The Dark Man (11 page)

We had a janitor in Minnesota one time who was working around enough EMF juice to fry an egg. He never noticed. But then, there was a woman in Northern California who had a minimal spike in her laundry room whenever she turned on the washing machine. She would faint from the EMF buzzing around her and claim that whole hordes of angry spirits were trying to have an orgy with her. Fun stuff.

But, on the other hand, a hungry spirit can also soak up this EMF energy and use it to communicate. We even have what we call an “EMF Pump” that we’ll deploy sometimes in an attempt to supercharge the atmosphere. Neither Mike nor I have one with us at the moment, but given the strength of this razor-clawed entity that’s already here, I doubt we’ll need it.

It won’t be fully dark for at least another three hours, so it’s beneficial to us to get all of the standard objectives out of the way while we can still see.

By the time Mike finishes the routine EMF scope downstairs and comes up empty, I already have three of his “spotcams” situated in assorted positions. Various paranormal groups have their pet terms for what they call these stationary filming units, but they’re really just digital cameras on tripods that are set to record in night vision from a static location. One spot all night, thus, the
spot
cam.

We even had a group of die-hard
Graveyard: Classified
fans who dubbed themselves the “spotcamgirls.” The pictures they sent to our e-mail address at The Paranormal Channel headquarters would make a porn star blush, much less the unfortunate intern who answered all of our mail for minimum wage.

Maybe he didn’t mind so much.

Glory days, indeed.

“Looks like you’ve got them in good locations,” Mike says.

“Yeah, the one there in the eastern corner picks up the entire living room where Craghorn was attacked earlier today, plus that entrance down into the kitchen where he was watching something while I talked to the detective.” I move over to the next one and wave down the hallway. “This one will capture anything along this whole corridor—living room, kitchen, storage closet off in the peripheral with a direct line of sight down to the back door. It’s all covered. Then the third one over here is set up in the top corner of the stairwell, looking up at where Craghorn told you he hears footsteps all night long, and then right over to the entrance. It’s all set up like a funnel down here, herding everything in front of a camera.”

Damn, that felt good. There for a minute, I was totally in the zone with Don the cameraman behind me and Charlie Chocolate Chip, the sound guy, standing off to the side and holding a small boom mic over my head, while I explained to the fans and casual viewers how we were setting up to conduct the investigation. Back a couple of years ago, I would’ve nailed the whole thing on the first take.

“Ford?” Mike says, bringing me out of the revelry in my mind.

“Huh?”

“You got a little gleam in your eye. Right there in the corner.”

“Sorry. Reminiscing.”

“Doesn’t change anything, but I felt it, too. Did you ever think about—
Jesus Christ
!”

We duck, throwing our heads down and to the side as a decorative ceramic plate hurtles past our heads.

Bewildered, mouth agape, Mike straightens up and asks, “Where in the hell did that come from?”

I look behind us. The plate lies on the hardwood floor, smashed to pieces against the grandfather clock that’s been dead for decades, according to Craghorn. “That looks like the Elvis plate,” I tell him. “One of those commemorative ones. It used to be in the kitchen, hanging beside the refrigerator. I noticed it because my mom used to have the same one.”

In the silence between our breathing, my ear picks up an intruding sound.

It’s a distant noise, the staccato rhythm of slow-stepping hooves.

Clop, clop.

Clop, clop.

I picture the demon walking down the hall behind me. I strain to listen for the hooves. The hair on my arms stands at attention. The pressing pain in my bladder builds.

Then I realize the sound isn’t coming from far away. It’s right beside me.

It’s the dead clock ticking.

Now
that
is an omen.

We’re standing up on the second floor, at the head of the stairs, looking back down toward the front entryway where the decorative plate lies in ruins. We left it alone as a small symbol of defiance, just enough to flip the bird at the right-hander to let him, or her, or it, know that we weren’t going to bend to its will.

You
break something and
we
clean it up?

As if.

Well, I mean, not until the investigation is over. We won’t really leave a mess for Craghorn
if
he ever comes home. God, I hope he won’t. I hope he listens to what I said and stays far, far away from this place.

