Chapter 3 — After He Left

  Cid had barely reached the stairs before Dave said what the room had been holding back.

  “You’re bringing him in because of Nicaragua.”

  Pastor Elias did not answer immediately.

  The basement had grown quiet again. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Somewhere above them someone crossed the sanctuary floor in slow, measured steps.

  Mike set his camera bag on the table but did not open it.

  Ruben held his pen above the notebook without writing.

  Tomas leaned back in his chair and watched the priest.

  Daniel remained where he was, against the wall.

  At last Pastor Elias said, “I’m bringing him in because he may be useful.”

  Dave folded his arms.

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “No,” Elias said. “It isn’t.”

  The honesty settled the room more than any careful excuse would have.

  Mike spoke first.

  “The story is bad,” he said. “Mother involved in occult practice. Then he lives with the grandmother on the mother’s side. The aunt dies and the house gets worse. Later comes the board with the neighbor girl. Then the clock. Years later, the song again.”

  He looked at Elias.

  “That’s a pattern.”

  “More than one,” Ruben said quietly.

  Tomas glanced down at his notes.

  “Do we trust his memory?”

  Daniel answered before anyone else.

  “He doesn’t sound like a liar.”

  That mattered.

  Not because honesty made a witness correct.

  Because lying carried a different smell, and no one in the room had caught it on Cid.

  Pastor Elias sat down slowly.

  “I trust that he believes what he told us.”

  Dave glanced toward the stairwell.

  “That still isn’t the same thing.”

  “No,” Elias said. “It isn’t.”

  Mike rubbed his thumb along the edge of a battery case.

  “The family history bothers me more than the board.”

  Ruben looked over.

  “Why?”

  “The board is stupid-kid behavior,” Mike said. “Bad enough. But it comes after. The mother’s practices come first. That means he may have been exposed to something long before he touched the board.”

  Daniel’s expression shifted slightly at the word exposed, but he did not argue.

  Tomas turned a page.

  “He never called it witchcraft. Not directly.”

  “Children use the language adults give them,” Elias said.

  Ruben nodded.

  “Cards. Candles. Names. He kept circling it that way.”

  Dave asked the practical question.

  “So what are we saying? Trauma? Suggestion? Something spiritual?”

  No one rushed to answer.

  That was the difference between frightened people and disciplined ones. Disciplined people let uncertainty sit in the room long enough to become useful.

  Finally Elias said, “I think he has a credible history of contact with things he did not understand.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Daniel looked up.

  “Contact?”

  “Yes.”

  It was a careful word, and everyone there understood why.

  Not possession.

  Not oppression.

  Not attack.

  Contact.

  Mike spoke again.

  “The aunt dies and the house changes.”

  “According to him,” Dave said.

  “According to him,” Mike agreed. “Then he gets moved. Later comes the board, the girl changes, the clock starts stopping at three, and years later he hears the same song in a gym while another clock stops.”

  Tomas tapped his pen lightly.

  “The strongest part isn’t the clock.”

  “The song,” Ruben said.

  The room went still again.

  A cold room could be environmental.

  A stopped clock could be mechanical.

  But a song heard by one man alone—at the exact moment an old pattern returned—

  that was harder to dismiss.

  Pastor Elias folded his hands.

  “The song is the stronger marker.”

  Dave frowned.

  “The cold was real too.”

  “Yes,” Elias said. “But shared. The song was not.”

  Mike leaned back in his chair.

  “So when something turns strange around him, he hears it.”

  “That appears to be the pattern,” Elias said.

  Daniel spoke again.

  “It wasn’t random.”

  No one interrupted.

  “It was the same song from the girl’s house. The one he remembered from after things started changing.”

  Ruben nodded slowly.

  “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

  Mike looked down at the table.

  “That makes it personal.”

  “Which is exactly what I don’t like,” Dave muttered.

  Tomas asked the next question carefully.

  “So which is it? Sensitivity? Trauma trigger? Or something addressing him?”

  No one answered immediately.

  Finally Elias said, “We do not know.”

  It was the most honest sentence spoken all evening.

  Then he added, “But if something external is using an old marker to get his attention, I want that to happen under observation. Not in a dorm room or on a train platform where no one knows what he’s hearing.”

  Daniel pushed off the wall and came to the table.

  “That’s the part we say plainly.”

  The priest looked at him.

  “You’re not bringing him in just because he studies sound,” Daniel said. “You’re bringing him in because when the room changed, he reacted before the room made sense.”

