OUR LAST NIGHT: an edge of your seat ghost story thriller (18 page)

She rubbed her eye. “Let’s just . . . try to enjoy these memories. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Being together. That’s all life is.”

“Okay.”

“
Okay
?”

I stroked her hair. “Alright.”

Snow fluttered around us. It was shocking; it literally came from nowhere. A frigid arctic winter imported direct from Siberia, forming now in Idaho’s Timber Ridge Mall as a surreal indoor blizzard. It was as cold as the vacuum of space; a godless void that blackens your fingertips and ruptures the blood vessels in your eyes. But it was also bizarrely, achingly beautiful to see snow drizzling from the ductwork of the ceiling, collecting on the red blocks of the GameStop sign, cresting the fronds of potted ferns, and swirling across the floor on breezes that shouldn’t exist.

Addie smiled, catching snowflakes in her palm. She was three months from twenty-six but I saw her as a little girl stepping outdoors for the first time, marveling at the things the world is capable of. “I’ll admit,” she said, crunching crystals between her fingers. “It’s . . . kinda cool.”

“Kinda.”

“You’re sure vampires can’t cross water?”

“Positive,” I said. “You’re thinking of being invited in. They can’t come into your house without you first inviting them in.”

“Ah.” She glanced back at the Gasman, following twenty yards down the shopping corridor, silhouetted behind a screen of impossible snow. “Bummer that isn’t his weakness. That would’ve been handy.”

But I had an even better idea now. It had slipped into my mind like a daydream; a way the Gasman’s inability to cross water could potentially save us both. But I’d be counting on a few things. A few big things.

“Dan, it’s
snowing inside the mall
,” she gasped aloud as we cut through the men’s section of Macy’s, past rows of posed mannequins collecting white on their shoulders. She scooped up a handful of fresh snow from the khaki pants display. “How often can you say that?”

“Hopefully never again.”

As we passed the last mannequin — a dude-bro in denim — Addie beaned it in the face with her snowball.

So, yes, I had an idea. But also a pool of dread in my stomach, growing as my dead fiancée and I raced through the freezing memories of our summer of 2013, and into whatever came before. Fluorescent lights sparked and fizzled as storefronts bulldozed themselves around us; plate glass disintegrated and the floor writhed in rolling waves of shattered tile. Through this storm of snow and plaster, we kept running, barreling deeper into the past with the Gasman at our heels. If this new plan of mine failed, I couldn’t stand to lose Addie a second time. I’d already lost her once on New Year’s Eve, and it broke me.

I couldn’t lose her again.

NEW TEXT MESSAGE

SENDER:
“Holden” (509) 555-8727

SENT:
11:41 a.m. Mar 20 2015

I drove by ur house WTF are you? Ur car is gone.

NEW TEXT MESSAGE

SENDER:
“LJ” (509) 555-5622

SENT:
12:01 p.m. Mar 20 2015

Holden says you’re MIA. Last chance for Old Briar. We’re at the park-n-ride, leaving at 1300. Call by then or don’t call at all. Running outta time . . .

59 Minutes

“The dock,” I said, “where we first met back in 2011. That’ll be our Alamo.”

“Our
Alamo
?”

“You know. Our Alamo. Our last stand. The place we stop running. The Gasman won’t be able to cross the water. We’ll be safe there.”

“So . . . the exact opposite of the real Alamo?”

“Hopefully, yes.”

It all seemed convenient, but yes, in theory, we’d be safe back there on that FrightFest boardwalk over lapping tidewater. The place I’d first found her, stumbling out the broken door of the Total Darkness Maze on October 24, 2011. The place our lives had collided. For weeks after she’d died, I’d struggled vainly to relive that moment. How ironic, then, that it might just save us.

Let her go
, Dyson whispered in the back of my mind.

But I squeezed her fingers and led her further back in time. Timber Ridge led to the Hostess factory investigation. Those catacombs of rusted-out ovens and peeling paint led to the candy-colored beanbag chairs in the Cubek lobby, where Addie interned for a summer. Man-children, energy drinks, and keyboards speckled with crumbs. Every memory folds into another; daytime in one room, midnight the next. A floor leads to a wall. Gravity bends ninety degrees in a nauseous twist.

And still I worried as we fled the gas-masked creature through time. Like Dyson had told us, the Head-Scratching Rifle was digging through my mind and memories, learning my secrets. Adapting to my mental architecture. What if it was only feigning an aversion to water? To trick us into going where it wanted us?

Let go of your imaginary Adelaide, or the Gasman will use her against you—

Abruptly she halted, a whiplash of blonde hair, yanking my wrist backward.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she said. “Do you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

But I did, too. An ammonia odor, acrid and thick. Dyson’s clue.

Cat litter.

* * *

“Where are we?”

