Ashes to Ashes (Experiment in Terror #8) (13 page)

“
You can still
squeeze in with me here,” he said, patting the middle bed. He gave
me a wistful look that I found downright charming. “I don’t like
sleeping without you.”

I smiled but said, “Dex, it’s a
single bed. My ass barely fits on it as it is.”

“
You might
change your tune later.”

“
And you’ll be
the first to know about it.”

Rebecca peered at the third bed
then looked over at us. “You know what, I really don’t feel like
having a repeat of Eureka. Please try and keep your hands to
yourself.”

“
You are
absolutely no fun,” Dex told her while I blushed furiously. One
night when we were camped out at the haunted library, Dex broke out
the Jack Daniels. One thing led to another and we ended up having
sex in the library stacks—and not too far from Rebecca. Poor woman
was probably traumatized from that.

After we’d put our bags on the
shelves and Rebecca brought out her planner, discussing our goals
and objectives for the shoot, the school bell rang and Davenport
came to see us.

“
I trust
you’ve made yourselves comfortable,” she said with nary a smile.
“You’re free to use the break room anytime you’d like. There’s a
microwave, a hot plate, and a fridge. I know heading into town can
be quite a pain, so I suggest you stock up at the Fred Meyer in
Tillamook and have all your meals here.”

Great. A week of ramen noodles
and microwavable mac and cheese. My thighs were going to love
that.

“
Please, no
alcohol,” she added. “This is a school, first and
foremost.”

Actually,
it’s a sanatorium
, I thought to myself. I
looked over at Dex, knowing what he thought of that. His mug was
tellingly impassive. I knew he had beer and whiskey under the bed
already like a rebellious teen at a sleepover.

“
When do we
get a tour?” Rebecca asked. “I’d like to start getting as much
footage as we can.”

“
I’m afraid
you’ll just have to be patient,” she said with a cock of her scary
penciled eyebrow, not even picking up on her own pun. “Originally I
thought I’d do it myself, but I’m running out of time today. All
you need for now is to know this first floor, and I’m sure Kelly
showed you that well enough. Tomorrow morning at nine o’clock I’ve
arranged for a local historian to stop by. Patrick Rothburn. He
runs the maritime museum here and comes from a family who used to
run the post office for Sea Crest. He’ll show you the rest of the
building. Hopefully you can get some good footage.” She lowered her
voice. “To be frank with you, as much as I’d love to believe Ms.
McIntosh, I’m not entirely convinced she is telling the truth. I
hope the three of you will at least prove her wrong or
right.”

She drummed her fingers
anxiously along the side of the doorway, her attention off in the
halls as a few students straggled in the background, heading to the
main doors and the way home. She looked back at us after a few
moments. “I’ll be working in my office for the next hour. I suggest
if you’re going to get food, you go now. We lock this place up at
night and I don’t feel like entrusting the keys to you. No offense,
of course.”

“
None taken,”
said Dex. He turned to me. “Well, kiddo, what say we get some
provisions before we get locked up in The Overlook
Hotel?”

“
Very funny,”
I muttered. Images of the twins from The Shining were the last
thing I needed in my head.

We bid goodbye to Davenport and
hopped into the Highlander. We were halfway down the mountain when
Rebecca exhaled noisily.

“
What?” I
asked, twisting in my seat to face her. She had rolled down the
window, the cool air messing up her black curls. Her face looked
paler than normal and her eyes were closed, exposing the perfect
lines she’d drawn on her lids with liquid liner.

She kept her eyes closed. “I
don’t know, I was just feeling I was going to be sick back there.
Didn’t realize it until now.”

“
Altitude
sickness?” I suggested.

“
It’s only 400
meters above sea level,” she said. “That doesn’t make
sense.”

I looked over at Dex. His lips
were pursed in thought. He eyed her in the rear view mirror. “You
know, Becs, if you ever feel, uh, creeped the fuck out, you know
it’s okay to admit it, right? Perry and I know the feeling better
than anyone.”

