by Jason Hawes
“Let her,” Trevor said. “At first, I was thrilled that she wanted to include us in her documentary. More publicity for my new book, right? But she and her crew are starting to get in the way. It’s better if we can investigate on our own.”
“Good luck with that,” Connie said. “Erin strikes me as the kind of person who doesn’t let go once she sinks her teeth into something. At least, not without tearing off a mouthful of flesh first.”
Drew looked at Connie, once more struck by how odd she had been acting.
“Problem, Drew?” she asked.
“It’s nothing. I’ve just never known you to use such . . . colorful language before.”
Her smile turned into a grin. “What can I say? I’m just chock-full of surprises.”
Erin grinned as she watched the footage from the museum play on her laptop screen.
“Here it comes . . . get ready for it.”
She sat at the desk in her hotel room, computer open in front of her, her crew standing behind her. As they watched, the word Stop appeared as if by magic on every surface in the room. The image flickered once or twice and at one point blurred out entirely, but otherwise there was no interference. The footage couldn’t have been more perfect. Clear enough to be seen but not so clear all the way through that it looked as if they had used special effects.
“I was hoping that watching it on the small screen would make it less terrifying,” Pattie said. “But it doesn’t. It’s just as bad.”
“Sure is!” Sarah leaned against Pattie, and the older woman put her arm around her.
“I’m still too stunned to be scared,” Ray said. “I mean, I filmed the whole damned thing, and I’m still not sure I believe it.”
“Well, I believe it,” Sarah said. “And I don’t want to ever experience anything like that again!”
The footage ended, and although Erin was tempted to play it over, she didn’t. The last thing she wanted was for any of her crew to get so spooked that they quit. It wasn’t as if they would be walking out on a big paycheck if they left. As little as she could afford to pay them, they were almost working for free. Since she hadn’t been able to use money to motivate them, she’d had to find other ways. She’d told them that the film would be good exposure and a great addition to their résumés. It might even win some awards at festivals, get picked up for broadcast on a cable network, eventually see a DVD release . . . It could end up being a stepping-stone to bigger and better things for all of them. But she knew none of that bullshit would work on them right now. It might later, once they’d had a few days for their nerves to settle down, but she couldn’t give them any time off. This was the last weekend for Dead Days, and the big parade was that night. She needed them to keep working.
“You know what we’ve got here, right? This is the best footage of an actual paranormal event that’s ever been captured. We’re going to make history! This footage will be spread all over the Internet. People will debate whether or not it’s real and, if it is real, what that means. We may have found the first definitive proof of life after death!”
“People will just say we faked it,” Ray said.
“Some will, sure,” Erin said. “But specialists will examine the footage, and they won’t be able to find any evidence that it was faked, because it wasn’t. We’ll be famous! And afterward, we’ll be able to write our own tickets. Any kind of job you want, you’ll get. Writing, directing, producing . . . it’ll be your choice.”
She hoped she wasn’t laying it on too thick, but she truly did believe this film was going to change their lives.
“Maybe you and Carrington will get famous,” Pattie said. “Or in his case, more famous. But we’re just the crew.” She sounded skeptical, but it was clear from her tone that she was tempted by the scenario Erin was painting for them, and she wanted it to be true.
“Your average Joe and Jill on the street may not think much about the people behind the cameras,” Erin said, “but industry professionals know better. Of course, it’ll be up to us to make the most out of the opportunities we’ll get, but they’ll come, believe me.”
Her crew was silent for a few moments after that, and Erin knew they were all imagining the possibilities. One thing you could always count on about people who worked in the arts: they were all dreamers. And the easiest way to manipulate them was to steer their imaginations in the direction you wanted them to go.
“But if there really are ghosts in this town, do we want to disturb them any further?” Sarah said. “I mean, people have died, Erin! None of us wants to be next.”
“When you find a hornets’ nest, the last thing you should do is stick your hand in and shake it around,” Ray said. “You’re just asking to get stung—a lot.”
