Mike grins and lifts his finger to Caribou, ordering another round. “Carla suspected that would be the case, and she’s already agreed to take a hands-off production credit to get you on board. You’re the talent, Ford, the draw, and she knows that. I know it, too. You’re the face, I’m the brains.”
I don’t even know how to express myself, so I hold up a saltshaker like it’s a glass of champagne. “I’m not saying yes, mind you, but man, this is unreal. It’s exactly what I’ve been wanting for almost two years now. There are so many things we can do. Wait, yeah, there’s that lighthouse down in Florida. I got in good with the chief of police there—I’m sure he would love to have us work on this impossible cold case they’ve been looking at since 1987, and I know he—”
“Ford—”
“—would be totally cool with loaning us one of his detectives—”
“—Ford—”
“—for a couple of weeks—”
“Hey. Dude. Listen to me. We aren’t going to have creative control.”
My heart slams to a stop like a crash test dummy’s head against a steering wheel, then sinks down to somewhere around my colon. “We don’t?”
“No, they already have the concept worked up. It’s the concept that tested so goddamn amazing.”
“Which is what?”
“We go after the right-hander that hurt Chelsea. We fight back.”
I’m flabbergasted that he would even suggest such a thing, let alone be on board with it. After all we went through with that family. After everything we put that little girl through. “Mike. Mike? You’re kidding, right?” I ask this around a flabbergasted chuckle.
“It’s what the people want.”
“No. No, no, no. Not a fucking chance. I am not putting Chelsea Hopper through anything else. Not publicly. Never again. I can’t even think of all the ways I would say no to this. And even if, by some miracle of the heavens above that I would give five seconds of thought to the possibility, the Hoppers wouldn’t come within a thousand miles of me. They would rather drive a wooden stake through my heart than see my face again. Are you nuts? Is Carla nuts? What the hell?”
He scratches his forehead with the mouth of the beer bottle. “You finished?”
“I’m just getting started.”
“Before you do, hear me out.”
I remain silent, fuming.
Mike continues, “I don’t know how she did it. Probably because she’s some magical sorceress and sold the souls of a million newborns to the devil himself, but Carla got the Hoppers to agree.”
“What!”
“In concept alone, nothing more. They don’t want anything to do with the story, or the filming, or the production. The marketing, the celebrities, nothing. They’re only granting the rights to their family’s story—because—they have a memoir coming out this fall. They—”
“So now they’re exploiting Chelsea? What happened to all the money they got in the settlement?”
“After all the lawyer fees and suits and countersuits and appeals, they didn’t come away with all that much. Haven’t you kept up with this?”
“Obviously not.”
“It’s how it works, Ford, you know that. That being the case, if somebody from Fifth Avenue, or wherever those big publishers live, somebody shows up on your front doorstep with a check that has two commas and six zeroes in it, and you don’t have to fight anybody in court for it—it’s easy to see how some small, tortured family like the Hoppers might hand over the rights for a bigger house, maybe a deeper college fund for Chelsea. Cosmetic surgery to conceal the scars that a fucking demon gave their daughter? You’d do the same, right?”
From my position, having had money, and having kept money, enough to last me for a long, long while, my answer is no. It’s not worth it. However, given what I know about the Hoppers and their situation, okay, yeah. Maybe it’s not necessarily exploitation if they feel like their story could serve as a warning to other families looking to cash in.
Hell if I know. People do strange things to fatten their bank accounts.
I ask Mike, “So they’re on board with this whole fucked-all-to-hell idea as long as a paycheck is involved, and they don’t have to look us in the eye?”
He salutes me with his beer bottle.
“And you’re okay with this? You’re okay coming back? Honest to God, Mike, I never thought I’d hear from you again. I called you today because I needed help, like actual, legitimate help with this badass right-hander because there’s no other person on this planet that I would trust to go to war with me against something so strong, and then you show up, lying about how you just want to help Craghorn—”
“I’m not lying about that. He needs help, for sure.”