  “Yes,” Elias said.

  Dave let out a slow breath.

  “That gets people hurt.”

  “Yes,” Elias said. “It also gets things noticed.”

  Mike nodded once.

  “He’s useful either way.”

  Ruben looked at him.

  “Because of the sound work?”

  “And because he listens,” Mike said. “He doesn’t rush to label. Half the families we interview decorate the story before we even sit down.”

  Tomas nodded.

  “He’s leaving things out.”

  Daniel’s gaze shifted.

  “That bothered me too.”

  “What things?” Dave asked.

  Daniel looked down at the table.

  “The worst parts.”

  Mike understood first.

  “The girl.”

  “Yes.”

  Ruben added, “And the mother.”

  “And probably the house with the grandmother,” Tomas said.

  That was the problem with frightened young men who had survived something real.

  Silence often hid the center of the wound better than hysteria ever could.

  Pastor Elias glanced toward the stairs.

  “He is still cutting around parts of the truth.”

  “Do we press him?” Mike asked.

  “Not tonight,” Elias said.

  Dave stayed practical.

  “If he freezes in the field, I pull him.”

  “Yes.”

  “If he starts hearing that song again, I pull him.”

  “Yes.”

  “If the house starts answering him instead of the family, I pull him before the rest of you start building theories.”

  A faint smile touched the edge of Elias’s mouth.

  “Yes.”

  Daniel asked quietly, “So what exactly is he to us?”

  The priest answered immediately.

  “An assistant.”

  No one moved.

  Then Elias continued.

  “And someone we observe carefully.”

  There it was.

  The second truth.

  Tomas said it bluntly.

  “So we’re studying him.”

  Daniel’s head turned toward him immediately. The room tightened.

  Pastor Elias cut through it before the wrong meaning could settle.

  “We are not using him,” he said. “We are protecting the team, protecting the case, and protecting him.”

  Daniel held his gaze another second, then looked away.

  That was acceptance, if not comfort.

  Ruben turned the notebook toward himself again.

  “Then let’s be exact.”

  He began listing.

  “Mother involved in occult practice. Early exposure in the family home. Later residence with the grandmother on the mother’s side. The aunt dies. The house becomes oppressive. Relocation. Adolescent participation in a spirit board session. Disturbance centered on the neighboring girl. Repeated clock event at three. Years later, the same song heard again during a shared environmental anomaly and a second stopped clock.”

  Mike exhaled slowly.

  “It sounds worse when you stack it.”

  “Patterns usually do,” Ruben said.

  Dave asked the question no one wanted.

  “You think something knows him?”

  Silence again.

  Pastor Elias did not soften the answer.

  “I think that possibility is stronger than I would prefer.”

  The room held that for a moment.

  Then Mike asked, “So why Loomis?”

  Elias answered immediately.

  “Because if a disturbance is already using old markers to get his attention, I would rather that happen in front of people trained to notice it.”

  That ended most of the argument.

  Not all of it.

  But most.

  Daniel said quietly, “He’s stronger than he looks.”

  Dave gave him a flat look.

  “You mean physically?”

  “No.”

  That was all Daniel offered.

  It was enough.

  Pastor Elias rested one hand on the Loomis file.

  “Then here are the rules.”

  The room focused.

  “He does not enter a room alone. He does not conduct private interviews. He does not remain in a house after the team withdraws. If he reports a pattern, we document it. If the case confirms it independently, the weight of his observation increases. If not, we hold it lightly until evidence appears.”

  Mike nodded.

  “Good.”

  Tomas asked, “Do we tell him all of this?”

  “Not yet,” Elias said.

  “When do we?”

  “When he can hear it without building an identity around it.”

  Daniel disliked that answer less than the others did.

  Dave stood first.

  “Fine. But if the house starts singing to him again, I’m not debating it.”

  “No one will,” Elias said.

  Mike began packing his gear.

  Ruben capped his pen.

  Tomas remained seated a moment longer.

  “One more thing.”

  Everyone looked at him.

  “The song is not just memory.”

  No one argued.

  “It’s a marker,” Tomas said. “When things turn strange around him, he hears it.”

  Pastor Elias nodded once.

  “Yes.”

  Not because they understood it.

  Because pretending otherwise would have been foolish.

  “So we watch the house,” Tomas said.

  He paused.

  “And we watch him.”

  No one objected.

  Because they all understood the same thing now.

  Cid was not simply being brought onto the team.

  He was entering the case with them.