“And it’s not just those three who died in the last day,” Pattie said. “Don’t forget Alex.”
Erin closed the laptop more forcibly than she needed to. “That was different. What happened to him was an accident. And we all agreed to keep working on the film because that was what he would’ve wanted.”
“That was before these latest deaths happened,” Ray said. “Yeah, at first, it seemed like Alex died accidentally. But now . . . well, let’s just say I’m open to alternative explanations.”
Erin examined her crew’s faces. Each of them was scared, Sarah more than the other two. She looked as if she were fighting to hold back tears. Erin knew that she needed to try another approach if she didn’t want her crew walking out on her in the next few minutes.
“Look, we’re almost done with this shoot. We’re scheduled to film at the college this afternoon and then tonight during the parade. After that, it’s a wrap. If anything else comes up—”
“Like another murder?” Pattie asked.
Erin ignored her. “If anything else comes up, I’ll shoot it myself. All right?”
Her crew looked at one another, silently conferring. She honestly didn’t know which way they were going to decide until Ray let out a long sigh.
“What the hell. It’s just a tiny college and a rinky-dink parade. What can happen?”
Erin smiled. A lot, she hoped. And with any luck, they would get it all on film.
Mitch sat in his Impala, listening to a hard-rock station on the radio. It was funny. He should have been hungry for lunch by now. He glanced at the dashboard clock and saw that it was well after noon. Hell, he hadn’t had any breakfast that morning—he should be starving. But he didn’t have any appetite at all. In fact, his stomach felt a little upset. All he’d had to eat the day before was fast food, so he figured that was the problem. That junk had got his whole system out of whack. He would make sure to eat a decent meal the next time he was hungry, and that should fix him right up.
He was parked behind a Mexican restaurant several blocks from the hotel where Esotericon was happening. He had his windows down, and the greasy-spicy food smells drifting in made him feel even queasier. He rolled his windows up, but that only trapped the food smells in the car with him. He concentrated on breathing through his mouth, and that helped.
He didn’t know where the Dark Lady was. She came and went as she pleased, without so much as hello or good-bye. One moment she was there, the next she wasn’t. Wasn’t that just like a woman? Not that he was sure she was a woman. Oh, she looked like one . . . at least, he thought so. He had trouble looking at her directly. Every time he tried, his gaze slid away from her, as if his eyes refused to view her image. Or maybe he simply didn’t want to look at her too closely for too long, afraid he might see past her veneer to what lay beneath. Her voice sounded like a woman’s, and she gave off a distinctly feminine energy, but he couldn’t help feeling that it all was a disguise, a costume no different from the Halloween outfits worn by the idiots thronging the streets.
You’re afraid.
It was his father’s voice.
Mitch wanted to deny it, but he didn’t bother. Daddy always knew when he was lying.
Fear makes you weak. And no son of mine is going
to be a weakling.
A memory rose from the depths of his mind. He was nine and playing in his first Little League baseball game. His team was the Pirates, and they were playing the Braves. His daddy was sitting in the stands with the other parents. His mom had stayed home. Daddy didn’t like it when she went out in public, said he wasn’t going to have other men staring at her like a whore, even if she was one. Mitch wasn’t sure what a whore was, but he knew it wasn’t good by the way his mom cringed whenever Daddy called her that.
Not much happened in the first inning. Mitch played left field, and no one hit the ball toward him, and he didn’t get to bat. The Braves didn’t score, and neither did the Pirates. The second inning came, and the Braves were up. The first batter grounded out, and the second hit a pop-up foul that the catcher nabbed, making another out. The third batter stepped up to the plate, swung at the first pitch, and missed. He connected with the second, a good, solid hit, and his ball sailed straight out into left field, right toward Mitch. Adrenaline surged through his body. He didn’t have to run far to get under the ball, and when he was in position, he raised his glove, squinted his eyes against the bright sunlight, and waited for the ball to fall into his hand.
