Came Back Haunted: An Experiment in Terror Novel #10

by Halle, Karina

  I nod. “I will.”

  I quickly leave the locker room, my cheeks burning as I go through the reception area, people staring at me, wondering what happened.

  I’ve never walked home so fast. The fear has me so shaken that there’s nowhere for it to go and I’m barely holding myself together.

  When I get to our building, I go up the stairs instead of the elevator, unable to handle the idea of standing still for too long.

  Then I open the door to the apartment.

  Fat Rabbit’s head pops up over the couch and he gives a bark at me.

  “Dex?” I ask, praying he’s not still mad at me, not now. But I don’t hear him. I’m alone.

  I go over to Fat Rabbit, scooping him up into my arms and holding him close, scared to death, hoping he’ll calm me down. He licks my face with his stinky dog breath and I swear my blood pressure lowers.

  Then the front door swings open.

  Fat Rabbit jumps out of my arms and onto the couch just as Dex bursts inside.

  “Perry!” he yells at me, running over, looking crazed.

  He grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me into him, holding me tight. I’m shocked only for a moment, then I sink into his chest, my hands going around his back, nails digging into his t-shirt. “What happened? I was just looking for you,” Dex asks.

  “How did you know?” I say softly, trying to fight back tears. If holding Fat Rabbit lowered my blood pressure, being held by Dex is like a double dose of Xanax.

  I’m safe.

  I’m safe.

  “I heard you,” he says, breathing hard. He must have been running. He puts his hand at the back of my head and presses my face against him. “I heard you yell, somebody help me. I heard it in my head. Fuck, I’d never been so terrified before. I thought I lost you. I ran to the gym but they said you’d left. We must have just missed each other.”

  He pulls back, holding me by the shoulders again, his grip vise-like. Manic, anguished eyes rapidly search mine. “I thought…I thought I wouldn’t see you again. I had this terrible fucking thought that you were gone. And that I never got a chance to...that the last thing I did was treat you like shit and…”

  “It’s okay,” I tell him adamantly. “I’m okay. And I’m sorry.”

  “No,” he says, voice getting gravelly. “No. I’m sorry. I know why you didn’t tell me. I know I can get overprotective of you. I know you thought I’d change my mind about the baby. I know all these things. I should have talked to you—instead I didn’t know how to process it…”

  “I should have told you everything that was happening.”

  He closes his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose. “I was hurt that you didn’t trust me. That’s all. But that was no excuse. Baby, I love you so much.” He puts his hand on my cheeks. “I love you. Forgive me.”

  “I love you,” I whisper. “There’s nothing to forgive. It was just a fight. We do that from time to time, you know.”

  He kisses me softly, then pulls me into a hug again, wrapping his arms around me. “What happened? The woman at the gym said she heard you had a panic attack?”

  I’m almost too scared to say anything, as if talking about it, thinking about it, would invite Samantha into our home. But I won’t hide anything anymore, not from him. “I was in the shower after class. Someone got into the shower next to me. There was all this blood coming over and…I saw her feet. I saw her arm as she climbed over the stall. It was her, Dex. It was Samantha.”

  “Shit.” He holds me tighter.

  “Yeah. I tried to escape, but I couldn’t get out. I heard her behind me. Thank god a woman came in and got me out. Of course there was no blood, and no dead witch. I had to lie, tell her it was a panic attack. She wouldn’t have believed me.”

  It feels like he’s trying to crush my ribs now. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

  Normally I would point out that this overprotectiveness is what I was trying to avoid, but I don’t argue with him. I don’t want to be alone ever again, to be honest.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper, managing to look up at him.

  He stares down at me, a million different emotions passing through the depths of his eyes, the line between his brows deepening.

  “I hate it when we fight,” he says in a low, rough voice, hands sliding into my hair. “It kills me. I would have never been able to forgive myself if…if it ended like it did.”

  “But it didn’t. I’m okay.”

