Blake Byron
Paranormal Investigator
Andrew Beymer
Contents
1. House Party
2. House Horror
3. Night Shift
4. Duty Calls
5. First Responder
6. Bump in the Night
7. Bumping Back
8. Vampire Killer
9. Official Investigation
10. The Chief
11. Intel Pukes
12. Debriefing
13. Homecoming
14. Deadly White Lies
15. The Station
16. Bad Call
17. Punishment
18. Home Invaders
19. Experiments
20. Chewed Out
21. Government Intervention
22. Evening After
23. The Hunt
24. House Party
25. Weapons Test
26. Jailbreak
27. Questions
28. The Factory
29. Local PD
30. Execution
31. Escape
32. Intel
33. Lurking
34. Back to The Factory
35. Dastardly Plan
36. Explosive
37. Blessed Are the Badass
38. In Custody
39. Back at the Job
40. Not-So-Surprising Reveal
41. Dawn
42. Blake Byron: Paranormal Investigator
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1
House Party
Stephanie stepped out of the house, the music thumping and rolling off of her through the still open door. Like most college kids she wasn’t all that concerned about progressive hearing loss so she didn’t mind that the guys running the house party had set the volume on their music to somewhere just below the decibel count of a 747 taking off.
Not that it would matter for Stephanie. She’d only be using her hearing for another half hour or so. Not nearly enough time for progressive hearing loss to work its dark magic on her.
She tried looking at her surroundings and the world obliged her by happily spinning all around her. The world might be happy about the spinning, but Stephanie wasn’t all that excited.
All in all not the greatest thing considering her stomach was already doing flips and begging to give the whole puking thing a try. See how things felt afterwards.
She leaned against the porch and prayed it wouldn't break under her weight. Paint flaked off, and like everything else on this part of campus it looked like it had enjoyed the bare minimum of upkeep in the years since students ran the last families out of what had since become a student ghetto.
In the meantime those students had done their level best to destroy everything in this part of town with long suffering landlords coming out every summer to spend long hours in the hot sun wondering if it was all really worth it as they made repairs in a never ending Sisyphean struggle.
Stephanie let the world spin around her for a few more minutes, best to be sure of her unsure footing after all, before risking a trip down the stairs.
Those old stone stairs were dangerous considering the heels she wore. They were the sort of heels that would make a girl working at the Joker’s Wild on the other side of town stop and stare with envy.
The alcohol swimming through her system merely added an extra layer of potentially neck breaking danger to the already dangerous situation caused by her gravity defying stripper heels.
Stephanie didn’t even realize she’d had all that much. She thought back to the talk they gave all the incoming freshman girls during orientation over the summer. Telling them to always keep an eye on their drinks and never accept anything that wasn't factory sealed.
Only she had been careful. She’d kept an eye on her drink the whole night. She couldn't understand why she suddenly felt so woozy after a couple beers.
Stephanie might not be the greatest about keeping up with her studies, but she’d been very diligent and scientific about figuring out her exact limits when it came to alcohol tolerance. She'd thrown herself into the physical trials for that with a reckless abandon and diligence she’d never shown with her book learning.
What she’d never counted on was that her ability to count suffered a catastrophic failure around about the third drink of the evening which left her with one hell of an unreliable and statistically questionable data set when it came to her personal alcohol tolerance.
The farther she got from the house the clearer her thoughts got. It was odd. Like being near that creepy guy was enough to make her head go all fuzzy.
She was starting to understand all those warnings from her youth pastor over the summer. Temptations of the flesh. Hellfire and damnation. The end of the world. Blah blah blah.
At the time she figured he was pissed off he didn’t get invited to that sort of party when he was in college, the dude went to one of those boring Christian colleges where the thought of a boy and girl holding hands was scandalous, but now she was starting to wish she'd listened a little better. Hadn’t blown off those warnings and thought she’d make her own damn decisions thank you very much.
Yeah, those warnings didn’t seem nearly so silly now as she walked through the dark student neighborhood.
Her heels clicked on the sidewalk. A sidewalk that was even more treacherous now than in the daytime. The city didn't give a damn about the sidewalks in student neighborhoods and random bits of concrete stuck up at odd angles that were dangerous enough in broad daylight.
At night in heels when she was more than a little tipsy? Stephanie figured she’d be lucky to make it home without breaking her neck.
Drunken students shambled through the darkness around her, moaning occasionally in the misty shadows making her feel like she was walking through a zombie movie. Though of course they were only drunks, not zombies. Zombies weren't real.
