clearly.  Is there anything else?” Neil asked.

Rollie lifted his eyes to Angie’s.  He didn’t want her to hear this.

Sensing his reluctance to speak, Angie reached out and laid her hand over his.  “I want to know, Rol.  Please don’t try to protect me from it.”

Rollie turned his hand up and curled his fingers into hers.  He then turned back to Neil.  “At first, I didn’t remember anything at all past that point, but I’ve been regaining some fuzzy memories.  I remember the . . . the pain, the pain of the poker hitting Nicholas’s body, my body, feeling my bones break, my flesh tear.  And then everything went black.  I--”  Rollie stopped, shaking his head.  He couldn’t say any more.

Angie’s grip on his hand had tightened almost painfully.  She was staring at him with anguish in her eyes.  She wanted to pull him into her arms and hold him, protect him in any way she could from what was happening to him.  But she couldn’t protect him.  She didn’t know how.

Raging at her helplessness, Angie turned to Neil.  The man was watching Rollie very closely.  After a moment, his head nodded slightly.

“I’m sorry that I have to make you relive all this, Mister Tyler, but I need to know everything in order to best approach this situation.”

Rollie looked back at the man as intently as he’d studied the Aussie a moment ago.  “You weren’t sure that you believed us, were you.  Until this moment, you had your doubts that we were telling the truth.”

Neil’s eyes widened in surprise.  “How did you know that?”

Rollie shrugged.  “Just a feeling.”

“Well, your ‘feeling’ was right on the mark, Mister Tyler.  Over these past sixteen years, I’ve dealt with a lot of situations where people falsely claimed a house was haunted because they wanted to get some publicity.  There have been some who have set up elaborate ruses in order to try to fool people.  When Ms. Ramirez said that you were with a movie production company, I couldn’t help but think about the possibility that this was all a scheme to get publicity for the movie you’re filming.”

Rollie nodded, understanding completely.  “The truth is that this kind of publicity is the last thing we want for exactly the reason you mentioned.  Many people are bound to think that it was all a ploy to garner interest in the movie.”

Neil smiled, leaning back in his chair.  “I’d never have thought of it that way.  You seem to know your business well.”

Both Rollie and Angie gave a laugh.  “Actually, this is our first movie as producers in an official capacity.  Before this, we were strictly special effects artists.  A string of occurrences during a movie we were filming several months ago led to this.”

“Special effects, huh?  Well, if this was all a put on, you could probably do quite a convincing job of making this place appear haunted.”

Rollie laughed again.  “You’d better believe it.  Ange and I could literally have ghosts coming out of the woodwork.”

Neil got a thoughtful look on his face.  “Wait a minute.  Do you have some connection to Tyler F/X?”

Rollie smiled.  “Yeah, I’m the ‘Tyler’ in Tyler F/X.  It’s our company.”

“Then you did the effects for ‘50 Trillion Miles from Home’.”

“Yeah, that was us.  That was the movie I mentioned before that started this whole producer thing.”

Neil nodded.  “Now that I think about it, I saw the name Rollie Tyler listed as co-producer.”

“Yeah.  I hadn’t expected that since I was acting as producer unofficially.  The real producer was in an accident and laid up in the hospital the better part of the time that we were filming.”

“Well, congratulations on your new business, Mister Tyler.”

“Thanks.  Please call me Rollie.”

The ghost hunter nodded.  “And please call me Neil.”

Rollie’s smile faded.  “I guess I need to tell you the rest.”

“The rest?”

“Yeah.  There was another . . . incident yesterday afternoon, after Angie called you.  It was worse.”

Neil’s eyebrows lifted.  “Worse?  I find it hard to believe that it could get worse.”

Rollie just looked at him for a few seconds.  “I became Robert Powell,” he said quietly.

Neil grew still.  He looked over at Angie, who was staring at the floor.  “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” the Aussie admitted.  “I have no memory at all of that incident.  I don’t know why.”

“Perhaps your subconscious is blocking the memory to protect you,” Neil suggested.

“Yeah, maybe.”  He turned to his partner.  “Angie can tell you what happened.”

Angie looked up and met the gaze of the two men.  Reluctantly, she told what happened, how Rollie had changed and what he did and said.

Neil shook his head.  “I don’t like this at all.  I have never heard of possessions like this before, not even among trained mediums.  The fact that it happened twice in one day leads me to believe that either your ability to communicate with the ghosts is getting stronger or they are dramatically increasing their attempts to get you to do whatever it is that they want from you.  And that’s the real question.  What do they want?  If this was just a simple case of them wanting you to leave them alone, they wouldn’t be going about it in this way.  It seems to me as if they are trying to tell you something, and the key to it may very well be the murder itself.  What do you know of it?”

Rollie and Angie told Neil what they knew of the murder/suicide.

“There’s a good chance that you’d be able to find out more from old newspaper articles,” Angie said.

“Yes, but what you’ve told me is enough to make me wonder.  There is definitely a mystery here about why Robert Powell’s personality changed so dramatically.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that too,” Rollie said.  “Of course, it could have been something physical, like a brain tumor.  From what I understand, a tumor can radically alter a person’s personality.”

