Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (57 page)

“Positive. I was standing in the doorway the whole time. And…”

The doctor’s face pinched.

“And?”

“When I came in here, before the lights went out, I saw Mrs. Dieter. But… I didn’t see anyone else.” He turned to Deb, looking pained. “I’m sorry, but you were alone in here, dear.”

Mal wanted to hit somebody. “This qualifies as assault, right Detective?”

“Absolutely.”

Mal pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “I’m calling the police.”

By now, everyone was in the exam room, huddling around Deb. Moni was helping her put her legs back on, and Dr. Madison was peering down his wife’s throat with a lighted opthalmoscope.

“Your vocal chords are swollen, but I don’t see any damage. How did you lose your voice?”

Deb shook her head and mouthed “I don’t know.”

Mal was walking around the office, waving his cell phone around like it was a talisman to ward off evil spirits. “Goddammit, no signal. Anyone else have a cell phone?”

Tom checked his. “No bars.”

“Doctor, where’s the phone in this place?”

Dr. Madison shrugged. “There aren’t any phones at Butler House. No electricity either, except what’s powered by the gas generators. No Internet. We’re completely cut off from the grid here.”

“This is insane,” Mal said. He turned to his wife, who was still shaking from her ordeal. “We’re leaving, Deb. Right now.”

But rather than get the expected nod, Mal watched in amazement as Deb shook her head.

“Honey, you were attacked!”

“If it was a ghost,” Deb said, her hoarse voice barely a whisper, “he went away. If it was a trick to scare me, that’s the point of this experiment.”

She reached out, held Mal’s hand. He gripped it tight.

“Let’s stay,” she said.

Moni grinned. “I’m with you, girlfriend. And if the ghost comes back, we kick his Casper ass.”

Mr. Wellington was feeling the walls. “I can’t find any secret passages or trap doors or mirrors. But any magician worth his salt can do a disappearing act. This didn’t have to be a ghost. There could be a rational explanation for all of this.”

Pang was setting up his spirit hunting equipment. Frank and Sara were holding hands in the corner of the room. Aabir had her eyes closed and was swaying where she stood.

“So much sorrow in the room,” the medium said. “So much misery. And something else. A strong presence. An evil presence. Hatred. Toward you, Deb. Toward your husband. Something to do with West Virginia. Many people died there.” She opened her eyes. “Deborah, can I touch your hand?”

Deb let go of Mal and reached for the psychic. When Aabir touched her, she gasped.

“So much pain in your past, Deborah. So many scars. Much tragedy. But much bravery, too.” Aabir’s eyelids fluttered. “A bed and breakfast. The Rushmore Inn. I see misshapen, deformed people. They’re after you. They want something from you. You’re in a room. In bed. Someone is under the bed.”

Deb’s eyes got wide, and she tried to pull her hand back. But Aabir didn’t let go.

“I see a mountain lion.”

“Enough.” Mal pulled the medium away, but then Aabir clasped his arm.

“The ghost who did this to your wife. He has a brother named Jimmy. Jimmy is the one who cut off your hand.”

Mal tried to shake her off, but the woman’s grip was like iron.

“Jimmy is here, in this house. He’s followed you here.”

Mal’s sphincter clenched. She was relating the worst thing that ever happened to him. The cause of his nightmares.

Aabir’s voice got low, so she sounded like a man.

“Maaaaaal…. I waaaaant your other hand…”

Mal was rooted there, terrified.

“Holy shit, bro!” Pang had some electronic gizmo pointed at Aabir. “The EMF is off the scale! I’ve never seen anything like this!”

“I WAAAANT YOOOOUUUUR HAAAAAAND!”

Mal shoved her away, and Aabir collapsed to the floor. Dr. Madison and Moni knelt next to her, and Pang was wide-eyed, snapping pictures with a digital camera.

“Will you fucking look at this!” Pan declared. He held out the viewfinder for Mal to see.

In the picture, Aabir was glowing like she was on fire.

Tom

Tom was on edge.

He still hadn’t talked to Forenzi about Roy, and the whole examination room incident with Deb left a bad taste. Tom had interviewed enough victims to know Deb was one.

But what was she a victim of?