“Then you drop this on me? What in the immortal fuck, dude? Do you need the money? What’s the deal? Why the flip-flop? One minute you’re punching me in the face and the next, you’re practically begging me to come work with you again. I—I can’t even fathom what’s going on here.”
Mike snorts and looks away; he can barely make eye contact with me. “The truth is, it took a few trips to a shrink, but I finally got around to forgiving you. And, for months now, I’ve been waffling about whether I was actually going to say something. I was there, man. I totally was. And then—then I showed up today, saw your face, and a whole rush of anger came on like goddamn Niagara Falls and I couldn’t let it go again. Not until, well, not until we got back into the groove. By then it was just—this is hard, dude. Man to man, this opening-up thing. The doc says I gotta do it, though. Good for my head.” He tips back in his chair, nibbles on his bottom lip awhile before he continues. “So there’s that. And then, Toni and I, we got caught up in some bad investments,” he adds, like he’s already regretting the words coming out of his mouth.
“You? Captain Penny-Pincher?”
“I was stupid. Impulsive. Greedy, with a wife that wants nice things. I don’t know how much cash you have left—”
“Plenty.”
“You would’ve thought I had rocks up here,” he says, rapping his knuckles against his skull. “I had all these people coming to me with ‘investment opportunities,’ and shit. There was this one with a salsa factory down in Guadalajara. Profit margins were supposed to be—you know what, it doesn’t matter. The money went first, then the houses, the cars. The kids are so ashamed of me, they’ve barely spoken to me in months. We managed to keep the beach house in Kitty Hawk, but that was because we took every single penny we found to save it. I’m talking, like, Toni and I were smashing the kids’ piggy banks with a ball-peen hammer. It’s been tough, bro, I won’t lie. I’ve tried to get my own ideas made into shows, checking around with all the old contacts, ringing them up. They wouldn’t touch any of my pitches, not without you. Not without the almighty Ford Atticus Ford running point. I was so pissed that I didn’t even want to look you in the eye, much less be on another show with you ever again. It took a while, but I got over it.”
“But why now? Why this thing with Carla and the Hoppers?”
His shoulders go up to his ears and then drop, resigned. “Same goes for me. Like I said, somebody comes at you with promises of a check that has six zeroes and two commas, it’s hard to say no. I’m not proud of it.”
I take a second to let this marinate. Mike’s broke; he obviously and desperately needs the money, so much so that he’s willing to overlook my past transgressions. He’s also willing to overlook the fact that we would once again be allowing Carla Hancock to exploit the story of little Chelsea Hopper.
I want to tell him to go to hell, that I will not take advantage of her again, even if her parents are blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes.
But I could also get national attention for something I’ve been doing privately already with my own investigations. Millions of theatergoers could watch as I send that bastard right-hander back to where he belongs.
Talk about emotional wavering. I’m like a swing set in a hurricane.
Mike says, “I get it, Ford. It’s a big whammy. You probably need some time. Just promise me you’ll think it over, okay?”
Until I have a chance to process this, I refuse to tell him that I’ve already been working on Chelsea’s case on the side. “Let me sleep on it. But first you have to help me beat that thing over at Craghorn’s. I have a job to do, and you owe me for the surprise punch in the nutsack.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mike and I remain silent on the ride back over to Craghorn’s house. He tossed his idea grenade in my direction, and he probably feels like he’s allowing it to do the smart thing and simmer awhile before he brings it up again. The only thing he does say is this: “Kind of a dick move to spring it on you like that.”
I agree with a simple, “Yeah.”
Then we pull into Craghorn’s driveway. With his car gone, and Detective Thomas’s unmarked sedan out of the way, I’m thankful we don’t have to spend fifteen minutes driving around the block, praying someone will leave a spot open.
