"The plan is we get set up right here," he said, gesturing to the overgrown yard. Might be safer than doing it on the street or inside."
I looked behind us. The street was totally empty, only a lone car parked further down it, by the only dwelling that looked inhabited. Still, considering we weren"t in a good neighborhood to begin with, it made sense to keep ourselves and our equipment away from roving eyes.
"This place is just..." Perry said absently while I fished my camera gear out of the back of the truck.
"Creepy?" I supplied.
"More than creepy," she said with her eyes riveted to the attic window. "It feels both dead and alive. Not just this house, but this whole street, this whole area. How many people must have died here thinking they were going to survive? How many people must have clung to the hope before they realized that help was never coming? All the regret and death...it"s everywhere."
"Easy now, kiddo, we"re just here to film this, not make a tribute to the tragedy."
She looked at me with annoyance. "But people can"t just forget. No one really knows unless they"ve been here and looked around them and felt it. No one understands what was really lost."
"Except New Orleanians," Maximus spoke up gruffly. "They all know, every single one of them. And Dex is right. Let"s not make this more than it is. I know you"re feeling things right now, and h.e.l.l, I am too. Everywhere I turn in this city, I feel like I"m picking up on one more lost soul..."
I turned to him. "You are? I"m not feeling anything."
Okay, that wasn"t true. I did feel the supernatural layers were thinner in New Orleans, that there was this sick electricity in the air, that I could spot the dead around me if I really wanted to. But I didn"t want to. Because to spot them was to let them all in, especially the ones I wanted to keep out. Her.
"You need to keep your eyes open," Maximus said after studying me for a few moments. "Retrain yourself. Then you"ll see. You can start with tonight." He nodded at my camera. "Let"s get this going. I"d rather not be here very long."
And, as if he"d been waiting such a long time to do this, Maximus launched into our plan of attack. I had to admit he was a lot more thorough than I usually was, and that only made me hate his plan even more. But, as Jimmy had said, he was the boss tonight and I had to bite my tongue until I made it bleed.
There would be no exploring first and filming later. We had only one chance and it had to be our first one. Spirits didn"t reappear twice for the sake of cameras. And there would be more than one camera as well, Maximus was manning the other. Perry would stay with either of us, and she would be silent for most of the filming. We could do a voiceover with her later, but Maximus didn"t want her talking for the sake of talking. He said it ruined the atmosphere for us and the ghosts. Instead, she would just react and use the new infrared device that Maximus had brought, one that not only showed the warmth of objects around us but the magnetic fields as well.
I was given an EVP, to keep it attached to my belt and running the whole time. I knew the s.h.i.t worked and I even had one of my own that we recorded Pippa"s voice on, but Maximus said our own equipment was probably inferior and possibly warped due to all the data we"d captured on it. Whatever.
"Now are we ready to go hunt some ghosts?" he asked us like the douchiest subst.i.tute teacher, trying to sound commanding and relatable at the same time.
"f.u.c.k you," I said, while Perry sighed.
She reluctantly led the way up the weed-strewn path to the house, my camera on her, Maximus and his camera behind us. The tall gra.s.s waved in the wind and tickled my legs, scaring the c.r.a.p out of me already. The porch swing swung back and forth, as did two rocking chairs. Surely the wind wasn"t strong enough to make those move on their own...
"Are you filming that?" Maximus said from behind me, once again nearly making me s.h.i.t my pants.
"Yes, jacka.s.s," I sneered. Man, listening to the playback of this was going to be fun.
We climbed up the steps and stopped. The two rockers chairs slowed, then stopped moving entirely.
"Are you getting anything on the reader, Perry?" Maximus roared over my shoulder.
"Jesus, man," I said, glaring at him. "Do you have to be so loud?"
He gave me a half-smile. "Sorry, I"m excited."
"Well go be excited somewhere else, and preferably not behind me where I can"t see what you"re doing."
"I can see two cold spots on the reader," Perry said, squinting at it, perplexed.
"Really?" Maximus yelped and basically pushed me aside to get to her. He looked down at it and grinned. "Well, I"ll be d.a.m.ned. It"s one thing to know there are two men sitting right there, it"s another to see it."
"Wait...wait...wait," I said, throwing my arms in the air. "What?"
"Yeah, what?" Perry asked. "You can see them?"
He nodded. "It"s a gift."
