Came Back Haunted: An Experiment in Terror Novel #10

by Halle, Karina

  I freeze, feeling icy trails down my neck. I don’t even have to look at Dex to know he’s feeling the same way.

  “I’ll leave you now,” Atlas says. “Please put the key under the mat when you’re done.”

  Then he turns and walks quickly down the path toward the street.

  I glance up at Dex, whose furrowed gaze follows Atlas’ every move until he disappears. “That wasn’t fair of him,” I mumble, trying to shake away the uneasiness, though I know there’s no point considering what we’re about to do.

  “I don’t like how he knew that about us,” Dex eventually says.

  “Me neither. But I guess it’s easy to find on the internet.”

  “No,” he says, slowly shaking his head. “I don’t think it’s something he read on the internet about us. I think he just…knew. The real question is, what else does that fucker know about us?” He rubs his lips together for a moment before he glances at me, frowning. “Are you okay?”

  I lift a shoulder. “A little cold and wet and spooked.”

  “I won’t blame you for having second thoughts.”

  I glance at the door, the way it seems to hum for me, promising things I can’t quite put my finger on. “Are you hearing any of those voices in your head?” I ask him.

  “Not yet. You?”

  “No. But this house has some wild, dark energy. Don’t you feel that pull?”

  “Yep. All the more reason to never open up anything inside there, no veils, no portals, nothing,” he says. He starts to unzip his camera from the bag. “We just go inside and film and try to communicate with her…for fuck’s sake, we don’t even know her name.”

  Samantha Poe.

  The name just pops into my head, whispered very quietly.

  “Samantha Poe,” I tell him.

  His eyes go to mine, bewildered. “How did you know that?”

  “I don’t know. I just…heard it. In my head.”

  “A woman’s voice?”

  “I’m not sure…” The more I try to think about the sound of the voice, the more I can’t hear it at all. Maybe I never did hear it.

  “I might be wrong.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re not.” He nods at my purse. “You should bring out the EVP, just in case that thing hears things more than we do. And the flashlight. And the EMF meter as well.”

  “I only have so many hands,” I say, rummaging through my purse.

  Dex doesn’t say anything to that so once I’ve got the EVP in my hands, I look at him. He’s staring at me with the goofiest smile on his face, his expression catching me off-guard.

  “What?” I ask. I can’t help but smile right back.

  “You,” he says, bringing the camera up to his face, taking off the lens cap before looking through it at me. “There you are.”

  I look away, feeling put on the spot, especially as the camera focuses on my face. “This is crazy, isn’t it?”

  “That we’re right back where we started?” He peers at me over the camera, meeting my eyes.

  “In a way, yeah. I just never thought we’d be doing this again.”

  His mouth curls as he squints at me. “Did you really think that?”

  I suck on my lower lip for a moment. The truth is, even if it was something I didn’t actively think about, I think my subconscious, some deep part of me, knew I would return to this in some shape or form. “I guess not.”

  He grins, his tongue briefly poking through his teeth. “I guess the difference is, now I can touch you all I want.”

  My brow raises. “Oh, you can, can you?”

  “Perks of being your husband,” he says, stepping closer. He lowers the camera and grabs my free hand, pressing it against the fly of his black jeans so that I feel the thick, hard length of his erection.

  “Good lord, Dex,” I say, glancing up at him. I give him a squeeze, just to see his eyes roll back in his head, hear the sharp intake of his breath. “Completely inappropriate, as always.”

  He leans in, nose brushing against my ear. “You can’t tell me that you’re not turned on as fuck,” he murmurs.

  I wasn’t, actually, until now. But even so.

  I give him a stern look. “Dex. No.”

  He just gives me a lazy grin, the heat in his eyes flaring up, causing my body to do the same.

  But I’m not crazy. “We’re not fucking in a haunted house, okay?”

  His expression doesn’t change. If anything, I feel him grow harder against my hand. “This hasn’t been on your bucket list?” he asks, his voice going low, husky, the kind of voice that gives you goosebumps. “Because it’s sure as hell has been on mine.”

  “I wasn’t even aware you had a sexual bucket list,” I tell him, giving him another squeeze. “But of course you do.”

  His eyes flutter closed, mouth falling open. “You know, you’re looking at me like I’m crazy yet you’re the one who keeps touching me.”

  He’s right. But even though my body seems to want to check off his bucket list right now, the rest of me knows we have a job to do.

  I take my hand away and place it at his chest. “Fair enough. Besides, you know we’ve already had sex in a haunted school. Doesn’t that count?”

  He practically growls with disappointment. I have to admit, it gives me a lot of pleasure knowing how much I turn him on, even when I don’t mean to (and especially when I do).

  “It’s not the same,” he says gruffly as I push past him toward the door. “And, if I remember correctly, you came three fucking times, and that was after you said I was crazy for wanting to have sex with you there. See, nothing bad happened.”

  I pause and give him a wry look over my shoulder. “We almost died.”

  He adjusts his dick in his pants and walks over to me, full of swagger. “Kiddo, when don’t we almost die?”

