Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (136 page)

“Can you describe it?” Wayne asked.

“I feel it, between us,” Duncan said, showing more excitement than Ann.

“Is it there now?” Wayne said, keeping his voice flat. If the two old ladies started twittering, any auditory evidence would be lost.

“It’s cold,” Ann said.

Wayne slid a digital thermometer from his pocket, but before he could move to the bed, a red dot appeared on the blanket. “Sixty-seven degrees,” Gelbaugh said.

Infrared temperature gun.
To bother reading surface temperatures at a distance, Gelbaugh must have had a deeper interest in metaphysics than he’d implied. Or maybe he was trying to stay one step of Wayne, proving the superiority of reason over faith.

“Invalid,” Wayne said for the benefit of the witnesses and the recording. “You have no baseline for comparison.”

“I’ll get my baseline afterward,” Gelbaugh said.

“It’s sitting here beside me and you two are bitch-slapping?” Ann said.

“What is it?” said the hunchback. “A demon?”

“There’s a ghost here,” Baldy said. “I can sense it.”

Gelbaugh snorted in derision.

“Shh,” Wayne said. “You’re contaminating the evidence.”

“Never mind,” Ann said. “Whatever it is, it left.”

“I felt the mattress sag when it sat down,” Duncan said.

“Are you still with us?” Wayne said, hoping the rest of the hunts had a better mix of personalities. An investigation was difficult enough for a trained team of hunters to collect any useful data, but it was nearly impossible for a group of strangers.

“Yes,” Gelbaugh said. “I am.”

“What’s with you?” Baldy said in the dark.

“Nothing’s with me. In fact, I am utterly alone. Despite your collective wishful thinking.”

“Sorry, folks,” Wayne said to the others.

“Bummer,” Duncan said.

“What is it?” asked the hunchback.

“A party crasher,” Baldy said.

“They call it ‘pragmatist’ where I come from,” Gelbaugh said.

Wayne was mentally charting his course across the dark room to the light switch when a
thunking
sound was followed by a brittle crash.

“Who did that?” Ann said.

Gelbaugh flicked on a pen light and the small, bright beam settled on a shattered lamp that had fallen from a bedside table. “Well, I’m way over here, so it wasn’t me. Which of you is playing ‘Poltergeist’?”

Gelbaugh’s beam bounced from face to face, each of them grim, before fixing onto Wayne’s. He squinted against it, annoyed at the damage.

“I didn’t touch it,” Ann, who was the closest, said.

“Ladies and gentlemen and all you dead people,” Gelbaugh boomed. “Honesty is the best policy. If you broke this, just admit it and be forgiven. Don’t carry the sin with you.”

“Stuff it, Gelbaugh,” Wayne said, flipping the light switch and exploding the room into painful brightness. After the hushed, almost sacred atmosphere of minutes before, the space now seemed desecrated and cramped. The occupants, besides Gelbaugh, began rising and stretching, the elderly ladies confused by it all.

“Investigation ends at 6:44 due to human interference,” Wayne said into the recorder before shutting it off.

“Come on,” Gelbaugh said. “Don’t tell me you can’t stand up to someone poking a stick at your invisible friends. That’s hardly sporting.”

“We paid good money for ghosts,” Baldy said to Wayne. Ann and Duncan had already left the room.

“We’ll get you on another hunt,” Wayne said, collecting the largest shards of the lamp.

After the group exited, Baldy grumbling aloud, Wayne faced off with Gelbaugh. “You’ve made your point, now stay out of the way.”

“You should work on your technique,” Gelbaugh replied. “Take some acting lessons.”

“Some of us have to fake it, but you’re a natural-born asshole.”

Gelbaugh laughed. “Will the last one leaving please turn out the lights?”

The room went dark.

“Nice trick,” Gelbaugh said. “Too bad your audience is gone.”

Wayne, ten feet from the light switch, said nothing. He stood there with the yellow orb of light burning its blurred images behind his eyelids—along with a face, yawning black mouth and vacant eyes riding behind the glow like a red scream.

It was a face he’d kissed and loved and married once, long ago.

It wasn’t so pretty these days.

Chapter 13

The Roach was down on demons.

