The Dark Man

by Desmond Doane

  Carla nodded, touching the tip of her thumb and forefinger together, and if it was possible, her uncomfortable grin grew larger as she winked.

  Behind me, and out of the camera’s view, Mike whispered, “This is such bullshit.”

  I continued, “They say that the world corrupts innocence. We’re all a fresh, clean canvas until life comes along and throws a smattering of paint on it like Jackson Pollock—just a crazy, wild, mishmash of experiences. That may be true, but what I like to believe is that innocence is a powerful weapon against evil. If evil has not yet corrupted a young mind, and if that young mind is given the power to face down malevolence and wickedness, then there is nothing more potent, nothing more capable of sending a demon back to hell.”

  I hardly believed a word of this, by the way, but it sounded pretty righteous.

  However, strength, will, and determination can overcome the evil in our lives. And really, what’s more determined than a child who hasn’t yet learned to compromise?

  “This is why we’re trying an unprecedented tactic this evening. You all know what trigger objects are, especially if you’ve seen the show more than once. Trigger objects—”

  The bedroom door to my right slammed shut with enough force to shake the walls and rumble the floor underneath my feet. I yelped in fear. My skin prickled.

  Mike shouted, “Dude!” and moved closer to me.

  The cameraman, Don, scampered away and our audience got a shaky view for a moment. Don was a professional, however, and it only took him a second to recover. Also, off camera, I’m sure those watching clearly heard Carla exclaiming, “What the fuck was that?”

  Or the bleeped version of it. We were broadcasting on a five-second delay from the live feed and those audio guys out in the van had speedy fingers.

  The amount of paranormal energy it took to slam that door so hard was staggering. Right then, it became completely clear that we were dealing with something significantly stronger than what any of us suspected, and again, I reconsidered sending Chelsea into the attic.

  No. We needed to do it. We were making paranormal history.

  We needed it. She needed it.

  Once I regained my breath, I held up a palm to the camera. “Wow. Let me just point out to you—quickly, if our cameraman, Don, will follow me here—that there are no open windows in the house, no fans, nothing that could have caused a draft to slam that door.” I peeked in the master bedroom, then Chelsea’s bedroom, then pointed to the window down at the end of the hallway, and had Don show the viewers that the bathroom window was also closed.

  We were upstairs, and since it would take up too much valuable time, I had Mike reassure the audience that there were no open windows downstairs. “I closed them all myself,” he said begrudgingly. At least he was playing along.

  “That was pure, unadulterated paranormal energy, folks. All right, as I was saying—I’m just making sure that this door is propped open here—trigger objects are items we use to draw out spirits. If you’ll remember from our episode in Tombstone, Arizona, we dressed up like outlaws and had a mock gunfight out in the street, shot blanks from our revolvers. That’s a trigger event with trigger objects. Intelligent spirits can see us, they can interact, and it’ll draw them out more if they’re shown something familiar to them. That said, what we’re about to do is unprecedented. Up here, directly above us in this very attic, resides one of the evilest, strongest demons we’ve ever encountered. We believe he—at least we think it’s a he—has been torturing families who have attempted to live in this home for decades.

  “Before the Hoppers, the Casons lived here. Before them, the Leyerzaphs, the Huttons, the Johnsons, all the way back to the 1850s when this home was built. Report after report after report, but none of them as terrifying as what the Hoppers had to endure. So what we’re going to attempt is this: We’re going to beat this thing with the white light of childhood innocence. We’re going to send little Chelsea Hopper, who is only five years old, up into this attic. She’s our trigger object. She’s going to battle the demon that terrorized her for so long, and we’re going to send it packing. We don’t need a priest. We don’t need holy water. We need unconditional love to battle the darkest rage.”

  I paused to take a breath. It was done. There would be no backing out.

  As if he was reading my mind, Mike whispered, “Don’t do this, Ford. I’m begging you.”

