Dex obviously picks that up from me because his expression quickly softens and he leans in to place a gentle kiss on my cheek, his lips warm. “Come on. We have a job to do. I promise I’ll keep it in my pants for now. All bets are off when we get home, though.”
He puts his hand on the doorknob and waits for me to join him at his side. “You ready, baby?”
I nod, quickly eager to get inside before I have another chance to think about it and change my mind.
He turns the handle and the door opens wide. It looks more like it’s pulling away from Dex’s hand and opening on its own.
Showcasing the fathomless black inside.
Five
Dex is first to step inside the house, but I’m not far behind him.
I try to keep the door open, making sure it doesn’t close on us while we’re trying to get the place lit. Dex quickly turns the camera light on, illuminating a path straight to the back wall, where it glints against the broken glass of a china hutch.
I clutch the flashlight in my hand, the beam of light strong and steady, then press record on the EVP, sticking it in my back pocket. I think about taking out the EMF meter, which reads electronic frequencies, but honestly we’ve never needed a lot of help in that department. We’re not exactly ghost hunters anymore, and to be honest, I don’t think we ever were. After all, the ghosts were hunting us.
A cold shiver crawls down my back and I grip the flashlight tighter.
Why am I doing this again?
“You can close the door now,” Dex says, gesturing over his shoulder.
I really don’t want to. I feel like the door is our only connection to the real world, like everything in this house exists somewhere else.
But I do it anyway.
At least I take my body weight off of it, and the door then basically pushes me out of the way, slamming shut, making both of us jump.
Yup. Totally normal.
“You okay?”
“Yes.” I close my eyes for a moment, willing my heart to calm the fuck down. I’ve literally taken two steps inside and I’m already shaking.
When I open them, my eyes are more adjusted to the light.
“I hate to say it, but this place is pretty fucking cool,” Dex says, shining the camera light around. I do the same, my flashlight following his.
The house looks the same as it did two weeks ago, an old eclectic mess of rooms and architectural style. There are beams on the ceilings, red wallpaper gilded with gold lions, wood floors, thick faded crimson rugs. The front entry area is less of a room and more of a long hallway that continues on into the darkness.
That’s where we went last time, stopping just before the dining room. We never went in there, even though Atlas said that’s where he last saw his mother. Probably because it’s where Dex saw a random ghost woman, who Atlas said was bad news.
“What do you think?” Dex asks, turning the camera on me.
I wince at the light, shielding my face with my hand. “We’re doing this already?”
He lowers the camera, and I catch a sheepish look on his brow. “Sorry. I guess we should probably talk about the plan first.”
“We probably should have talked about the plan outside,” I say, supressing another shiver as I continue to shine the light around. At least that horrible magnetic pull I was feeling toward the house earlier has dissipated. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m with Dex, or because we’re actually in the house now.
It has us where it wants us.
I try not to dwell on that.
“Well, here’s my idea,” he says, eyes glittering in the faint light. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this over the last two weeks. Actually, if I’m being honest, I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. You know how I wanted to do a documentary on haunted places? Well, I’m switching gears. We do the Warrens thing. We become paranormal investigators, but we film it. We already have a production company, we just shift Haunted Media’s focus onto us. That’s the documentary now. The reality show. Whatever it ends up being. Then we sell it to Netflix.”
I can’t help but be impressed by his ambition. “Netflix? That’s a lofty goal.”
“It’s an attainable goal. There’s nothing stopping us. There are ghost-hunting shows left and right and they’re all the same. Ghost hunting is a huge business now. But paranormal investigators? Real ones? That’s new. Done properly, with the right budget, the right equipment. Baby, you know we can do this.”
I continue to shine my light around, having a hard time coming to terms with what Dex is saying. I mean, I get it, and I’ve obviously thought about it in some ways, and even Atlas mentioned something about my “purpose” the last time I was here.
But standing in this house isn’t the best place for this discussion.
“I have no doubt you can do this…” I tell him.
“That we can do this.”
“Right. But for now let’s just…see how tonight goes before we start making grand plans. We don’t even know if we can communicate with the dead in a professional manner.”
He sighs and runs his hand over his beard. “There you go being the voice of reason. But you know I’m right, too. That this makes sense. And anyway, we still need a plan for right now. Tonight. In this house.”
“Atlas was leading us down there last time,” I say, gesturing to the darkness at the end of the hall. “Where you saw the ghost. He seemed to think that was the best place.”
“Yeah,” he says carefully. “Think I lost my balls down there though.” He lifts the camera up onto his shoulder. “Though seriously, fuck that guy. He wasn’t leading us anywhere. He was leading us away from something.”
“From what?”
“The third floor. The bathroom. Door was conveniently locked, wasn’t it? Didn’t have a key? Happened to also have a trail of bloody water leaking out of it? Not a fucking coincidence.”
“Then up we go,” I say, my voice going quiet. For some reason I’d rather take my chances in the dining room at the end, but Dex is probably right. Atlas didn’t seem surprised by the blood, which makes me think he wanted us to avoid it.
He turns, and we walk over to the wooden staircase, heading up. Our footfalls are soft despite the hard floors, like the house is devoid of an echo, as if sound doesn’t spread. For a moment I almost have a panic attack thinking there’s no air in here, but of course there is.
Then again, if this house really is the closest place to the Veil…
“I also think they’re full of shit,” Dex says, as if he’s been talking this whole time. Maybe he has.
“Who?” I say as we round the second floor and head up to the third. “Atlas and Harry?”
“Yeah. Or maybe just Atlas. I don’t know. But they’re lying to us, kiddo.”
“About what?”
“About everything. I don’t know.”
“And yet we’re here.”
“Fair is fair.” We both stop once we reach the third floor. “And obviously there’s something going on here. Look. The bathroom.”
He aims the camera light down the hall and I quickly shine my flashlight on the bathroom door. Like before, a trail of bloody water is slowly leaking out from underneath.