Raised a Catholic, he’d first sensed evil at the hands of a priest, who had touched him in ways that made him sick and tingly all at the same time. Nothing too overt, nothing that would have merited a civil suit in the “Pope Versus Lawyers” landscape of the 1990’s, but enough to instill an unsettling view of sacred rituals.

During puberty, he’d felt the shadow latch on him as he’d explored the natural wonders of masturbation. Figuring it for a textbook case of guilt, he’d offered his Hail Marys and continued indulging. But the shadow deepened, insinuating into his heart like an autumn whisper, and one night the shadow appeared at the foot of his bed and said, “We’re ready to play.”

He’d passed that night with the light on, flipping through his Bible without seeing the words, mumbling catechisms and the Lord’s Prayer. He’d tried to speak to his priest about the incident, but the modern church was more interested in pop psychology and public relations than battling ancient evil, and so little Rodney was left on his own. Fortunately, the Internet and a New Age bookstore had provided an armchair education, and soon he was secreting away holy water in preparation of the coming Armageddon, when the Fallen would have their day.

The Roach had become an informal demonologist, working outside the church, moving in a world that bordered between low-budget horror movies and La-La Land. He’d taken up ghost hunting almost as a cover, since the equipment reassured many of the clients who consulted him. The Roach never charged for his work, believing it a calling from God, and he’d joined Spirit Seekers International because the group would provide more opportunities for service.

Only problem was, these days, he wasn’t so sure which side he served.

God promised eternal peace and joy, but it was a delayed gratification. Lucifer and his gang gave you everything you wanted, and right now.

But Lucifer played a game of bait-and-switch, with the catch being you only
thought
you wanted something, and when you got it, you realized it wasn’t so good for you. And when you wanted another person, and consumed her against her will, then it wasn’t so good for her, either.

Eat her like a cracker. Bread of life, bread of death, it all comes down to crumbs floating in the chalice.

“You picking up anything, Roach?”

Cody gave his sparkling gaze, and The Roach was nearly disgusted by the innocence and light that swam in The Future of Horror’s eyes. Angels weren’t born, they were made, and they pissed him off royally.

There but for the grace of God go I. Maybe you’re taking my dance card on the head of a pin.

“There are five here,” The Roach said. “Two of them are the bad-ass variety. The rest are impressions that don’t even know they’re dead.”

“We’ll slap the MAC Attack on them and pin them down.” Cody was rigging motion detectors in the large dining hall to work in sync with the cameras, all linked to a couple of eight-gig hard drives that could store two days’ worth of data. Audio, thermal image, spot temperature, electromagnetic activity, all measurements were recorded and correlated with the exact time so that anomalies could be cross-referenced. Cody’s MAC Attack did everything but give the ghosts an anal probe, and The Roach was sure that feature would be added once he patented his system and marketed it to the UFO crowd.

“You were right about the crawl space,” Roach said. “That entity’s so old it doesn’t even have a name.”

“I’m just afraid of what’s going to happen once all these paranormal tourists start stirring things up.”

“Come on, Cody. You’re not afraid of anything.”

Cody flashed his smile, and heavenly light practically sparkled off his teeth. No wonder Kendra was sweet on him. If Wayne didn’t watch it, he’d be raising an extra generation, and it wouldn’t be a virgin birth, either.

“Nothing sticks to you that you don’t invite, right?” Cody said.

True dat, little friend.
“But you can be tricked.”

Cody perched a tripod in the corner of the dining hall. “Other people can be tricked. Not me.”

“You just haven’t been presented with the right temptation yet,” The Roach said, thinking of Kendra.

“Oh, I’ve had a few,” the teen responded. “Jesus wandering in the desert and all that. Keep your heart pure and you’ll be okay.”

Cody reeled out some black, plastic-sheathed cables, keeping them out of the traffic areas as he set up his sophisticated data-collection system. The paranormal field had exploded with technical gear in the last decade as profit margin sparked its own brand of ingenuity. While a few technogeeks had invented tandem devices to combine various measurements, Cody had developed software that charted information from multiple sources. All the MAC Attack needed was a marketing push and Cody would be set for life.

“We’ve got a visitor,” Roach said. A shadow shimmered in the cut glass of the ornate dining-room door. The round tables were bare, covered by white linen and an air of expectation, as if invisible diners had eaten and were now waiting for dessert.