Everyone had moved into the great room. Aabir slumped in her lounge chair, looking like an inflatable float with half the air leaked out. Pang was hunched over a coffee table and typing something in his laptop, his face beaming. Mal and Deb were sitting on a sofa. Deb looked like a zombie, zoned out and slack. Mal was tapping his foot rapidly. Moni was near the front doors, whispering something to Wellington. Frank and Sara were on a loveseat, Frank’s arm around her.

Despite Mal objecting, Dr. Madison had begun taking blood samples from everyone, going person to person, putting the vials into a metal case. He was also fitting everyone with a battery powered monitor, which recorded, among other things, electrical activity in the brain, heart activity, pulse, blood pressure, and calories burned. The device clipped to the belt, and worked wirelessly with ten electrode pads stuck to the skin in various locations, including the chest, wrists, neck, and temples.

“I’m scared, Frank,” Sara said to him.

“I’m scared, too.” Frank patted Sara’s leg. “But keep remembering that we’re
supposed
to be scared. That’s the point of the experiment. All of this could be intentional, set up by Dr. Forenzi.”

“Where is Dr. Forenzi?” Tom asked Dr. Madison as he was labeling a vial with marker.

“Hmm? In his lab, I suppose.” The doctor seemed preoccupied with his task and didn’t bother to face the cop.

“I need to talk to him.”

“I’ll tell him as soon as I finish up here.”

“Now.”

“I understand your urgency, Detective. Especially after what we all saw. But you have to understand, things like that happen in Butler House all the time. Dr. Forenzi has strict instructions not to be disturbed while he’s in his laboratory. And even if I wanted to disturb him, the doors are steel and locked all the time. I’ve never even been in there. If he doesn’t want to come out, no one can make him.”

Tom wondered if he should push, but he still had all night to force the issue. Moni was right—he had no jurisdiction here. But he did have a gun, and a lot of questions, and by tomorrow he would be damn sure he got the answers he sought.

“These readings are mind-blowing.” Pang was still staring at his laptop screen. “The electromagnetic field around Aabir surged like I was scanning a high tension power line. I wish I’d had my remote thermometer on. Did anyone notice a temperature change?”

No one answered.

“Okay okay okay.” Belgium cleared his throat. “Besides the painting in the hallway with all of us in it, and what happened in the examination room, has anyone else witnessed anything unusual since arriving at Butler House?”

Sara spoke up. “In my room. A rocking chair. It was rocking by itself.”

“Was there any explanation for it?” Belgium asked, obviously concerned.

“No. No window open. I wasn’t anywhere near it. And when I say it was rocking, I don’t mean a little bit. It seemed like someone was in it.”

Belgium shivered. “Anyone else?”

“There was a cold spot in my room,” Pang said. “Ten degrees cooler. Celsius, bro. But it went away before I could record it, so I don’t have any proof.”

“Tom?”

Tom shook his head.

“Mal?”

“What? No.”

Deb mouthed something.

“What, hon?” Mal asked, putting his arm around her.

“Painting in our room.” Deb’s voice was scratchy, but audible. “Fell off the wall.”

“Aabir,” Belgium pressed, “have you noticed anything?”

Aabir remained quiet.

“Cornelius? Moni? Have you had had had any… um… encounters, since you’re arrival?”

“Naw,” Moni said.

“Neither have I,” said the Brit.

“You told me you saw an orb,” Pang countered.

Wellington shrugged. “I saw a flash of light in the hallway, while I was walking to the loo. You called it an orb, Mr. Pang, not I.”

“What’s an orb?” Belgium asked.

“Ghost lights,” Pang said. “Also known as orbs, ignis fatuus, will-o’-the-wisp. One pervading theory is that hauntings are residual energy that lingers after a traumatic event. Another is that the energy leaks into our dimension from another one. Like in quantum theory, where a particle can be in more than one place at the same time. In this case, our world, and the afterlife.”

“I thought you were a skeptic, Mr. Pang.”

“I am, Mr. Wellington. But skepticism requires me to be aware of the hypothesis I try to debunk.”

“There are reasonable, scientific explanations for everything that has happened so far,” Wellington said.

“A ghost assaulted my wife, Mr. Wellington,” Mal said, his chin out and his voice clipped.

“It could have been a man who said he was a ghost,” Wellington said. “Or, perhaps, Mrs. Dieter might be mistaken in her account.”

