The Dark Man (7 page)

Back when the show was chugging along and we were doing twenty-two episodes per season, there was a lot of down time while the crew set up and scouted angles. Mics were checked. Cameras and recorders had batteries replaced.

Oh, man, the batteries. Batteries upon batteries. We probably kept Duracell in business on our own.

With or without
Graveyard: Classified
, every investigation I’ve been on is a coin flip that’s governed by chance, luck, and timing; life and the afterlife are bonded by those three things.

But when it all works out, and the investigation is a winner?

I’ll take an espresso and two shots of adrenaline to go, please. Sign me up.

Things that go bump in the night have terrified people since we had to look out for nocturnal predators, praying that our campfires didn’t burn out. No matter how many times you’ve flipped off the last switch and encased yourself in darkness, daring or begging something to show itself, there are times when you’ll get spooked.

You’ll hold your breath and feel every square inch of skin prickle. You’ll want to scream. You’ll want to run, but damn it, you have to fight that flight instinct because there’s something out there, something from the other side, and it’s dragging a sharp fingernail down a window, or some Civil War soldier is pleading for you to get a message to his children, or a shamed servant is apologizing for taking her own life. A piano plays by itself in another room. Footsteps echo across the wooden floor overhead when you
know
you’re alone.

I’ve seen and heard so much. I’ve never faked even the tiniest of things, like a piece of dust on a camera lens. What do the hip kids say these days? Haters gonna hate, right?

Well, doubters gonna doubt.

As I daydream about past investigations, the good ol’ days, my eyes drift around the neighborhood, inspecting the nearby homes.

Like I said, I normally don’t pause to appreciate this stuff, but since Detective Thomas seems to be retelling his story starting with the book of Genesis, I have a couple of minutes.
In the beginning, God created demons and shitheels…

Despite my typical reservations, the architecture here actually
is
pretty fantastic with a lot of stones and crenellations, high windows, and pure craftsmanship displayed in the front doors. These homes were built back when people took pride in their hard work. It’s nothing like the homes in my neighborhood that are governed by a snippy HOA board: mow your grass to a quarter of an inch below standard; you have too many dandelions; you’re not allowed to have a gnome in your flowerbed.

I swear an entire house popped up in a week around the corner from me. One day it was an empty lot, I left for an investigative trip to Lansing, Michigan, and when I got back,
boom
, house.

Anyway, if you didn’t know what lurked inside his walls, Craghorn’s place is beautiful and does the neighborhood justice. Minus the dying flowers and shrubs that haven’t been tended to in God knows how long, minus the powerful demon controlling the interior, I’d love to call this place home.

“Ford!”

“Hmm?” I mumble, daydream interrupted.

Mike asks, “Did you see that?”

I clear my throat and cross my arms, making a decent attempt at looking like I was paying attention. “Yeah, it was up there, and, uh …”

“Second floor window. The curtain dropped back like somebody pulled away.”

For the first time in an hour … no, longer, since he was attacked and we retreated to the safety of the sidewalk, Craghorn speaks a coherent sentence. He says, “That’s where it likes to stay.”

“It?” Mike asks. “You mean the …”

“Yeah. Him.”

There’s a layer of sharp acrimony in Craghorn’s voice that I’m hearing for the first time. Perhaps he’s recovering from earlier. Perhaps he feels emboldened now that the paranormal defense team is fully present.

“That was my wife’s study. She used to paint in there.” Craghorn clenches his jaw, the muscle rising and falling underneath loose skin. His mouth purses, his nose scrunches as he glares up at the window. I halfway expect him to make a fist and shake it like some old codger.

Mike is about to ask another question when Detective Thomas excuses himself and takes a phone call. We wait patiently while he listens to his caller, lifting his shoulders in a sorry-can’t-help-it apology. Finally, he hangs up and tells us he has to go. “Wife was reminding me about my visit to the doc. Checking out the ticker today,” he says, patting his chest. “After what happened in there, I feel like I should keep the appointment. Tell you what, Mr. Craghorn is in good hands here. You know what you’re doing, and I’m pretty sure I’m not going back inside that goddamn place ever again. So, you do what you do, and then come meet me back at the station. That work for you guys?”

