The Dark Man (20 page)

“Get out of the house.”

“But what about—”

“Out the door, Mike. I’ll be fine.”

“But—”

I quickly remind him about his wife and kids, that he doesn’t have to do this, that I dragged him into it, and it’s my battle.

He closes his eyes and rubs his temples. “I feel dizzy. Weak, too.”

That’s even worse.

“Do I have to shove you out that door?”

“My heartbeat is going so fast.”

In my earbuds, I hear a cackle of little-girl laughter, like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. Obviously, Azeraul has absorbed enough of Mike’s life force to return.

Mike whispers, “Sulfur,” so quietly that it’s barely picked up by the microphone. Then he adds, “Two minutes.” His arm drops to his side, then the rest of his body crumples onto the middle cushion of the large couch. He sits back, eyes glazed over and staring into the center of the room as if he’s catatonic.

I let loose a chorus of curse words and dart across the living room, my shin slamming against the coffee table, sending knickknacks and magazines flying as it overturns. Before I can make it to Mike, I feel a hand on my chest, hot and burning, holding me back.

The little girl’s voice says, “
He’s mine now, Ford
.”

“Shut up. Shut up. Do
not
use my name. Get off me.” I try to wrench away, but no matter which direction I turn, I can feel the pressure of the claw-tipped hand on my skin. “The power of Christ compels you, Azeraul. Get off of—”

The now-familiar screeching roar doesn’t just come through my earphones, but it explodes into the entire room, so loud that I can picture it bowing the walls outward.

I trip sideways and fall to the floor, covering my ears.

Mike sits, immobile.

Azeraul’s voice, as before, comes from everywhere and nowhere at once. “
I am not Azeraul. I am death. I am immortal. I am the enemy of God. I am the destroyer. I am everything you fear, child, but I am not Azeraul. This name you speak has no power over me. Master calls. I must … go. Light will come again, but so will I
.”

I can’t actually believe what I’m about to do, because it’s pure crazy-talk, but I stand up and beg for a demon not to go. “Don’t leave. Please. Who murdered Louisa Craghorn? Was it her husband? Did she ever say who it was while you had her trapped? Give me some answers, please!”

Rumbling laughter that chills my spine and sends goosebumps across every inch of skin ripples around the room. And then, words follow that stun me into silence as they trail away, fading into the darkness: “
Begging … beneath you … See you again … Hopper house
.”

“What the fuck did you just say?” I feel dazed, slammed in the chest by a wrecking ball. “Are you the same … the same one … the one who …?”

And then he’s gone.

Azeraul. Not Azeraul.

Whatever that thing’s name is, it left the house. Just like before, when we initially drove him back, the room, the entirety of wood, brick, and stone in this structure, feels lighter. Brighter. Almost as if rock and maple alike are heaving a sigh of relief. The suffocating blanket that’s been choking the atmosphere has lifted, too, and for the first time since I stepped in this house earlier today—soon to be yesterday, according to the ticking wall clock—it feels like I’m inhaling clean, fresh air. The hint of putrid smoke that laced the oxygen is gone, and I take deep breaths until my lungs feel washed and bleached of the demonic muck.

His final words clang around inside my head.

See you again … Hopper house.

I don’t even—I can’t wrap my mind around this possibility. We’re along the coast of Virginia. The Hopper house is in Ohio, a thousand miles away.

I stand, completely motionless, considering the implications. It’s not unheard-of for spirits to become attached to items and move thousands of miles, and I wouldn’t imagine that demons would be confined to an area. It’s not like Satan is franchising haunted houses, and these soul-sucking bastards have to set up shop in a specific territory.

But, holy shit, what are the odds that Chelsea’s demon is the same one that was here? And that I would end up here investigating it as well? Mike suggested the possibility earlier, but I scoffed at him, and now …

See you again … Hopper house.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s not what it meant. Maybe he was saying he’d see me there. Maybe I’m supposed to go back to Chelsea’s old house for a showdown.

I honestly don’t know.

Is it a sign? Should I agree to Mike’s request for the documentary? Could this really be a shot at redemption?

I tell myself not to let those thoughts intrude. My redemption should not come at the hands of exploiting Chelsea’s story again.

Over on the couch, Mike coughs, hard and raspy, like it’s his first time smoking a cigarette, and his body is trying to reject the filth in his lungs. He leans forward, hands up over his mouth, and hacks until I go to him. I sit down on the couch by his side, fearful that Not Azeraul might still be inside Mike, having duped me with false promises about leaving. But when he turns to me, I can see the real Mike in his eyes. They’re uncontaminated, unpossessed. He’s looking at me by his own volition.

He says, “Did we get him?”

“To be continued.”

Mike is beat; says he feels like he had a garbage truck run over his chest, then back up and do it again; wants to drive home and go to bed, sleep next to his wife, but I tell him it’s probably too dangerous. If he’s that exhausted, I don’t want him passing out on the way home, crashing, and then dying. I’d be sad, yeah, and clearly I don’t want Mike haunting me because that would be a never-ending barrage of practical jokes, missing keys, and general pestering until I joined him on the other side.

We made the pact to haunt each other, and to be annoyingly foolish about it back when we first started this journey together, and I’m quite positive that Mike hasn’t forgotten.

Instead of letting him drive home, I convince him to come zonk out in my hotel room down at the Virginia Beach oceanfront. The couch in my room folds out into one of those grotesquely uncomfortable beds, and I remind him that it’ll be like old times, back when we were on the road and filming. Me sleeping like a pampered princess with my face cream to keep the cameras and lighting friendly during the day, accompanied by a rejuvenating eye mask and earplugs, skin soaking up mist from the portable humidifier, all while Mike lay in the other queen bed, snoring, drooling, and sleeping naked.

