later, his father had done that to help, rather than hurt him. Thankfully, he’d had a chance to make things right with Buford last year. His father hadn’t stopped in to chat since they’d made peace.
As the pages began to pile up, so did the emotions coursing through his system. When the first tear splashed against the keys, Cope knew it was time for a break. Getting out of his chair, Cope paced around his office. The two windows in the room looked out over their backyard. He could see the full moon had risen into the night sky.
He’d left his phone downstairs with Jude so he wouldn’t be distracted by incoming text messages, and since he didn’t wear a watch, he had no idea what time it was. Since the moon was so high in the sky, Cope had a feeling he’d gone long past the hour he’d given himself to work on this project. He hoped Jude wasn’t upset he’d been gone so long.
Walking across the room, Cope had his hand on the office door when he heard a tap. It was followed by another. And then another. It sounded like someone was typing, but that was impossible since he was across the room from the machine.
His mind turned back to the night before when he’d woken up to the lyrics of Amazing Grace typed on the last page he’d been working on. Cope assumed he’d typed the lines as he’d nodded off to sleep, but now, listening to the click of the keys, maybe that hadn’t been the case.
Turning around fast, the typewriter was just as he left it and there was no one sitting in his chair. Not that he expected there to be. There were no spirits in this house, at least none that he’d been able to detect. Cope had kept his word to Jude. He’d checked the wards and charms on the house. They were intact. Nothing had gotten through. As he stood here now, he wasn’t detecting anything or anyone else in the room with him.
As if on cue, the keys of the typewriter started depressing on their own. Cope could hear the keys striking the paper. There was a loud ping and the return slid across the typewriter moving on to the next line.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. On and on it went, moving faster than any human being was capable of typing. If Cope didn’t know what the sound was, he would have thought Jude was downstairs watching some movie with machine gun fire.
Reaching out with his gift, Cope still could not sense another spirit in the room with him. His eyes weren’t lying though, words were appearing rapid-fire on the piece of paper.
“Who’s here?” Cope’s voice was shaking. He was alarmed and a little frightened by the fact that he could not detect a spirit of some sort in this room. A shiver tore down his spine when he realized Wolf was sleeping on the other side of this wall.
No one answered Cope’s question. The keyboard continued to type all the way to the bottom of the page. The rollers turned backward, and the piece of paper slipped out and fell back onto the desk.
Cope felt rooted to the spot. His heart was beating in his toes. Fear like he’d never experienced in his life roiled in his gut. “I’m Copeland Forbes. Who are you?”
Silence.
The only thing left for Cope to do was pick up the piece of paper and see what the ghost had typed on it. He’d never been more frightened in his life. Cope had been seeing and speaking to spirits for half his life and this was the first time something was present with him that he was unable to see or communicate with. His entire body shivered.
Cope recalled a story Tennyson told about a spirit named Justin Wilson who had not yet mastered dead speak. The only way he’d been able to communicate with Ten was through images he would show the psychic. Maybe the spirit who’d been using his typewriter to communicate was having the same sort of issue. Cope thought maybe he was only able to communicate via the machine. Cold fear wrapped around his spine, ghost writer or not, he still couldn’t detect any other spirit in the room with him.
He’d seen a horror movie where machines had risen up against their makers. He’d had to sleep with the lights on for weeks after that. Is that what was going on here?