“
I’m not
scared,” she said through clenched teeth, her eyes still closed and
head back on the seat rest. “I’m not creeped out. I just feel
sick.”

“
You’re not
preggo, are you?” I asked her.

Finally, her eyes flew open.
Man did she look pissed off, considering it was an obvious
joke.

“
Really,
Perry,” she said.

I shrugged and sat back in my
seat. I also felt a million times better now that we were away from
the school and back on Highway 101, winding south toward Tillamook.
After we stocked up on simple groceries—frozen meals, freeze-dried
coffee, health bars, and some fresh fruit—we pulled into a local
diner to catch a quick cup of coffee before we headed back up.

As soon as Dex parked the car,
I realized where we were. It was the same diner that we had gone to
when we first met. The faded orange awning, tired-looking patrons,
and peeling graphics all looked exactly the same.

“
Wow,” I
whispered, feeling the past rush through me.

“
What? What is
this place?” Rebecca asked as she peered at the aging
café.

“
Where Perry
and I had our first date,” Dex answered with a grin. I looked over
at him and smiled. With his newsboy cap pulled low on his brow, his
light black jacket and scruffy face, the Dex of now—my Dex—could
have been the Dex back then. Of course, that Dex would have been
nervously chomping on Nicorette or breaking a toothpick in his
mouth, his hands fidgeting, his face thinner and drawn into a
mysterious scowl. Oh, and now he had hard, tight muscles to fucking
die for.

Once again I was reminded about
how far we’d come in such a short amount of time.

Rebecca eyed the both of us.
“This was your first date? I thought that was at Zekes.”

Dex sighed. “If you want to be
technical, then this was more our first…real chance to talk.”

I frowned and folded my arms.
“If I recall correctly, we didn’t get much talking done. You were
being an asshole.”

“
That’s
right,” he said playfully, “and you stormed out of here like I lit
a fire up under that bouncy ass.”

“
You said I
was faking it,” I countered.

“
Well you
could have been a famewhore for all I knew.”

“
You guys,”
Rebecca spoke up. “This is really sweet and romantic and all—in a
twisted way—but are we going to get coffee here or
what?”

I ignored her. “And then when I
came out here, that’s when I saw Pippa. Where she talked to me for
the first time.”

At the mention of her name,
their faces became drawn. I continued, “She warned me about Dex,
told me to watch out. Then she said I’d need him.”

Rebecca looked over at Dex.
“She was kind of right.”

“
And
after that,” I added, “she went into the diner. Next thing I knew,
Dex was coming out of here like
he
was the one with the fire
under
his
bouncy ass. He nearly drove us into a tree before he
admitted to me that he’d seen Pippa before.”

Rebecca clucked her tongue.
“All right then. You two definitely win the award for the most
fucked up history. It still blows my bloody mind that your
grandmother used to be his nanny.”

I was barely listening to her.
I was staring at Dex, deep into his dark, brooding eyes, wondering
if he was feeling what I was, the full circle of everything—that
feeling that no matter what happened to us in the future, there was
this aura of destiny about us. Okay, that was a pretty cheesy
analogy, but I had nothing else. There was just this indescribable
feeling that every little step in our lives had been a lead up to
us meeting each other. I could only hope that the same fate would
continue. After all we’d been through, that’s all we could really
hold on to.

“
Have you seen
her lately?” Rebecca’s voice came into focus.

“
Huh?” I said,
snapping out of my daze and tearing my eyes away from
Dex.

She snapped her delicate
fingers in my face. “I said, have you seen her lately. Your
grandmother?” When I didn’t answer her right away, she looked at
Dex. “Is this a sensitive topic?”

I shook my head. “No. Sorry, I
haven’t. Not since New Orleans.” It was a lie of course, but
sometimes it wasn’t worth getting into my dreams, especially when I
knew Rebecca couldn’t understand them the way I did. It was hard
enough for me to figure out if my dreams were something to consider
or not.

The image of the little girl
and the bouncing ball flashed into my head. If I ever ended up
meeting this Shawna I’d be a little bit closer to the truth.