Monsters weren’t real.
Stephanie shivered. Now where the hell had that thought came from? Without really thinking about it she looked over her shoulder. And stopped in her tracks.
Partly she stopped in her tracks because one of her heels hit a crack in the sidewalk and she would’ve gone down if she took another step. But the main reason she stopped was the shadowy figure standing well behind her bathed in a glowing mist.
Monsters weren't real. They didn’t stand in the middle of the street surrounded by mist that made it look like they were being backlit by a spotlight or something.
It had to be her drunk eyes. She was seeing things. Only when she blinked the figure was still there.
Stephanie shivered. She didn't know who that figure was, and she didn't like the strange certain feeling she had that it was the creeper she met at the party. The creeper who wouldn't take no for an answer. The guy who seemed like the type of fedora-wearing idiot who got all his dating advice from Internet forums where other guys who couldn’t get dates traded terrible tips.
The guy who seemed to make her feel more and more lightheaded the longer she stayed near him.
She got a chill thinking about his gaze. And not a good chill. No, that was the sort of chill the ancient primates who would eventually become humans got when they got the feeling there was a predator with sharp claws and pointy teeth stalking them through the tall grass.
Needless to say it was a feeling Stephanie wasn't used to considering her ancestors hadn’t had to worry about that sort of thing for twenty to forty thousand years depending on what anthropologist you talked to.
Only the feeling was there now, it was very real, and she suddenly had the overwhelming feeling that she needed to get the hell out
of Dodge.
Stephanie yelped as she miraculously yanked herself free without twisting her ankle or breaking the heel, turned, and clicked down the sidewalk as fast as her heels would take her. She thought about pulling out her phone and turning on the flashlight then thought better of it.
She didn't want to advertise where she was to any creepers. Assuming that was the creeper and not just some random student going for a mist-shrouded walk that didn’t involve much actual walking.
Monsters weren't real.
Stephanie cursed herself for thinking it. The brain fog that faded when she left that house was back. Getting away from the party, getting away from him, had been enough to lift the veil of confusion that had passed over her mind.
That she was feeling it again told her more than anything that the shadow in the mist was the creeper, and she knew that brain fog move definitely wasn’t something he picked up in some class about pulling chicks by negging them.
She turned a corner and sighed with relief as she saw her house ahead. It was completely dark, her roommate was obviously over at her boyfriend’s getting her brains fucked out, but that didn't matter.
Safety. That's what mattered.
Once she got into her house she’d be safe. She’d lock all the doors and no one would be able to get her. She even had that pistol her dad insisted on giving her when she moved out on her own. He’d said she might need it someday.
Basically your typical overprotective father routine taken to extremes by a man born and raised in rural America who thought the second amendment was the only one that ever really mattered whether he was holding court on fighting nazis, showing liberals who runs this country, or the best method for protecting his daughter’s virtue once she went off to college.
The poor man would’ve had to go on a veritable campus massacre at this point to defend his daughter’s virtue considering all the fun she’d had since arriving, but like all parents who sent their kids off to college he was being kept on a strict “need to know” basis concerning what Stephanie did for fun.
She’d thought he was being ridiculous giving her that gun, she’d gone on about how guns were more likely to hurt the owner than anyone who might harm the owner, statistically speaking, which nearly made her dad have a heart attack to hear him talk about it, but in the end she’d relented and took the damn thing to get him to shut up.
She was really glad her dad had insisted now, though. That pistol might mean the difference between living and dying.
She frowned as she moved as fast as her heels would carry her. The difference between living and dying? Now why would she think something crazy like that?
She told herself she wasn't in any danger. That she was overreacting. Freaking out.
She was on a nice quiet campus where bad things didn't happen. At least nothing ever made the news so she figured it was safe enough.
Poor Stephanie was about to find out just how wrong she was, but by the time she realized how wrong she was it would be far too late.
2
House Horror
Stephanie stumbled past an abandoned house, oblivious to the doom she was clicking towards with each step.
The creepy old house was one of several rentals that stood abandoned thanks to giant apartment complexes going up around the edges of campus enticing students away with promises of a dorm experience but with amenities not to be found in the dorms like air conditioning, single rooms that were bigger than what one might find down at the local state correctional facility, and most importantly management who looked the other way when it came to partying and underage drinking instead of RAs with sticks perpetually up their asses preventing anyone from having a good time.
She'd wanted to have the full college experience though, and that meant living in a run down old house off campus just like her mom did back in the day.
