Chapter 24

The thing with the vases. Rory had dismissed it when Nina had told him about the anomaly. He couldn't see any difference when she pointed it out. His wife had mentioned it a few times and then hadn't bothered after a while. That is exactly what he hoped would happen. Ignore the problem and hope that it went away.

Then the light had started going on. This was something more concrete. Rory could check it before he went to bed and then see it on the next morning. An electrician had been summoned and he had found nothing wrong. It was disappointing that the puzzle couldn't be solved by tweaking a wire or replacing a switch.

After that, he had studied the vase, making a mental note of how it was positioned. Nina was right. It definitely moved about an inch overnight. Rory remembered some story about a statuette moving in a museum. It turned out that the traffic rumbling past outside had caused vibrations which made it travel across the shelf. Living in a house on the edge of town, there weren't many passing cars to blame.

Nina had been so good how she coped with it all. Telling Grant and Maria how she simply moved the vase back and turned the light off and got on with her day. No hysterics or worry. She had been used to coping with drama, courtesy of her mother, for her entire life. This was just an inconvenience to her. Well it had been.

The suggestion from Grant about the camera had been too good to ignore. Rory loved a gadget and immediately looked on line to learn about them. He was immersed in spy cameras for a couple of days before he actually bought some. It was fascinating and he couldn't wait to set them up.

It had all been a bit of a game. Rory really hadn't thought about what might happen when they checked the recordings. He certainly hadn't thought that it would exacerbate the issue. Watching the film unfold and the blank screen, had been a chilling experience. What the hell was going on?

What do we do now, Nina had asked and he didn't have a clue? His, pregnant, wife was no longer irritated by some slightly odd events. She was frightened. The stupid idea of using cameras had backfired and made things worse. There was no way to put the genie back in the bottle.

Rory was at a loss about what to do next. At the moment, all he could think to do was downplay the disturbing images until a solution could be found. 

"It was odd that recording. The blank screen. It's the first time I've used the cameras. I probably did something wrong."

Nina raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"Whatever we saw, or didn't see, doesn't change the fact that the vase and the light are minor things. Like you said to Grant and Maria, set them right and then get on with the day."

"I don't want to dwell on this. At the same time, I don't want to bury our heads in the sand. At the moment we are both a bit freaked out. Let the dust settle and then we will come up with some ideas about how to sort this out."

Finding himself sleeping on the sofa on ghost watch, was not the kind of thing Rory had in mind. Being quite a heavy sleeper, it came as no surprise that he wasn't disturbed by anything. He had gone along with Nina's suggestion though, because what else could they do?