Ashes to Ashes (Experiment in Terror #8)

by Karina Halle

  I looked over at Dex, feeling slightly frustrated. Our next two days were strategic. We all knew we could stay a few extra days if we needed to record more, and that was the original plan, but I insisted we leave the place as soon as we could. Like Gary Oldman, I also wasn’t someone to push my luck. It was now our last show, but the sooner we got out of it, the better it was for us in the long run.

  I decided to pretend I wasn’t being filmed and stopped asking anything from our supernatural hosts. I walked toward the edge of the playing field, where potted garden beds turned into scraggly wildflowers and the wildflowers turned into the trees.

  I inhaled the dewy breeze, feeling the sharpness sink all the way into my lungs.

  That’s when I heard the giggle.

  I froze in place and slowly swiveled around. Dex was in the middle of the field, filming me from far away, and beyond that was Rebecca in her vintage coat, still holding the door to the body chute open.

  A movement at the playground caught my eye. I squinted, trying to focus on the swings just in time to see one of them swing back and forth by itself.

  Oh man.

  I gestured to Dex to turn around and film it. I was just about to join him and go over when I heard another giggle from behind me.

  I shifted to see a young boy standing beside me.

  The scream that wanted to rip out of me was stuck in my throat.

  “You’re Jody’s friend,” the boy said, plain as day. Aside from the sickly transparent quality he had, he looked absolutely real, from the shininess of his hair to the freckles across his nose, to the plushness of the toy teddy bear he was holding. The way he held his hat in his other hand reminded me of Oliver Twist asking if he could ‘have some more.’

  I swallowed painfully, trying to find my voice. “I met Jody today. You must be Elliot.”

  Elliot look at me for a moment, sussing me out, and in that one blinding instance, I was reminded of how fleeting the glimpse between life and death was. He was looking at me like I was real and I was looking at him as if he were the same, and yet we could never really coincide; we never belonged in each other’s world.

  “Elliot,” I began, an idea building through me. “Why are you here?”

  He stuck out his lower lip in thought. “Why are you here?”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “At Sea Crest.”

  “Do you know what year it is?”

  He began to flicker before me, like the light was going out of him. I started to panic. By now my eyes went over to Dex and I could see him filming me, though being careful about being too obvious and keeping his distance.

  “Elliot,” I quickly went on, “what do you want?”

  He looked down at the hat in his hands. “I want to see my family. I want to go home.”

  “Why don’t you then? Go see them. I’m sure they’d love to see you. You have no reason to be here.”

  He was staring past me at the swing set. I glanced at it over my shoulder to still see the swing moving.

  “I can’t. Not until she lets me.” His eyes were white-rimmed with fear. I looked at the swing set again and when I turned back, Elliot was gone. I called after him into the forest but only heard the faint rustle of pine needles. The trees suddenly looked as if they wanted to envelop me in their darkness.

  I spun around and ran across the field to Dex. “Did you catch all that?” I asked breathlessly.

  He gave me a wary smile. “I did. But the camera didn’t,” he said, patting the side of it. “This time it looks like you were talking to yourself. Sorry, kiddo.”

  “But you saw it with your own eyes, right? You saw Elliot.”

  “Of course.”

  I nodded, as if that’s all that mattered. In some ways, that was true. As long as I looked sane in Dex’s eyes, I wasn’t doing half bad. I looked at the swing set. “Well, that’s still moving, and from the way Elliot was looking at it, I’m guessing that there is someone there.”

  I stalked off toward it, knowing in my heart that it was Shawna on that swing. She was dead, didn’t like me, and I was frightened to death of her, but I had to push that all aside.

  “Shawna,” I said carefully as I approached the set, the metal chains glinting in the light of the camera. “Shawna, are you there?”

  The swinging slowed down. Then stopped. The gravel underneath the swing began moving, crunching under unseen weight.

  It stopped right in front of me.

  I held my breath. I felt tiny fingers grasp my one hand and turn it over. What felt like teeth grazed the top of my anchor tattoo.

  I gasped and snatched my hand back. The air filled with a girlish, malicious laugh, then a growling, drooling, snapping sound.

  I cried out, the noise working its way into my bones, and staggered back into Dex’s grasp.

  “I have you,” he said gruffly. He looked out at the playground, at the gravel that kept moving. “Hey, little bitch, you wanna come back and try something with me?”

  I kept my wrist to my side and shook my head. “Dex, don’t tempt her.”

  His eyes were on fire as he looked at me. “Yeah well, maybe I don’t like it when they keep going after you. This is exactly why we have to end this show.”

  “And we are,” I said. “We are.”

  He held me close to him, lowering the camera. “I fucking hate it when I’m filming and this shit happens to you. Hate it. Makes me feel so powerless.”

  “Jealous of the attention?”

  “It’s not funny, Perry,” he said.

  I managed a smile. “Well we can stay out here and find out what else they have in store or we can go back inside and try something else.”

  “To be honest, I’d rather just go back to our rooms and save the rest for tomorrow,” he admitted. “I have the footage of the swing going by itself, that’s a powerful enough image, especially with this background at night.”

  I eyed him closely. “What about me talking to Elliot?”