My first thought was
landfill
, but I knew better. We were in the foyer of an early-century rancher, absolutely crammed with hoarded junk, reeking of stale cat urine. Tons of heaped debris packed into every square inch. The floor was crunchy with yellowed newspaper, soda bottles, and grocery bags. Sunbeams caught updrafts of frizzy cat hair. Boxes stacked to the ceiling, leaning precariously on mildewing cardboard.

“This is . . . Montana. Out by Butte,” I told Addie. “I drove out here one weekend to help Holden clean out his grandmother’s house after she croaked—”

I realized Holden was in the room.

“—Uh, died.”

He clapped his hands together. “Thank you — both of you — for making the drive. I really appreciate it, more than you know—”

I elbowed past Holden mid-sentence, venturing deeper into the stagnant house, and Addie followed. Cats skittered underfoot, feral tabbies and torbies with matted fur.

“What are we looking for?”

“The litterbox,” I guessed.

It wasn’t hard to find. It was a giant bin, scooted to the center of the living room by a perimeter of looming trash. It was every bit as horrifying as I remembered; a damp mountain range of sand under a fuzzy carpet of black mold. The box looked like it hadn’t been scooped since the Bush administration.

Addie gagged through a sleeve. “I hate cats.”

Covering my nose, I looked around at the room of towering clutter — Aquafina bottles, paperbacks with bent spines, German porcelain figurines. ‘Needle in a haystack’ doesn’t do it justice, because at least in that situation you know you’re looking for a damn needle. What was the objective here? I tried to recall what Dyson told us atop that lighthouse:
I left you a clue. So you’ll know your chance when it arises, and seize it.

Before the Gasman realizes.

Realizes what?

And . . . what chance?

Addie sighed. “He couldn’t have been more specific than a cat turd?”

“It had to be a clue.”

“Well, he must suck at charades.” She stared into the litterbox. “Think he . . . uh, buried a weapon for us in there?”

“God, I hope not.”

She grabbed something white off a nearby trash pile, hit her knees, and started digging into the disgusting box. Chipping like an icepick.

“Wait—” Holden snatched the token away. I didn’t see what it was.

I joined Addie on the floor; she’d rolled up the black sleeves of her
Haunted
hoodie and now dug with her bare hands, lifting and breaking bricks of cement-like sludge. No time to be repulsed. The Gasman was coming.

It’s got all the time in the world. You don’t, Dan.

“Could Dyson have left us a message?”

“Why?”

She pointed at a black turd. “That one is shaped like a P.”

“Dump it out. Maybe they spell something.”

They didn’t. We tried. I’d started to suspect it was futile about halfway through, but once you start arranging cat shit on the floor, you kind of have to see it through. We found a P, six C’s, two L’s, and an S. Everything else was an I. For a long, bleak moment we scrutinized a floor full of Kitty Rocas, trying to decode an intelligent design where none existed. Like finding EVPs in audio slush, or incongruous shadows in photos. Stare hard enough into the random, and you might eventually find something, but is it worth it?

Holden watched us, mortified. “What the
hell—”

“I can explain,” Addie said, wiping her hands.

I didn’t bother. This version of Holden was just a memory — like the extras populating the Timber Ridge Mall, or the partygoers at LJ’s lake house — but still, I couldn’t help but notice how
young
my best friend looked. This was 2012. Three full years in the past. You don’t really notice aging in yourself or your family until you stumble across an old photo, and this Holden was a living, breathing photograph. His hair was thicker. His bald spot smaller. His face was rounder, newer. He was also sixty pounds heavier; he hadn’t yet been exposed to the anonymous venom of
Haunted
’s viewer comment board.

And I realized, with an icy jolt — what if he’s dead, too?

Like me?

For all I knew, the Head-Scratching Rifle could’ve already gotten him. This evil
thing
, whatever it is, spreads indiscriminately, quietly reaching in all directions, like exploratory fungus stalks. It grows on anything within touching distance. Whether you’re a forklift driver or a transient — if you’re breathing, you’re potential food. I should have known this from the start, but I’d been convinced I could contain it; limit the risk to myself. I’d thought I could trick it with something so remedial as a bullet with too much gunpowder — hell, W. Louis’s book even warned me that the Head-Scratching Rifle diligently remembers to perform a safety check before firing.

“Holden,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He looked at me.

“I . . . I was selfish, Holden. I was incredibly selfish, and did something stupid. And I allowed you to drag yourself along with me, because I was lonely. And now you’re in danger, too. You might already be dead. It . . . whatever
it
is, it doesn’t seem to experience time the way we do.”

My best friend stared, eyes wide.

God, I must’ve sounded like Dyson already. A ghost lost in time, speaking in grim riddles. And really, what did it matter anyway?

“I know . . . I know you’re not real.” I let out a breath, my shoulders sagging. “I know I’m just imagining you. You’re not the real Holden — the real Holden is somewhere else — so it doesn’t matter what I say.”