Sure it had taken a little bit of lying to the university. Her parents told them she’d be commuting from home to get her into off campus housing as a freshman, but she figured what the university didn't know wasn't going to hurt them.
Convincing her dad had been surprisingly easy. All she had to do was print out a Fox News article about how campus dorms were the new front line in the war against truth, justice, and the American way.
Never mind that they were always coming up with a new front line in the war against truth, justice, and the American way as far as she could tell. What mattered was it worked like a charm on dear old dad and now she had a house just like she’d always wanted.
Only now she was wondering if her choice of housing was going to hurt her.
She paused. Thought she heard something rustling beside the abandoned house. Against her better judgment she peered into the darkness.
She stared long and hard, feeling some of that strange sensation she’d felt when that guy was talking to her. She almost thought she could see something moving in the darkness, and that more than anything brought her back to her senses.
That ancient monkey brain, forged over tens of thousands of years of surviving things with claws and teeth long enough to fuck and reproduce offspring that were good enough to survive things with teeth and claws long enough to fuck, was asserting itself in a major way.
If she were a monkey she’d probably be screaming and baring her teeth and maybe even flinging around some of the Taco Bell she really shouldn’t have eaten before going out for a night of drinking, but she wasn’t. She was a drunk college girl who couldn’t think straight through the booze haze clouding her thoughts so she stood there stupidly for a moment looking at the darkness like it was a particularly interesting puzzle.
The monkey brain screamed again. She shook her head and did something smart for the first time that night. Not that it was going to do her a damned bit of good.
"What the hell are you doing Stephanie?" she muttered. “This is how people die in horror movies!”
She knew what she was doing. She was going back to her house. She was getting the hell out of here. She was going to lock every door in the place, double check all the windows on the first and second floor, and then for good measure she was going to turn every light in the house on.
Because everybody knew the monsters couldn't get you when the lights were on.
Damn it. Why did she keep thinking about monsters? Monsters weren't real. Monsters weren't out to get her.
Monsters weren’t stopped by lights. She might as well climb under her sheets and hope they still had the magical anti-monster properties they’d possessed when she was a stupid little kid.
She stumbled up the steps. Felt a wave of comfort and relief as she saw the dilapidated peeling paint that was the same as every other house in this neighborhood, but this dilapidated old house was hers.
She fumbled with the key to the deadbolt. It took her a moment, and she had a strange feeling as her hands shook and she tried to get the key in the damn hole. Something she hadn't felt in years. Since she was a little girl going down to the basement in her parents’ house.
She always got the uneasy feeling there was something lurking down there. Something waiting for her. Something that would devour her if she waited long enough and gave it a chance.
She never did tell her parents why she was terrified of doing laundry when she was little. The memory of sprinting up the stairs as fast as her feet would carry her was still fresh all these years later. And that same feeling of panic was hitting her now.
Like she’d be devoured if she didn’t move fast enough.
When she finally got the deadbolt open she sprinted into the house and slammed the door shut behind her. Turned the deadbolt and stared at the door, her heart racing and her pulse pounding in her ears. Her breath coming in quick ragged gasps.
Her head spinning because sprinting, even over short distances, wasn’t exactly a great idea in her current well-pickled condition.
She felt like she’d just run a race. She wasn't sure what kind of race it was, but she couldn't shake the feeling that
it was for her life.
She went to flip on the light in the front entrance and stopped, her finger hovering on the switch. The more she thought about it the more she thought maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea to advertise that she was home alone.
No, she needed to get to her room. To that pistol. She had an overwhelming feeling it was going to save her.
She’d never really agreed with dear old dad’s undying love of the second amendment, but she was starting to warm up to it now.
She needed to feel a weapon in her hands. Feel the reassurance of knowing she could do some serious damage to anyone who tried to fuck with her.
She knew she was being silly, but she couldn't shake the feeling. She kicked off her heels, basking in the sweet sinful relief that was pulling off an uncomfortable pair of shoes that made her ass look fucking awesome, and took the steps up to her room two at a time.
She breathed a long sigh of relief as her hand wrapped around the comforting cold metal of the gun buried in the back of her nightstand.
She pulled it out and inspected it, though she had no idea how the thing worked other than knowing she needed to flip the safety off and point the shooty end at whoever was threatening her.
It was weird. Cradling the gun in her hands made her feel almost as safe as cradling her teddy bear had felt when she was a little girl afraid there was a monster in the closet or under the bed.
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