She nodded and walked to the
door of the café. “Well, shall we go in? We don’t have much time
before we have to go back.”

We went in together with Dex
putting his hand at the small of my back, a gesture I found so
enticingly protective.

“
Are you all
right, kiddo?” he asked gruffly in my ear, his breath tickling the
hairs on my neck.

“
I’m okay
now,” I told him. We found a booth at the back—it wasn’t hard since
the diner wasn’t very busy—and the waitress came over with some
menus. It wasn’t quite the same waitress as we had before—this one
had severe bangs and a crooked smile—but Dex flirted with her just
the same.

While we downed the tarlike
coffee, we quickly went over the plans for the coming week. I
wasn’t too keen on staying at the sanatorium for that long, but
Rebecca shrewdly pointed out that we should take advantage of the
free accommodations.

“
Besides,” she
said, sipping from her cup of green tea, “I don’t want us to pull
the usual get in and get out.”

Dex snickered at that and I
kicked him under the table.

She smiled mischievously at
him. “That is what you call the Dex Foray Special, right?”

He gave her a stern look. “Hey
now.”

“
What’s the
Dex Foray Special?” I asked, suddenly intrigued. Sometimes the two
of them had these inside jokes that drove me nuts. I just hoped it
wasn’t something that involved Jenn.

“
Baby, you’ve
already had the special,” he said with a wag of his brows. “And you
liked it. Anyway, I agree with Rebecca, but only if it’s what
everyone wants.”

“
And by
everyone you mean me,” I said, starting to feel the slightest bit
annoyed. “Seriously, don’t treat me like my head might start
spinning around at any moment. We’ll do what we have to do for the
show.”

He opened his mouth but I cut
him off with the raise of my hand. “It’s been almost six months
since all that…shit happened. We’ve been taking it easy, and when
things have gotten too scary or risky, we’ve gotten out. We’ll do
the same here. There’s a difference between having our lives at
risk and being scared. I know I’ll be scared every second we spend
there this week, that’s just the way it is when you see fucking
ghosts every day. But please don’t start treating me like I’m some
special case. The three of us have been through a lot already—I
don’t see how this is going to be any different.”

Yet the minute those words came
out of my mouth, I knew it was a lie. Whether it was the warnings
from my dreams, the look of utter fear in Brenna’s eyes, or the
fact that Rebecca—our rock, our island—was being affected by the
place, I didn’t know. But I knew we’d find out.

***

The plan for the next few days
seemed simple enough at first. We would start filming tomorrow with
the historian and take in an actual tour of the place from top to
bottom. Then, depending on what we felt about each floor, or if
there were any particular areas that stood out to us from the tour,
we would start concentrating our efforts there. Rebecca wanted to
make sure every corner of the place was covered, from the
playground at the back of the building to the roof where Dex saw
the paper planes come from, with the most haunted sections getting
the most attention.

Once we got back to the
near-empty school and put our meager groceries away, the plans
changed. Like usual, it was all Dex’s doing.

While Davenport was bidding us
farewell, she noted that Carl, the custodian, would be the last one
in the building and locking up when he was done with his shift in a
few hours. Rebecca, feeling her claustrophobia come back in full
swing, was happy to know that the emergency doors at the ends of
the first floor wings opened up from the inside.

“
Remember, it
can be very unsafe for you to investigate the upper floors without
being supervised. I’ll have you know that I do have security
cameras monitoring the first floor, turned on by motion detector,”
Davenport said as she was ready to go out the main doors. She
seemed to direct her eagle gaze at Dex, who didn’t squirm under her
scrutiny. “Just keep that in mind. Of course, as long as you stick
to your rooms, the break room, and the washrooms, that shouldn’t be
a problem.” She finished that off by eyeing a place on the wall
behind us.

We turned to see a tiny video
camera mounted just above the grand staircase that led to the upper
floors. Big brother was watching. We didn’t have to voice it to
know that we weren’t expected to go anywhere else in the building
except for the first floor.