All the Love in the World: A Holiday Anthology

by Karina Halle

  “Where are we going?” I ask, trying not to sound afraid, but there’s something about that black, cavernous space that we keep heading toward which makes me feel like my head isn’t screwed on straight.

  “I’m trying to take you to where my mother was last seen.”

  “Your mother?” I repeat.

  “Last seen? I thought she drowned,” says Perry.

  He stops and we almost bump into him.

  Turns and eyes me. “Yes, Dex, my mother. My mother married Harry after she had me.” He looks to Perry. “And yes, she did drown. But the last place she was seen was here. Last Halloween.” He points into the room. “Sitting in the dining room.”

  Chills. I’ve got motherfucking chills going down my spine.

  Hell, it’s been a long time since I felt that.

  “So, let me get this straight,” Perry says. “You believe the same thing as your stepfather.”

  “Believe?” He purses his lips quizzically.

  “Yeah. That her ghost is here.”

  “Oh. Well, of course her ghost is here. It’s been here since the day she died. I see her all the time.”

  “You do?” I ask, and once again, I don’t think the guy is lying.

  “That’s right,” he says with a quick smile, his teeth flashing white. “Why do you think I’m giving you the tour?”

  “But then why give us one hundred grand if you can just talk to her for free?”

  He laughs, the sound falling flat in this place. “Because my father doesn’t trust me. I don’t even think he believes me, to be honest. Maybe because I’m too close to her, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a jealousy thing. Either way, he doesn’t want me doing it.”

  “Not even to pass a message?” I ask.

  “Who said anything about passing messages?” Atlas says.

  “Your father did,” I tell him, getting an uneasy feeling about all of this.

  “Oh. I see.” He slides a hand into a pocket and shrugs. “If he has a message for her, then I don’t know about it. It doesn’t matter, he’s here all the time yelling at her, even though he rarely sees her himself.”

  I raise my palm. “Okay, okay. This is getting way beyond the thing that we were told. How do I know that you’re not lying to us?”

  “You know I’m not.”

  “Stop fucking acting like I’m supposed to know you, I don’t. And you don’t fucking know me.”

  He sighs tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t the best place for an argument. The more we fight, the more the bad shit will come out.”

  “Bad shit?” Perry says, her eyes glowing. “Is that a technical term?”

  “Tell us why we’re really here,” I tell him. “Or we’re walking.” And taking the money, but I don’t say that.

  He looks us both in the eyes. “Fine. There are no secrets here. My mother is dead, but she hasn’t moved on. She…can’t. For one reason or another. She’s stuck in this house. She just needs a little…push.”

  “A push?” I ask, narrowing my eyes. “Which way?”

  He grins at me. “I suppose that’s up to her now. At any rate, my father picked you two because you’re somewhat famous and I went along with it because my mother said you would do.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know what to make of it. What are we supposed to do?”

  “He wants us to open the Veil,” Perry says quietly. “I won’t do it.”

  Atlas smiles. “You don’t need to open the Veil, my dear. It’s already open.”

  I swallow, my body feeling hot and cold. “What do you mean?”

  “Samhain,” he says. “The most powerful day of the year for a witch. The Veil walls are thin, and in here there are no walls.”

  That’s why I’m here.

  The woman’s voice slices through my head again, my eyes going wide.

  “Dex?” Perry asks in concern.

  But I can’t move.

  My eyes are glued to the space in the dark beyond Atlas.

  The graying body of a dead woman slowly disappearing into the black.

  Fuck!

  “Dex,” Perry says again, sharper now.

  You’ll have to come back, the voice says. I know how hard that thought gets you.

  Fucking hell, and I do have a fucking erection, don’t I?

  We’ll be here. Waiting.

  Then the voice stops and I can move again.

  “You okay?” Atlas asks, and luckily no one is pointing their flashlight at my crotch.

  “I’m fine,” I say, swallowing.

  “You look like you saw a ghost,” he says, smirking.

  “Well I kind of fucking did.”

  “What did you see?” Perry asks.

  “Maybe his mother?” I say, pointing to the dark room where, of course, there’s nothing. “I gotta tell you something, I’m not fucking going in there.”

  Atlas stares into the black for a moment and then nods. “Understood. Come on, I’ll give you a tour of the rest of the house.”

  He walks around us, and even though I don’t want a fucking tour, I refuse to be left alone with Perry in this hall. We hurry after him, but the immense darkness at my back feels like a black hole, and if I don’t escape from it fast enough, it’s going to suck me back in with that dead woman.

  “So, wait a minute,” Perry says to Atlas, catching up to him. “If the walls are down in this house, why do you need us to do anything?”

  “Because I don’t have what you guys have,” he says, leading us over to the stairs. “Your gift. Just because the Veil is down or thin, doesn’t mean spirits will walk through. They might not even know they can. They need to be drawn out. They need to be shown the way. That’s what the two of you have always done. That’s your purpose in life.”

  Oh, Perry isn’t going to like that.

  “Purpose?” she practically spits out as we climb the stairs. “I have a purpose in life and it’s not this. It never was.”