The door creaked open and in came Kendra. “You guys ever heard of a light switch?”

She flicked on the electric chandeliers, but an incipient gloom still clung to the corners like a permanent stain.

“Ghost hunters do it in the dark,” Cody said.

“Yeah, yeah, and all night long, too. I’ve heard it before. When you going to come up with some new stuff?”

Cody looked past the camera he was mounting to Roach. “I’ve got to get this lady on my payroll.”

“You don’t have any payroll,” Roach said. “Remember, you’re the ‘future of horror.’ You ain’t happened yet.”

As Kendra approached, Cody made a show of swiveling his camera toward her, as if recording her walk. She immediately broke into a stilted, filly-like strut, like a model on a runway. She was overdoing it, a little uncomfortable in her flirting.

“I’m too sexy for my shoes,” she rapped, in a send-up of the old Right Said Fred song.

“Paranormal poster child,” The Roach said. “You’ll be ready to take over for Digger any day now.”

“Cool it, Roach. I’m not legal yet. Besides, I’m going to art school.”

Cody propped a ladder against the wall. “You don’t believe in any of this stuff, do you?”

Kendra sat down on one of the tables, and it wobbled, throwing off her calm insouciance. “Nothing personal, Cody. But I’ll believe it when I see it, and you haven’t shown me anything yet.”

Whoa, she’s good
. Roach ogled her as much as he could get away with, noticing how much her figure had filled out in the past year. The pesky little brat was swelling into a full-blown tart.
If I were 10 years younger and had a shred less morality...

“What does Digger think about having a heathen in the family?” Cody climbed the ladder to tape a remote thermometer to the wall.

“I don’t think he’s noticed,” Kendra said. “But I talk to my mom all the time.”

“Communing with the dead?” Cody said.

“I call it praying,” Kendra said. “Your mileage may vary.”

Roach checked the electromagnetic levels in the room and marked them down. While Cody’s program would record the data automatically, Roach still found comfort in pen and paper. He’d seen computers go dead along with other equipment, especially when demons needed a handy power source while entering the physical realm.

“Better watch your aura,” Cody said. “Roach says there are some Dark Ones here.”

“I don’t get it,” Kendra said. “If God has the power to throw angels out of heaven, why would He allow them to hang around down here and tempt people with evil, possess them, or whatever?”

“God needs somebody to do His dirty work,” Roach said. “Keeps his hands clean.”

“What do the demons get out of it? I mean, Lucifer got tossed out on his buns because he wanted to be top dog, and now he’s sitting around plotting his comeback?”

“That’s what the Book of Revelation is all about,” Roach said, though that biblical text was clouded by metaphor and poetic nonsense. “The Fallen go for it, they get Earth for a thousand years, just enough for them to get a taste, and then–
whammo
–God yanks the bone out of their mouths.”

“Okay, so they’re waiting for their day in the sun,” Kendra said. “Then why are they messing around in the meantime? If demons walk among us, how come none of us are possessed?”

The innocence of youth. Where do you think your own sins come from, Digger Junior?
And you don’t even have to rely on evil’s influence spreading from within, because sooner or later the Devil’s hammer is going to hit you from the outside.

“Demons can’t work without invitation,” Roach said. “So it’s a choice. That’s what the whole heaven-and-hell thing is all about.”

“Lighten up,” Cody said. “You’re going to give the paranormal industry a bad name. I’d rather be seen as a bunch of opportunistic flakes than Gloomy Doomies.”

“What good are numbers in matters of faith?” Kendra said. “You can pile up specs until the end of time and never come up with an answer to the big question.”

Cody grinned a little at the compliment, but uncertainty clouded his features. “What’s your point?”

“You’re trying to prove the unprovable, Dad’s trying to know the unknowable, Roach is trying to defeat the invincible. We’re all just going through the motions and it all comes out the same in the end.”

“Whoa,” Cody said. “I didn’t realize you were an existentialist.”

She slid off the table, mussing the linen, and headed for the door. “Nah, I’m just a cartoon character. Don’t mind me.”

Roach watched Cody’s eyes as they consumed every detail of the girl’s movement. Confident she was being watched, she gave a flip of her hair, blending shadow and light, and lapsed into a subtle imitation of her catwalk strut.