Speaker 1: Caloroga Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Romance Weekly and Halloween Possession. This
is episode one, the Static between Us.
Speaker 1: I should tell you right now that I don't believe
in love at first sight. I'm thirty two, divorced, and
I investigate disappearances for my true crime podcast. I know
what happens to women who lose themselves in men. But
October changed everything, and it started with something as simple
as static electricity. Have you ever touched someone and felt
the sh shock travel somewhere? It shouldn't, not just your finger,
but deeper. That's what happened when Ethan handed me the
keys to the Victorian house on Essex Street. Our fingers
brushed just barely, and I felt it in my chest,
behind my ribs, like my heart was a radio suddenly
finding a station it didn't know existed. I pulled my
hand back, of course, made some joke about the dry
October air, but he was looking at me with these
dark eyes. God, why do they always have dark eyes?
And I knew he'd felt it too, that impossible electricity,
that recognition of something you can't name. You'll hear about
the missing women, he said, not a question. His voice
did something to my spine, like fingertips trailing down vertebrae.
I told myself it was just because I was tired
from the drive from New York. I told myself a
lot of things that turned out to be lies. Let
me back up. I'm Mara Chen and my podcast, Vanished Voices,
has two million subscribers who trust me to find the
truth about missing women. Three days ago, I arrived in
Salem to investigate a pattern. Three women, three Octobers, three disappearances.
The police say there's no connection, but I've built a
career on finding patterns that men in uniform miss. The
Victorian House was my starting point. The last missing woman,
Rebecca Torres, had toured it the day she vanished. The
Salem Halloween Festival runs historic tours all October, and Ethan
Blackwood manages the properties. I'd expected some aging history buff Instead,
I got six feet of lean muscle in a charcoal henley,
with carpenter's hands and a voice that made me forget
my first question. The house gets to some people, he
was saying, leading me up the narrow stairs. I was
trying to focus on his words, not the way his
genes fit or how he smelled like cedar and coffee
and something else, something like rain before lightning strikes, especially
sensitive types. You're not sensitive, are you? The way he
said sensitive made me flush, like it was something intimate,
something he could tell about me just by looking. I'm
a journalist, I said, my professional voice, a little too sharp,
ideal in facts. He turned on the landing, and suddenly
we were too close, in that narrow space. I could
see the gold flex in his brown eyes, could feel
the heat coming off his body, the cool October afternoon facts,
he repeated, and his mouth did something that wasn't quite
a smile.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: My phone buzzed, Lily, my sister's timing has always been catastrophic.
Can I crash with you for a few days? Derek
and I had done for real this time. I stepped
back from ethan thumb flying over my screen. Lily lived
in Boston, only forty minutes away, but she might as
well have asked to stay with me on Mars. I
was here to work, not to nurse her through another
breakup with her toxic on again, off again boyfriend. I'm
in Salem for work, staying at the Hawthorn Inn. Perfect.
I'll drive up tonight. I need to get away from everything.
I looked up to find Ethan watching me, head tilt,
said slightly, like he was listening to something only he
could hear. Sister, He asked, how did you I stopped.
My expression must have given it away. That's all She's
coming to visit during Halloween's season in Salem. He turned
and continued up the stairs. She must be running from
something pretty bad. Rebecca Torres had stood in this same
hallway a year ago. I tried to focus on that,
on why I was here, but my body was betraying
me with every step. Each time Ethan moved, I caught
another angle of him, the stretch of fabric across his shoulders,
the way his hair curled slightly at his neck. I
was acutely aware of my own body in a way
that made me angry. The weight of my breasts under
my sweater, the sensitivity of my skin, the heat pooling
low in my belly. This is exactly what I'd promised
myself wouldn't happen again after my divorce. No more losing myself,
no more men who made me forget my own name.
This is where she was last seen, Ethan said, opening
a door to a small bedroom, the tour guide said,
Rebecca seemed fascinated by this room, stayed behind when the
group moved on. The room was perfectly preserved, victorian rose, wallpaper,
brass bed, heavy velvet curtains. But something else was here too.
The air felt charged, like the moment before a thunderstorm.
The hairs on my arms stood up. Do you feel that,
I asked, before I could stop myself. Ethan stepped closer,
too close. Feel what the electricity? The static? Maybe, he said, quietly,
more sensitive than you think. Our eyes met, and suddenly
I could hear something impossible, a woman's voice, faint and desperate,
like a radio signal from very far away. Help me, please, someone,
help me. I gasped and stumbled backward. Ethan's hand shot
out to steady me, gripping my elbow, and the moment
his skin touched mine through my sweater, the voice became
clear as a bell. He's coming back. October brings him back.
Don't let him find the others like us. You heard her,
Ethan said, It wasn't a question. His hand was still
on my arm, and where he touched me, my skin
felt like it was dissolving into pure energy. You heard, Rebecca.
I jerked away from him, my heart hammering, that's not
that's not possible. You investigate missing women, don't you want
to know what happened to her? I want to know
why you're not surprised, I shot back, Why you're acting
like hearing voices is normal. He leaned against the doorframe,
blocking my exit without seeming to This close, I could
see the pulse in his throat steady where mine was racing.