  “That seemed more like a private moment. Even if the cameras don’t pick him up, it’s obvious he’s there. I think it’s better if we keep the kid out of it.”

  I nodded, completely besotted with Dex’s protective side.

  We turned back to head into the building when we saw Shawna standing between us and the door.

  And Rebecca was no longer holding it open.

  Dex’s hand tightened around my waist and I heard his breath hitch. He saw her too.

  “I asked you to play with me and you never did,” Shawna said in her melodic voice. She pulled at the sides of her plain white dress as if she were trying to look weak. I did not buy it for a second.

  “Where’s Rebecca?” I asked.

  She gazed at me blankly. “I do not know what you mean.” She took a step forward, the grass looking like dark blades around her white shoes. “Why didn’t you play with me?”

  She was addressing me. I licked my lips and said, “You were in my dream.”

  “That woman scared me away,” she noted. Her fine eyebrow rose. “Who was she?”

  “No one,” I said quickly, even though I could tell Dex was looking at me for an explanation. ”She was just part of my dream.”

  “I don’t reckon I liked the way she talked to me,” she said, her voice rising. “She reminds me of the nurses. You do know what they did, don’t you?”

  Dex and I both shook our heads. I felt feeble and stupid.

  “I think they tried to remove my soul,” Shawna said, her voice becoming deeper, wetter, more guttural. More inhuman. She looked down at her chest where a red stain suddenly appeared on one side and started spreading outward. “I think they succeeded.”

  Oh shit. All Dex and I could do was stare at her, at the gaping hole that began to form in her chest, until the fabric of her dress burned away and we were left with a bloody view of her open chest cavity. Her lungs shrank and expanded as if she were breathing.

  “Jesus H. Macy,” Dex gasped.

  “Look
what my father did to me,” she said, her voice back to being breathy and sweet. “He tried to give me new lungs. But it didn’t work.” Her black eyes narrowed into slits. “Perhaps if I had yours.”

  She took a step forward with an outstretched hand, her nails looking like claws, and Dex and I stepped back, holding onto each other. She paused then smiled wickedly. “I can always get my creature to get them for me. He would be better at it than I. He owes me for letting him loose.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the building, where the fog was starting to lift. The bad thing was crawling out of an open window and for once we could see it all in its entirety.

  I wished I could bleach my eyes out.

  The bad thing was just as disturbing as I thought it was when it wasn’t hidden by the shadows. It looked human, except for its black skin that had a sickly sheen to it and its watermelon shaped head. It had no nose, no features, except a razor-toothed slit and ghostly white eyes that protruded from the face. It crawled down the side of the building, moving like a giant spider, reaching forward with stick-thin limbs and extra-long fingers, making a skittering, snapping sound as it moved like a cockroach.

  I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stare at the bad thing until it disappeared into the bushes that lined the bottom of the building. I slowly brought my eyes over to Shawna, who was smiling again so broadly I could see her canines.

  “What is that thing?” I found myself whispering.

  “It eats hate,” she said. “It devours fear. It has promised me things.”

  The bushes at the base of the building rustled and a long, spindly arm came out, digging needle fingers into the grass.

  A second arm followed.

  “Guys!” Rebecca’s voice suddenly rang out across the field.

  We both looked over Shawna to see Rebecca back at the door, removing a rock she had placed to keep it propped open. “Can we go? I don’t feel so well.”

  She obviously didn’t see Shawna standing in front of us. If I wasn’t so terrified out of my mind, I would have found it fucking frustrating.

  Shawna didn’t seem to notice or care. But her smile dropped from her small, white face and she skipped off toward the bushes, the blood from her open chest trickling on the grass. We watched as she went into the bush. The bad thing’s arms retracted and they were both gone from sight.

  “Did you get any of that?” I whispered to Dex, almost afraid to raise my voice.

  “No,” he said slowly. “I forgot to film everything except that last part. Rebecca snapped me out of it.”

  We looked over to her where she was now waving at us. “If you don’t hurry up,” she shouted, “I’m going back inside and locking you out here.”

  No thank you. We scurried across the field over to her. Close up, she looked paler than normal and her lipstick was rubbed off.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She shook her head and grimaced. “I was sick around the corner. Maybe it was something I ate. What were you guys doing?”

  “You didn’t see the little girl or the creature on the walls? The demon?” Dex asked.

  “You saw the demon? The one that the historian was talking about?”

  We nodded. She exhaled sharply through her nose. “Bloody hell. What happened?”

  I gestured to the open door. “I’d feel a whole lot better if we could discuss this inside.”

  “Right, right,” she said. We went back into the body chute, and for the first time, the tunnel of death almost felt safe. At least compared to the outside, where Shawna and the bad thing might still be. Sooner or later, it seemed, there would be no safe places left.

  Maybe there never were.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  After we filmed outside, we went back into the break room to review the footage while giving Rebecca the rundown on what we saw. It was true that once Shawna appeared, Dex dropped the ball on the filming. I couldn’t blame him—the show was the last thing on my mind too. I was more concerned about, oh, I don’t know, not dying or having my lungs ripped out of me.