Awkward were the nights when he’d kick the covers off.

In addition to saving his ass from turning into highway hamburger, I let him know that Detective Thomas will most likely want to speak to him again, adding, “What I do now, it’s not like the old days where we’d pack up and head back to the hotel for an after-party. I usually spend a day or two with the detectives, answering questions, going over details of my investigation, maybe trying to help them piece together clues if I don’t get any direct answers.”

“Whatever,” Mike says. “Just give me a bed and some coffee in the morning.”

As we pack up the rest of our gear—my small collection compared to Mike’s ghost-hunting surplus store quantity—I tell Mike what the right-hander said while he was catatonic. I add, “You’re not going to believe this, but I think it’s the one who hurt Chelsea.”

Mike snorts. “You’re shitting me.”

“Dead serious, dude. It said, ‘See you again. Hopper house.’ Just like that.”

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean it was him.”

“True, and I considered that, but the more I think about it, the more it feels right. Doesn’t it? I mean, didn’t it to you? The same type of energy, the same strength? And you know how we always talked about whether or not demons each have their own signature vibrations?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“It feels right. It feels like it was the same one.”

Mike works an SB-11 spirit box into its cushioned slot of the storage case. “Feeling is a lot different than proof. You know that.”

“There was something else, too, and it didn’t click until it mentioned the Hoppers.”

A fat rechargeable battery, now lifeless, gets shoved into its home. “And?”

“That laugh. When I told you it was pretending to be a little girl? You didn’t hear it, but I swear on my mother’s grave, it was copying Chelsea.”

“Funny, I don’t remember her laughing. Just terrified and crying.”

I slam the lid closed on my case. “Low blow.”

“Sorry. Old habits.”

“Anyway. It was the same one. I’m positive.”

We take one more quick look around the living room to make sure we didn’t leave anything behind, and as we’re doing so, Mike asks, “Does this mean you’ll consider the documentary? Sounds like a challenge to me. Fucker is calling you out. Wants to do battle back at the Hoppers.”

He’s baiting me, ever so subtly, and it would work if I was ten years younger, but my mind is made up. “I told you already, no way in hell am I exploiting her again.”

The hotel room is icebox cold since I left the air conditioner dial on the January-in-Minnesota setting, and I’m certain that Mike is asleep before I’m finished brushing my teeth. Thankfully, and possibly because in here it’s as cold as a demon sucking all the energy out of the room, Mike’s conked out in his clothes. The snoring and drooling haven’t changed. I’m positive there’s already a wet spot on the pillow.

With the temperature outside still sitting at roughly eighty degrees, even at two o’clock in the morning and a hundred yards from the ocean, it seems ridiculous to climb underneath the covers, but man, that air conditioner is top notch. So I pull all eighteen layers of blankets that come with a hotel bed up to my neck and shut my eyes.

Sleep has never come as easily to me as it has for Mike, and once again this feels like our glory days. Same old routine. Mike snoring, me struggling to doze off, only now I’m not worried about how my complexion looks on camera, and I didn’t bring earplugs because I hadn’t intended on having him around for a sleepover.

It’s almost a comforting sound, though, because after what we just went through, it’s nice to have company. I appreciate having another living soul in the room. The sound of Mike sawing logs is like a nightlight when you’re afraid that something might be under the bed.

I try a variety of meditation techniques to clear my mind—tricks I learned and had to use for a long time after Chelsea’s incident—but they’re useless at the moment. Every time I feel the junk of the previous sixteen hours slipping away and the slow-moving calm of slumber seeping in, my mind spins back around to that thing’s voice and the way it imitated Chelsea’s laugh, mocking me.

Wherever it may be
now
, it was
here
, damn it, and regardless of whether it was a coincidence or not, I’m kept awake by the fact that there seems to be some sort of netherworld connection that shares information—like a ghostly Pony Express.

Or perhaps information is shared across energy.

“Energy” in the broadest sense, I guess. I’m not talking about, like, electricity or wind power. I’m no scientist, and, in fact, I could barely tell you the difference between an astrologist and an astrophysicist, but what I
believe
is this: everything, from a ladybug to a boulder, from Dick Cheney to a candy bar, from a cup of coffee to a ‘69 Chevelle with white racing strips, is made up of atoms and protons and neutrons, the building blocks of the universe, and whether it’s inanimate or a two-year-old jumping on a trampoline, everything is made up of this interconnected web of energy. It’s not necessarily the hum of life, but the hum of
existence
.

Your coffee table may not be alive, yet it
exists
, and there are billions of particles screaming around and around that make that object what it is.

Thoughts are energy. Emotions are energy. A ham sandwich on rye is energy—bear with me here—and
everything
is connected.

I’ve believed this for a long time, and I’ve also believed that spirits can somehow share information like it’s a phone call or an e-mail, but I’ve never really seen concrete evidence of this reality until recently.

I chose not to tell Mike that I had already been investigating Chelsea’s case again because, for now, I didn’t want him to use it as ammo, or a bargaining chip, in his efforts to get Carla Hancock’s documentary going. But in a way, I suppose he deserves to know what I learned back at the old farmhouse before I left for this case.

And, amazingly enough, it’s further proof of that interconnected, subatomic layer of … what, invisible universe juice?

Which apparently exists on both sides of life and death.

Physically, I don’t have an ounce of get-up-and-go left in me. My mind won’t stop turning, in spite of this, and I’m afraid my thrashing around in the bed will wake up Mike, so I force myself to sit up and tiptoe quietly through the room. The balcony door complains loudly as the seal is broken—plastic peeling away from plastic. I cringe, but Mike only mumbles something in his sleep and rolls over while I’m greeted with the thick humidity outside our room.