Yeah…they remind me of that.
The door slams shut behind me, making me jump.
“It’s okay,” Dex says in a calm voice, thankfully not pointing the camera in my direction. “It’s just extra vibey tonight.”
“You feel that too?”
He nods. “Come on, let’s not spend any more time in here than we have to. You want to walk ahead of me?”
I cock my brow, warily walking around him. “Just like old times.”
“I’ve got your back,” he says with a quick wink.
Right. But who has my front?
I take in a deep breath, turn both my flashlight and EMF meter on, and start walking down the hall toward the room at the very back. I try to focus on Max when I can, hoping he’s watching, hoping he’ll make an appearance soon. There’s no way he can’t know we’re here. I assume every time that door opens in this house, every dead thing inside turns its head.
The thought makes me shiver. I need to knock it off.
Dex keeps the camera focused on my back, and every now and then I look over my shoulder and give it a haunting look, knowing he loves it when I get all dramatic like that. It definitely helps me believe I’m in a role and not reality.
But the closer we get to the cavernous room at the back, the more scared I get. It’s hard to ignore how things change with each step, like the pressure is getting heavier, my ears feeling like they want to pop. It’s not too dissimilar from stepping into the Veil, which isn’t a good thing.
“There are obviously more spirits in this house than just Samantha Poe,” Dex says for the camera’s sake. “We’re going to see if we can make contact with them.”
We are? I ask in my head.
Sorry, he apologizes.
But I guess it makes sense. If we’re going to be investigators, mediums, then we have to be open to many possibilities, not just one. Many voices, many beings, many opportunities.
I keep walking, ignoring the pressure building in my ears, the feeling that the air is getting drier, thinner, my breath becoming shallow.
Then I stop.
Before us is the black dining room, up a couple of steps at a higher level.
It’s cold as hell and the beams from my flashlight and his camera seem to disintegrate in the air, like the light is being choked from them. There’s a strange wind too, blowing back strands of my hair. It smells damp, reminding me of the winds that whirl around inside a cave.
“What is it?” Dex asks. He’s right behind me now, his presence only mildly comforting.
“I don’t know. I don’t like it.”
“We don’t have to go in,” he says.
And just as he says that, I hear a scaping sound from the black depths, like a chair being pushed back somewhere in the room.
Oh my god, that’s terrifying. Maybe I’m not as ready for this as I thought.
“Who’s there?” Dex asks, projecting his voice into the room where it falls flatly. “Tell us your name.”
The EMF meter which has been steadily beeping at a low volume, locked on green, is now slowly rising to yellow, the beeps increasing.
“Want to go inside?” he asks.
I shake my head.
He presses his lips together into a hard line, then nods. “I’ll go.”
“No, Dex,” I say, making a move to grab his arm, but he just saunters past me like he’s walking into a Panda Express.
“Okay, ghosties,” he says, aiming the camera around him, even though the light only carries a few feet, like he’s surrounded by ebony fog. “You want to talk? Here I am.”
Oh my god. So much for wanting to be taken seriously.
I take in a deep breath, ignoring how my lungs burn, and then walk up the two steps so that I’m level with him and inside the room.
We both stare at each other, our faces heavily shadowed, listening for a response.
Another chair scrapes along the floor from behind Dex.
He whirls around, shining the light.
There’s nothing. Nothing that we can see anyway.
Meanwhile, my heart is beating faster than hummingbird wings.
“Maybe we should head toward the walls,” Dex whispers to me.
“Why?” I don’t feel like going a single step further.
His voice goes even quieter. “Just to know that there are walls.”
I gulp. How did his mind even go to that place? Like we’re not even in the room, not even in the house anymore?
I think back to what Jacob said to me.
This house exists on another plane.
Of what? The universe? Of existence itself?
Dex starts walking away from me, the black of his hair and his jacket blending into the void. Even his light disappears.
“Dex?” I cry out, but my voice is so fucking quiet.
“I’m here,” he answers. He sounds far away, so my relief is short-lived.
“How about you come back here?” I ask, shining the light around. I can see where the steps start to lead into the rest of the hall but I can’t see beyond that.
Silence.
“Dex?”
I hear him make a strangled noise, like he’s trying to respond and failing.
Then an ear-splitting scream fills the air.
His scream.
“Dex!” I yell, horror overtaking me, and I start running in his direction, my fight or flight instinct poised to fight for him.
A light shines right in my eyes and suddenly he’s nearly bowling me over, his hands desperately clawing at my arms, holding me in place.
“What was that, what happened?” I ask, trying to shine the light on him.
His eyes look like onyx, the whites wide and shining. He’s breathing so hard I think he might be having a panic attack. Then he looks down at his hands as they shake and tremble.
My fucking god. It’s rare to see him this scared. All bravado is gone.
“What did you see?” I whisper harshly, wanting to get the fuck out of this room.
“It’s not…” His eyes pinch shut and he tries to breathe in through his nose, his nostrils flaring. His eyes whip open and he stares at me wildly. “It’s not what I saw. It’s what I felt.”
“What did you feel?”
He lets out a long exhale, shaking his head. “A leg. I felt a leg.”
“A leg!?” I repeat, practically shrieking.
“Yes. On the wall. The wall was like…slimy, like membranes or…tissue.” We both make a disgusted face in unison. “I moved my hand over, at about this high.” He gestures straight out in front of him. “And then I…I touch a leg. An ankle, a calf. A man’s leg, I think. About five, six feet off the ground.” He swallows. “It was stuck to the wall.”
My hands go to my mouth, the EMF meter clattering to the floor, though I manage to keep hold of the flashlight. I think I’m going to throw up.
He quickly crouches down and picks up the meter, aiming it at the darkness he just came out of. “I have no doubt that this thing will go red if we go over there.”
“We are not going over there,” I hiss at him, grabbing his arm hard. “We are leaving this fucking place. I did not sign up to be talking to ghosts where there are people’s legs on the fucking walls.”
I motion my head toward the steps, so terrified that if I don’t do something, I’m going to freeze in fear. I need to walk away from this place, but I can’t leave him behind.