Love, Like Ghosts: A Bay City Paranormal Investigations Story

away in anger or misguided fear. No, this was a calm, rational decision. Something to which Greg had clearly given a great deal of thought.
Who could blame him? You hurt him in a fit of anger. Maybe his fear isn’t misguided. Maybe he’s right to be afraid of you. Maybe you’re a potential abuser, just like Harrison, only with powers that let you cause damage without ever laying a finger on a person.
The idea horrified him. He’d never thought of himself as that sort of person. Then again, he’d never before loved anyone outside his family. It seemed counterintuitive to him that his feelings for Greg brought out the worst in him sometimes, but there it was. Maybe being in love simply turned him into a monster. Maybe he was destined to be alone forever.
“I don’t believe that,” he declared aloud, as if trying to convince himself. “I will not believe that.”
Regardless of what he believed, Greg’s decision left Adrian alone now.
An invisible truck parked itself on Adrian’s chest. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pressed his palms to his forehead and drew slow, deep breaths until the urge to scream and sob and rail against the universe passed.
Once he got himself under control, Adrian pushed to his feet and started toward the physics lab. Life didn’t stop, no matter how much he might want it to right now, and he had work to do.
~ * ~
    The librarian looked up with a smile when Adrian walked in. “Hello, Adrian. Back again so soon?” He smiled back automatically, even though he didn’t feel it. “Hi, Mrs. Wickham. Yes, I still have quite a few papers to get through. I have the rest of the afternoon free, so I’m going to stay until closing and get as far as I can, if that’s all right.”
    “Of course, dear.” Taking her keycard from the drawer, she walked out from the enclosed desk area. “The machine is free. I doubt anyone will need it. We rarely have any requests to view any of our microfilm collection these days.”
    “Well, I’m glad you have it. Otherwise I’d be out of luck. Davis Library has a lot of the town’s newspapers scanned from microfilm into digital, but they haven’t gone back as far as I need yet.”
In the past fifteen days, twenty-one hours and forty-five minutes since Greg had broken up with him—not that he’d been keeping track—Adrian had spent most of his free time researching the sparse clues to Lyndon Groome’s death. With very little idea of what to do, he’d decided to go through all of the Chapel Hill newspapers from the last three months of nineteen-oh-five to see if he could find anything helpful. For the past two days he’d been a fixture here at the Chapel Hill Public Library, skimming through the old newspapers on microfilm in whatever spare time he could scrape together. He hadn’t seen anything interesting yet, but he wasn’t prepared to give up. Lyndon Groome vanished on Halloween. Adrian’s gut told him that if there was anything to be found in the newspapers, it would be in the editions published soon after Lyndon’s disappearance. He’d wanted to read the October papers mostly to see if anything had happened in the days leading up to Lyndon’s disappearance.
He trailed the librarian’s neat salt-and-pepper braid into the rear of the building and waited while she retrieved the film he needed and set it up for him. When she’d finished, she patted him on the shoulder. “There you are, dear. You know how to use the machine, and you know where to find me if you need me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a more genuine smile than he had when he’d first walked in. “Thank you. You’ve been a huge help to me with this project, and I really appreciate it.”
A faint blush tinged her dark cheeks. “You’re most welcome, Adrian. It’s good to see young people taking an interest in this town’s history.”
Adrian just nodded. Mrs. Wickham was a sweet lady, but she didn’t need to know about his abilities or his precise reasons for wanting to read Chapel Hill’s old newspapers.
She glanced behind her at the open door of the microfilm viewing room. “Well. I suppose I should get back to my desk. Let me know if you need anything, dear.”
“I will. Thanks again, Mrs. Wickham.”
She nodded, turned and left, closing the door behind her. Once she was gone, Adrian settled himself in the chair in front of the viewing machine. He set his iPhone on the desk provided in case he needed to take notes, then started scrolling through the November