Craghorn’s gaze flitters upward, looking as if he’s slightly worried that the man with the gun is leaving, and I don’t bother telling him that bullets would only tickle that thing inside his house.

I say to Detective Thomas, “We’ve got it all under control,” then toss another subtle compliment at Mike. “He’s the best at what he does, so if we’re able to find anything for you, it’ll be because he’s here.”

You catch more bees with honey.

The detective gives us a cordial salute and spins on his heels. He’s down the sidewalk, around the corner with his step looking lighter, and gone before anyone else speaks again.

Craghorn is the first to say something. “Good thing for him.”

“Why’s that?” Mike asks.

“I can’t repeat what the dark man inside said about the detective.”

My lungs clench, and Mike flashes me a worried glance.

Maybe it’s just coincidence—could be nothing at all—but it’s so odd that he refers to it using the same words as Chelsea Hopper.

“
Don’t let the dark man get me, okay
?”

I can see tremors of the past rippling across Mike’s face. At first, I think he’s reliving the moment with that little blonde angel bobbing down the hallway, excited to help and so thrilled to be with her new friends from TV. A thousand pounds of regret fill my stomach. I’m aching and anxious to get back to fighting for her retribution.

I think Mike is going to sympathize with me. He’s going to tell Dave Craghorn that it’ll be okay. We’ve fought things like this before, and we’re going to get his life back. We’re going to give his wife the everlasting rest she deserves. I think this, and I’m about to say something to Craghorn, but Mike’s fist connects with my jaw, and I drop like my chute didn’t open. I blink, trying to see around the sparkles dancing in my vision.

Before I can clear my head, there are rough hands on my shirt, yanking me up. Mike says, “You put him up to this, didn’t you? The dark man? Really, Ford? Did you think I’d come running back for that?”

I taste blood. I try to tell him no, that I never said a word to Craghorn about Chelsea or the dark man, but I’m dizzy and confused. My words come out jumbled. I can make out the red hue in Mike’s skin, the rage twisting his features, and then his forehead meets the bridge of my nose.

I succumb to the darkness.

I come to, and it takes me a second to realize that a few minutes have passed. I’ve been moved, and instead of lying on the searing sidewalk outside, knocked unconscious, I’m stretched out on Craghorn’s couch. It’s freezing in here.

I quickly sit up. A spark of fear shoots throughout my body—I’m inside, alone, where the dark man is—and then my eyesight swims just enough to send me back down, hand on my forehead and groaning. The coppery hint of blood remains on my tongue and I feel the dried, caked aftereffects of Mike’s headbutt on my upper lip. My eyelids and nose are slightly puffy, and the bulge hinders my vision. When I drop my left arm, I feel an ice pack resting against my thigh.

At least they were a little considerate, and I hold the ice up to my face, wincing and hissing with the pain.

I wonder where Mike and Craghorn are, and it occurs to me that Mike might have been pissed enough to drop me off inside, alone, as a tasty, immobile sacrifice to whatever abomination inhabits this house. If that’s the case, I picture myself tied to a railroad track with a locomotive bearing down on me, horn wailing, but there’s no cowboy in sight coming to my rescue. There’s no flying man in a cape, swooping down to sweep me away. No fireman with a ladder or a helicopter pilot with a dangling harness. You know, standard hero shit.

My mind does that sometimes, goes places. If you’ve spent enough time in silence, as I have, waiting on a sign from the afterlife or something to manifest, it’s easy for your imagination to run unchecked. I should write books. I bet I could give Carter Kane a run for his money.

While I’m pondering my demise and picturing the dark man bearing down upon me, I hear voices in the distance, maybe down the hallway and upstairs, and I realize that it’s Mike and Craghorn.

