Her voice was trembling now .
“I ran back to my car as fast as I could and didn’t stop until I was at home in my bed. I never, ever came close to this damn house again until they found Haskell’s body. Ever since that day, I’ve been lying to myself, pretending I had imagined the whole thing. Now I know better. Krippner is still in that place. Call it a soul or spirt or ghost, but a part of that monster has survived. And he is waiting for me to return. But the next time he won’t let me go. The next time he is going to make me pay for what my father did to him. And I can’t—”
She broke off, gripped by powerful emotion. I could tell she was fighting back tears. After a few moments, she managed to pull herself together.
“Why him? Why does a murderous bastard like Krippner get to linger in this world when good people die every day and are never heard from again?”
Winters was talking about her father.
My heart went out to her. I didn’t want to burden her with details of the war being waged in the shadows, a war between light and dark, between monsters and men.
“It’s not fair,” I said quietly.
“My father killed that bastard,” she said, her voice tight. “It took me years to stop dreaming about Krippner. To let go of what happened. Why can’t the fucker stay dead?”
Some monsters aren’t so easy to kill , I thought. Fortunately, Krippner wasn’t the first evil spirit I had the pleasure of kicking off this plane of existence.
I squeezed Winters’ hand. She seemed surprised by the contact but didn’t pull away.
“You don’t have to go in,” I said.
“Do me one favor, Kane. If you meet Krippner in that house, send him to Hell for me.”
I nodded. That was the plan.
Reassured by the weight of my holstered pistol and the athame under my shirt, I got out of the cruiser.
The air had a harsh scent, filled with the flavor of raw earth and rotting leaves.
The scent of the grave .
With that lovely thought ghosting through my brain, I climbed the road that snaked around the hill like a coiled serpent.
My ascent turned out to be more difficult than I expected. I hike a lot in the Santa Monica mountains, and my body is used to climbing hills. Approaching the house, it felt like I was fighting against an unseen force that was pushing me back, almost as if the gravity was different around the property.
Up ahead, the foreboding house loomed on the barren hill. The building seemed to call out to me as I drew closer. A dark power had infected this place. I sensed it in my bones, and from the way my Ouroboros tattoo was burning.
The serpent on my shoulder reacts without fail to black magic. If the tattoo hurts, it means that dark forces are at work, and at the moment it felt like someone was raking hot needles over my flesh .
I stepped up to the front entrance, wreathed in fog, and fished out the house key Detective Winters had handed me earlier. I took a deep breath, the air redolent with the smell of mold and things that should have remained undisturbed, and unlocked the door.
A blast of marrow-chilling cold greeted my arrival. It was at least twenty degrees colder inside the structure than outside. Not surprisingly, the pain in my shoulder spiked, and I pulled out my athame.
Better safe than sorry.
Knife up, I entered the crypt-like home. My first instinct was to turn on the lights, but there was no power. Obviously, the Ghost Tour wasn’t paying the utilities for the Krippner home. They probably figured it was spookier in the dark.
Fortunately, I came prepared.
I pulled out my Maglight, which I keep in my double holster, and switched it on. A beam of light speared the dusty air. I know it sounds funny, but the flashlight plays as vital of a role as my weapons do in my ongoing battle with supernatural evil.
Light swept the foyer as I began my exploration of the house. Silence seemed to press in from all sides, a silence with a strange weight of its own. The skin on my head and neck instinctively prickled, and I fought back the sharp impulse to turn on my heels and bolt out of the place.
Whenever I experience fear, I try to recall my father on that night, the fanatic glee as he drove his sacrificial blade down toward his victim. I imagine the helpless terror the woman must’ve felt in that moment. And then I hear the gunshots from the FBI agents. Heroes putting themselves in harm’s way to save an innocent life. Then I ask myself a very important question: Who do you want to be? The villain or the hero?
I’m not a thrill seeker or paranormal nut eager to probe the mysteries of the unknown. I do what I do to make up for the blood that stains my family name. To prove to the world—and to myself—that I’m not my father.
These thoughts steadied and firmed my resolve and I continued to edge deeper into the dark house. How long would it take for Krippner’s spirit to show itself to me?
I had a feeling I would know soon enough.
I headed for the living room first, then the kitchen. The weight of the magically charged athame gave me courage as I combed the house. The knife had slain many monsters over the years, including ghosts.
You may wonder how my father’s sacrificial knife, an instrument of evil, could prove so deadly to the servants of darkness. The answer is simple: The athame had always been a weapon of light until my father got his hands on it and perverted its magical power.
The exact history of the blade is shrouded in mystery and legend. Some stories claim it was fashioned from the Roman lance that killed Jesus Christ, better known as the Spear of Destiny. Another ancient tale claimed the pentagram affixed near the handle was made from Perseus’s shield, the one given to him by the goddess Athena and which he used to cast back Medusa’s reflection and turn the serpent-haired beast into stone. According to one ancient text, wood taken from Noah’s Ark formed the knife’s handle.
Did I believe any of it? Not really. Wild tales made even wilder through the fog of time.