  He glances down at her. “I suppose if you tell yourself that enough times, sooner or later it might be true.” He smiles. “But you’re here, aren’t you?”

  “For a fuckload of money!”

  “Easy now,” he says. “Last time we had words, your husband saw a ghost. Do you want that to happen again?”

  “I thought we were here to see ghosts,” I tell him as we get to the second floor.

  “You’re here to talk to my mother,” he says. “What you saw wasn’t my mother. You definitely don’t want to see her again.”

  “Fucking hell, what else should we not want to see?” I mutter under my breath.

  But as Atlas takes us from room to room on the second floor, showing us different bedrooms, still fully furnished, filling us in on some of the seemingly harmless history of the so-called Stimson House, we never see anything else.

  That is, until we get to the third floor.

  Where I had seen the light from outside.

  On that floor I stop dead when I see bloody water seeping out from underneath a doorway.

  “Uh,” I say, pointing at it, and holy fuck have I never wanted a video camera as bad as I do right now. This is fucking gold.

  “Oh my god,” Perry says softly, jumping back from the water as it seems to rush toward our feet. “What’s in there?” She stares at the door.

  “It’s a bathroom,” Atlas says. “It’s locked and I don’t have a key.”

  Oh, this Edgar Allan Fuck is lying, that much is true.

  “And it seems we’re out of time,” he says, taking out his phone.

  “What do you—?” My words are cut off by all the lights in the house going on at once.

  Illuminating people standing all around us.

  Dead people.

  Fucking everywhere.

  Perry and I scream bloody murder, our voices rattling through the house.

  And then the lights go back off.

  The dead people disappear.

  The bloody water that was inches from my boots, retre
ats back under the door, like a film in reverse.

  “November first,” Atlas says tiredly. “The walls have closed.”

  I barely hear him, barely take in how quickly time has passed while we’ve been in this house.

  All I hear is the rush of blood in my head.

  The dry rasp of my breath as I try to breathe.

  And all I feel is something deep inside me coming alive again, hitching a ride on the adrenaline that’s pumping through my veins.

  I look down at Perry to see if she feels it too, the electricity, the heat, the desire. The…purpose. Because fuck it if Atlas wasn’t right about that.

  She’s breathing hard, her hand to her chest and she looks scared.

  Really wish that didn’t turn me on so much, but this house has fucked with me a bunch of different ways already.

  And I want more.

  I glance over at Atlas to see him watching me with curiosity, a gleam in his eye.

  He knows. He knows what I have planned.

  That’s why he brought us here.

  “So,” he says carefully. “I’ll have to tell my father that it didn’t quite work this time.”

  “This time?” Perry asks, giving her head a little shake. “No, we only agreed to this one time.”

  “You won’t come back another night? I don’t think you’ll have any problems getting through.” He pauses, licking his lips. “Or are you just going to take the money and call it quits?”

  “That’s not fair,” Perry says. She looks at me expectantly. “Dex? We’re not doing this again.”

  But didn’t you feel it? Didn’t you feel plugged into the motherfucking universe?

  I’m not sure if she hears me or not.

  “We’ll think about it,” I tell Atlas, even though he knows I’ve already made up my mind. “Give us a few days.”

  “Take all the time you want,” he says. “She’ll stay dead forever.”

  What a callous way to think about your own mother, then again, I’ve thought that and worse about my own. Perhaps Atlas and I have more in common than I thought.

  We make our way down the stairs, and I hold onto Perry’s hand the whole time to give her reassurance for the time being.

  Then Atlas opens the front door and we step outside into the night. The air smiles like firecrackers again, it’s cold as hell, and I feel like every sense I have is suddenly heightened.

  Ada and Jay are at the bottom of the steps and Ada immediately rushes toward us, pulling Perry into a hug. “Oh my god, are you okay?” she cries out. “We saw all the lights in the house go on. I saw a fucking ghost boy in the window!”

  “Yeah, we, uh, saw all that,” Perry says.

  We walk down the steps and then Atlas gives a nod, like he’s some old timey gentleman saying goodbye. “Let me know when you want to talk,” he says, and then he goes down the street, disappearing around the corner as quickly as he had appeared earlier.

  “What the fuck was that?” Jay asks me. “That fucking house is not a house, is it?”

  “I don’t know what that was,” Perry says. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”

  “Oh, let’s go back to that hotel and get more drinks.” Ada claps her hands together, apparently able to turn from “I saw a ghost boy” to “More underage drinking!” in a heartbeat. “Do you think they’re still open?”

  “Princess, it’s past midnight,” Jay says, putting his arm around her. “And we have our own hotel to get to.”

  She grins at him, remembering.

  We start walking down the street back the way we came, and the further we get from that house, the less of a pull it has on me. By the time we’re at the Sorrento Hotel and calling an Uber, it almost feels like a dream, like none of it happened at all.

  But I know it happened.

  I know what I saw.

  I know what I felt.

  And I know that I’ll be back.

  With my camera next time.

  THE END

  …or…the beginning…

  Have you heard the good news? This story continues on in CAME BACK HAUNTED, the all-new full-length novel, Experiment in Terror #10. Releasing on December 11th, 2020.