Because I've been hearing them since the first woman disappeared
three years ago, and because I've been waiting for someone
else who could hear them too. My logical brain was
screaming at me to leave. This was crazy trauma response,
auditory hallucinations, something. But my body wouldn't move. Every cell
felt oriented toward him, like he was magnetic north. Why
I managed, because whatever took them gets stronger in October,
and because he paused, his eyes dropping to my mouth
for just a second. I think it it hunts people
like us, people like us. The words hung between us,
intimate as a confession. My phone rang lily again. Mara,
I'm an hour out. You have to promise not to
judge me, but I think there's something wrong with me
like medically wrong. I keep shocking everything. My laptop died,
my phone keeps glitching, and Derek said kissing me felt
like licking a battery. I looked at Ethan, who was
watching me with those dark, knowing eyes. Just get here safe,
I told her, we'll figure it out. When I hung up,
Ethan said, your sister too. Two. I laughed, but it
came out shaky. I don't even know what this is. This.
He pushed off from the door frame and moved toward me,
slow and deliberate. My body responded immediately, nipples tightening, breath
catching that liquid heat spreading through me like honey or this.
He raised his hand, not touching me, just holding it
an inch from my cheek. The air between us crackled,
and I could feel him, not his hand, but him.
His desire hit me like a physical thing, making me gasp.
It was overwhelming, invasive, intoxicating. I could feel what he
wanted to do to me, could feel his struggle for control,
could feel the way I affected him or without a
single touch. Stop, I whispered, but I didn't step back.
I'm not doing anything, he said, and his voice was rougher.
Now that's all you bullshit. But even as I said it,
I knew he was right. I was the one leaning
toward him, drawn like a moth to flame. I was
the one whose body was singing with want. He dropped
his hand, stepped back, and the loss of that almost
touch left me aching. There's a pattern, he said, or business.
Suddenly the missing women all had this ability. They could
feel things others couldn't. Electromagnetic fields, people's emotions, echoes of
the past, and in October, when the veil is thin,
that's an old Salem expression. Something notices them. You're telling
me there's a what a monster that hunts psychic women.
I'm telling you that Rebecca Torres could do what you
just did. So could Emma Martinez the year before, and
Sarah Kim the year before that. His jaw tied, and
they're all gone. My investigative instincts finally kicked in, overriding
my body's confusion. How do you know all this? Because
my family has been in Salem for three hundred years.
We've seen this before. My grandmother called it the October hollow,
something that feeds on people with our particular sensitivity. He
met my eyes and because I tried to warn Rebecca.
She didn't believe me either. You knew her. Something flickered
across his face, guilt, pain, something deeper. She was drawn
to me the same way you are. It's not real attraction.
It's electromagnetic resonance, our abilities recognizing each other. The words
stung more than they should have. So this feeling is
just what physics? No, he moved closer again, and my
traitor's body responded instantly. The poll is physics. What we
do about it, that's choice. And Mara, the way he
said my name made my insides clench. I'm trying very
hard to make the right choice here, which is to
keep you alive through October. My phone buzzed, Lily fifteen
minutes out and Mara, there's someone following me. They've been
behind me since I left Boston. The temperature in the
room seemed to drop. Ethan pulled out his phone, typed
something quickly, tell her to come straight to the Witch Museum.
It's public, well lit. I'll meet you both there. Why
would you Because if your sister has the same ability,
she's already being hunted. And because he paused at the door,
not looking back, I couldn't save the others. Maybe this
time will be different. He left me standing in that
charged room, my body still humming from his almost touch,
Rebecca's voice echoing in my mind. I looked around the
perfectly preserved Victorian bedroom and wondered which of us would
be the next to disappear. My reflection in the antique
mirror looked flushed, pupils, dilated, like I'd been thoroughly kissed
instead of just nearly touched. This was exactly what I'd
sworn wouldn't happen. No more dangerous men, no more losing control.
But as I headed for my car to meet Lily,
I could still feel Ethan's presence on my skin like static,
and I knew I was already lost. The only question
was whether I'd survive October. To regret it, I should
have left Salem that night, packed up Lily, and driven
back to New York, where things made sense, where touch
was just touch, and October was just a month. Instead,
I drove toward the Witch Museum, toward my sister, toward him,
toward whatever was hunting women like us. The radio in
my rental car burst into static as I turned onto
Essex Street. Through the white noise, I could have sworn.
I heard Rebecca's voice again, stronger this time. He makes
you feel alive, so you don't notice you're dying. I
turned the radio off, but the warning was already under
my skin, mixing with the want that wouldn't let me go.
Three women had disappeared in October. As I pulled into
the museum parking lot and saw Ethan waiting under the
street light, beautiful and dangerous and impossible, I had the
terrible certainty that if I wasn't careful, I'd be the fourth.
But when he looked up and our eyes met through
the windshield, that electromagnetic pull sang through my bones like
a siren's call. My body didn't care about danger. It
only knew that he was the answer to a question
I'd never known to ask. I was in so much trouble,
and October had just begun.