Behind him I saw Addie looking at me, her eyes crystalline, pierced with heartbreak. She sensed that I was really speaking to her. And truthfully? I guess I kind of was. Like Laika, I was trapped in this tiny world, bottled up inside an echo chamber with my imaginary friends. It’s a lonely feeling.

After a long silence, Holden asked, “Dan, are you . . . having a
stroke
?”

Under his voice, I heard something.

A . . . faint, dry scratching. A whisper of friction, of gently grinding wood. Something was in the room with us, and it wasn’t a cat.

We all turned.

At first I only saw the white token — the thing Addie had used to dig cat litter before Holden snatched it from her. It was moving, by itself, as if tugged by invisible strings, atop a shelf of piled detritus.

“Oh my God—”

Then I recognized what it was — the pale plastic, the arrowhead shape, the dirty glass lens — because I’d seen it before. It was a Ouija planchette. On Holden’s grandmother’s Icelandic mirror board. Scraping over the aged wood before our eyes like a movie special effect, a slow, deliberate zigzag across the alphabet. Letter to letter.

Spelling a message.

* * *

IDENTIFYYOURSELF.

Addie read aloud. “Uh . . . identify ourselves?”

“That’s wrong,” Holden said.

“You
think
?”

“No, not just that.” He stumbled closer to his grandmother’s vintage board, tipping a heap of books. “See, on this kind of mirror board, ‘identify yourself’ is what we — the human operators — are supposed to ask the spirit. Not the other way around.”

The planchette slid to the TURN tile and stopped.

We all stared at it again in another slow drip of bewilderment. I tried to remember what Holden had told me, in another time and place, about the significance of that special TURN spot on his grandmother’s ancient board.
Like when you’re on a walkie-talkie and you say ‘over.’ So you don’t talk over each other, because this mirror board exists in two dimensions at once. It’s both the input and the output.

It was waiting for us to answer.

Addie huffed. “I wish we’d seen this
before
digging into the litterbox.”

I grabbed the planchette — surprisingly light, like it was made of bird bones — and traced from letter to letter on the sticky surface, answering the spirit’s question with another question. The ultimate question: WHATDAYISIT?

I pushed the token back to TURN and waited.

“Dan.” Holden came up behind me. “This is dangerous.”

“I know.”

“You could be talking to a demon—”

“Believe me, buddy,
I know
.”

The planchette darted, startling us both: MAR202015.

March 20, 2015. The day after I bought the Head-Scratching Rifle from Joe’s Guns. Okay. I reached again for the token, but Holden grabbed my wrist with a big hand, his fingernails digging into my skin. “Stop, Dan. Stop—”

“Let go of me—”

“You don’t know what evil you could be screwing with—”

“Actually, at this point, I could draw you a detailed picture.”

“Holden,” Addie said, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I used your grandmother’s magic Ouija board to dig up cat shit.”

But somehow I suspected that was what set things in motion. She’d triggered the Ouija board,
awakened
it in some way, when she grabbed the planchette and plunged it into the litterbox. Had that been Dyson’s plan all along?

Now she craned her neck and looked out the half-blocked window, over a heap of bubble-wrapped porcelain. “Uh . . . Dan?”

The planchette scraped: WHEREISDAN?

“
Dan
.” Addie’s voice pitched. “The Gasman is outside. He brought friends.”

Holden turned. “Who’s the Gasman?”

I ignored them both, answering: THISISDAN. Then I asked: WHOAMITALKINGTO?

“Dan!” Addie screamed from the window. “Come here now—”

But I couldn’t. I stared at that antique mirror board, waiting for an answer. I needed to know who or what was on the other end of the supernatural channel, and why it wanted to speak to me. This was Ben Dyson’s plan. This was my one fleeting chance to save the Head-Scratching Rifle’s next victim, whoever it was.

Then I realized what Addie had said. “Wait . . . he brought
friends
?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice low with terror. “Come see.”

I stumbled to the window.

I saw trash bins, spindly trees, and a yellow lawn scaled with snow. And of course, the Gasman, standing by my black Celica. His left eyehole was still shattered from Adelaide’s bullet back at Timber Ridge. A thin stream of fluid — something pale and milky yellow — leaked from the broken aperture. It wasn’t blood; I knew we hadn’t really hurt it. It was just a utility fluid the creature stored inside itself, not unlike oil in a car.

And like Addie had said, our pursuer was now flanked by frozen corpses. Toothpick skeletons in baggy flaps of Red Army clothing. Like freeze-dried stick figures. I saw sunken cheeks, calcified teeth, eyeless faces with skin pulled taut and browned like dead climbers in old photos from Mount Everest,
express-delivered from somewhere hopeless and frigid. Jesus, I saw dozens now, creeping in from the corners of the suburban Butte neighborhood like termites wriggling out of wood. Every face was a gory portrait of 7.62x54R destruction. Each was unique, in the way that every car accident is. They congregated around him; the Gasman’s morbid, icy flock.