Thank God they haven’t left me in here entirely alone.

It sounds like an informative discussion, but mostly it’s Mike asking questions and Craghorn responding. He’s such a hushed and beaten-down man, I can barely hear his replies.

Mike says, “That happened in here?” And seconds later, he follows up with, “That was only six months ago? When Detective Thomas came back? Interesting.”

I make a concentrated effort to sit up, but slowly and cautiously, to give my throbbing face and woozy head a chance to catch up. One last groan, and I push myself to my feet.

You’d think I’d be used to things like this now, but there’s a large mirror above the fireplace, and a peek at my own reflection spooks me. I chuckle at how ridiculous this is—the great and mighty ghost hunter scared of himself—but I wasn’t expecting it to be there. Mike would probably say it’s an improvement, because I really do look like Wile E. Coyote hit me in the face with a fat hammer from Acme. Blood is caked in tendrils around my mouth and crawls down my neck. Luckily I’m wearing a black T-shirt, my trademark, so you can’t tell how thoroughly it’s soaked, which is enough for it to pull against my skin when I turn away from the mirror. It’s the same sensation you get when you pull a scab off too early.

I find them in the upstairs hallway. Craghorn is in his submissive stance, hands clasped at his belt buckle, hunched over like he’s waiting to be reprimanded, examining his shoelaces.

At first, I think Mike is simply standing with his arms crossed as he surveys the photographs hanging on the walls, but upon closer inspection, I see that he’s trying to warm himself. If the downstairs was cold, this is igloo territory up here. He sees me coming, drops his hands to his waist, and shakes his head. He tries to say something, but it comes out halting, like trying to start a car on a freezing day.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I probably deserved that.”

Mike clears his throat. “Right,” he says, then adds, “I’ll buy you a beer later.”

“Make it a steak and we’re even.”

He lifts a corner of his mouth in a genuine attempt at a smile. The steak thing, that’s a running joke going back a few years, before the show was a hit, back when we were starving college students who would trade the promise of a high-dollar steak on bets and dares while we stole handfuls of coffee creamer from a convenience store just to have milk for cereal.

That’s old history between us, and it’s gratifying to see that he can’t headbutt good memories in the face.

“You should call that detective,” Mike says. He lifts a digital voice recorder and waggles it. “We need to do a full investigation. Not just an afternoon asking questions. There’s no way we can properly comb this place and then meet him back at the office this evening with some answers.”

I nod toward the recorder. “You catch something?”

“Class A. It’s a strong one.” Mike stares down at the display, breathing heavily through his nose, as he rewinds the recording to the proper timestamp.

“You think it’s …” My words trail off.

Mike doesn’t need me to finish my sentence. He knows. “Do I think it’s the right-hander from the Hopper place?” He pinches his lips together, tilts his head from side to side, lifting his shoulders. “What’re the odds, you know? I don’t think it is. Tone is off, but then again, I was just explaining to Mr. Craghorn about how demonic entities can mimic other spirits, other animals. You know the drill. Anyway … honestly, I think the fact that he called it ‘the dark man’ was a one-in-a-million coincidence. Bad timing, whatever, and, unluckily for you, it was just the right set of words to light a fuse that I wanted lit for two years.”

I chuckle. “If that’s a disguised apology, I accept. What’d you catch?”

“Two voices, actually, and Mr. Craghorn, if you don’t want to hear this again, it’s fine if you step away.”

Craghorn slowly lifts his head. “I’ll be downstairs.”

Mike waits until Craghorn is gone, head disappearing below the landing, footsteps whispering through the hallway, before he holds the digital voice recorder up and plays the audio file.

There’s silence, followed by Mike’s flip-flops slapping against his heels, and then comes the sound of a doorknob. The creaking hinges groan like they’re right off a Hollywood movie. Mike’s voice says lightly, “Mark time at 5:38, that was Mr. Craghorn opening his bedroom door.”