The damned, p.13
The Damned, page 13
“See?” Nona said, her smile growing wider. “My great-grandson, Freddy, told me the proper phrase for this would be: Nailed it.”
Right then and there, when she’d talked nothing like someone nearing one-hundred-years- old, I determined that Nona was probably the most awesome great-grandmother in history. A few seconds later, we stopped in the doorway of the previously locked room and peered inside.
The trio stood in the center of a wine cellar among hundreds of bottles. The wine racks were so tall that they blocked much of the light from the lone lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. The room gave off a damp redolence mixed with the scent of wooden shelves and cork. Dylan and Shadow huddled around Midnight, who poured a bottle of wine into their clear plastic cups.
I let out a disappointed sigh. I preferred our ideas to the truth, even if they were stereotypical.
Midnight corked the bottle he held and returned it to its place on the rack. The other two men tasted their wine. Dylan made a bitter expression as he pushed the wine down his throat, while Shadow turned aside, spit it against the wall in the corner, and let out a disgusted grunt.
Nona approached them. “These aren’t the best conditions to store these bottles. It’s too warm in here. For that reason alone, I suspect that the integrity of each bottle has been compromised.”
“Huh?” asked Shadow. “Isn’t it easier to just say ‘It sucks’?”
Nona gave him a slight nod. “I’ll grant you that.”
Midnight smirked at Nona and took a sip. He winced, quashed that expression a second later, and swallowed with a straight face. Directing his gaze to the side, he said, “It tastes fine.” Ignoring a grossed-out look from Shadow and a chortle from Dylan, he placed the cup on the rack behind him and then turned to us. “Come to see how it’s done?”
“What makes you think there’s a ghost here?” asked Nona.
“It’s cool in this room,” he said with an all-knowing grin. “It’s not in the hall or the other rooms on this floor.”
“Do you think the chill may have anything to do with us being in a wine cellar? The wine needs to languish at a certain temperature to maintain its quality.”
Shadow cringed. “It tasted like I’d kissed a dumpster.”
“It’s because,” Nona said, standing beside a thermostat, “its sixty degrees in here and a wine cellar should be set five degrees cooler. This room must have its own air conditioner, and Lacey admitted that Mr. Hazard hasn’t adjusted the temperature in the house during the summer, so I’d imagine it may have grown much warmer in here the past few months, hence the poor taste.”
“Are you saying there isn’t a ghost here?” asked Shadow, putting his cup aside and removing an EMF meter to check the electromagnetic field.
Dylan placed his cup on the rack and grabbed his camera.
“Over here,” Midnight said, and after Dylan gave him a thumb’s up, he looked into the camera with a gleam in his eye. “We’ve just walked into the fourth previously locked room in this home, and…” He lifted both arms at his sides. “As you can see, it’s a wine cellar. It’s cooler here, and according to our other contestants, it has nothing to do with spirit activity, but the set point of the air conditioner in this room is…wait, hold on. Shadow? Have you got a reading?”
His partner turned on his EMF meter. “I’m getting a spike in the electrical current.”
“And that,” Midnight said into the camera, “is why technology trumps the instincts of so-called ‘mediums’ and ‘psychics,’ both of which stand behind us, but who have not granted us permission to include them into this episode. Could it have anything to do with, oh, I don’t know, they don’t want to get called out publicly as frauds? I’ll let you be the judge of that.”
I disregarded the cheap shot because I had to agree with Shadow’s EMF meter: a chill had grown quite prominent over the last few seconds.
“It seems,” Nona said, “we have a visitor.”
“Well,” Midnight said, grinning, “I’m glad our ‘psychic medium’ agrees with scientific proof, even if her intuition is a little late to the party.”
“Hey,” I said, stepping toward Midnight, but still out of camera range. “Cool it with the insults.”
“Nice pun on the given situation,” Midnight said, giving the camera a tiny grin.
Nona chuckled. I admired her goodness. She looked for the best in even the most annoying people. I needed to work on that approach. Upon further thought, maybe that perspective contributed to her long lifespan.