Mal stood up, his fist clenched. “Are you saying she’s lying?”

“I’m not saying anything, Mr. Dieter. Only that I don’t know. I haven’t met anyone here before today, so I can’t voice for anyone’s honesty. But even if I trusted your wife was speaking what she believes to be the truth, couldn’t her account of the events be colored by her past traumas?”

“So now she’s not a liar. Now she’s insane.”

“I’m simply calling attention to the obvious. We have ample proof of liars in our society, as well as ample proof of mental dysfunction. But we don’t have any proof of spirits. So if I’m being asked to dwell on what is more likely—either supernatural activity, or lies, hoaxes, and hallucinations—I think Occam’s Razor bears me out. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

“Let’s all of us take it down a notch,” Tom said. Dr. Madison was attaching a sticky pad to his neck, and the conducting gel was cold. “But I think that anyone who wants to leave Butler House, should do so.”

Moni snorted. “And give up a million bucks? You’re on crack.”

“Dr. Belgium?” Tom met his eyes. “Do you and Sara want to leave?”

They exchanged a look. “I believe we’re staying.”

“Mal and Deb?”

Mal faced his wife. “We should go, hon. We don’t need this.”

Deb shook her head.

“Deb…”

“I’m done running away,” she rasped. “Go if you want. I’m staying.”

Deb crossed her arms. Mal pursed his lips, and then he walked away, to the other side of the great room.

“Cornelius?” Tom asked.

He folded his arms across his vest. “Naturally, I’m staying. I don’t believe we have anything to fear here, except our own overactive imaginations.”

“That leaves you, Aabir. Do you want to stay, or go?”

The psychic’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Can you speak up?”

“Paper,” she whispered.

“Paper? Dr. Madison, can you give Aabir your clip board?”

“Certainly.” The doctor placed it in front of the psychic, and put a black marker on top.

Her face still devoid of expression, Aabir began to write. Frank moved in for a closer look.

I IS JASPER

The words were in block letters, almost childish in their scrawl. They also took up most of the page, so Dr. Madison flipped to the next one.

I WORKS THE FIELDS AT BUTLER HOUSE

“What’s she doing?” Moni asked.

“Psychography,” Pang said. “Also known as automatic writing. She’s channeling a spirit and writing what it’s telling her. Sounds like it’s the ghost of Ol’ Jasper, the slave that Colton Butler sewed two extra arms on. Shit, my EMF meter is going berserk!”

Tom remembered the Butler House website. The picture of the scarred, old slave with the extra arm.

THEY HURTS JASPER BAD

Dr. Madison flipped to a fresh page.

NOW JASPER GON’ HURT DEM BACK

Frank realized he was holding the armchair of the loveseat so tightly his knuckles were white.

I... IS...

Aabir’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head.

HERE

Aabir screamed, and collapsed onto the floor.

Then the lights went out.

The great room was very dark with the chandeliers out, but enough dusk was peeking in through the cracks in the shudders that Tom could still make out some shadows. A moment later, Pang’s camcorder light went on. Tom followed suit, digging his tactical flashlight out of his pack.

“Cornelius, you’re near the front doors.” Tom pointed the beam in his direction. “Try the light switch there.”

Wellington found the wall panel and flipped the switch, to no effect.

“Nothing. Might be the circuit breaker. Or the generator.”

Tom waved the light across the group, taking a head count. He saw Deb and Mal, Moni, Frank and Sara, Pang, Aabir—”

“What’s that sound?” Frank asked.

Everyone went quiet. Tom was acutely aware of how silent true silence actually was. Living in Chicago, silence was an anomaly. There were always sounds. Traffic, heat or air conditioning, birds, constant human noise from talking, yelling, playing music.

But this house was completely devoid of noise. The only thing Tom could liken it to was when he put on his ear muffs on the shooting range. Silence had its own sound; the steady, inaudible hum of consciousness, which made you realize how alone you really were in the universe.

And then, like a slap to the face, he heard it.

Something dragging across the wooden floor.

Like a claw. Or a—

“Machete,” Tom whispered.

A machete like Ol’ Jasper was supposed to carry.

Tom twisted his flashlight to widen the beam, and then did a slow pan across the great room, trying to locate the sound.

He saw empty chairs, the fireplace, an old piano, a wall, a hallway, a table, another hallway, another wall…