This was not true.

There was someone…

Right behind me.

I was face to face with a…being…covered in graying skin that puckered in the shadows. Their chest had caved into a red abyss. Their neck looked like a piece of fraying string cheese and could barely hold up their head, which was gruesomely flattened, wider than it was long, like it was smashed in by something heavy, leaving part of it open and exposed, a mixture of brain matter, blood and bone. The blood flowed freely off this gaping wound and fell on to the ground in sticky, wet splotches. The sick source of that rhythmic pattering.

The eye closest to the wound was destroyed, only a hole of gray goo remained, and the other eye fixed itself on me sharply. It was a female eye, puffy, with running makeup underneath. She almost looked like she could be crying, but…

She smiled at me. And it sounded like wasps buzzing.

I finally screamed.

Despite taking self-defense classes, Karate, and boot camp, my instinct wasn’t to stay and fight. It was to get the fuck away from it. With nothing in my head but absolute horror, I turned and tried to run back to my room. My socks lost traction and slipped out from under me and I was down on the floor with a frightening thud, lying at the feet of a buzzing dead girl.

I scampered up just as Fat Rabbit’s barking form came shooting out from the bedroom, followed by Jenn, who was waving around a curling iron like a weapon.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked, looking around in a total panic. I whirled around to see if the demented woman was there but she wasn’t. However, the blood on the floor still remained and trailed away toward the kitchen where it stopped.

“Perry!” Dex yelled. I looked to see him coming out of the room, practically naked and barely pulling on his pants in time. I was too freaked out to find that intriguing.

He stopped and grabbed my shoulders as Jenn flicked on the living room lights.

“What happened? What is it, are you OK?!” He looked over me frantically.

“Are you bleeding?” Jenn asked, eyeing the blood on the floor, which Fat Rabbit was sniffing distastefully.

I shook my head, trying to find my breath and my voice again. It felt like I lost most of it with that scream. It was still ringing in my own ears.

“It’s not my blood,” I finally got out between gulps of air.

Jenn and Dex exchanged a look.

“Whose blood is it?” Jenn asked. Her voice was laden with suspicion. She was not going to like my answer.

I looked at Dex. He tightened his grip on my shoulders and led me over to their white couch.

“Dex, not if she’s bleeding!” Jenn cried out, afraid for her upholstery.

He shot her a sharp look. “She said she’s not, so she’s not. Go get her some water.”

She jumped a bit at his brusque tone but hurried off to the kitchen, frowning as she went and careful to avoid the bloody spots.

He placed me on the couch and sat beside me, his body positioned towards mine. He took both of my hands in his and looked me straight in the eyes.

“Tell me what happened, from the beginning.”

I did, very conscious of how it sounded in front of Jenn. To her credit, she didn’t say anything during this bizarre conversation, just brought over the cup of water and perched her tiny butt on the edge of an armchair.

“And you didn’t recognize the ghost?” he asked when I was done.

I stifled a chuckle. “Recognize? No.”

“I meant the person before they died. The normal parts of her. They didn’t look familiar to you?”

“No.”

I looked down at my hands, which were still enveloped in his firm grasp. I could feel from the occasional twitch that if he let go, my fingers would be shaking uncontrollably. He felt it too.

“This is ridiculous,” Jenn said. Dex and I both looked at her. We knew it was ridiculous, but it had happened. After what had happened on the island, I knew better than to doubt myself anymore.

“It’s the truth, though,” I said quietly.

“Sure. The truth in your mind,” she said, getting up. She stretched as if it was all boring her, her gray camisole lifting up, which displayed her richly hued, flat stomach.

“Explain the blood then,” Dex said defensively, gesturing at it.

Jenn shrugged. “Could be a bunch of things. And none of them say ‘ghost.’ All I know is that I need to clean this mess up before it stains the floor.”

She walked over to a utility closet and brought out cleaning supplies. I watched Dex watching her. He seemed livid, but with an eerie, contained kind of anger. It made his eyes sparkle and fade, his jaw twitch back and forth. Finally he looked away and up at me. Now he just looked sympathetic, maybe even apologetic. It’s just us against the world, his gaze seemed to say.

Soon after Jenn had finished cleaning and went back to sleep, Dex came with me into my room to say goodnight.

“Are you tucking me in?” I asked wryly as he flicked on the light and shut the door behind us.

He smiled shyly. “I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

Well, I wasn’t all right. I never was “all right.”

I walked over to the bed and got in, pulling the covers around me. Dex followed and sat on the end of it.

“I’d stay with you here if I could,” he said, looking around him at his stuff on the walls, absently stroking the bedcover.