"We have gifts too," Perry said defensively. I think it"s the first time I ever heard her get defensive over it, like she was almost proud.
"Well, what are they doing?" I asked. To say it was unnerving that they were there and neither Perry nor I could see them was an understatement. Maybe Maximus was pulling our leg.
"They"re looking at us and shaking their heads," he said. "They look old...overalls...grey hair."
"Black or white?" Perry asked.
"Black. Probably from the 1940s. Must have lived here back then."
"You are full of s.h.i.t," I said to him.
His smile dropped and he looked at me. "I can a.s.sure you, I am not. I can see things you guys obviously can"t."
"Why are they shaking their heads?" Perry asked. "Are they warning us?"
"Could be," he mused, studying them...or absolutely nothing. Or splintered old rocking chairs. "They don"t mean us any harm. If anything they"re trying to tell us something."
I folded my arms but kept the camera rolling. "Hey, you"re the ghost whisperer, you fill us in."
He frowned then jerked back. "They"re gone."
Perry sucked in her breath. "He"s right. Look." She showed me the gadget. The blue shapes were gone.
"Guess the dead don"t want to talk to you either," I told him, slapping him hard on the shoulder.
He glared at me and then motioned for Perry to continue inside. The door to the house was boarded up with rotten wood in an X across the window, but the k.n.o.b was still there. Perry tried to put her hand on it then snapped it away, shaking out her fingers.
"Is it cold?" Maximus asked.
She shook her head and shot us an embarra.s.sed look. "Spider webs. Ugh."
I didn"t know if she ever saw the day coming where she reacted more strongly to a spider web than she did to some old dead guys, but here it was.
I leaned over and turned the k.n.o.b, tempted to sneak a kiss on her neck. Then I remembered Maximus was filming us for the show. Then I remembered I didn"t care and kissed her anyway.
She smiled, her eyes twinkling as she gazed up at me, and Maximus was clearing his throat in no time.
"Come on, let"s act professional here," he drawled.
Yes, because the three of us were such old pros. The only reason we couldn"t compete in the ghost hunter Olympics.
I smiled to myself at my own little joke, but it didn"t take long before my smile faded. The moment we stepped into that house, everything changed. Whatever was on the porch, the old men, whether they did or didn"t exist, that was harmless. That was benevolent energy. Inside, in the dark, coffin-like air, the absence of sound, the house felt like it was holding a hundred ugly secrets, and the moment we walked through the door, through that threshold, it had already begun conspiring to hold us a secret as well.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
"Uh, guys," I said, looking around me, trying to take the house all in. "Are you feeling this?"
Perry"s dark head bobbed up and down in front of me. Maximus fiddled with his camera. "I"m putting this on night vision, can"t see a thing in here like this."
That didn"t really help me. There was little light coming in off the streets since the windows were all boarded up, and I couldn"t find the flashlight I"d packed. The one on my camera was p.i.s.s-poor but it would do. I could see a white glow in front of me though as Perry brought out her iPhone and put it to the flashlight application-just like old times. I did the same, and though the room wasn"t illuminated, with both our lights going we could at least see what was in front of us.
First of all, it was apparent that no one had been inside for a very, very long time. The creaking floorboards were covered in a thick layer of dust that only our footprints seemed to have disturbed. There was some furniture scattered about, stained, old, and with holes in it, although not as dusty as the floor. Beside the furniture were the plastic covers, discarded once squatters found their way into the old house and decided to make it their home.
I could see from the way her phone"s light jerked that Perry was scared. I"d learned to recognize those subtle movements, episode after episode. She was always so afraid to let me know how she was really feeling, how vulnerable she really felt. Here, I couldn"t help but feel the same way. It wasn"t that there was anything menacing in the corners, or that we were being watched by unseen forces (although, if I really let myself think about it, I would have felt that too), but that we were somewhere we really weren"t supposed to be, yet somewhere that...knew we were coming. The house felt like it was expecting us. I was seconds away from saying that, but didn"t want to make myself look like a chump in front of Maximus.
We continued to walk into the inky abyss, across the ragged old rug that went across the living room floor to the stately stained gla.s.s windows that must have looked out to the backyard, except those windows too were boarded up. I felt like we were in a house-sized coffin and every step we took forward was a step into the ground.
