Love, Like Ghosts: A Bay City Paranormal Investigations Story

don’t own each other.
It was a logical enough argument to settle his disquiet somewhat. In any case, he didn’t have time to think about it right then. He needed to get a move on if he wanted to contact Lyndon and leave the tower before Greg could find out he’d been up here.
Closing the door, Adrian moved to the center of the room and settled cross-legged on the floor. He took a moment to center himself, then relaxed his control over his psychokinesis. Lyndon’s welcoming energy eddied around him and flowed through his mind.
Adrian smiled. “Lyndon? Are you here?”
The air in front of him shimmered. He felt a pulse of power, but he knew right away it wasn’t strong enough. He forced back his disappointment. So what if Lyndon couldn’t manifest? Adrian was going to do his damnedest to communicate with him anyway. It would just take a little extra concentration.
Shutting his eyes, he cleared his mind of all thought and let the patter of the rain ease him into a light trance. Lyndon’s warm energy pulsed in his skull. Adrian opened himself to it without trying to shape or direct it. Either Lyndon would talk to him, or he wouldn’t. Adrian had done all he could to establish a connection. The rest was up to Lyndon.
For a while, nothing happened. Adrian waited, counting out three seconds for each inhale and three more for each exhale. His pulse beat a shade too quickly against his eardrums. He willed it to slow.
The minutes passed, and Lyndon remained present, but silent. With time running out, Adrian allowed his conscious self to sink a bit deeper while his subconscious rose closer to the surface. It had the potential to make his psychokinesis stronger and therefore unpredictable, but he didn’t think it would be dangerous. He had no intention of letting himself fall that far from conscious control.
Soon enough, it became clear that the whole thing was a moot point, since Adrian’s attempt to connect with Groome Castle’s resident spirit wasn’t working. The more Adrian reached out for Lyndon, the more he felt Lyndon’s presence slipping away. Frustrated and inexplicably sad, Adrian let himself emerge from his trance. He opened his eyes…
…And cried out as a savage burst of energy slammed him flat on his back on the hard stone floor. He lay there gasping for breath and staring blindly into the middle distance as a series of images seared themselves into his brain…
…The tower room, white and hunter green and pale gold in the early morning sun. A huge bed with the covers balled in the middle. The smell of sex, a feeling of happiness as vast as the Carolina sky…
…Rain. Wind. Wet earth all round. So cold…
…Cold, God, cold enough to freeze skin from bone. Powder-white covering the ground between the trees. Gray sky, low and threatening overhead. Handful of snow, molded into the perfect missile, tossed right into the center of a broad, black-wool-covered back. He turns, pale cheeks pink with cold, and the snowball in the face is worth it just for that beautiful smile and the sparkle in those blue eyes…
…Blue flowers embroidered on a white collar…
…White walls, narrow cot with a thin blue blanket, a wooden cross on the wall. Spare, Spartan, unlike the Castle, but it’s okay because it’s his room and that means privacy and entire glorious days alone, naked, in bed. Like now. He rolls over, smiles, opens his arms. He’s so lovely like this, his dark hair mussed with sex and sleep. One kiss, and the whole universe lights up in kaleidoscope colors…
The vision ended as suddenly as it began, leaving Adrian blinking away a haze of tears. He’d seen the tender light in Cassius’s eyes via Lyndon’s memories of him, and he’d felt the answering swell of emotion in Lyndon’s heart. He knew what it meant, despite having never felt it himself.
“Oh, my God,” Adrian whispered to the stained and chipped stone ceiling. “They were in love.”
Two men. Lovers. In Chapel Hill, North Carolina in nineteen-oh-five, a time and place when such a thing would definitely have been frowned upon. It may have even still been illegal back then, Adrian wasn’t sure.
He sat up, heart pounding. Could this explain why Lyndon vanished that night? Did he and Cassius run away together? No one talked about a boy named Cassius going missing, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. If Cassius had no family to raise the alarm, or if he told them he was leaving town—though probably not why —his