  His tone is light and his eyes are dancing in that half-manic, half-carnal way, yet his words hit deep. Last night’s dream, combined with the real-life memory, flashes before my eyes. The time that “almost” became absolute.

  Dex obviously picks that up from me because his expression quickly softens and he leans in to place a gentle kiss on my cheek, his lips warm. “Come on. We have a job to do. I promise I’ll keep it in my pants for now. All bets are off when we get home, though.”

  He puts his hand on the doorknob and waits for me to join him at his side. “You ready, baby?”

  I nod, quickly eager to get inside before I have another chance to think about it and change my mind.

  He turns the handle and the door opens wide. It looks more like it’s pulling away from Dex’s hand and opening on its own.

  Showcasing the fathomless black inside.

  Five

  Dex is first to step inside the house, but I’m not far behind him.

  I try to keep the door open, making sure it doesn’t close on us while we’re trying to get the place lit. Dex quickly turns the camera light on, illuminating a path straight to the back wall, where it glints against the broken glass of a china hutch.

  I clutch the flashlight in my hand, the beam of light strong and steady, then press record on the EVP, sticking it in my back pocket. I think about taking out the EMF meter, which reads electronic frequencies, but honestly we’ve never needed a lot of help in that department. We’re not exactly ghost hunters anymore, and to be honest, I don’t think we ever were. After all, the ghosts were hunting us.

  A cold shiver crawls down my back and I grip the flashlight tighter.

  Why am I doing this again?

  “You can close the door now,” Dex says, gesturing over his shoulder.

  I really don’t want to. I feel like the door is our only connection to the real world, like everything in this house exists somewhere else.

  But I do it anyway.

  At least I take my body weight off of it, and the door then basically pushes me out of the way, slamming shut, making both of us jump.

  Yup. Totally normal.

  “You okay?”


  “Yes.” I close my eyes for a moment, willing my heart to calm the fuck down. I’ve literally taken two steps inside and I’m already shaking.

  When I open them, my eyes are more adjusted to the light.

  “I hate to say it, but this place is pretty fucking cool,” Dex says, shining the camera light around. I do the same, my flashlight following his.

  The house looks the same as it did two weeks ago, an old eclectic mess of rooms and architectural style. There are beams on the ceilings, red wallpaper gilded with gold lions, wood floors, thick faded crimson rugs. The front entry area is less of a room and more of a long hallway that continues on into the darkness.

  That’s where we went last time, stopping just before the dining room. We never went in there, even though Atlas said that’s where he last saw his mother. Probably because it’s where Dex saw a random ghost woman, who Atlas said was bad news.

  “What do you think?” Dex asks, turning the camera on me.

  I wince at the light, shielding my face with my hand. “We’re doing this already?”

  He lowers the camera, and I catch a sheepish look on his brow. “Sorry. I guess we should probably talk about the plan first.”

  “We probably should have talked about the plan outside,” I say, supressing another shiver as I continue to shine the light around. At least that horrible magnetic pull I was feeling toward the house earlier has dissipated. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m with Dex, or because we’re actually in the house now.

  It has us where it wants us.

  I try not to dwell on that.

  “Well, here’s my idea,” he says, eyes glittering in the faint light. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this over the last two weeks. Actually, if I’m being honest, I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. You know how I wanted to do a documentary on haunted places? Well, I’m switching gears. We do the Warrens thing. We become paranormal investigators, but we film it. We already have a production company, we just shift Haunted Media’s focus onto us. That’s the documentary now. The reality show. Whatever it ends up being. Then we sell it to Netflix.”

  I can’t help but be impressed by his ambition. “Netflix? That’s a lofty goal.”

  “It’s an attainable goal. There’s nothing stopping us. There are ghost-hunting shows left and right and they’re all the same. Ghost hunting is a huge business now. But paranormal investigators? Real ones? That’s new. Done properly, with the right budget, the right equipment. Baby, you know we can do this.”

  I continue to shine my light around, having a hard time coming to terms with what Dex is saying. I mean, I get it, and I’ve obviously thought about it in some ways, and even Atlas mentioned something about my “purpose” the last time I was here.

  But standing in this house isn’t the best place for this discussion.

  “I have no doubt you can do this…” I tell him.

  “That we can do this.”

  “Right. But for now let’s just…see how tonight goes before we start making grand plans. We don’t even know if we can communicate with the dead in a professional manner.”

  He sighs and runs his hand over his beard. “There you go being the voice of reason. But you know I’m right, too. That this makes sense. And anyway, we still need a plan for right now. Tonight. In this house.”

  “Atlas was leading us down there last time,” I say, gesturing to the darkness at the end of the hall. “Where you saw the ghost. He seemed to think that was the best place.”

  “Yeah,” he says carefully. “Think I lost my balls down there though.” He lifts the camera up onto his shoulder. “Though seriously, fuck that guy. He wasn’t leading us anywhere. He was leading us away from something.”

  “From what?”

  “The third floor. The bathroom. Door was conveniently locked, wasn’t it? Didn’t have a key? Happened to also have a trail of bloody water leaking out of it? Not a fucking coincidence.”

  “Then up we go,” I say, my voice going quiet. For some reason I’d rather take my chances in the dining room at the end, but Dex is probably right. Atlas didn’t seem surprised by the blood, which makes me think he wanted us to avoid it.