It should have been easy. The ball floated down toward him as gently as a soap bubble, seeming to move so slowly that he thought he could reach out with his bare hand and simply pluck it out of the air. But as the ball came closer, his excitement gave way to a sick, fluttery feeling in his stomach. He remembered playing catch with his daddy in the backyard one time the summer before. It had been one of the few times he could recall Daddy spending time with him—he was usually too busy watching TV or building something in his basement woodshop and downing copious amounts of beer in the process. So it had been a special afternoon for Mitch. They had thrown the ball back and forth a few times to warm up, nothing too hard, and then Daddy had decided to start making Mitch work. He’s thrown fast balls, curve balls, sliders . . . Daddy had played on the high-school baseball team, and he was still pretty good. Mitch hadn’t caught every throw, but he’d caught most of them, and while his daddy hadn’t praised him, he hadn’t criticized, and to Mitch, that was just as good.
Then Daddy had decided to throw some high balls. Mitch had caught the first two easily enough, and without thinking, he’d grinned at his daddy and said something he’d heard older boys say when they played ball around the neighborhood.
“Is that all you got?”
It was nothing, just a bit of playful banter, but Daddy’s expression had darkened.
“You think you’re so smart, you little fucker? Try and catch this!”
Mitch had been afraid his daddy would fire off a fast ball straight at him, but instead he’d thrown the ball almost straight up, and it had flown much higher than any of the others, higher than Mitch thought possible. It had seemed to dwindle to a black speck against the blue sky, and Mitch had wondered if he would ever be big enough and strong enough to hurl a ball so high.
“Catch it, or I’ll bust your ass.” Daddy had said this softly, but Mitch had no trouble hearing it or believing it. Then Daddy had stepped back to give Mitch room to go after the ball.
He had stood frozen for a moment—but only a moment—before getting his ass in gear. He’d run forward, keeping his eyes on the ball, glove held at the ready. The ball, already descending, had seemed to come down so much faster than it had gone up, and Mitch had imagined that instead of a baseball, he was trying to catch a meteor that was rocketing to earth, trailing a tail of burning fire behind.
He had got into position, eyes still on the ball, glove up and ready, and his father’s words had whispered through his mind. Catch it, or I’ll bust your ass. Mitch knew that Daddy had been talking about more than a spanking—much more.
The ball had hurtled toward him, and at the last instant, he’d squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth.
The ball had slammed into the left side of his head and mashed his ear before bouncing off and landing in the grass. Bright light had exploded behind his eyes, and pain had roared through his nerves like wildfire. The impact had caused his knees to buckle, and he’d fallen onto his side, sobbing. Tentatively, he had reached up to touch his ear and found it swollen and hot. He had feared he would feel blood gushing from his ear canal, but the only moisture he’d felt was a bit of sweat.
“That was pathetic. You’re pathetic.”
Mitch had looked up to see his father silhouetted against the sky like some dark giant.
The promised ass-beating had begun soon after that.
So, months later, when Mitch stood in left field, watching a ball come down toward him, he froze. This ball didn’t hit him, but he almost wished it had. It fell to the ground less than two feet away from him, bounced a couple of times, then rolled to a stop.
A collective moan of disappointment came from the crowd. Mitch’s coach shouted for him to pick up the ball and throw it to second, but Mitch didn’t move. All he could do was focus on his father, who was sitting in the stands right behind the dugout, glaring at him from behind the chain-link backstop.
The ass-beating he got later that night was worse than any he had ever experienced at his father’s hands before. The next morning, he was in the emergency room at the hospital, his mother trying to explain to the doctor how her son had come by three cracked ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and two broken fingers. “Skateboarding accident” was the excuse the doctor had finally accepted. At least, that’s what he had written down on the chart. Whether he believed it was a different matter.