We slam the doors of the rented Honda closed and stroll through the gentle sprinkle, turning and climbing the steps, side-by-side. In my mind, I’m picturing us as two gunslingers in the Old West, starring in an action movie directed by Michael Bay, where we’re marching in slow motion with some badass guitar riff overlaid in the background.
We did that for an episode at some ghost town in Nevada back during season five, and I’m fairly certain it was my favorite thirty seconds of staged footage on the show.
I use Craghorn’s spare key to unlock the deadbolt and then reach for the door handle. It’s a chunk of ice. I picture my hand getting stuck to it, ripping off a layer of skin. Instinctively I recoil, and it’s nice to see that I don’t leave anything behind on the metal when my hand comes free. “Jesus, feel that.”
Mike touches it with the back of his hand and whistles. “That’s insane. How warm is it out here?”
“Eighty-five, at least. Can you imagine the strength of that thing inside?”
“I don’t want to.”
“And Louisa is trapped in there with it.”
“Yup,” Mike says, matter-of-factly. “Ready to rock?”
I can’t quite tell if his enthusiasm is manufactured so he’ll be on my good side as I ponder his offer, or if he’s now legitimately excited about the investigation. My guess would be a mixture of both.
“Here goes.” I reach for the doorknob again and turn it gradually. I don’t know why I’m trying to be quiet. That bastard inside already knows we’re here. He probably sensed us coming before we hit the 1500 block on this street.
The door, weighty on its hinges and off-balance, swings inside without my help, screeching as it goes, and my thoughts instantly go back to how well that sound would’ve played during an episode. We would’ve magnified it, placed a couple of layers over it and, presto, you’ve got this chill-inducing shriek that sets the mood and tone for the next hour.
Mike, ever the gentleman, motions inside and says, “After you.”
I actually hang back for a moment. It’s not often that I get legitimately scared, but whatever’s inside here has the potential to do some major league damage to our souls, and I do something that I haven’t done since we went into the Hopper house for the first time years ago.
I say the Lord’s Prayer, loudly, raising my voice into the long, deep, dark entryway, as if I’m talking into a tunnel that leads straight to hell. I touch my crucifix necklace, which feels warm against my skin, and make the sign of the cross over my chest.
Mike joins me, and to any of the neighbors, anyone passing by, we must be a sight. Two grown men, praying into a house.
When the prayer is finished, I add, “Hear me now, demon. You have no dominion over my body, or the body of my friend, Mike Long. You have no right to my soul, or the soul of my friend. We are here under the protection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Once we enter, you are not allowed to touch us. You are not allowed to harm us in any way. We are protected by Almighty God, and you will obey us and listen to our orders. We are here to ask questions. We are here for information. And, above all, we are here to free the soul of Louisa Craghorn, and we are here to demolish your control over her surviving husband, Dave Craghorn. Do you understand us? We are protected by our faith, we are here to take back this house, and we are here to wreck your fucking ass.”
Mike chuckles. “Forever and ever. Amen.”
“Let’s do this.”
Mike and I step across the threshold. We make it three steps inside, enough to clear the path of the swinging door, and it slams behind us, the powerful shock echoing throughout the house.
We barely have time to flinch and look behind us, hoping that it was the wind, before we hear a malicious, throaty growl coming from upstairs, which is followed by the thundering sound of footsteps stampeding down the stairs.
“What the—” Mike says, unable to finish his sentence, as we’re both hammered in the chest and thrown into the corner where we fall limply like old jackets.
Mike moans and sits up, rubbing his rib cage and looking like he didn’t make it off the canvas after the referee’s ten-count. It takes me a second, too, because I feel like I’m breathing through water. With a hit like that, who knows what’s going on inside my lungs, but I can’t stop now. I can’t back out and run away.
“Where’d it go?” Mike asks, whipping his head around as if he can spot the next impending attack.
