Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum Read Online Free PDF Page A

XPI . Zach suspected that she’d one day work
for the federal government. In his mind’s eye, he could already picture her
dressed in a navy blue suit normally worn by FBI agents.
    Rebecca Smythe had been the next to join XPI ,
but she likely wouldn’t have said twenty words had it not been for Shelly’s
delicate interrogation. Short and plain-looking, Rebecca wore wanton brown hair
that completely contradicted her personality.  She revealed that she held
a strong commitment to the supernatural that had emerged from a personal
experience she had declined to share. Because she had researched the paranormal
extensively, Zach made her the team Occult Specialist. Their first case, she
discovered an ancient Navajo ceremony to release the spirits of infants who
were haunting a school that had been converted from a hospital where the babies
had died in childbirth. Since then, Rebecca’s dedication and research had made
her an expert in the supernatural.
    Over the years, students joined and left,
but the core members of XPI –which included the technical guys who’d been
added later, had become a family of sorts. Sometimes it was a dysfunctional
one, but a family nonetheless. And now, Zach was going to shock them with two
surprises. One, the case at Rosewood, he knew they’d like, but the other,
working with the Demon Hunters, had the potential to divide them.
    “Okay ladies and gents,” Sara said, snapping
Zach back to the present. “Is everyone here? Where’s Matthew Morgan?”
    “I’m here,” Matthew said. He was wearing a
black t-shirt and a red baseball cap. They’d done twelve episodes and he had
made that combination of apparel his signature of sorts. Matthew, a theater
production major, was an expert in producing intricate stage sets. His
ingenuity carried over into his work on the show. Whenever a contraption needed
to be constructed to facilitate lighting or cameras, Matthew was “the man.”
While he’d earned his reputation for being tardy, he had arrived early and
already constructed a makeshift platform for the cameraman to get shots from an
elevated position.
    It was Mike “Turk” Turko, Ray’s audio and
video review counterpart, who appeared to be running behind schedule.
    “Where the hell is the Turk?” Sara demanded.
    Zach cringed as soon as Angel Perez opened
his mouth to speak. “He’s probably banging the easiest freshman he could find.”
    As XPI had come to rely more and more
on technical equipment, Zach had recruited Angel as their Technical Lead. The
pudgy, acne-scarred Mexican-American was not a handsome man, per se, and his
antagonism and resentment towards the Turk made him even less attractive.
    Sara glowered at Zach as though both Angel’s
attitude and Turk’s lateness were his fault. Zach pulled out his cell phone
but, just then, Turk popped out of the glass doors of the brick building
nearest them, the cafeteria. His slicked back jet-black hair and sunglasses
gave him the slightest hint of movie star quality which he played to the hilt.
Chomping on a banana, he hustled over to the group.
    “Thanks for showing up, Turko,” Angel said.
“Nice banana. Don’t you usually freeze those and use ‘em when you’re alone?”
    “Hey.” Zach squinted at Angel. “You’re in
mixed company here.” He did not intend to continue playing referee between
those two. Their history of gamesmanship was obviously not clean.
    Most of the XPI team cast
not-so-subtle glances at Wendy Merrick, their Historical Researcher. Wendy had
been added to the XPI team immediately prior to filming their debut episode.
Thin, blonde and self-conscious, had she refused to date either Angel or Turk,
no one would have been uncomfortable. Had she not been girlfriend to both of them at various times over the prior summer, the comfort level would have
been perfect.
    “Okay people, listen up!” Sara’s normal
energetic demeanor kicked into an even higher gear.
    As usual, Ray was standing as close to Sara
as