Dead Man Walking: Nick Holleran Series A Paranormal Investigator Book One

by David Green

  THE END

  Afterword

  I hope you enjoyed your first look in Haven city, in Dead Man Walking, and the time spent with Nick Holleran, Ruby, Maeve and Harry (I know, I know), Charon, Suraz, Lucifer, and the Wheelers.

  If you enjoyed your stay at Haven city, please take a moment to review on Amazon, Goodreads, or whatever platform you purchased this book. Every review counts and we really appreciate every single one of them.

  Thanks for reading. Until next time!

  Now, for a peek at book two in the series...

  The Devil Walks In Blood, begins right where we left off when the ghost in the corner plunges Nick into a decades old case that puts him at even more odds with the Haven Police Department.

  The Devil Walks In Blood

  I, ME, MINE

  September 21st

  “A case?” I mutter.

  My cigarette flutters from my lips to the floor, smoke tendrils drifting upwards. I can’t see myself, and I’m glad the eyeless ghost-girl who’s stood in the corner of my office for the last five years can’t either. At least, I think she can’t. Reckon I must look as surprised as a fish that got the hook in the wrong end.

  “A fucking case? You haven’t so much as twitched for five years, and now you’re offering me a job. How’re you even gonna pay?”

  It isn’t my best quip, but under the circumstances…

  She cocks her head, twisting around until she’s facing my laptop.

  “Can you turn that racket off?”

  I blink. Nirvana’s Stay Away plays, on a low volume I might add, and my fingers feel thick as I hit pause. “What, you don’t like my music?”

  “Is that what you call it? I prefer a little more…melody in mine. Don’t you have any Beatles records?”

  “Records?” I ask, glancing at Spotify. “Wait, what the Hell are we talking about? I don’t even know your real name!”

  “It’s Diana.”

  Not Darcy, the name I gave her. I’m actually kind of disappointed.

  “Close enough, I guess. Okay, so why’s it taken you five years to speak to me? I’ve tried, you know. More than once.”

  She turns her sockets on me and my blood chills a few degrees. It’s like those eyeless pits pin me to the chair. They see everything; I’m sure of that.

  The analytical part of my brain fights its way to the surface as I study her. With her eyes missing and her black skin now grey, washed out like all ghosts, it’s hard to place an age on her, but I’d guess no more than sixteen. Max. Her long, pigtailed hair runs down to her waist, and she’s wearing a striped, one-piece dress that stops just above her knees. Not from this decade. The 1960s, if that comment about ‘Beatles records’ is any indicator. I lean back in my chair, waiting for her to answer.

  Girl could’ve stood in that corner for sixty years, if I’m right. A life sentence for a victim.

  She shrugs, just a bump from those slim shoulders. “I don’t know… Part of me noticed you, but it’s like a haze. Your name, what you do, the people who visit you.” Her mouth curves into the hint of a smile. “The conversations you have with Rosa. Your music. It washes over me, but some of it sticks. Most of the time all I can think about is his face. The man who killed me, leering at me as I fight for air. As he takes my eyes. The memory smothers me, but for a while now, I saw more. Heard more, like… I knew when you were here, and when you left. Who visited you. Just now, it lifted. I can’t explain it.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a strange couple days,” I whisper, rubbing my eyes.

  That’s the understatement of the year. My last case—shit, was it really only yesterday?—dragged me right back to the night I died. The night when all this started.

  His name was Dean Wheeler, a crook with enough enemies to hire a P.I. to follow him, and with enough paranoia to lure a tail into a dark alley. That’s how I wound up with three bullets in my chest and the power to see the dead.

  Then his wife arrives in my office, mutilated and fearful, telling me she’s being followed by Dean. The ghost of Dean. Needless to say, I went flying into the fray. The next thing I know, one of my best friends gets murdered in front of me, and I’m breaking into Wheeler’s villa, out for blood. Only I’m the one who winds up bleeding, a sacrifice in Michelle Wheeler’s ritual to summon Lucifer and wreak her revenge on the world.

  Can’t say I blamed her, but I’ll be damned—literally—if I’m going to be anyone’s sacrifice. See, her sigils could hold me, but they couldn’t hold a bullet. Two Wheelers turned out to be exactly the kind of offering that’d attract the Devil and so I wound up with the most powerful being in Hell on the hook.

  I surprised him when I didn’t beg for my own life. I asked him to reunite two souls in Heaven. Guess maybe I made an impression. I could have asked for anything, so I figure he saved me for services rendered, but those scales feel unbalanced. Pretty sure I’ll be seeing him around.

  Diana’s watching me—at least, I think she is—and I realize I’ve been sitting in silence a little too long. It’s been a fucking long couple of days.

  I fill a glass with bourbon, and almost ask if she wants one. I’m not sure if it’s her age, or the fact she’s a goddamn ghost that stops me in my tracks. “You died in this room.”

  She nods, recognizing the statement in my tone. I don’t need to ask. Ghosts who haven’t Strengthened live out spiritual loops of their lives, usually their last moments. Why else would she be here, of all places?

  “He brought me here when he…”

  Her head sinks. I regret bringing it up, but…

  I’m taking her case. I already know it.

  I down the bourbon, then climb to my feet. She’s just a kid—murdered in my office—and I don’t want to question her here. I ain’t visited the alley I died in yet, and I’m not sure I want to. Dream about it often enough.

