Thankfully he just nods quickly, and we both hurry out of the darkness and down the steps, into the hallway. Here it’s still dark of course, but nothing like it was in there, like it was a black hole that swallowed all light.
We walk fast until we’re back near the stairs. I stop, hesitating, remembering Max.
“You really want to go up there?” Dex asks, following my eyes up the staircase. “I just touched a fucking leg stuck to a gelatinous wall.”
“Samantha is up there. Maybe she can tell us what that room is about.”
He gives me a crazy look. “I mean, if you want to, let’s do this.”
“I don’t want to go back in there,” I say, gesturing down the hall. “But upstairs is familiar to us.”
“You are full of surprises,” he mutters under his breath. He sighs and then aims the camera at me. It’s interesting to see him on the other side of things, him being cautious, me wanting to keep going into the unknown.
I climb up the stairs, past the second floor, and onto the third, Dex close behind the whole time. I hear his breath growing steadier, though I can feel how chaotic his energy is. He’s scared shitless and I don’t blame him. I’m scared too but not as scared as I should be, considering.
We stop outside the bathroom door, the stream of bloody water flowing out from under it, heavier and thicker than before.
That’s not the only thing that’s different this time.
The door is open a crack.
Darkness lies behind it.
I try to swallow, my heart feeling caught. I look at Dex, not sure what we should do.
He lifts up the EMF, showing me that it’s back to green.
As in, this should be harmless, safe.
But what the fuck is considered safe with us?
He gives me a barely perceptible nod, his eyes coaxing me.
He wants us to go inside.
I steady myself, straighten my shoulders, trying to calm my nerves which have turned into pins and needles up and down my limbs.
Okay, I tell him.
He studies me for a moment, I guess to make sure, then aims the camera at the door and slowly pushes it open.
The door is heavy, as if it’s stuck.
As if something is holding it in place.
But Dex keeps pushing until it opens, inch by inch.
And then it’s open wide.
“Jesus,” Dex whispers, the light shining straight ahead.
I have to walk through the blood to be by his side, but there’s a reason I wore boots tonight.
I stop beside him and look forward into the bathroom.
As it seems to be with so many rooms in this house, the bathroom is huge, longer than seems possible. It stretches on and on, black and white tiles on the floor like a chessboard, the stream of blood cutting through the middle of them like a gushing wound.
At the very end is a large frosted window, a faint orange glow from the streetlights outside coming through, giving everything a sense of normality. It reminds me that there is a world outside this place, the normal world, and that this place isn’t forever.
Beneath the window is a large claw-foot bathtub.
Filled to the brim with bloody water.
The source of the stream.
“Samantha?” Dex asks, his voice echoing off the bathroom tiles.
He steps inside.
I follow.
We walk slowly, carefully, our feet splashing through the blood. Our end goal is the bathtub, and somehow it seems to get further and further away. I shine my flashlight on the walls, at the mosaic of tiny tiles which at first glance seem abstract and artistic.
On closer look, they resemble things.
A black goat.
A raven.
A bat.
A fur-covered baby with red eyes.
Horns.
Oh my fucking god.
“Dex,” I whisper harshly, unable to process the utter fear I have running through me, the fear that these images are bringing me, like they’re striking me right in my lizard brain. “Look.”
My flashlight is shaking, scattering the beam as Dex brings the camera closer, the lens focusing on the tiles. “What the fuck is this shit?” he breathes.
A splash from the bathtub echoes in the room.
We gasp and turn to face the tub, both beams focused on it.
The water is moving, sloshing over the sides in red waves, flowing toward us.
But we don’t move.
We can’t.
We’re unable to look away from the tub where a hand is slowly rising out of the bloody water. Then an arm. Pale and tinged with black streaks, the arm of a dead woman.
The arm reaches over the side of the tub, long bony fingers pressed against the porcelain.
And then the head rises, like a nightmare moon.
White face, black hair, black eyes, black teeth.
The woman in the ocean.
She smiles at me.
Hello again, she says.
And then, fast, disarmingly fast, she hauls herself out of the tub and onto the floor, coming toward us on all fours.
I scream so loud, I’m vibrating.
Dex grabs my arms, screaming along with me, and starts running, shoving me in front of him, running and running, my boots slipping on the blood.
I fall over just as I step out of the door, right onto the hardwood floor, my hands breaking my fall.
I cry out, rolling over, watching as Dex pulls the door shut.
“We’ve got to go,” he says frantically, hauling me to my feet and then swinging me up so I’m being carried on his back, for the second time in as many days.
He starts running down the stairs to the second floor.
“What the fuck!” he yells.
Before I get a chance to ask him what happened, if I can even form words with this level of horror running through me, Dex runs right SMACK into something, everything coming to a full stop.
The impact sends the both of us flying back, and I land on the floor again, this time my poor shoulder taking the brunt of the impact.
“Fuck,” I cry out, more in terror than pain.
I reach out to touch Dex, or my flashlight, anything, but there’s nothing.
“Sorry about that, little lady,” I hear Maximus’ voice drawl through the dark. “Didn’t know if I’d be able to stop you or not.”
I feel a hand on my arm, and I know it’s not Dex’s hand. Maximus gives my arm a squeeze, I guess trying to be comforting, though I don’t think I can be comforted right now by anything or anyone.
“Dex?” I ask uneasily.
“I’m afraid I might have knocked him out,” Maximus muses. “You got a flashlight on you?”
A flashlight? Can’t ghosts see in the dark?
I slowly sit up and then reach around until my hand grasps the flashlight. I knock it against the ground until a flickering light comes on and I quickly shine it around me.
Dex is crumpled on his side, Maximus standing off to the side of me, staring down at Dex with what can only be called amusement.
“Is he okay?” I ask, worry taking over as I get to my knees and crawl over to him.
“You ask if he’s okay?” Max says with a soft laugh. “Perry, you know your husband better than that by now. If he can survive a sword through the throat, he can survive almost anything.”
Almost anything.
“Dex?” I whisper, putting my hand on his shoulder and shaking him.
“Hopefully the camera is okay. You sure do have bad luck with that shit.”
I glance over at the camera. The light isn’t on anymore and it might be broken, but it’s the least of my concerns right now.