  I prayed that my mic didn’t pick that up. We absolutely had to show solidarity. If we got cold feet, we’d be crucified throughout the Internet and the paranormal community. Our reputation, our credibility! Flush them like turds because we’d be a laughingstock if we lost our nerve during something so huge, right?

  In my earpiece, another producer, Jack Hale, who was monitoring the feeds from the production truck, quietly said, “Holy fucking shit, Ford, we just passed eight million web viewers. Keep going. Knock this fucking thing out of the park.”

  Behind me, Mike said, “Ford?”

  In front of me, Carla pinched her face into a point and shook her head, silently scolding him.

  “Okay, let me remind you that this is live television,” I said. “And here we go. Bring her up. Chelsea Hopper, ladies and gentlemen, our demon warrior.”

  Don panned the camera around to the stairwell, and the fans watching saw the same thing I did: a petite blonde child bouncing up the steps. It was hard to tell on screen, given the night-vision view, but she was wearing pink jeans with butterflies on the pockets, along with a white shirt bearing a rainbow-colored unicorn. Her shoes were the tiniest things, small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, and even in the pitch black of night, I could tell that she was smiling from ear to ear.

  “Mr. Ford!” she said, darting down the hall toward me.

  Damn it if my heart didn’t turn into a mushy puddle, and I felt overpowering guilt, but the damage was already done. The boulder was picking up speed as it rolled down the hill. I squatted when she reached me and put my arm on her shoulder, turning her toward the camera. My hands were shaking.

  Shy little Chelsea snickered and covered her mouth with her hands. She held them cupped together, almost like she was praying, and I wondered if she was old enough to understand the concept of God.

  “Are you ready for this?” I asked. “Are you ready to go fight the—um, I mean, it’s time to go beat up the bad guy, okay?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘the dark man’ because I knew she was afraid of him.

  Chelsea seemed to retreat further into her hiding place behind her hands, then nodded in agreement.

  “We’re going to beat the bad guy together, okay? You remember what we talked about, and you’ll be fine.”

  I stood up beside her.

  Her head barely reached the middle of my thigh. She was so small.

  That thing up in the attic was so strong.

  I kept trying to convince myself that if she could face it down, the rest of her life would be a cakewalk. She’d be able to take on anything. I thought I believed it, but really, I just sounded desperate for my conscience to agree with me.

  Mike slipped away like a ghost, out of the shot, leaving me to pull the cord. We’d been friends, partners, and brothers for years, and the look of disappointment on his face cut deeper than anything I could have imagined from him. It was sadness. Despair. Disbelief. I trusted Mike and his opinions. He had the right answers, always. Truth be told, I was the talent, he was the brains, and neither of us had a problem admitting it.

  With my back to the camera, so that eight million people watching online and probably triple that watching on television at home couldn’t see me, I mouthed the words “I have to.” Maybe it was an apology. A poor one.

  He looked away.

  I pulled the cord, and then I told Chelsea, “I’ll be right here. You’ll be fine.”

  When I glanced back at the camera, I had no idea that the image would be captured and used for weeks. That single picture of my face, a helpful grin distorted into some
vile sneer, would portray me as the demon.

  And, really, who would I be to argue?

  CHAPTER TEN

  When I get back to Mike and Craghorn, the front door is wide open, and they’re cautiously looking back inside the house.

  Well, Mike is, while Craghorn stands off to the side with his arms wrapped around his body. I have to get right on top of them before I realize that Mike is whispering the Lord’s Prayer, like he’s a member of a SWAT team tossing a smoke grenade inside before he storms the drug czar’s hideout.

  I wanted to tell him about the jogger and her shirt, but it doesn’t seem like the right time. I’ll save it for when I need an extra dose of good karma. Or there’s a chance it’ll work against me if I remind him of the good ol’ days.

  Anyway, Mike doesn’t hear me come up the steps, and Craghorn doesn’t acknowledge my presence. These facts combined send Mike three inches off the ground when I tap on his shoulder and say, “What’s going on?”

  Once he lands and the shock has drained from his face, he punches my shoulder. “Asshole.”

  “We even now?”