  “Doesn’t matter, baby. I…I can’t lose you. I won’t. You’re more than my other half, you’re in my blood and in my fucking bones. To lose you is to lose my very soul. To lose you is death.”

  I feel my heart crumbling into tender little pieces, rendered weak by his words.

  When I feel strength again, I manage to give him a faint smile. “Don’t be so—”

  Dramatic.

  But my words are cut off by his mouth on mine. The kiss is sweet and sad and desperate, making my heart expand in my chest. My toes curl in my shoes, my fingers dig into his shoulders. There is safety and solace in the wet slide of his tongue, the hungry fever that spreads from his lips to mine. This kiss is the doorway to becoming whole again, to healing all wounds.

  We stumble backward to the couch, moving fast and slow all at once. Like we have all the time in the world, yet there’s an urgency running through us both, that need to come together, to make things right between us again.

  We’ve always been very good at making up.

  Our clothes are discarded as we go, and thankfully Fat Rabbit gets the hint and jumps off the couch, disappearing into the den.

  I press my hands on Dex’s shoulders and push him down onto the couch so that he’s sitting, and I straddle him, my knees on either side of his thighs, the front of me rubbing against his shaft.

  He lets out a low moan, one hand going to the back of my neck, the other to my breast where he feels the weight of it in his palm, his breath hitching. His head dips forward, licking over my nipple, teasing it until the fire in my core is building with pressure. He licks me like I’m something to be treasured, cherished, my nipple turning pebble hard under his tongue, nerves sparking like a live wire.

  I gasp, leaning forward, reaching down to take a firm hold of his cock, his skin hot and hard and soft all at once. I feel his desire pumping against my hand, growing larger by the second, the heat pressed against my palm.

  I should take my time with him, luxuriate in this, in the both of us coming together again, erasing the fight and hurt and anger, but I can’t. I need to be completely removed from what just happened, need all my thoughts and wants and feelings to whittle down to just him, just us.

  Slowly, I tighten my fist around his girth and move him into position, and gradually lower myself down until he’s pushing his cock up into me, trying to take control.

  He hisses out a breath, his face rising to meet mine in another hot, wet kiss that feels like forgiveness and hope, and I expand around him until he’s inside me to the hilt and I’m breathless again.

  God, this is so, so good.

  “Perry,” he whispers to me, hands on my face, in my hair, hands trailing down my back, to my waist where he spreads his palms wide, bracketing me.

  He doesn’t say anything else, just offers up my name like a prayer and I close my eyes, moving my hips back and forth, up and down, trying to control as much as I can. Every single moment is pure exquisite bliss, the silky slide of his body inside mine, the purity of our connection.

  Eventually he can’t handle it. He rarely can when I’m in charge. His grip around my waist turns bruising, and he starts to lift me up and down on his cock, faster, deeper enough that I have to dig my fingers into the back of the couch to stay remotely in control.

  “I don’t know how but I keep falling in love with you,” he says, emotion and desire rippling through his voice. His tempo slows momentarily as he brushes my hair off my face, continuing to rock his hips up into me, continuing to make
every part of my body feel alive. “I can’t stop it.”

  He kisses me, just getting my bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth for a wet moment. Then he breaks away, taking in a deep, shaking breath and resting his forehead against mine. “I don’t think it’s normal to need someone this much.”

  I’m about to tell him I know how he feels. That I feel the same, how I can be married to him and yet have these feelings be so intense and deep and permanent that it still scares me. But he tightens his grip at my waist and lifts me up instead.

  “Get on your knees so I can take you from behind,” he says gruffly.

  And just like that, he goes from sweet to crude, and I’m being flipped over by his strong arms so that my ass is to him, my breasts pressed against the back of the couch. He shoves a knee between my thighs, parting them roughly, and then wedges himself inside me. He’s so hard where I’m so soft, and the change in positions has me wild, like I’m feeling him deeper than he’s ever been before, like we can’t ever be parted.

