The inbetween, p.35
The InBetween, page 35
part #1 of Painter Mann Series
“Okay.”
“But I musta got it wrong. Maybe it was someone who just looked like her.”
A nod. “Like a relative. A parent?”
“Yeah. Or a brother. Or sister.”
“A father?”
“Right,” he said and closed his eyes again.
The Professor smiled. This type of thinking, reasoning, might be why he was actually a good investigator. At least a good dead one.
Painter did indeed have a talent for sniffing out—or at least sniffing toward—the truth.
But she knew something about the man sitting next to her that he didn't. He'd forgotten. A stark truth that would one day shake Painter to his core.
Another time, she thought. And then Professor mimicked the private investigator’s position and just listened to music, with a friend, under the stars.
The parking lot was full of cars, but not a person was in sight.
Only him.
They were up there.
Both of them in one place!
That old bitch who had stood in his way so many times before. And Painter Mann. He’d ruined the plans for their army.
They had been so close!
Time to rebuild.
But in time, soon, before the army marched on this world, those two would have to go.
He caught a glimpse of his face in the side mirror. Well, not his face. Not the one he’d been born with. Not the one he’d died with.
When alive, this man had been a genius. A homicidal genius, sure, but brilliant nonetheless. He’d worked out the physics of the InBetween like no one had before. One part Einstein, one part John Wayne Gacy. Maybe two parts John Wayne Gacy.
The “cab ride”? That was just one of the hidden secrets of this world. There were others.
The young man took another drag of his cigarette and then threw it through the open window of a nearby car. On its bumper: a faded sticker of the rebel flag.
He slowly pulled from the lot toward the exit.
He knew of a place to throw these two who were now sitting up on that mountain so smug. He had once discovered a place that was not life.
Not death.
Not afterlife.
An infinite prison.
Before the army would rise again, that was where these two were headed.
Into the eternal pain and madness of being fully conscious within an envelope of pure nothing.
<<<<>>>>
ACKNOWLEGEMENTS
The author wishes to thank the masochists who agreed to read early drafts of The InBetween like Leah Pasnin, Jeremy Elwood, Pauline Knox, and Nicola McHaffie. The New Zealand health system offers four free psychiatric counselling sessions for those who need it. You’d be wise to take advantage of that. Much love to authors M.P. McDonald and Jack Roach for their guidance. I encourage you to go check their stuff out
And of course, Tiffany Wybrow. Thank you for being a sounding board, a comforting voice in the dark, my wife and my very best friend.
DEAR LOVELY, GOOD-LOOKING READER…
If you liked The InBetween, please take a moment to leave a review on Amazon, iTunes, or wherever you might have picked it up (and thank you for that!). This allows other readers to find the novel and, no matter how short, reviews help book sales.
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THE NIGHT VANISHING
Chapter One
Hollow stared at the mirror but didn’t see his reflection, though not because he didn’t have one. He wasn’t a vampire.
“There ain’t no such thing as vampires.”
He was a ghost hunter, although that was not what he and his crew called themselves. Standing in the old Scotsman’s bedroom, he felt his body sway just a little.
Tired.
Get back to it.
Staring into the reflective glass, Isaac “Hollow” Hollister traced his eyes along the floorboards of the wall behind him, as he’d done hundreds of times before. Then in a sweeping pattern, he scanned up and up, searching. He’d described this process many times, especially in that first season. Looking for the “ghost sign.”
Then he stopped describing it because he sounded less and less convincing every time he did.
Halfway up the wall, he’d realized he wasn’t really looking. His eyes were going through the motions, his mind elsewhere. He’d done this with the novels he was reading, especially more recently. He would flip through half a dozen pages and then have to flip back because he hadn’t read a word.
His mind drifted more these days, maybe because he was turning fifty. Maybe it was because he wasn’t sure he had the strength to make it to fifty-one.
He wasn’t suicidal, just tired. Tired of trying to convince others it was all real when secretly he was no longer convinced. The encounter, so long ago now, felt increasingly like a dream.
Tired of the bullshit. Tired of this chase.
However, this bullshit chase made him a lot of money.
“Hollow, come on, man!”
He turned and saw only a brilliant burst of white, a tiny star that blotted out the emptiness of the dark bedroom.
The sunburst wobbled to the right, and in his mind’s eye, Hollow could see Digit with hands on both her hips, head tilted to the side.
After a moment of total darkness, she came into shape and looking around the room, the light from the camera on her shoulder scanning the walls.
Hollow looked down to the digital sleeve, which showed the “vanity cam” monitors of all but one of his crew members. When Digit saw he was watching this, she looked directly into hers and once again said, “Come on!”
He blew out a breath and half-smiled. These are the people I hang out with?
“I’m searching for ghost sign,” Hollow said, half growling the last two words.
“Later!” Digit was engaging in her habit of shuffling from foot to foot, as if running in place. They’d had to put gimbals on all her cameras, especially the one trained on her face, so the viewers wouldn’t get motion sickness. “Sapphire says he’s got something.”