  But as soon as Rebecca called out to us, snapping us back to reality, Dex did start to film. He caught a few seconds of me asking, “What is that thing?” and though you couldn’t see Shawna, per se, you could see an orb of light flickering past the camera and hear a garbled voice whisper, “It eats hate.” Even though I was there when Shawna said it, the playback cut me to the core.

  Even Rebecca looked impressed. Well, at least she momentarily stopped looking like she was going to puke. And then at the very end of the tape, you could actually make out the droplets of blood as they appeared on the grass as Shawna skipped away. Again, it wasn’t everything that we saw, but for a ghost hunting series, that was some pretty good evidence. The three of us were practically giddy as we realized that the show itself was shaping up to be something pretty special.

  And then of course, I think it made us all a bit sad. So Dex brought out the rest of the whiskey and we had a merry little time at that table, enjoying each other’s company and not thinking about the horrors that were waiting for us on the floors above us.

  When it was time for bed, I wanted a good night’s sleep instead of cliffhanging off the side of the bed with Dex’s body taking up most of it, so I went for the middle bed. Even though the immovable plastic partition between the beds meant that I couldn’t see them properly except for their outlines and couldn’t be close to them, being in the middle made me feel safer. Dex was closest to the door as well, plus I’d propped the chair under the handle again, just in case.

  I actually fell asleep for what must have been a couple of hours, something I never thought possible in this terrible place. When I woke up from my dreamless sleep, the first thing I heard was Dex snoring lightly from his bed.

  He must be on his back, I thought. Normally I poked him in the side when he did that in order to get him to roll over and shut up.

  I lay there, my eyes adjusting to the light, and pulled my covers up to my chin, feeling a chill set in. I turned my head on the pillow to look over in Rebecca’s direction.

  She was sitting up in bed. I could see her silhouette through the curtain.

  “Can’t sleep?” I whispered.

  The outline of Rebecca’s head moved, as if to face me. She didn’t say anything.

  “Are you awake?” I whispered again. Maybe she was dreaming or sleepwalking or something. “Rebecca?”

  I could feel her staring at me through the curtain, still remaining silent.

  Honestly, she was starting to freak me out.

  I slowly got out of bed and walked toward her, trying to keep as silent as possible and not really knowing why. I put my hand on the edge of the curtain and pulled it back as far as it would go.

  Her bed was empty.

  No one was there.

  I swallowed hard, my scalp prickling.

  Just then I heard a muffled sob and the sound of crying. Now that sounded like Rebecca. She rarely cried, but the few times I’d heard her, all of it post-Emily, she sounded elegant even when she was breaking down.

  I padded down the room, glancing over at Dex as I went. He was still snoring, eyes closed, deep in sleep. I decided to leave him be for now. The chair had been removed from under the door so I opened it and stepped out into the hall. The crying continued, coming from the bathrooms.

  Not that I wanted Rebecca to be crying, but I really, really hoped it was her and not Shawna luring me to my own doom. I tried to keep my heart from pounding out of my chest as I carefully crept down the hallway, the lights above me flickering.

  I stopped right outside the woman’s washroom and took in a deep breath. Then I flung the door open and poked my head inside.

  The washroom was empty and the crying had stopped.

  Oh shit.

  “H-Hello?” It was Rebecca’s voice, coming from one of the stalls.

  I let out a huge breath of relief. “It’s me,” I said.

  “Oh.” And then she started cr
ying again.

  I raced over to the stall she was in and knocked on it. “Can I come in, or are you, um…” What was the polite way to say “taking a dump?”

  The stall door slowly swung open and Rebecca was sitting in her silk pajamas on top of the toilet, dabbing at her tear-soaked face with rolled up tissue paper.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her, my voice softening.

  “Oh, it’s…I can’t even say,” she said with a sniff. “You’ll judge me.”

  “Me?” I exclaimed. “Judge you? Rebecca, come on. It’s Perry. I have no right to judge anyone and I’d never judge you. Believe me, I’ve been there, done that.”

  She gave me a sad look. “I guess you’re right.” She sighed.

  “Well? What’s wrong? Did something happen to you?”

  “Something did happen. Recently. Before we got here.”

  I cocked my head, having no idea what she was going to say. “Well? You can tell me. I’m here to listen. I’m your friend.”

  “I know you are,” she said quietly. “I haven’t told anyone yet.”

  “Not even Dex?” I asked, knowing she was closer to him than she was to me.

  She shook her head and a teardrop fell on her pants. She quickly wiped it off with her hand. “No. I can’t tell him.”

  “Well, I won’t tell. What is it?”

  She took in a long breath and held it for a moment before she exhaled. Then she looked at me with regretful eyes and said, “I’m pregnant.”

  Whoa.

  Whoa.

  I was absolutely floored. “Pregnant? How could you be pregnant?”

  She stared at the tissue in her hands. “It was almost a month ago. I went out to a club with Dean and Seb. You know, the night you guys took that cooking class. I got drunk…I didn’t want to be alone. One thing led to another,” she trailed off. “I had sex with a guy.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said, still flabbergasted. “I mean, how?”

  She gave me a wry look with her red eyes. “You want a demo?”