“That’s OK,” I said even though I never wanted anything more. I had the urge to lean over, grab him by the edge of his plaid pajama pants and pull him on top of me. His body in my hands would make the fear go away. I wanted to tug at his shaggy black hair, suck on his bottom lip. I wanted to run my fingers over the tattoo on his chest, “And with madness comes the light” and feel the madness inside of me until it consumed both of us.

I closed my eyes at the thought. I had to stop thinking this way. When did I turn into such a horny teenager?

After a period of silence he asked, “Are you having any dreams?” He approached the question softly, like he was treading on eggshells.

“Yes.” I carefully opened my eyes, afraid that I might see that girl again, but it was still Dex. His elbows were propped up on his thighs and he was holding his head in his hands, looking like he was falling asleep. It was 4 a.m. after all.

“But they aren’t nightmares. They are just dreams. Weird…flashbacks. Like I’m reliving the past.”

“What past?”

“High school.”

“When you were a shoplifting, coke-snorting badass?” he asked, now sounding amused.

I paused. “Yes, those were the days.”

“And nothing else?”

“No…”

He looked up and twisted his body to face mine.

“Are you sure?”

My brows furrowed. “Yes, I’m sure.”

I pulled up the covers even further around me and asked, “What about you? Do you ever have any dreams?”

“Yeah.” He smirked. “I’m all alone and I’m rolling this big donut…”

“I’m serious,” I said, though I obviously smiled.

“Then no. I don’t have those kinds of dreams,” he said. He got up and shivered against the chill that was creeping up in the room. That coldest part of the night before dawn.

“I really don’t want to leave you.” He walked over to me and stopped, peering down. He put out his hand for mine and I grabbed it, giving it a quick shake.

“I’ll be OK,” I said, more forcefully. He nodded then cried out softly, “Hey what if Fat Rabbit sleeps with you? He snores and farts a lot but he’s solid company.”

“Takes after his dad, I take it?” I joked. “Actually I’d love it if the dog stayed here.”

Within a few minutes, the lights in the room were off, I was snug under the covers, and Fat Rabbit was happily wheezing away at the foot of my bed. I counted down to the cadence of his breath until I fell asleep too.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tuesday morning was oddly calm and beautiful. The rains that had plagued the city had stopped sometime after we all fell asleep again and the golden, winter morning sun was making the wet branches outside the apartment sparkle and shine.

Jenn didn’t mention anything about the incident in the night, but did cook us all up a giant feast of French toast and bacon, which gave off the vibe that she was making up for something. Not that she had anything to make up, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if Dex had given her a warning. She did seem to insinuate last night that my mental health wasn’t all what it seemed to be.

Which was nothing new. I was used to people thinking that I was crazy and if anyone was going to think anything less of me, I knew it would be someone like Jenn. But it got me thinking, especially as I spent the morning pattering about in the den and flipping through all the books that Dex had.

You see, none of the books that lined his shelves had anything to do with the mental institute we would be investigating later that night, even though there were quite a few library books there. There were some on the paranormal, stuff I would eagerly devour some other time when I wasn’t afraid of a dead girl in his living room, but nothing that was remotely related to our case.

Perhaps it didn’t mean anything. Dex had been busy moving and dealing with a dog and all that, and it was possible that he forgot about the research part of the show. But normally I had a script, or something to go on, and even if I wrote that script myself, I did it with his help. This time it felt like we were winging it entirely and at a point when we couldn’t really afford to. It wasn’t just about our wee Experiment in Terror show. It was about how our show did up against the bigwigs like Spook Factory. Now was not the time to be going into any situation blind, and yet Dex and I hadn’t discussed anything about it at all.

I thought about asking him. I knew he was in the living room, reading the paper, sipping on his coffee, occasionally saying something to Jenn. But something told me not to. And it stemmed from the same reason why I thought Dex was keeping me in the dark about things. Frankly, he didn’t want to talk about it.

It must have something to do with the fact that Dex had been in a mental institute. What else could it be? We had never discussed what had happened to him or why he was there. I just knew it was true. But I didn’t know how to bring the topic up with him, or even if it was any of my business.

Yet, the fact that we were going traipsing into an actual mental hospital later, well…that sort of made it my business. It was like if you were heading off into battle with a shell-shocked veteran. You’d kinda want to make sure that they were OK with it, otherwise they’d flip out at the first gunshot and you could be dead in a second.

I decided I’d try to approach the subject when the time was right. Hopefully that time would come sooner rather than later.

After we spent the morning doing not much of anything, the couple decided to take me out for lunch in the Capitol Hill district. Dex also wanted to take me past the Harvard Exit Cinema, the allegedly haunted theatre that our dear rivals were investigating.

We got into the car, Dex’s black Highlander this time, and drove off along the sunny streets. It was funny how even in the sunlight, the city had this hidden, shadowy quality to it, like it was just being covered up by sunshine-hued fabric.