eagerly.
Dwayne grinned at me. “See if the ghost really said ‘boo.’ ”
Oh, he was a laugh riot. As if I hadn’t had enough disbelief and teasing when I’d confessed that.
Phin fast-forwarded the sound file all the way to the clatter of the recorder hitting the ground, when it went dead for a bit. When it came back on, for a few seconds you could hear my breathing, with labored rasps. Then finally, my voice, quaking with cold, “Wh-wh-what d-d-do you want?”
Then silence. No one spoke in the room, either. The terror in my voice was clear, even through the chattering, full of visceral fear that twisted my vitals in memory.
The dogs, who’d been sleeping around the room, started barking. I was relieved to have something to do, to calm my nerves as I calmed theirs.
Phin ran the recording back to listen again. But there was nothing after my question but more harsh breathing, until it stopped entirely.
Finally Jennie spoke. “I guess it didn’t get any voice.”
“EVPs aren’t always audible until you amplify and filter the recording.” Phin plugged the recorder into her computer and loaded the file.
“What’s an EVP, anyway?” asked Dwayne while we waited. “All these initials are hard to follow.”
“An electronic voice phenomenon,” said Phin, in a lecturing tone, “or EVP, is when a voice can be heard on an audio playback that wasn’t audible during the live event.”
Jennie giggled. “ ‘Live.’ Heh. That’s funny.”
It was so silly, even I laughed. Phin gave her an I-don’t-get-it frown, and when Jennie explained, “Because it’s ghosts,” she raised an eyebrow, Mr. Spock style which made Jennie—and me—laugh harder.
I felt punch-drunk. It was almost two in the morning, and the night had passed “surreal” a long time ago. I’d talked to Mark about my family. I was laughing at ghost jokes. I’d fallen so far off the fence, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back up.
Jennie and I composed ourselves as Phin turned the computer so we could see the sound-mixing program. She turned up the volume as a vertical bar moved across the time line, leaving spikes where my ragged breath lurched through the white noise of the maxed-out speakers.
And then a new sound stabbed through the silence, leaving a buzz of white on the screen. The others jerked when they heard it, then got intently still.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Dwayne. “It did say ‘boo.’ ” On the computer playback it was clear.
Mark frowned in concentration. “Play it again, Phin.” His shoulders were stiff, his elbows braced on his knees as he leaned forward. His tone took the levity out of the air.
Phin obliged. I held my breath as the five-second clip played again, and again the ghostly word hissed through the silence. But this time I heard what Mark had before.
“There’s more,” I said, the fingers of unease crawling up my spine. “After the ‘boo.’ ”
Phin pointed to the sound wave on the screen. The “B” made a big spike followed by two trailing points. “Three syllables. They fall off, but they’re distinct.”
“Shhh,” said Mark. He slid off the sofa to sit next to Phin, shoulder to shoulder by the laptop speaker. “Play it again.”
Three syllables, emerging from nothing, an auditory specter taking shape in the air between us.
“Búscame.” Mark spoke the word aloud, bringing it out of Neverland into the room with us. “It’s Spanish.”
“Búscame,” I repeated. I’d taken Spanish in school, and even remembered some of it. “As in buscar?”
My brain supplied the word, but meaning lagged behind, and implication trailed even further.
“ ‘Look for me.’ ” Mark’s warm and human voice hung over the electronic whisper like a curtain over smoke. “It’s saying ‘Look for me.’ ”
16
at least I knew what it wanted. I hadn’t decided if that improved things, though.
Despite the hour, Jennie and Dwayne wanted to go over every millisecond of the recording, until Mark pointed out that Emery would put out an APB on them, just for spite, if they didn’t get to the hotel soon.
That got the excited pair headed for the door, but Mark hung back and helped Phin gather her laptop and equipment. “We’ll see you two tomorrow, right?”
“Definitely,” she said. Her enthusiasm made Mark smile, even when she explained, “I have another experiment I want to try.”
“Dr. Douglas is okay with that?” I asked. “I mean, our coming back to the dig, not Phin’s experiments.”
“I told her you two are good luck.” He grinned at me. “And she liked the way you took direction with that skull today.