  Dex & Perry are back, baby! Make sure to join me on social media for all the latest updates.

  A Nordic New Year

  Featuring the Nordic Royals

  Chapter 1

  Aurora

  I’m being chased by a pig.

  Not just any pig, of course, but the now infamous Snarf Snarf, who is miffed that I ripped a Christmas tree ornament out of his snout. He was about to chomp a plastic Santa in half, no thanks to the terror twins who are on a rampage today, shredding all the Christmas decorations before we even have a chance to put them away.

  “One of you could help me!” I cry out, running down the hall and whipping around into the dining room, which probably wasn’t the best idea. You see, Snarf Snarf is slow and fat, but he’s clumsy and this dining room is filled with a lot of priceless art that he shouldn’t be around.

  Regardless, I’m jumping up on a dining room chair, the slobber-covered ornament in my hand, as Snarf Snarf barrels in the room.

  He squeals and snorts, trying to paw at the furniture, rocking the chair back and forth.

  My eyes dart to the doorway where Aksel is standing, arms crossed, amusement dancing on his handsome face.

  “Well!?” I cry out. “Call off the bloody pig!”

  He gives me a self-satisfied smirk, the kind that only my husband can pull off, then slowly shakes his head. “I don’t think so. You see, I knew this would happen. That day you returned from the Tivoli with that little shit in your backpack, I knew the day would come when the pig would turn on you.”

  “He’s turned on me a million times before,” I tell him. “But I think this time he’s out for blood.”

  As if to make a point, Snarf Snarf headbutts the chair and I nearly go tumbling off, trying in vain to keep my balance.

  Then Aksel decides I’ve had enough, strides over and calmly plucks me off the chair so I’m in his arms.

  I laugh, putting my hands around his neck. “My hero, the king.”

  He grunts and then carries me out of the room.

  Snarf Snarf trots behind us, but he’s intimidated by Aksel, as so many people are. Not just because he’s the King of Denmark, but because he’s tall, stern, and formidable. Only I know the hidden sweet, mushy side of my man, a side he likes to keep hidden from everyone. Including the pig.

  Especially the pig.

  As he carries me down the hall, I whisper in his ear, “How about you take me straight up to bed?”

  He grunts again and gives me a burning look, his glacial blue eyes brimming with intensity. “You know I’d do anything for my queen…”

  He doesn’t have to finish the sentence.

  While we have help around the palace, we are in the middle of putting Christmas decorations away with the children, and the two of us are leaving tomorrow morning for Oslo to celebrate New Year’s Eve with friends. Jetting off upstairs for a quick screw would definitely be noticed and frowned upon, even if we are the King and Queen.

  Damn. I have to say, even though I’ve been married to Aksel for three years now, the fact that I’m the queen still manages to leave me blindsided. Having married into this royal family still takes some getting used to. I still feel like me, just a girl from Australia. I don’t feel I’m special, that I have any sort of power. I just happened to fall in love with a king.

  “Well, at least we get to have our first vacation alone in years,” I tell him as he carries me into the living room, where the kids have managed to knock over the Christmas tree, needles and remaining decorations spilling everywhere.

  “Shit,” Aksel mutters under his breath, lowering me to the ground. “All right,” he booms. “Who did this?”

  All four kids freeze in place.

  There’s Clara, holding a box full of decorations, her expression already aghast that we m
ight consider her a culprit.

  Then there’s Freja, who is lying on the floor near the tree, who either attempted to stop the tree from falling or just gave up on life.

  Then there’re the twins, Lars and Emil.

  Both of them are standing beside each other like the kids from The Shining, evil smiles on their faces, their hands behind their backs. They’re even dressed the same, which was never my idea, they just want to look the same to make us confused. Luckily, it’s pretty obvious who is who, even though both of them look especially guilty right now. Maybe guilty isn’t the right word for it. Proud?

  “It was them,” Clara cries out, pointing at the twins. “They did it!”

  Lars looks at Clara and goes “Raaaaawr!” with his hands out, mouth open, running toward her like he’s going to bite off the tip of her finger.

  Clara screeches, dropping the ornaments, and runs to the safety of the sofas.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” I say, running after Lars and scooping him up. He squirms in my arms, making him hard to hold. He’s two, and getting larger by the day.

  Aksel knows what to do. He goes and scoops up Emil under one arm, then comes over and take Lars from me, doing the same. Both of our boys kick and scream, but Aksel carries them like he’s bringing in groceries (not that he does that), and then leaves the room.

  I sit down on the floor beside Freja and sigh. “I was only gone for a few seconds,” I tell her. “You couldn’t have watched them?”

  Freja narrows her eyes at me. “They bite, you know.”

  “Yeah!” Clara shouts from the couch, peering over the edge of it with big eyes. “You shouldn’t have left us alone with them.”

  “Well, I was being chased by a pig.”

  Freja giggles.

  “Speaking of,” I say, looking around. “Where did Snarf Snarf go?”

  Down the hall, from the opposite end of the palace, I hear a faint yelp. Probably from Maja.

  I sigh again. “I guess someone found him.” I get to my feet and then haul Freja up to hers. “Come on, let’s fix the tree.”