Maximus was now in front of us, relying on his night vision through the camera. I could see the faint shapes of things over his shoulder and knew we were about to walk into the kitchen and pantry. For a split-second I thought I saw someone standing over a cutting board, giant knife in hand, slicing something gruesome. But once I shone my phone in that direction, I saw it was just the refrigerator, its chrome trim gleaming against the blackness.
"Are you guys picking up on anything?" I asked. The EVP recorder wouldn"t tell me any of its secrets until we were done and had uploaded it to the computer.
"It"s cold in here," Perry said softly. "Everything is cold. But nothing like it was with the two men outside."
"I"m getting nothing," Maximus said. "Are you getting the magnetic readings too?"
"I don"t think so," Perry said.
"Why don"t you aim it at the ceiling," I told her. I could barely see her turn around in the dark to give me a look but she did as I suggested.
"There"s..." she trailed off. "There"s heat upstairs. I can"t tell what though. And the magnetic fields look a bit warped. What does purple mean?"
Maximus made a noise of agreement and cleared his throat. "Purple means something. Next stop, second floor?"
I knew we"d all be going up there even if we said no. Part of me wanted to play chicken-be a chicken-and hightail it the f.u.c.k out of there. We"d been in haunted lighthouses, hotels, islands, and mental asylums before. All of those places had given me the same heebie jeebies as I was feeling now. But this place felt different. This house felt like it was a mixture of dead and alive, old and new, bad and...worse. There was something more than the dead at play here, but the feelings, the vibes, they were so abstract that I couldn"t put my finger on it. I felt like I was in one of my nightmares, unsure if it was real or not, but certain that it meant something for somebody somewhere.
"Dex," I heard Maximus say, and I turned my head to follow his voice. He and Perry were lit by the glow of her phone, standing underneath the doorway out of the kitchen. Somehow they had gone past me, back the way we all came, and I hadn"t even noticed.
"I"m here," I told them, feeling shaky. I wondered how long I had been in my head like that. I followed them out of the kitchen and back into the main room. There was a grand staircase that led up to the second floor and together we climbed it. Maximus was leading the way now, Perry behind him, and me at the end. I guess the laws of our show dynamics were changing now that we were inside. I hoped Perry felt at least a little bit comforted about being between the two of us, because I was freaking out by being at the end, feeling like something dark and heavy and horrible was following up the stairs behind me as we went, nipping at my heels.
My mind wanted to imagine my mother, her lithe, snake-like form, her torment, her terrible words. I could almost feel her, her wide black mouth and sharp teeth, her sharper tongue, her blacker heart, wanting me to suffer.
But I couldn"t let my mind go that way. I couldn"t let my own demons get in the way of everyone else"s.
The second floor was a little bit easier than the first. For one, half the floor was divided into rooms with closed doors while the other half, the half facing the street, held a couple of chairs that must have had quite the view over the streets and gardens. The windows weren"t boarded up here. They were open and broken, with the hot breeze flowing through the jagged holes, stirring up little clouds of dust that rose from the various chairs and coffee tables. If this was a boarding house once, this must have been the breakfast area or a lounge, a place for people to relax and get some sunshine. Now the only light was the one coming off the street, and though it was eerie in its own way, it still let us see what we needed to.
"Should we go into each room?" Perry asked, and I was surprised by her tenacity. And a little impressed. I had a.s.sumed everyone was as scared and eager to run away from this place as I was, but that didn"t seem to be the case now. Maybe it really was in my head, feeling that the whole house was against us, that living and dead forces were at work. The thoughts about my mother should have been the first sign that I was alone in feeling this way.
Take it easy, I told myself, inhaling deeply through my nose. So you"ve had a few bad dreams, you"re doing okay. You"re doing okay.
"Yeah, why don"t you try the first door?" Maximus said, and it struck me how much he sounded like me when Perry and I were doing the show together. There was a brief time when Perry and I had stopped doing the show and Maximus had gone to Portland-with Jimmy"s blessing I might add-with hopes that he"d be able to convince Perry to do the show with him as the cameraman. It hadn"t worked out, because my poor woman got f.u.c.king possessed and Maximus plead allegiance to the nation that is Palomino. But I had to wonder how long he"d been waiting to take over this role.
"Okay," Perry said uneasily, stepping toward the first door. Now that I wasn"t the one ordering her around, now that I wasn"t the one who was in charge and worried as s.h.i.t as to whether or not we were going to get a show worth showing, I could see how demanding the job was. I had a glimpse of it when we switched roles up in Canada, but Sasquatch was an entirely different ballgame and now I was even further removed.