  “Even? For what?”

  “Remember that old church in France, beginning of season four? You caught me napping on one of the pews, thought it might be funny to teach me a lesson?”

  He nods. “One of our highest-rated episodes. Partly because a few million people watched you piss your pants.”

  “Hey, I dribbled. It wasn’t a full stream.”

  I’m aware that this banter isn’t appropriate in front of Craghorn, so I cut the jawing and ask Mike if they uncovered any more details while I was gone.

  Craghorn says nothing, as expected, and Mike tells me, “He says the right-hander didn’t show up until after that maid—what was her name?”

  “Elaine,” I answer.

  “The right-hander showed up after Elaine found the diary. Louisa had it buried underneath a floorboard up on the second floor. So what I’m thinking is, that diary was hidden down there where nobody could find it, and all that negative energy was trapped. Yeah? Make sense? So she’s up there one day cleaning, finds a loose floorboard, and being the nosy type, she decides to investigate. Pulls the diary out and boom, it’s like the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones when the Germans open it up. All that black energy comes surging out, and Mr. Right-Hander, maybe he’s hanging around the area, looking for a fresh snack, and there you go, moth to a flame.”

  I have to agree with him. He makes a perfectly good case for it, and that’s probably a conclusion I could’ve come to on my own had either the detective or Craghorn told me the diary had been buried, or that the demon had just shown up around the time the maid found it.

  Pardon the pun, but the devil is in the details.

  First off, spirits can get attached to objects, like something that a person had an emotional connection with when they were on this side of the graveyard soil. More than likely, Louisa Craghorn was dumping every ounce of sentiment into this diary, keeping tabs on everything she was doing with Mayor Gardner, yet she also had a tremendous amount of guilt about what she was doing to her poor husband. All that negativity was swarming around her, enveloping her body and mind, soaking into those pages.

  Second, if something like that has been secured away, all of that blackness can stay contained until, you guessed it, someone disturbs it. Once it’s unleashed, it’s free game, and it usually results in a haunting from a spirit who’s been at rest for years, decades even. We in the paranormal community see it a lot, especially when someone moves into an old house and begins remodeling.

  Tear down some drywall in your grandma’s old house and see what happens.

  That’s common. What’s rare is something else, something otherworldly, being close enough to detect that fresh batch of energy. It would be like hanging out on your front porch, and a neighbor three houses down is frying bacon, and you have no qualms about traipsing right into his kitchen to feast on it.

  This whole scenario is apt to be the reason we captured Louisa Craghorn’s voice, and the voice of the uninvited guest in their home. Louisa is here, and she wants to apologize, but more important, I’d bet she wants forgiveness. Even still, if Craghorn says, “You’re forgiven,” that thing in there won’t let her leave. It’s feeding off of her. It’s feeding off of the negative energy it’s creating in Craghorn, or completely sapping what’s left of the positive kind.

  All of this goes through my head in a flash, and I’m immediately caught up with Mike’s train of thought.

  I tell them, “Totally makes sense. So here’s where we move forward. I just talked to Detective Thomas, and Mr. Craghorn, if it’s okay with you, and if Mike is up for it, I think we’d like to perform a full investigation. I know we captured your wife’s voice, and I know we heard that evil bastard in there, but I think we can squeeze more out of it. I think we can get you some real answers.”

  A flicker of excitement flashes across Mike’s face. Then he tries, and fails, to hide it. That’s all I needed to see. The dangling carrot did its job.

  Fun fact: Mike actually hates carrots.

  Craghorn lifts his eyes to meet mine, but nothing else comes with it, almost as if he’s glowering at me from underneath his brow. His voice is quiet, though, when he asks, “What’re you hoping to find?”

  “More evidence. I let the detective know about what we caught in those EVPs—your wife’s voice offering an apology, that right-hander saying she was guilty. Although it’s not likely admissible, and what I do so rarely is, he feels like it still gives him enough to go on. Enough to continue pursuing the murder angle.”

  “Hang on,” Mike says. “Just because she said ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t mean she was murdered. He’s reaching.”