What I knew for a fact was that a Celtic druid used the Hexblade to fight evil before the fall of Rome, and that a long line of demon-fighting medieval monks had wielded the weapon throughout the Dark Ages. Leave it to my old man to take such a weapon and pervert its original purpose. Once again, the Hexblade had become a powerful tool in fighting the supernatural abominations that threatened our reality.
A sudden sound thrust me out of my musings. It wasn’t the shriek of some tortured spirit but the bane of the modern age—my cell phone was chirping, the ring tone eerily amplified in the otherwise silent house.
I checked the caller ID. Dakota Vesper.
I hoped she had some good news.
I accepted the call and said, “Hey, Vesper, how is it going?”
“I found the key to the wine cellar, boss, so things are looking up.”
“Hey, some of those wines have been in my family for generations.”
She sighed. “They’ve aged beautifully. ”
I chuckled. Vesper loved to mess with me when she had free rein over the place.
“Any luck figuring out our little puzzle?”
“You know me. I love solving puzzles. And this one is a doozy.”
“Does that mean you cracked it?”
“I’m afraid not. You were right about one thing—it’s a spell. So far, I’ve only deciphered half the symbols. As far as I can tell, the markings both amplify spectral energy and create a bridge between the material and ethereal plane.”
I considered this. “So it not only makes a ghost stronger but also acts as a beacon of a sort, drawing the wraith to the target the way chum draws a shark.”
Vesper chuckled, a throaty sound that tickled my ear. “You sure have a way with words, boss. But you’re totally right. The spell weaponizes a simple haunting, increasing a spirit’s power over the physical world.”
“Fantastic,” I muttered.
Most spirits struggled to impact the material plane and had to manipulate their victims on a psychological level. They were great at playing mind games. It
was rare for them to generate enough energy to physically lash out and murder a person by crushing every bone in their body the way Krippner’s ghost had done with Haskell. Rare, but not unheard of. When that happened, it usually involved black magic.
“I’m working now on figuring out the second part of the spell. ”
“Sorry to ruin your day with actual work,” I said dryly.
“It beats bingeing another season of Friends. How are things in Maine? Are the lobster rolls what they’re cracked out to be?”
“No idea. I’m running on caffeine and protein bars at this point.”
She snorted. “Lovely. What are you doing now?”
“Snooping around the haunted house where Haskell was killed. If my tattoo is any indicator, I’m not alone in here.”
“Are you nuts? Why didn’t you tell me you were in the middle of a hunt?”
“I can multitask.”
“Damn it, Simon,” she said, voice suddenly serious. “Do me a favor. Stay alive.”
And with these words, Vesper clicked off, my assistant’s way of telling me she worried about me. I smiled. Perhaps it was time to give her a raise.
My flashlight cut through the dark house as I went over what Vesper had shared with me. The world of the dead and the world of the living are two separate realms separated by an abyss of time and space. In some rare cases, the two dimensions could overlap and even allow beings from each plane to cross over.
To the dead trapped on our plane, the living are like distant stars. Visible but far away. That’s why most ghosts don’t attack people. They barely know of our presence.
The same holds true in reverse. You might glimpse a spirit, feel a chill or hear strange noises, and the odds of that happening increase exponentially if you’re psychically gifted. But most spirits cannot exert any real influence over our material, physical world.
If Vesper was correct, the tattoos on Haskell’s body had created a bridge between the reality show host and the spirit trapped in this moldy house. The spell had allowed Krippner’s ghost to attack by amplifying the ghost’s power in our world.
My gut told me Haskell hadn’t committed suicide by ghost. He hadn’t been the one to cover himself with ritual henna tattoos. No, someone with a deep knowledge of the occult had brought Haskell to this house and sacrificed him to Krippner’s spirit. But to what purpose? There were far easier ways to kill a man. Was it a trade of some kind? Haskell’s life in exchange for an otherworldly favor from a dead serial killer?
I had a lot of questions and very few answers.
Clearing my mind, I headed for the second floor and made my way through the bedrooms and bathroom. All clear. Next up was the attic which stood empty.
There was no sign of Krippner, but my continuously throbbing tattoo told me something lurked within these walls. And I had a pretty good idea of where I’d find it.
The basement. Figures that the focal point of the haunting would be the place where most of Krippner’s victims died.
I returned to the ground floor and was about to look for the cellar door when I heard a gravelly voice, almost beyond the range of human perception.
“Help me, Kane!”
I’ll be honest. The whispered words nearly made me jump out of my skin. My heart leaped into my throat, and I froze in place.
The words lingered while my flashlight carved erratic patches of light from the dark home and painted crazed shadows against the wall.
Was the disembodied speaker Krippner? How would the serial killer know my name? Even though the voice was hard to make out, there was a sense of familiarity there. Had the spirit psychically scanned my mind? And why the hell didn’t the dead serial killer show himself? Did the cunning bastard sense the power of my athame?
Only one way to find out. I had to check out the basement.
Great.
I searched the first floor in earnest. Ten minutes later, I located the hidden doorway underneath the staircase. I’d previously missed it in the shadows; otherwise, the cellar would have been my first stop.