“Yes, but I don’t think that it would affect a person to the point that they’d actually commit such a heinous act as slaughtering their entire family.  I don’t know.  Maybe it would.  Only a neurologist could answer that.”  Neil rose from the chair.  “I need to perform some scans in the house.  Does the electricity work in there?  I need to know in order to adjust the EMF meter properly.”

“No.  Everything is turned off,” Angie replied.

“That’s good.  It will make things easier.  Now, this is going to take me a while since I’ll be covering the entire house from top to bottom, recording both EMF readings and EVP's.  I will also be looking for cold spots with a thermal scanner and thermal imaging scope, and I’ll be taking some pictures as well.”

“I know that EMF stands for electromagnetic field, but what are EVP’s?” Rollie asked.

“It’s an acronym for Electronic Voice Phenomena.  It is a process whereby the voices of the dead are embedded onto magnetic recording tape.  When ghosts speak, we often can’t hear them with our ears, but, somehow, the voices are recorded onto the tape of the recorder.  We can then hear what they said when we play back the tape.”

“What do you want us to do?” Angie asked.

“Nothing for now.  It would be best if I go through the house alone, at least this first time.”

“Do you want us to hang around just in case there’s trouble?” Rollie asked.

“No, I’m sure I’ll be fine.  I’ve investigated a lot of houses over the years, and I have never gotten into a situation where I felt I was in danger.  Contrary to what you see in the movies, the majority of ghosts are not malevolent beings.  Oh, every once in a while, you’ll get a nasty one, but that’s only because the person they were in life was also evil, like in the case of serial killers and other extremely violent individuals.”

“Um, I don’t think I have to remind you that Robert Powell brutally murdered his entire family,” Angie said.

“Yes, I know, but, based on the kind of man he used to be, it’s obvious that he was not an evil person by nature.  Something drove him to do what he did.”

“Well, if you don’t need us here, I guess we’ll go into town and get some lunch,” Rollie said.  “Can we bring you anything?”

“No, I’m fine.  Thanks.”

Rollie and Angie headed down the hill and into town.  After lunch, they went back to the park they’d gone to yesterday.  They took a pleasant stroll, hand in hand.

“Rollie, is there anything else that you’re keeping from me in regards to this whole thing?” Angie asked after they’d been there around twenty minutes.  “Because, if there is, I want you to tell me.”

Rollie thought about it for a moment.  “No, there isn’t anything else, not that’s important.”

“Good.  From now on, I want you to tell me everything that you experience in that house.”

Rollie’s gaze dropped to the concrete of the path they were walking on.  Angie looked at him, her eyes narrowing.

“There is something else you’re not telling me, isn’t there.”

Rollie shrugged.  “It’s just that, whenever I’m in there, I . . . feel pain.”

Angie stopped walking abruptly, forcing Rollie to stop.  “Pain?  It hurts you every time you’re in the house?” she asked sharply.

The Aussie shook his head.  “It’s not my pain.  It’s theirs, the Powells.  I’m feeling their pain.  The only times it felt like it was my pain was when I woke up in the house and when I became Nicholas.”

Angie studied her partner’s face for a long time.  “Rollie, exactly how hard is it for you to be in that house?  I want you to be completely honest.”

Rollie was silent for a while, trying to find the words.  “It isn’t always the same.  Sometimes, it’s not so bad.  Other times, it’s a little worse.  And, sometimes, it’s . . . I guess you could liken it to how a person with claustrophobia would feel being locked in a coffin.”

“Oh, Rollie.  Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There’s nothing you could have done about it, Ange.  I’m dealing with it.  I’ve been in some pretty bad situations in the past, and I’ve managed to get through them without falling apart.  I’ll get through this too.”

“But you don’t have to do it alone, Rol.  I’m here, and I will help you any way that I can, even if it’s just to try to distract you from what you’re feeling.”

Rollie smiled down at her softly.  He wrapped his arms around her.  “Well, I can think of one surefire way that you could distract me.”

“What’s that?” Angie asked.

“This.”  Rollie bent down and took Angie’s lips with his.  The kiss grew from gentle to smoldering within seconds.  It was quite a while before they separated.

“Mmm.  Yep, that would do it, all right,” Rollie murmured.

“I’ll have to keep that in mind,” Angie said before pulling his mouth down to hers for another kiss.  They both sighed as they separated again.

“You think we have enough time to go back to the motel and continue this?” Rollie asked, rubbing his cheek against Angie’s.

“I doubt it.  Besides, I wouldn’t want to rush things.  I like savoring you.”  Angie backed up her words by pulling Rollie’s earlobe into her mouth and sucking on in.  The Aussie gave a low moan.

“You’d better stop that, Love.  Otherwise, I’m going to find the nearest private place and have my way with you,” he told her huskily.

“Ooh, promises, promises,” Angie said in a sultry tone.  Then she sighed again, this time in regret.  “I’ll have to take a rain check, I guess.”

“Don’t worry, Love.  The product will be in stock by tonight.”

Angie giggled.  “Oh, good.  I hate waiting, and I have wanted this particular ‘product’ for an extremely long time.  And, now that I’ve sampled it, I can’t get enough of it.”

Rollie grinned broadly.  “Same here.  I am totally addicted, and I have no desire to be cured.”

Arm in arm, the couple left the park, heading back up the hill, anxious to find out what Neil Sinclair had found.