Midnight patted Shadow’s shoulder. “Glad you came fully equipped, my friend.”
“Then by all means,” Nona said, unfurling both arms and stepping backward, gently pressing against us, encouraging us to move toward the door.
When my butt pressed against it, I came to a stop. With Eloise to my right, Nona stood straight ahead of us.
Dylan set his camera on Shadow, while Midnight now stood behind them.
“This reading is off the chart,” Shadow said. “I’m switching this out for the Thermal Imaging Camera.”
I recalled how that device could distinguish between hot spots and cold spots. I was eager to find out what the the equipment might register on the screen. Unfortunately, at this angle, I couldn’t see the tiny screen that Shadow looked through.
“Dylan,” Midnight said. “Switch to infrared. Ladies? I’d appreciate it if one of you would turn off the light.”
It figured that, while on camera, Midnight presented himself as a gentleman, whereas off screen he was impatient, distrusting, and filled with resentment. On the other hand, he had raced down the hall to inform me that Nona had fallen unconscious, so at least he had some redeeming qualities.
“Ladies? The light, please?”
The light switched off.
“Thank you,” he said.
But no one in the room had turned it off.
14
After entering this room, I recalled seeing the light switch just inside the doorway to my left, which would put it directly behind us. Even if I’d looked in the other direction and missed Eloise turning and raising her arm to reach the switch, I would have heard her fabric shift. Otherwise, the bulb hadn’t busted because I hadn’t heard a pop or shards of glass tinkling against the ground.
Was an entity behind us?
No, that option made no sense. All three of us stood next to the door. There would have been no space for the entity. Then again, while made of energy, a ghost wasn’t corporeal. It had no body. So it could have moved right through us, the same way it could walk through walls. After all, I had experienced a chill a short while ago.
My throat all but closed up on me.
Nona’s shoes slid a few inches to my right. “Eloise, did you turn off the light?”
“Uh-uh,” she said.
“Jocelyn?”
“Nope,” I whispered.
I scanned the room and spotted only two barely visible sources of light: a tiny lit red circle, which I assumed belonged to the camera that Dylan used, and the three-inch screen of the Thermal Imaging Camera, which I had trouble seeing because it jostled every time Shadow moved.
Then he finally stopped moving up ahead of us, and I was finally able to see the screen, upon which there were two splotches of yellow: Midnight and Dylan, the latter of whom Shadow now stood behind.
“We did not,” Nona said, articulating each word in a grave tone. “Switch off the light. Eloise, I recommend using the flashlight feature on your cell phone.”
“Just a sec…Shoot, I left it in my purse in the library. Jocelyn?”
“Mine’s charging in the same place. I recalled that Nona had an old flip phone that she infrequently checked, and since she had asked us, I presumed she didn’t have it on her.
Midnight chuckled. “Still trying to mess with our heads, huh? Shadow, what have you got?”
“I’m picking up you and Dylan. Nothing else.”
“She’s not messing with you,” Eloise said. “None of us turned off the light.”
“Okay,” Midnight said with a sigh, as though to pacify us. “Shadow, do a three-sixty to pick up any cold spots in the room.” A few seconds passed. “Hey!” he shouted.
One of the wine racks shook, threatening to tip over as the bottles clinked in their slots.
I scanned the darkness, but I couldn’t see anything. I turned my attention to Shadow in hopes of seeing something through his EMF meter.
“Whoa!” said Midnight. “Something just banged into me. Dylan, did you get that? I’m gonna see what’s up with this fucker!” There was a moment of silence. “Where’s my phone? Whoever hit me just snatched my phone!”
That sounded odd. I’ve heard that ghosts can move things or even bang into a person like what had happened with Nona a short while ago, but I didn’t think they could remove a phone from someone’s pocket, if that’s indeed where Midnight had stored it.
I pressed my back against the door, felt for the knob, and my knuckles knocked against it. I lifted my hand again, grabbed the knob, and twisted it.