  He shudders a breath in my ear, kissing the back of my neck, his hips moving in tight, controlled circles that has his body straining behind me, trying his hardest to hold back, to keep the pace from getting punishing. I love him at this stage, when all he wants to do is come, when he’s fighting the urge to rush through it, to succumb to the intoxication of it all.

  He’s in a fucking battle.

  Another controlled pass of his hips, and then one hand is sliding between my legs, the other squeezing between my breast and the couch. I try to move back a bit, but he’s right there, all of him, this hot, chaotic energy that wants to undo me.

  He starts fucking me harder, the couch moving in inches across the floor. Each hard shove makes my mouth drop open, my eyes rolling back in my head, breathy little cries rising from my throat.

  He whispers hoarsely to me, pressing kisses on my neck, my shoulders.

  He tells me how good I feel.

  How much he loves me.

  How badly he wants me to come.

  That I’m a good girl.

  That he can never be without me.

  His finger slides across my clit again and again, and I know that I can’t hold back. I gasp as the orgasm rocks through me and then builds, builds, higher and higher, until I don’t know where it ends or if I can come back down. My cries get louder, more incoherent, and if I went off like a bomb, then the real explosion was lying in wait.

  I am obliterated.

  So is he.

  “Fuck!” he yells in a choked cry, pumping in as deep as he can go, holding me so tight to him that we’re fused. He’s shaking as he comes, and the way he keeps saying my name, that prayer again, brings tears to my eyes, all the emotions of the last twenty-four hours flooding through me.

  He falls forward, his damp chest pressed against my back, his face buried into my neck, breathing hard.

  We stay like that for a few moments and it grows so quiet that I can hear the fridge kick on, mixing with the sound of our breathing. In all that we’ve gone through, we’ll always come back together like this. Like there are magnets in our hearts.

  “That’s my girl,” Dex whispers into my hair, words shaking. “That’s my girl.”

  A single tear rolls down my cheek, and I quickly wipe it away with the heel of my palm. I don’t always get so emotional during sex, and for some reason it embarrasses me today. I’m a wreck.

  He pulls out, and I hate that empty feeling I get afterward, even though I feel so much more whole now than before.

  “You okay?” he whispers, placing a kiss on my shoulder before getting to his feet.

  I nod, closing my eyes, turning my head to give him a small smile.

  The exhaustion suddenly hits me, and it takes all my effort to actually face him, collapsing onto the couch.

  He pulls on his briefs, smiling at me with that blissfully sated look in his eyes that tells me everything between us is back to normal just as his phone rings from his jacket on the floor.

  “Might be Atlas,” he says, pulling it out of his pocket. He peers at the number and shrugs. “Hello?” he answers.

  I gather my scattered clothes, about to take them to the laundry basket in the bedroom, but I pause when I notice that Dex is silent, looking absolutely dumbfounded.

  “How?” he asks breathlessly into the phone. I watch as his expression gets more confused, more fearful. An icy river trails down my back.

  “Okay, thank you,” he says. “I’m sorry.” That comes out in a whisper.

  He hangs up the phone and looks at me, blinking for a few seconds.

  “What is it?” I ask him.

  His mouth opens and then closes again. “Harry is dead.”

  Fourteen

  I stare at Dex, trying to process what he just said.

  “Harry is dead?” I repeat. “What do you mean he’s dead?”

  He swallows and sits back down on the couch, elbows on his knees. “I mean, he’s dead. That was his accounting firm. I’d left a message with them when I couldn’t get a hold of him or Atlas. They told me he was found yesterday on the shore of Seward Park in Lake Washington. They’re doing an autopsy right now but they’re calling it an accidental drowning.”

  My hand goes to my chest. “Oh my god.”

  It’s then that I realize I’m still naked. I’m tired of being horrified and naked at the same time.

  “Hold on,” I tell him, hurrying into the bedroom to throw my gym clothes in the laundry basket. I quickly get dressed into a long thermal shirt and leggings, pulling my wet hair back into a bun. I rush back out to see Dex zipping up his jeans, subtly shaking his head.