Mike holds a thermal imaging camera, and what this thing does is, it takes all of the ambient heat in the room and projects it as an image on a small screen. All the warm stuff is displayed in reds, pinks, oranges, and yellows. Imagine the stages of a sunset; that’s what the room temperature heat looks like, more or less. Now, a spiritual presence is typically cold because it’s sucking energy out of the atmosphere in order to manifest, so if you’re looking at the screen and you see a dark mass, or figure, whatever, as it’s walking across the room, there’s a damn good chance you’ve got company.

I wait with my arms crossed, patiently and silently. “Anything?”

Mike breathes heavily through his nose. He’s always done that. That’s a sound I haven’t heard in a long time. It’s like going home again.

He answers, “Nothing. But it’s already so cold in here that it would almost be hard to tell the difference.”

“Would it help to switch it over to black and white?”

Same concept, only instead of a rainbow differentiating heat discrepancies, you have a monochromatic representation. It has its uses, but I prefer all the pretty colors.

He flips a switch, turns a couple of dials and, yeah, lots of black. That doesn’t do much for us.

“Should we move on?”

“Five more minutes. I want to see if that thing is stalking us.”

In all honesty, we sort of
retreated
up to the second floor. That’s not something I’m fond of admitting but when you have a right-hander powerful enough to sling breakable things at your head, it might be a good idea to get out of the way.

Technically, we could classify it as poltergeist activity. However, it’s not like there are a bunch of cabinet doors flying open and dead-battery toys dancing around the room. This demon is strong enough, and focused enough, and intuitive enough, to lift one single object—an object that caught my attention earlier in the day—and sling it over thirty-five feet.

That’s not just an explosion of paranormal energy.

That’s
intent
.

Mike inhales and exhales; the tempo of his body rocks like a persistent metronome. I want to be hunting for this thing, calling it out, telling it to come fight us, but it’s good to ease into an investigation like this. We have all night, and it feels like we’re getting back into our groove. Mike was always the one who focused more on the technical side of the investigation. Devices, gadgets, cameras, you name it, we tried it.

Back in the day, and it looks to be shaping up the same way, he was James Bond and I was Oprah.

You know, gadgets versus emotion. He’s pushing buttons, tweaking dials, and I’m riling up the crowd: You get a demonic possession! You get a demonic possession!
You
get a demonic possession!
Everybody
gets a demonic possession!

“Ford?”

“What?”

“Did you hear that?”

“No? Maybe?”

Mike hasn’t peeled his eyes away from the thermal imager screen yet, but he’s clearly focused on something as he lifts an arm and points over his back, which is also to my rear. I hate to be sneaked up on. Frazzles me, waiting on something to pounce.

One thing I never understood was how our cameramen, Don in particular, could stand there with a camera focused on Mike and me while we were freaking out about something happening behind them. They were brave, man. Never flinching, never wavering—it was always about the shot, capturing our reactions. I argued with the producers for over a decade that our fans wanted to see what we were looking at. They didn’t want to see
us
having an absolute shit-fit when a shadow figure darted across an empty gymnasium. The spirits were the real show, not us, but the producers, Carla in particular, didn’t see it that way.

I spin around and take a couple of steps to put my back closer to the wall. “What was it?”

“Sounded like a voice. Couldn’t tell from where. Female, probably, and I’d bet your beach house in the Hamptons that it’s Louisa again.” He finally looks over at me and drops the thermal imaging camera to his side. “I got nothing downstairs. Whatever it was ain’t there anymore. Should we go check out the voice?”

“Yeah. And the Hamptons house is gone, by the way. Melanie from wardrobe got it in the divorce; turned right around and sold the damn thing for about nine million.”

Mike puts his hands on his hips, shakes his head like a disappointed father.

“What?”

He hooks a thumb down toward the far bedroom and starts walking. “Did you ever think that maybe one of the
other
reasons she left you, aside from cheating on her six fucking times, was because you couldn’t take the relationship seriously?”

Defiant, I say, “What’s that supposed to mean? Of course I took it seriously. Kinda.”