Only it wouldn’t budge.
“Then how did the light turn off?” asked Midnight.
I looked into the darkness, straining to see a shred of light, something that would give me a hint of what had entered the room with us. But no. Nothing.
My breath came quick. I stirred in place, putting my weight from one foot to the other, wanting to move, but I didn’t want to bump into Nona and accidentally send her sprawling to the ground.
“This doesn’t feel right,” said Eloise, her voice trembling. “I don’t like this.” She swallowed hard like she was trying her best to force down food much larger than her throat would allow.
“Okay,” Midnight said in a high-pitched voice. “Somebody, tell me what you see?”
I clenched the knob with my palm. I tried to turn it again, but my hand moved around in a circle on the handle. Had it been locked from the inside?
“Eloise?” asked Nona with a calm tone. “Do you sense anything unusual?”
“Yes.”
I waited for her to say something. Anything. It didn’t happen.
I fumbled around the doorknob for the lock. My hand bumped the brass before falling away, only to knock my knuckles against it again, hoping to locate a lever to unlock the door.
It didn’t exist.
Whoever had installed the lock had purposely selected the lock to function this way.
“It’s a ghost?” Midnight asked. “Well, it seems we may have fallen upon a stroke of good luck.” Despite his words, his quickened words made it clear he was anxious.
I tried to catch another glimpse of the screen on the EMF meter, but I couldn’t, which told me that Shadow held the meter in front of him, shielding me from catching sight of it. Either that or he’d tilted it in a direction I couldn’t see.
“Guys,” I barely managed to say. “We’re locked in.” I reached for my key in hopes that there might be a keyhole.
“What?” Eloise asked, jumping beside me because her arms banged into mine. “Something’s...here.”
I fumbled for Nona’s hand and bumped her hip before I found her soft yet wrinkly fingers. I stuck the key in her palm. “See if there’s a keyhole and unlock the door.”
“All right.” She swiveled around, banged into my left arm, and slid her feet against the ground as she slowly shifted around. She grunted. “Dammit!”
It was the first time I’d heard Nona sound anything but self-assured. If this entity had been the evil presence she had spoken of, I could understand why she had curtailed her ordinarily long explanatory responses. With Nona busy with the door, I turned my attention to what Eloise said only a few seconds ago: Something’s here.
“Eloise?” I asked. “What’s here?”
“It’s…” Eloise trailed off.
I did my best to silence my mind from spinning too many abstract possibilities. I stayed in place, trying to identify what made its way into this room and turned off the light. It didn’t work. If anything, I became more nervous and less inclined to determine what had joined us.
“Eloise!” I snapped. “What is it?”
“The evil thing.”
My heartbeat hammered beneath my lungs. I focused on my surroundings. It took only moments to realize the air had grown thicker than mere moments ago. Every muscle below my neck stiffened, but I glanced around for the entity Eloise had spoken of. I still didn’t see anything.
“Well, Shadow?” Midnight said. “Anything?”
“No. Except…wait.” He sounded intrigued yet surprised. “That’s bizarre.”
Nona bumped into my left shoulder. I reached out, found one bony shoulder and slid my free hand along her neck until I grasped her other shoulder, and stepped aside so she could take the spot I’d just vacated. Every muscle in her back and arms were tightly coiled as if she’d prepared to do battle because I’d taken her out of the action and put myself in her place, but it felt like the right thing to do.
“Goddammit, Shadow!” Midnight shouted. “What do you see?”
“A cold spot. To my right.”
“Get a reading on it,” Midnight said. “Dylan? Have you got him in the shot?”
“One minute,” Dylan said. “I’ve…yeah, I’ve got him, but there’s something in front of him. It’s dark…and shimmery. It’s moving like a wave of smoke. Wait, now it looks like a person.”
“Oomph.”
My ears rang with the guttural sound of wind getting knocked from someone’s chest. Who was it? Shadow? Or Dylan? I may not have liked Shadow, but I still didn’t want him to get hurt. I blinked and shifted my neck forward, trying my best to see through the darkness.
