Page 75 of Specters & Spotlights

Graham didn’t know what the right move was in this situation. He didn’t even know what the situation was. But he knew, with an odd certainty, that he didn’t want to be far from her when he found out.

Elise crouched at the base of the rack and pushed aside a hanging hem, peering down toward the floorboards. The space behind it was usually hidden in plain sight—shadowed, cluttered, ignored.

Graham would never have noticed anything there. Not in a hundred years.

But Elise made a beeline for it, as if she’d been expecting it.

He leaned to see what she saw. Between two boards, a narrow notch of darkness had begun to bleed light—a faint blue glow, pulsing weakly, like someone had dropped a phone and left the screen on.

Graham knelt down beside her, close enough that their shoulders nearly brushed. He told himself to focus on the glow and not on the sudden, distracting awareness of her next to him—warm and solid in the cold hush of whatever this was becoming.

“What is that?” he murmured.

He glanced at Elise.

In the dim spill of that blue glow, her face looked different: tight around the eyes, mouth held too still. Not fear in the theatrical sense. Something closer to hesitation. Like she was weighing the cost of touching whatever was down there.

That did something unpleasant to him. A sharp, protective kind of discomfort.

Graham swallowed. Against his better judgment, and with absolutely no idea what he was volunteering for, he nodded toward the gap. “Do you want me to…?”

Elise’s gaze flicked to his hand, then to his face. A beat. Then she gave the smallest nod.

Graham exhaled once and slid his fingers into the narrow space between the boards. The wood was cool, the gap tighter than it looked. He felt around carefully, trying not to imagine what else might be wedged in there besides a phone. His fingertips brushed something smooth and hard.

A rectangle. Glass.

He hooked it, testing the angle, and found it jammed in deeper than it should’ve been—wedged like it had been pushed in on purpose. After a moment of fumbling, he managed to pinch either side and lever it free. The phone scraped against the wood as it came out, resisting until the last second, when it slipped into his palm with a soft, unpleasant thunk, still buzzing incessantly.

Graham stared at it. How had it even gotten in there? It certainly hadn’t fallen by accident.

He turned the phone over in his hand. The screen lit the moment his thumb brushed the side—faint at first, then brighter, as if it had been waiting for contact. Elise scooted closer without thinking, and suddenly they were shoulder-to-shoulder, heads tipped toward the same small rectangle of light.

For a second, Graham registered the intimacy of it—how close she was, how their breath shared the same narrow space—before the screen stole all of his attention.

Notifications began to stack.

Five. Ten. Twenty.

They arrived in a rapid succession, the kind of digital avalanche that only happened when a phone came back to life after being off-grid—after dead battery or no signal or something intentionally quieted. The screen kept filling, banners sliding down and bumping each other out of the way, the device vibrating faintly in his palm.

Graham and Elise just watched it together, unmoving, as the phone continued to wake up.

Jen

Ellen - where are you? We’re worried. Please check in stat!

We can’t hold curtain any longer.

Ellen?

Bex

YO WHERE ARE YOU

Mom

Honey, you haven’t answered your phone, can you let me know you’re alright?