I do the same. For the moment, the energy in the hallway feels different, as if we just experienced a paranormal Hiroshima, and the aftereffects of the atomic blast are settling down. “Gone, I think. Feels …”
“Lighter,” Mike says. “You’re right. Hit hard and fast, now it’s gone.”
“For the time being.”
“Oh, it’ll be back.”
“Gonna be a take-no-prisoners kind of night.”
Mike has managed to get to his feet, and he agrees with me as he clasps my forearm and pulls me up alongside him. He says, “Three guesses what’s showing up on our skin right now, and the first two don’t count.”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”
We both lift our shirts, and, as expected, we have wide, red splotches that are condensing to claw-tipped handprints. It looks as if Mike got the left and I got the right.
“Son of a bitch. That hurt.” I’m still having trouble trying to get a full breath. I double over and wobble with my head cloudy and knees weak. I count to twenty with my eyes closed, inhaling and exhaling in a steady rhythm, and when I look up, Mike is gone.
It’s a weird thing, this sensation I’m feeling, because at once I’m feeling abandoned—that childlike fear of being left alone, away from my mother—and terrified of the remote possibility that our enemy has snatched Mike out of thin air.
But rather than Mike having experienced some sort of paranormal rapture, he rounds the corner from the living room, snapping his equipment belt with one hand and handing me his GS-5000 with the other. I take it from him and enjoy the comfortable bulk in my hands. It’s almost like a security blanket to me. If I can communicate with what’s on the other side, I’ll know whether it’s an entity that I can approach, or something that requires extra protection from the Big Man upstairs. Whether it was birthed from human loins or the fires of Hades, it’s essential to know what’s there.
Mike opens a bottle of water, and instead of sipping it, he sniffs at the opening. He scrunches his nose and asks, “Does holy water go stale?”
“What?”
“I mean, does the blessing wear off?”
“I doubt it.”
“Good, because I’ve had this same stuff since that episode in Missouri, the one where we thought that right-hander was terrorizing the family of clowns. Remember?”
“Yeah, what a disappointment.”
As it turns out, our entire crew, producers and all, were thoroughly duped by the Morgansterns, who just happened to be a family of professional clowns hop
ing to gain more exposure for their entertainment company. Lesson learned.
I ask Mike what our plan of attack is.
“Beats me. This is your gig, Ford. I’m just along for moral support.”
I feel a cool rush of wind crawl across my exposed skin—my arms, hands, neck, and cheeks—and I know that there aren’t any open windows in the house. It’s almost as if this demonic entity is caressing me. “Let’s move,” I tell him. “Feels like it’s coming back for another round.”
There’s nowhere to hide, of course, and I’d rather be in action than simply standing in front of the firing squad, waiting on demonic possession bullets to come flying at my head.
We coordinate our efforts around the living room, kitchen, and hallway, checking each of our spotcams. They’re still working, and while I would love to spend an hour or two scanning through them to see if they picked up evidence while we were out for dinner, we don’t have the downtime that we would on a normal investigation.
Mike and I, we’re in an active, live-fire situation, and the enemy isn’t going to sit back while we hunt for proof of his existence.
Mike says, “I don’t know why, man, but I feel like this goddamn thing retreated upstairs. I feel safer down here, though.”
“While the answers we want are upstairs.”
My hands are sweaty. I wipe them on the legs of my slacks. Mike used to chide me about how my hands got wetter than a dog’s tongue the first few times we filmed. It’s not an easy thing, being entertaining.
Mike sees me swiping my palms and grants me a pass, because a second later he’s doing the same thing. I tell him, “Here’s the plan. We don’t need to bother with EMF sweeps or anything generic. That’s just telling a zebra he has stripes. We head up and jump immediately into the DVR. We’ll do a few sprint sessions to see if we can come up with a name.”
“Works for me,” Mike says.
There’s power in a name, which is why we’ll try to wrangle it out of this sucker.
He adds, “He’s not gonna give it up easily. This ain’t prom night where everybody’s eager.”
The Dark Man Page 12