Hollow sighed. “Nearly done.” After staring into the reflection, he looked back down at the floorboards again. He’d have to trace up the wall again and do it right. Who knew, maybe—
“Nah, man,” Digit said. “This you gotta see.”
“You say that every time, Digit. You need a better catch phrase. Especially because you move the subject in the sentence up like that, and it sticks out. First few times, it sounds cool. Aft—”
The room suddenly fell dark, like the heat had been sucked out of the room.
Hollow looked at Digit. “Those cameras stay on! We’ve got a webcast, goddammit! Subscribers are hard to come by, and if—”
“Come down into the basement,” Digit said, her eyes dancing as they reflected the moonlight coming through the dirty windows. “This is different. Saff found something.”
“Found what?”
The young woman hesitated and then said, “More.”
This was the thirteenth season of Ghost Wranglers and looked like it might be the last. The past few years they’d seen a steady decline in viewership. The program was too much of the same stuff—not just from them but all their copycats. And since Ghost Wranglers was basically a copycat itself, you ended up with a photocopy of a photocopy and after a while the images faded, becoming dull.
The network head suggested maybe Hollow go back to some of the old devices, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do that.
That was how they’d gotten attention and set themselves apart at first.
These were cowboy ghost hunters. In the early seasons, Hollow had even worn a hat and lasso, which was embarrassing for a dude from upstate New York.
Oh, they had some actual pros on the team, real investigators, and in keeping with that early buckaroo theme, their names fit like a glove.
Hollow followed Digit, moving from the top floor to the second and passing by one of the many bedrooms, this one filled with the strident voices of Doc and Rose. They brought a bit of clout to the show, but sometimes—a lot of sometimes—Hollow wondered if it was worth keeping them around, despite their rep of being bona fide explorers.
They’d had a popular show on the Travel Channel in which they took the viewers along on archaeological adventures. On that show, Doc and Rose were one part twenty-first-century Indiana Joneses and two parts circus acts. Their second biggest audience wasn’t even for a dig. It was when they’d gotten married at a site in Damascus, Syria, at an orthodox Christian church, one of the oldest in the world, with the entire liturgy in Syriac.
However, their highest-rated show was during one of their famous live, on-air fights. This one was in Egypt and had destroyed seventeen thousand dollars’ worth of broadcast equipment and a three-thousand-year-old mummy. It also left a three-year-old burro psychologically traumatized. However, the circumstances around how that happened were never documented.
Under threats from the Egyptian government, they were subsequently fired. They volunteered for a year at a Cairo museum to make amends, but when they came crawling back to the network, their show was as dead as the bones they once dug up.
They begrudgingly agreed to the only open positions available to them, which were on Ghost Wranglers, at that point in its fourth year.
Hollow glanced over at the room, listening to the yelling and banging that came from behind the door.
The owner of the house stood just down the dark and damp hallway, one of her frail hands rubbing at the corners of her mouth. When she caught sight of Hollow, she hurried over.
“Aye, sir, shouldn’t you be going in to see what the fuss is about?”
The Ghost Wranglers’ boss stopped halfway down to the next landing. He said, “They’re okay. If they break anything, I can take it out of their pay. It’s a rider on their contract.”
“I’m worried they’re going to break each other, sir!”
“No, no,” Hollow said and waved a hand. “They had a big fight in the airplane earlier, before we landed on the beach.”
“What on earth were they fighting about on an airplane?”
He shrugged. “Rose wanted the window seat.”
“So they’re destroying my home in round two, are they?”
“Nah,” he said. Then he listened for a moment and nodded. “They’re making up.”
“They sound like they’re wrecking the place!”
“No, that’s definitely making up.”
The widow said, “How can you tell the difference?”
Hollow started down to the next floor again. “It sounds similar, yeah, but when they’re making up, the slapping is more… damp.”
“That’s nasty,” Digit said, moving ahead of her boss, taking two steps at a time now. “Come on, we’re in the basement.”
“Of course we’re in the basement,” Hollow said with a sigh. “And turn your goddamn cameras back on!”
She did, and the penlights around her body lit up the stairs as they dropped deeper and deeper into the house.
On his holster, the one bit of cowboy detritus he kept from the early days because it was actually useful, his smartphone’s indicator light flashed green-yellow-red, green-yellow-red.
“Leave me alone, woman,” Hollow mumbled, not even needing to look at the screen. “Christ, how can I put a show on for you if you constantly want to interrupt it?”
Hollow’s legs just started to burn as he stepped onto the next landing. Another turn, then a door, and he began heading down the basement stairs.
Shit. “Why is it we always end up in basements?”
He clicked on his own cameras. Like all but one of their crew, he had one on his chest, another on his back, and a vanity cam that allowed him to talk directly to the camera. The cam also allowed for various dramatic expressions of reticence, excitement, fear, reluctance, and concern.
Today, they’d show something new.