Perry placed her hand on the k.n.o.b and the door swung open, creaking loudly. The room was entirely empty, except for an open window and a woman who stood beside it.
"s.h.i.t!" I exclaimed, my heart attempting to leapfrog out of my throat.
"What?" Perry asked, swinging her head toward me. Her eyes were wide and white in the light of my phone and I adjusted my camera so it would pick it up.
"Didn"t you see that?" I said, trying to tame the panic in my voice. "The...the woman?"
Maximus and Perry exchanged a look-f.u.c.k I hated that-and then looked back at the room and at their gadgets.
"The temperature didn"t change," she said, peering at the device. "But I thought I saw that purple glow, just for a bit."
I didn"t know if she was trying to make me feel better or not. I appreciated it, but it didn"t work. I just nodded and said, "Never mind."
We went to the next room and the next room and the next, Perry opening them all as if they held some hidden prize we"d won on the spinning wheel. But there was nothing inside, nothing that they saw or that I saw.
"Next floor," Maximus said in a deadpan voice, as if he was that droopy-faced dog in that cartoon that always said "going down." I could have smirked over that at any other time, but both Perry and I just nodded, tensing up and preparing for the next level.
Together we walked around the corner and made our way up the next set of stairs. Dust and cobwebs covered the railing, and we all tried not to touch it as we walked up the stairs, each one groaning as we went.
We were halfway up when one of the groans turned into a crack. Perry cried out, her legs falling through the stair, the wood splintering around her. I yelled and made a move to grab her, getting her arm hooked underneath mine as the entire stair disintegrated beneath her feet, sucking her body under until her lower half was dangling into the unknown.
"My Lord," said Maximus, turning around at the top of the staircase and coming back down toward us to help. He was only two steps away when the stair beneath him broke as well, splitting under his weight. He yelped and fell, holding his camera high in the air. Luckily his chest and arms were too big to slip through, though I was starting to think the whole staircase might collapse beneath us at any minute.
"f.u.c.k s.h.i.t f.u.c.k," I swore, trying to figure out what to do. Obviously Perry was first, but as much as I hated Maximus, I couldn"t have him get hurt either. I placed one foot on the wainscoted wall and the other on the railing, and pulled Perry straight out of the hole. Once she was able to get her footing on the step I was standing on, I crab crawled up the railing and wall to Maximus.
I looked down at his pale, sweating face and offered my hand.
"Come on, d.i.c.kweed. Your day"s not done yet."
I hoisted him up, my grip wrapping hard around his elbow, my shoulder straining. I didn"t know if old Dex would be able to get him out, but I was new Dex for a reason, if not for this reason. With some strain and effort, Maximus was lifted out of the hole in the stairs and climbed onto the next one which thankfully supported his weight. I then told Perry to take a flying leapfrog onto his back. It took her a few seconds to realize what I was asking, but she did it, jumping clear across the hole that nearly swallowed her and coming to a thud on him.
Before the step had a chance to break under both their weight, I got into a squat and yanked hard under Maximus"s arms, pulling him and Perry forward before anything gave way beneath them. The three of us collapsed onto the floor, taking a few moments to breathe before we got to our feet.
"Thanks, man," Maximus said, avoiding my eyes and walking away. I gave him the finger behind his back while pulling Perry closer to me. I kissed the top of her head and said, "Third floor"s a charm."
She couldn"t even muster a smile. I couldn"t blame her. I squeezed her shoulder and told her we were almost done.
The third floor was a lot like the first floor. More or less one giant room instead of a bunch of tiny little ones. There were two rooms at the end and a bathroom, something I a.s.sumed either richer boarding guests or the owners would use, but the rest of the area was one big game room with leather couches still covered in plastic, shelves of books and game boards and picture windows. Dust still covered the floor, but everything else looked somewhat fresh and new, as if some ghostly couple had pulled down a game of Monopoly and entertained each other for a few nights.
But as much as this floor held my attention, it was the attic that was calling me. A door at the end of the room must have been the way up. I looked at Perry and Maximus, who were chattering to each other about cold spots and purple waves and this and that, and felt like they were speaking in an alien language. The thing that I was after, the thing that I understood, was upstairs, and upstairs was where I had to go.