Determined to face the unnatural force trapped within these walls head-on, I opened the door. A bone-chilling creak reverberated through the house.
Stairs vanished into darkness below, a yawning, hungry void eager to swallow me whole. Something was waiting for me down there.
It had killed Haskell, and now it wanted me.
My fingers squeezed the wooden handle of the knife in my hand.
I gave myself an internal push and forced myself to take one step, then another, the narrow beam of my Maglite mapping the way.
I was ready to ram my knife into any ghost foolish enough to take a swipe at me.
I had no idea how much time it took for me to reach the bottom of the stairs. It felt far longer than a normal staircase. The air down here was stale and made me gag. Bile crept up my throat, and I swallowed back the revulsion bubbling inside the pit of my stomach. My flashlight tattooed patterns of light on the basement walls and at last found a steel door.
The entrance to the walk-in freezer.
The place where Krippner had stored his grisly trophies.
I placed the Maglite between my teeth while my free hand reached for the handle of the freezer door, my athame up and ready.
The freezer opened with a groan of rusty metal. I tried not to think of what the cops had discovered in here; tried not to hear the screams of Krippner’s victims as they exhaled their last breaths and the light in their eyes grew dim. I did my best not not dwell on the pain and suffering which had embedded itself into the walls of the dank basement.
Door open, I pulled the Maglite from between my teeth and entered the walk-in freezer. It measured about six by six feet. My tattooed shoulder hurt something fierce. It felt like someone was holding a burning lighter against my skin, and I stifled a moan. As I suspected, the freezer represented the focal point of the psychic energy in the house.
Suddenly, the door behind me let out a metallic shriek.
I whirled just as it slammed shut. A heartbeat later, an invisible force slammed into me, the impact sending me against the steel wall. I dropped the Maglite and it went out, drowning the freezer in pitch-black darkness.
This was not good.
How could I defend myself if I couldn’t even see my hands in front of my face?
I had to find my flashlight and get the hell out of this death trap. I dropped onto my knees and began searching the floor. Most people would have shut down, overwhelmed by terror, but this wasn’t my first rodeo. That said, I doubt I would have remained quite so calm if I’d dropped the athame.
I let out a whoop of joy when my fingers brushed against the Maglite. Without hesitation, I switched it on, and to my eternal gratitude, the light worked just fine. I wasn’t kidding when I said my trusty Maglite was just as important as my gun and knife.
Now, to find a way out. I swung the light toward the door.
That’s when I realized with horror that I wasn’t alone any longer .
A figure towered over me. And suddenly I understood how the ghost had known my name.
The spirit inside the freezer wasn’t Krippner.
It was Haskell.
His eyes were as wide and terrified as my own.
“Please help me ,” the ghost urged in a shaky voice that sounded like a distant radio transmission.
An instant later, the Maglite went out again.
Chapter Ten
Darkness held her, then spit her out like a rotten piece of meat.
Sara’s eyes fluttered open, her return to consciousness accompanied by an assortment of aches and pains. She squinted against the shadows that enveloped her. She tried to move and let out a groan. Her whole body was on fire, every muscle sore.
As sensation returned to her battered body, she realized that she lay sprawled on a hardwood floor. Another chilling realization followed this insight—she was naked. Whoever had kidnapped her had also undressed her while she was unconscious.
; The thought of her demon-masked abductor taking off her clothes, of him looking down at her naked, vulnerable body while she remained dead to the world, shook her to the core. She tried to remember what had happened to her, but the images were fuzzy. Had her abductor violated her physically while she was out cold?
Her heart hammering against her chest, she recalled the masked figure materializing in front of her rental car and bringing the ax down on the driver side window. Her ears rang with the sound of the glass shattering, and her skin ached with the remembered pain of the sharp pieces spraying her face. A pair of powerful arms had reached through the broken window and effortlessly pulled her through the opening as if she was a little child.
And then, before she could even scream with horror, the demon-masked assailant’s fists had rained down on her, a furious barrage that pounded reality into a black smear.
Reliving the attack, Sara realized there was something familiar about that red demon mask with its twisted pair of ram horns. She’d seen it before, hadn’t she?
Sara tried to get her mind to work. Her face felt like twice its normal size. Gingerly she probed her teeth with her tongue, only to discover that two of them had been knocked loose by the vicious attack. Oh God, this couldn’t be happening.
A series of clicking sounds pulled her out of her thoughts. Abruptly, there was blinding light all around her.
Sara blinked and shielded her startled gaze from the harsh beams of light shooting down at her. Gradually her eyesight adjusted, and she saw that her attacker had placed her unconscious, naked body on the stage of an empty theater. Spotlights shone down on her from the catwalks above and revealed the rows of empty seats facing her.
As far as she could tell, the auditorium was deserted. But for a crazed moment, she felt like a phantom audience was watching her from those rows of empty seats.
Then she looked down at herself and screamed. Not only was she naked, but strange symbols and drawings covered her skin.
Identical to the ones on John’s shattered body.
The Paranormalist- Servants of the Endless Night Page 7