And now there he was, thinking of the Dark Lady, hearing his father’s voice again. You’re afraid of her, just like you were afraid of that ball. She’s just a woman.
“No, she’s not,” Mitch mumbled. “I don’t think she’s just anything.”
Whatever she is, you’re her bitch, and it makes me sick!
“I am not.” He sounded like a pouty little boy, and he hated it.
She snaps her fingers, and you come running to her like a dog. Not a real dog, either. One of those tiny yipping things that are always trembling and squirting pee on the floor when they get excited.
“Stop it.”
You killed a man for her, for Christ’s sake!
“I . . . was being strong.”
Bullshit! You kill someone because they wronged you somehow and they got it coming, that’s being strong. Killing someone because someone else wants you to, that’s being a puppet. I didn’t raise you to be anyone’s toy, now, did I, Mitch?
“No, sir.”
You drove all the way to this pesthole of a town so you could get that little bitch alone and teach her a few well-deserved lessons. You didn’t come here to be the servant for . . . for whatever the hell she is. Did you?
“No.”
All right, then. So what the hell are you going to do about it?
Before he could answer, a dark smudge appeared in the air on the passenger seat next to him. The Dark Lady had returned.
He gripped the steering wheel tightly and kept his gaze focused forward. The temperature inside the car dropped swiftly, causing tiny veins of frost to appear on the inside windows.
“Where were you?” He was afraid to talk to her, let alone demand to know what she had been up to during her absence, but Daddy wanted him to be strong, to show this bitch who was really in charge around here.
He kept his gaze trained on the Dumpster behind the restaurant. An employee came out the back door, bulging white plastic garbage bags dangling from his hands by thin red loops. The employee—Hispanic from the look of him—didn’t so much as glance at Mitch’s car as he tossed the trash into the Dumpster and headed back inside the restaurant.
The Dark Lady said nothing the entire time the man was outside, but Mitch knew she had heard his question. He could feel anger radiating off her in waves, but she didn’t speak until they were alone again.
“I returned to the museum to leave a message.”
What the h
ell was she talking about? The two of them had already left a message, hadn’t they? And a goddamned big one, too—a pair of dead bodies sprawled on the museum floor.
“You got what you wanted. Now it’s my turn. I want Amber, and you promised you’d help me get her. I’m tired of waiting.”
No matter how much vehemence he put into his voice, he knew she wouldn’t take him seriously if he continued looking out the windshield. So he forced himself to turn toward her, but try as he might, he couldn’t meet her gaze full on. The best he could do was look past her and out the passenger-side window.
The cold within the Impala intensified, and frost spread across the interior of all the windows, the white crystals making soft crackling sounds as they appeared. The Dark Lady didn’t respond to his words right away, and he had the terrible feeling that challenging her wasn’t the smartest thing he had ever done.
“You keep hearing your father’s voice telling you that you’re weak. Would you like to know what being weak really feels like?”
Before Mitch could answer—and he most assuredly would have answered no—fingers of ice gripped his head and forced him to look into the obsidian eyes and marble face of the Dark Lady. He started to scream, but as he opened his mouth, she lunged forward and fastened her lips to his. He screamed anyway, but their lips were stuck tightly together, almost as if their flesh had merged, and his scream was muffled. He tried to pull away, but her grip was like iron, and she held him fast. Her tongue slithered forward, a thick length of meat as soft and sinuous as a snake. It filled his mouth, touched the back of his throat gently, almost hesitantly, as if exploring. And then—after pausing the merest instant—it began sliding down. Panic surged through him as the tongue seemed to swell within his throat, blocking his airway. He placed his hands against the Dark Lady’s chest and tried to push her away, but he found her body as hard and immovable as a stone wall. He tried clawing at her cheeks and gouging her eyes, but his nails found no purchase anywhere on her flesh. Lungs burning for air, he grabbed double handfuls of her long black hair and tried to yank her head away from him. But no matter how hard he pulled, he couldn’t budge her.