Hollow entered the damp cellar, just a few steps behind Digit. The odor that smacked him in the face conjured up images of years of decaying leaves, newly uncovered. The ceiling was so low that Hollow had to hunch slightly as he moved toward where Sapphire and Digit, the youngest members of his team, now stood.
They looked strange from behind, like insects that had stumbled onto a web.
Sapphire was facing a wall, arms spread. In the splash of key and fill lights, he had glow that was almost spiritual. Digit was just off to Hollow’s right as he approached, the young woman with both hands atop her head. Her legs moved like they were trying to drag her forward.
That was when he finally noticed the sound—like a rushing hurricane, but he couldn’t see an open door or window. Then he remembered he and his coworkers were in the basement.
He took another step toward Sapphire, whose sheer robe fluttered wildly in the light.
“No!” Digit yelled, stopping Hollow in his tracks.
Either she’s getting to be a better actor or…
“Saff, what are you picking up?” Hollow asked, surprised by how thin his own voice sounded. He cleared his throat. “You feeling something here at the wall?”
Slowly the young man reached out. The long billowy sleeves of his flowing shirt fell, exposing thin, pale arms. Softly, his fingertips connected with the damp concrete.
“Saff?” their boss asked. “Sapphire, what’s going on?”
Hollow stepped into the pool of light, catching sight of himself in the nearby float cams, momentarily self-conscious that he’d put on about ten pounds in the last few months. He then reached for the wall.
Feels cold. Damp. Uh, wall-ish. Not like before. Whatever, go with it.
Working through a few script options quickly in his head, he looked at the soft features of the young man’s face. It was splotchy and red. Tears had dried on his checks.
“Saff?”
Sapphire opened his eyes, hugging as close to the wall as he could. Hollow could only watch. Just touching the wall for more than a few seconds chilled him to the bone. Here the young man was hugging the damn thing.
“He’s gone,” Sapphire said and frowned. “It… he is no longer here.”
“Who?”
Sapphire turned and faced the blinding light. Then he shuffled into the dark.
Digit looked up from a device on her forearm. “About two more feet and you’ll hit a light stand. Veer a few degrees to your left, and you’ll find me, Saff.”
Hollow repeated himself. “Who? Who is gone?”
“I don’t know,” the young man said, the emptiness of his voice making the room colder. “He is seeking. I couldn’t hear it well, but he is wanting.”
Hollow clicked on his own light to capture Sapphire and Digit as he approached.
“Seeking what?”
“Not what,” Sapphire said. “Who.”
“Okay, who?”
Saff shook his head and half-shrugged, facing a dark corner of the room. Digit was playing back the previous few minutes on a screen strapped to her forearm.
For the moment, they could only watch—as viewers did on TV and the Web—as Digit rewound the tape. Some more tech-savvy fans had already done that, and Twitter alerts were dinging like mad, but the hashtag made no sense to Hollow when he looked at the mentions.
“Hey, what the fuck’s going on?”
The team jumped as a voice from the steps split the darkness. Rose and Doc both looked a little battered. However, no matter what had transpired in the room upstairs, Rose looked better than her husband.
Hollow barked, “Can you not swear on live TV?”
“My Twitter feed is going bananas,” Rose said.
Doc shrugged and smiled. “We’re cable, man. All good.”
Rose sidled next to Digit for a moment, who still worked the monitor. Their tech took a half-step away from her.
While they all watched the playback, Hollow stared at the wall. He found what he’d been looking for upstairs.
Ghost sign.
“Can’t be,” he muttered.
Then a voice, the audio small and tinny, reflected around the room. Sapphire had been in the playback. But even Saff didn’t recognize his own voice in the recording.
Digit said, “I’ll need to get another camera feed. Hold on.”
Sapphire: “He said he was scared. Needed help.”
“How are we supposed to help?” Hollow wasn’t sure how much of this was just for the cameras.
“Not us. He was looking for someone. The only one who could help. That’s what he said, the only one that could help him. But I didn’t understand the name. It sounded so strange.”
Digit said, “Just let me get the other cam audio. Hold on.”
Rose replied, “You don’t have to. That explains the hashtag we’re linked to. Some other nerds out there beat you to it. Probably that Punq guy.” She held her phone to her boss.
Hollow asked, “Who the fuck is Painter Mann?”
CHAPTER TWO
My name is Painter Mann, and I am the world’s best dead private detective.
I am also the only dead private detective, so I suppose that makes me the worst too. Just so we’re all on the same page here.
After saving the world—no biggie, just sayin’—there was no reason to take a break. I mean, what does that even look like when you’re dead? It’s not like I can go sunning in Cabo or hit Vegas for a long weekend of gambling and peyote-fueled self-discovery.
I went to New Orleans.
In part, I think I went there because it was one of my favorite cities while I was alive, but that’s really hard to pin down. A lot of my livin’ days have turned to ash in my mind, which happens for those of us stuck in the InBetween. But not all of us spooks lose a grip on our memories in the same way.