  “Yes and no. ‘I’m sorry’ could be an apology for anything. But he’s going on the assumption that she’s apologizing for the very reason we’re here—the diary, the infidelity. And if it’s a true thing, then it’s enough of a clue for him to keep looking. So if you couple ‘I’m sorry’ with the right-hander calling her guilty, it’s solid.”

  “Ford, you and I both know demons like that, especially the powerful ones. They’ll use any form of trickery and deception they can to fuck with mortals.”

  “Exactly, which is why we need to investigate further.” I turn to Craghorn and put my hand on his shoulder. He flinches as if the act delivers a small shock. I gently squeeze fragile bones. “My hope is that we can wrangle that demon into a corner long enough to ask your wife’s spirit some questions. If we can make contact and get her to communicate clearly, she may be able to tell us who murdered her.”

  “I would like that,” Craghorn says.

  There’s a tiny bell ringing way deep down in my psyche. Something is trying to get my attention, a gut sensation about this beaten-down man, and I can’t place what it might be.

  I leave my hand on Craghorn’s shoulder a second too long. He looks down at it, then at me. He’s so flat and expressionless.

  And then it hits me—it feels like he’s hiding information, and I make a mental note to ask Mike about this later.

  It’s strange, the way he’s acting—so emotionless—but he’s also had a top-tier demon sucking every ounce of vigor and life out of him for the past six months. Could be that the poor dude’s tired.

  “Mike?” I say. “You’re in, right?”

  He hesitates long enough to act like he’s thinking it over, and then says yeah, but he’ll have to call Toni and let her know he won’t be home for supper. I can imagine how that conversation will go, considering the fact that I’m involved, and it won’t be pretty. My guess is, he’ll spend ten minutes trying to convince her that he’s here to help Mr. Craghorn, and that I can go to hell after this is done, and it’s only one investigation with me. She could use a girls’ night out, right? He’ll tell her all of this, but if I know Mike, and I do, he’s quietly wiggling his excited bottom like Ulie staring down a treat.

  Ulie. Shit. I’ll need to ca
ll Melanie from wardrobe and check in on him. I told her I’d be back by midnight tonight. There’s no way that’s happening now. So it looks like I might need to do a little begging, too. She’s not my biggest fan, if I haven’t made that clear, but she tolerates my existence when I ask for help.

  Her heart is bigger than her disgust.

  When Mike leaves to call his wife, I’m left standing on the stoop with Craghorn. I don’t want to pepper the guy with even more questions, especially after the detective and Mike have bombarded him, but until we get a chance to compare notes, it’s a necessity.

  But first I say, “We won’t be bringing you in tonight, okay? This will strictly be just me and Mike.”

  Why? Because there’s no way in hell I’m making the mistake of using someone who might be susceptible to a demonic entity as bait. Not again. I learned my lesson with Chelsea Hopper, and I’m still trying to atone for that.

  I add, “You got somewhere to stay? Friends with an extra bedroom?”

  “Friends,” he replies, as if they’re something he remembers from another life. “No. Not really. None that I’ve seen in years.”

  “Family in town?”

  He shakes his head. “Dead or a thousand miles away.”

  “Okay, no big deal.” I pull my wallet from my back pocket and fish out a couple of hundred dollar bills. “I’m staying at the Seaside down at the oceanfront. They know me there. Just ask for Delane at the front desk, tell her I sent you, and then book an oceanfront room. You mention me, she’ll probably comp you a nice dinner in the restaurant. Go relax, Dave. Get away from this place for a while. You could use a recharge, yeah?”

  There’s no need to mention the fact that Delane is one of many reasons why Melanie from wardrobe is no longer Mrs. Ford Atticus Ford.

  Craghorn’s hand advances and retreats toward the bills, as if he’s gingerly waiting on them to bite his fingertips, and then he takes them, folds them in half, and stuffs them in a pocket.

  But not before I notice the scars. No wonder he’s kept his hands in his pockets this whole time.