  “This can’t be a coincidence,” he says in a grave voice.

  “Maybe he…maybe he tried to kill himself.”

  “Then he didn’t try. He succeeded.” He pulls on his shirt, messing up his hair. “Why would Atlas let us go to the house?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know his stepfather was dead? They didn’t seem close from the way he talked about him. And Harry never even mentioned Atlas at all.”

  “I knew there was something off about the both of them.”

  “We both figured that. I mean, he paid us all that money for pretty much nothing…” I trail off, realizing something. “Oh my god. They’re going to think we’re suspects now!”

  Dex frowns. “What are you talking about?”

  “They’ll see Harry wrote us a giant check. They’ll wonder why he paid us that huge amount and then died like three weeks later.”

  “From what his company told me, it didn’t seem suspicious.”

  “Yeah right! Why do an autopsy then?”

  “Covering their bases?” he says with an unsure raise of his brows.

  “Well fuck. I don’t know. What if the police contact us?”

  “So then they do. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “We’ve been in his house.”

  “His abandoned house and with his permission.”

  “We need to get a hold of Atlas.” The apartment seems cold suddenly, and I rub my hands up and down my arms. As if I wasn’t already anxious enough, this is just throwing more shit on the fan.

  “I’ll try again,” he says, picking his phone up off the coffee table. “I’ve literally been calling and texting him all morning. Of course, I looked him up on Facebook, Instagram, all the usual suspects. There’s nothing. Nothing but a phone number. I’m starting to wonder if…”

  “Wonder what?” I ask uneasily.

  “Is he even alive?”

  “Atlas?”

  “Yeah. What if he’s not? What if he’s a ghost?”

  I try and think back to all our encounters. We’ve only seen him at the house, nowhere else. Never seen him get in a car or an Uber. Never seen him beyond the property. He just always sort of…appears. Beyond cryptic and creepy too.

  “He could be,” I say. “But…it doesn’t make sense. If he’s dead, what does he need us for?”

  “To open the Veil to get
his mother out. Look at the ginger bastard. He can only do so much.”

  “But Atlas has a phone. What ghost has a cell phone?”

  Dex shrugs. “I don’t fucking know. The millennial ones? What I do know is we need to talk to him and we’re not going back in that house until we do.”

  “Dex, come on. We can’t do that to our friend.” Then again, with Dex so mad at me up until now, we’ve never really had a chance to discuss Maximus together. I mean, wow, there’s a lot to unpack right there.

  He gives me a slight nod. “You’re right. But we still have to talk to Atlas first. I have to know who his mother is.”

  “Well, if you can’t find anything about Atlas online, maybe you can find something on Samantha?” I point out.

  He agrees, walking past me into the den. I follow, taking a seat beside a napping Fat Rabbit on the twin bed while Dex pulls up Google on the computer.

  We find an old Facebook profile belonging to her, but it’s private and locked down. Her profile picture is one of a casket though, which is jarring. I’m assuming that after she died, either Harry or Atlas took over the account and that was their way of letting people know she was dead? Either way, creepy.

  Then I remember what Maximus said about her being a witch. I get Dex to type in “Samantha Poe witch” figuring it’s a long shot, but lo and behold some public Instagram page for Washington State Wiccas comes up. Apparently about ten years ago Samantha Poe was part of leading an intensive three-day program in the Olympic Peninsula about elemental witchcraft.

  “That could be something,” I say.

  “Could be. Could be there are a million witches named Samantha Poe. I mean, come on. If you were a witch, wouldn’t you pick that name?”

  “Are witches even real though?”

  “Are ghosts real? Sasquatch? Zombies? Come on, kiddo, you know better than that.”

  You’d think I would.

  “So now what?” I say.

  “We just have to keep trying Atlas.”

  “Well, when is Harry’s funeral? Why don’t we keep an eye on the obituary columns and see when it is? Then we can show up, see if we spot Atlas.”

  “Providing he’s not a ghost.”