“Dude, you never stopped calling your
wife
‘Melanie from wardrobe.’”

“Not to her face.” But, again, he has a point. “That was habit, nothing more. That’s who she was for six years before we started dating.”

“And then, things changed. You didn’t respect her.”

“This is
not
a discussion I feel like having, okay? We’re here to help Craghorn, not dissect my failed marriage. I’m not on Oprah.”

“What?”

“Forget it.”

As we stand in front of the bedroom door, Mike gives me a sharp look and says, “She’s a good girl, Ford. You ruined it. Just like you managed to ruin everything else.”

It stings to hear it, out loud,
again
, but I’m not going to argue with him. One, I don’t feel like it and two, I have no counterpoint. I open my mouth, and I’m about to tell him to leave my personal life out of the hunt when we both hear it.

A soft moaning comes from the second guest bedroom at our backs. We turn, ready and guarded, cocking our heads, listening intently, glancing at each other sideways. It’s definitely female, and it does indeed have the same tone and pitch as what Mike caught on his digital recorder earlier. He lifts a finger to his lips, gently taps out a shush, hands me the thermal imager, and then reaches into his back pocket to pull out his GS-5000, which is the big brother to the BR-4000 I accidentally left at home. This thing is the Cadillac of digital voice recorders. Real time audio playback so you can ask questions while you record and hear any responses. If you do happen to catch something, you can skip back and listen to it while the secondary mic continues ahead. It’s a brilliant device.

He lifts it, presses the button with the red circle on it, and pantomimes instructions. He’s going to push open the door while I use the thermal imager to immediately capture what’s in the room. I feel a bit like we’re a couple of real badge-carrying detectives ourselves, and we’re about to bust in on a most-wanted criminal snorting coke out of a hooker’s butt crack.

I spend a lot of time in hotels. Maybe I watch too much television.

Mike lifts his hand, reaches for the door, and pauses. Frozen in place, he says, “Whoa, hang on,” and then—“
Hungh!
”

He flies into me, sideways, and we both stumble to our left and land hard. My back crashes into a weakly constructed, triple-drawer console table, and the thing explodes under my weight, sending two picture frames and a decorative jewelry box onto my head and chest.

Mike lands off-kilter, holding his GS-5000 up high to keep from smashing it, and cracks his head against the hardwood floor.

I fling bits of splintered table and an empty drawer off me and climb to my knees, clambering over to Mike. “Holy shit. What happened? You okay?” I’m whipping my head around, trying, and failing, to see if another ambush is coming.

Instead of answering, Mike pushes himself up and crab walks back to the wall. We both know who did it—the question is where did it go? Are we still in danger?

I ask him again if he’s okay, if he’s hurt, either from falling or from the attack, and once he’s satisfied that he’s not going to get another beating, he tells me everything’s fine, to back off a second.

“Okay, but just—”

“I’m good, Ford,” he insists. “God, that was intense. I just need a minute.
Please
.”

I sit on my haunches and watch him, checking for anything out of the ordinary. Unusual anger, confusion, a feeling of immediate dread. You know, head-spinning, pea-soup-spitting type stuff. With a
blitzkrieg
that powerful, I’m worried that the right-hander attacked, invaded, and then put up a set of nice linen curtains in its new home, 123 Mike Long Street.

He understands what I’m doing, too, because he holds a palm up to me and says, “Just chill, man. I don’t feel anything.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah. It’s not like that time in Miami.”

Some people might go to Miami and come home with a sunburn or an STD. Mike went down for a solo investigation while I was on my honeymoon with Melanie from wardrobe—sorry,
Melanie
—and came home with a stowaway. He got careless, didn’t protect himself going in or coming out, warning the entities that he was
not
a vessel, and it took days of prayer with one of the big guns from the Vatican and three Native American shamans to get his body, mind, and home clear again. Toni wasn’t too happy about that, and, somehow, per standard operating procedure, she managed to find a way to blame me. Melanie and I were on a rinky-dink motorbike in the jungles of Vietnam when it happened, but, yeah, it was my fault. Thanks, Toni.