No luck. It was pitch black.
There was a sharp crack. And then another swift crack, softer this time. Three more followed it.
“What was that?” I asked, gasping for air. “Someone say something.”
“Oh shit!” Dylan said in a tight voice.
To our right, something solid thumped against the floor.
I jumped at the sound, my pulse pounding in my throat. I attempted to slow my heartbeat, but concentrating on it only made it knock harder, faster. “Nona? Any luck?”
“There’s no keyhole.”
My nerves jutted under my skin to move. I’d have given anything to get out of here, but that possibility didn’t seem likely any time soon. Still, I couldn’t just stand around.
“Dylan!” Midnight said. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t want to approach the evil thing, but someone had to do something. I started forward to face the unknown, unseen enemy.
“Shadow, say something!” Midnight snatched oxygen every second. “Shadow?” His voice was tinged with fright. “Goddammit!”
Footsteps pounded the floor, approaching me slowly.
I stopped moving. Sweat broke out on my brow at the idea that the corner we stood in would become even more compact, more claustrophobic.
“Shadow,” said Dylan in a tremulous voice. “Wait! He’s on the ground. He’s…not moving.”
Despite the uncertainty of what occurred ahead of me, I couldn’t let whatever attacked Shadow set its sights on Dylan without helping him. I whirled to my right and stepped forward at the same moment I felt Eloise’s arm inadvertently jab into my rib before trying to brush past my field of vision. At least I’d have some backup in case I ran into trouble.
“Shadow?” Midnight asked, almost choking on the name. “Shadow, please. Say something.”
15
Ahead and to the right, a slit of light to the right flashed only to vanish a second later. The chill disappeared. So did the thickness in the air.
My foot bashed into something on the ground, and I stopped short of pitching forward.
A light flashed in the darkness.
I flinched and staggered backward, doing my best to reorient myself to my surroundings. Then I caught sight of what I’d bumped into.
Shadow’s body.
It lay on the ground, arms and legs strewn about at awkward angles. Catching sight of his head made my mouth shoot open, but a soundless scream died in my throat.
His chin nestled against the ground facing us, but his spine now fit in the space his chest had inhabited only moments ago. Someone had snapped his neck and twisted it around.
“Oh my God!” Midnight shouted from the other end of the room. He raced over to his friend and skidded next to the corpse, his mouth open wide and his eyes bulging as he took in the horrific scene before him. “Oh my God!” he repeated. He made fists and whirled around, looking in every direction, expecting an attack. “What happened?” With a feral glance around the room, he set a glare upon Dylan. “What did you see?”
Dylan tore his gaze away from Shadow. Even though he’d looked away, his lips were still peeled back in terror, as though his mind’s eye couldn’t avoid the image of seeing Shadow’s head wrenched around.
“Hey!” Midnight shouted. He leaped to his feet and jumped into Dylan’s face. “What did you see?”
Dylan just stared at him, impassive
Midnight ripped the camera from Dylan’s hands. He stuffed it in his belly, spun around, and darted for the corridor.
Nona stepped aside from it a half-second before Midnight would have otherwise plowed into her.
He grabbed the doorknob, twisted it, and opened it. He jumped out into the corridor.
I stared at the doorknob, shocked. A second later, I looked at Nona, who seemed just as disoriented as I felt. “Did you open it?”
She shook her head, speechless.
In the seconds after the light switched on until the moment we’d found Shadow’s body, someone had unlocked the door.
I hurried into the hallway with Eloise and Dylan on my heels.
Midnight ran about ten yards off to the left, halted, and put the camera to his eyes, surely checking the video Dylan had recorded. He watched in silence. Moments later, he wrapped a palm around his mouth.
When Nona and Eloise assembled beside me, I caught Dylan’s eye. “What did you see?”
“I don’t know.” He looked askance and shook his head, his facial muscles twitching. “I watched that form turn into a figure and then it just vanished into smoke.”