  He turns, and we walk over to the wooden staircase, heading up. Our footfalls are soft despite the hard floors, like the house is devoid of an echo, as if sound doesn’t spread. For a moment I almost have a panic attack thinking there’s no air in here, but of course there is.

  Then again, if this house really is the closest place to the Veil…

  “I also think they’re full of shit,” Dex says, as if he’s been talking this whole time. Maybe he has.

  “Who?” I say as we round the second floor and head up to the third. “Atlas and Harry?”

  “Yeah. Or maybe just Atlas. I don’t know. But they’re lying to us, kiddo.”

  “About what?”

  “About everything. I don’t know.”

  “And yet we’re here.”

  “Fair is fair.” We both stop once we reach the third floor. “And obviously there’s something going on here. Look. The bathroom.”

  He aims the camera light down the hall and I quickly shine my flashlight on the bathroom door. Like before, a trail of bloody water is slowly leaking out from underneath.

  Almost as if it was waiting for us.

  It probably is.

  “So now what?” I ask, keeping my voice low.

  “Take out the EMF meter,” he says, keeping the camera focused on the blood.

  “For what? Proof? There’s blood. That’s proof.”

  “Just do it.”

  I grumble, fishing it out and flicking it on. The meter beeps, immediately shooting up to level four, going orange. Even though I figured it would go off, it still gives me the creeps. I quickly turn the volume down, since the beeping isn’t going anywhere.

  Dex turns the camera on me now as I hold the meter.

  “So what do you want to do?” he asks. A beat passes, darkness coming over his eyes. “Someone is inside the bathroom.”

  Motherfucking chills run through me.

  I try to shake it off, knowing I’m being filmed. “We don’t have to go in there,” I tell him.

  “But his mother might be in there.”

  “How did she die again?”

  “Harry said she drowned.”

  I look down at the bloody water. “Uh huh.” I look at the door. Part of me wants to open it, wants to go inside, but that feeling comes from a black place inside me, that sense of being compelled. I’m not sure I trust it. “Maybe we should save that for last.”

  “For last?”

  “We can always communicate with her right here. There’s blood. We’re at level four. She can hear us.” I pause. “She’s watching us.”

  Or maybe a lot of them are watching us. We were standing right here last time when the lights went on for a second, showcasing a range of dead people in the house with us. Were they there just because it was Samhain? Or are they here all the time?

  More chills. My nerves already feel shot.

  “Okay,” Dex says, adjusting his camera on the door. “How do you want to do this? Want to say something?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah you,” he says. “You’re the ghost whisperer.”

  “Why am I the ghost whisperer?”

  “You have the boobs,” he says, referencing Jennifer Love Hewitt. “And ghosts don’t like talking to me. They know I’m an asshole.”

  He’s right, but still…I have no idea what I’m doing. Which is kind of funny, considering all the encounters we’ve had, but we’ve never purposely tried to draw something out. Things always just…happened. In fact, I think if we just stand here long enough, she’ll probably show herself.

  But I guess this isn’t EIT. If we’re supposed to be paranormal investigators, we have to put in the effort now. It gives me just the faintest bit of respite to know that in this version, we’re the ones controlling this thing.

  “Okay,” I say, taki
ng in a deep breath. “Here goes nothing.” I clear my throat. “Samantha Poe? Can you hear us?”

  The EMF meter keeps beeping at a steady rate, holding orange. God help us when and if it goes to red.

  I glance at Dex, who is both watching me intently and listening.

  I don’t hear anything.

  “Maybe I should turn this off completely,” I tell him, and just as I say that, the meter swings down to zero, green.

  I gulp. “Did you do that, Samantha? Did you turn that off?”

  The meter goes to orange in a flash, then disappears again, the sound spiking through me, my heartbeats skipping.

  Jesus.

  “Looks like we have contact,” Dex says quietly. “Makes we wonder if we should have invested in one of those spirit boxes.”

  “We never needed one before,” I tell him. But if I’m only communicating with Samantha through energy frequencies, I’m not sure how far this will take us.

  “Ask her if she’ll show herself to us,” Dex whispers to me.

  “What? No.” I don’t want her appearing to us if she doesn’t want to. Actually, I’d rather her stay where she is.

  “Then ask her if she wants to talk.”

  “You ask her,” I whisper back. “She can hear the both of us.”

  Dex holds my gaze. I can hear him think, just do it.

  Bossy.

  I take in another deep breath and close my eyes, trying to channel my energy through the door. “Samantha, do you want to talk to us?”

  The EMF remains low. Both Dex and I listen hard as I absently watch the dust motes dance in front of the beams of light, the black of the rest of the house seeming darker than ever.

  Then Dex frowns, raises a finger at me, and leans in close to the door, as if he can hear something faint on the other side, something I can’t hear.

  He blinks and then turns his head to look at me and—

  KNOCK KNOCK.

  The door rattles on its hinges.

  Both Dex and I scream in unison, jumping back from the door. I immediately duck behind him, hands gripping his jacket, peering over his side at the door that has gone silent.