  “Want some fresh air? Sorry, figure of speech. Let’s go outside. Change of scenery might do you some good.”

  I grab my spare trench coat—not my favorite, but I set that one alight yesterday trying to scare off two fucking Amaroks—and walk to the door. Her reflection wavers in the glass, hesitating.

  She follows me with slow, tentative steps when I swing the door open. I guess it’s been a while since she stepped outside.

  …

  “You know, Kurt Cobain loved The Beatles.”

  “Who’s Kurt Cobain?” Diana asks, walking by my side.

  I sigh. So, my small talk’s weak right now. I’m a little shook. After the events at the Wheeler place last night, I should’ve gone home, taken it easy and let what happened sink in. Hell, I should have gone to bed for a night or two at least.

  Maeve and Harry moved on yesterday—to Heaven, but I lost `em just the same. It comforts me they’re together, and I owe Lucifer for that. Michelle Wheeler would have stranded Maeve in Hell if she’d had her way.

  Not that I knew it was her. She pinned it on Dean, used my rage and vengeance to feed her ritual. Man, did my soul sing when I Expunged that sonofabitch, but I sealed my fate in the process. Even if the Devil took pity and saved me from the Reaper’s swing, revenge is a sin. Reckon no matter what I do, Heaven’s closed to me now.

  Not like I’m giving up. Too stubborn or plain stupid. My old ma always said I fought for everything, bless her soul, and yeah, that phrase contains a healthy dollop of sarcasm. Since my awakening, I’ve avoided visiting my family home. I don’t want to know what I’ll find now that I can see the dead and the demons.

  Haven’t been there in years, even before my death. I moved to Haven from Portland a lifetime ago and never looked back, even if my thoughts sometimes stray that way.

  I put my restlessness down to Lucifer’s healing. I made my way back to my office after our encounter, but I can’t recall the details. Think I just sat in my chair for a spell, then got back to wo
rk. Still, I bled out on the floor of Michelle Wheeler’s basement, just like I did in that alleyway. The Devil might have healed me, made me feel fitter than I have in years, but the crash is going to be like all my hangovers rolled into one.

  Damn, I haven’t slept in over forty-eight hours.

  Maybe that’s why I can’t nail my thoughts down. My mind’s ragged from a night of raw revelation, but right now all I want is something to focus on. A new case. Someone to help.

  Diana glides by my side, head tracking like a security camera, taking in every part of this strange, new world she’s seeing for the first time. I wonder what it all looks like when you have no eyes.

  “Where are we going?” she asks, voice shrill, like she’s standing on the edge of panic.

  Shit.

  I ain’t thinking straight. This kid hasn’t seen a lick of Haven, save for my office wall, in sixty years. Place has changed—so have the people—and I don’t just mean the dead. Folk of all colors and shapes, dressed in clothes I reckon boggle her poor mind, are streaming by, way more than she’d have seen back in the 60s. Vehicles fill the road too, blaring horns, spitting fumes, pounding bass.

  This is like my awakening squared. It’s not just ghosts for her. It’s everything. She’s been transported sixty years into the future.

  “To my apartment. It ain’t far. Sorry, guess I’m not thinking straight today. Can you blame me?”

  I offer her my lopsided smile. The boyish, charming one. She peers up at me, jaw like stone. Now that I think about it, this grin don’t work out all too well for me.

  “Is it close?”

  I throw a glance around. My feet walked me here on autopilot while I did some first class navel-gazing.

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s not even a minute’s walk from here. Come on.”

  Picking up the pace, Diana follows, so close I can feel the chill in the seam where we’re occupying the same space. She’s got her head down, avoiding the sensory assault, so I scan the street for the two of us. That’s when I see it.

  An unmarked cop car sits across from my apartment. How do I know it’s the cops? Because these pains in the ass tail me and shake me down whenever they get the chance. Or they’re bored. Maybe it’s for kicks? I never did ask.

  Lori Gavin and Henry Butler. Yeah, I have history with these two morons. Our professional disagreements go all the way back to when I worked regular P.I. jobs. I understood their beef better back then. Not all cops like freelancers, especially not ones who took cases for shady people on the side.

  Look, money talks, alright? I learned my goddamn lesson when three bullets pinned me to the ground in a filthy alleyway.

  Except that now, they like me even less. They damn-near accuse me of planting evidence and taking advantage of the sickos—their words—with my paranormal shtick.

  My paranormal shtick landed me face-to-face with the Devil last night and now a ghost just followed me back from my office. I’m not in the mood for their shit right now.

  Fuck, what if they know about last night? They couldn’t, right? Cops would have come by the office with a warrant.

  It’s a shakedown, that’s all. A good, ol’ Haven PD violation of civil rights.

  Still…

  To be continued...

  Grab your copy of The Devil Walks in Blood everywhere books are sold.

  David Green is a writer of dark fiction. Born in Manchester, UK and living in Galway, Ireland, David grew up with gloomy clouds above his head, and rain water at his feet, which has no doubt influenced his dark scribblings. David is the author of the Pushcart Prize nominated novelette Dead Man Walking, and is excited for his fantasy series, Empire of Ruin, debuting in June 2021 from Eerie River Publishing.

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