Page 39 of Into the Dark

“No, she was a patient,” Oscar said, and caught a look of surprise on Zeek’s face. “I’ll tell you all about it on the way back.”

Trey’s living room was as depressing as the entry hall. An ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts, and empty beer cans crowded the coffee table. The seventies-era shag carpet was stiff beneath their shoes, as if it hadn’t been vacuumed in many a year.

“Can I get y’all anything?” Trey looked around, as if seeing the living room through new eyes. “I have, uh, tap water and Miller Light.”

“No, thank you.” Dr. Lawson perched on the edge of a sagging couch. Oscar sat beside her, trying not to imagine the layers of grime on the cushion. Zeek took what looked like a dining room chair that had been brought in to sit near the oversized television, while Trey settled into a recliner angled for optimum viewing.

“So what do you want to know?” Trey directed the question at Oscar.

Apparently he was taking the lead. “Anything you can tell us about what happened that night would be helpful.”

Zeek leaned forward and held out the old camera to Trey. “We found this—it belonged to your group.”

Trey’s eyes widened, and he took the camera, turning it over and over in his hands. “This was mine. I was going to take a picture of a ghost, sell it to the newspapers…we were going to be famous.”

Too bad it wasn’t that easy. But this had been back in 2006, well before the proliferation of ghost hunting shows and channels. A more innocent time, in some ways. “What happened to cause you to drop it?”

Trey reached for a beer he’d clearly been working on when they pulled in, and took a long swig before crushing the can. “I was always interested in the paranormal, you know? Even as a kid, I loved ghost stories. When I was a teen, I went into the local abandoned house that was supposed to be haunted. Heard somecreaks that might have been nothing, but I was sure were made by the old witch who supposedly died there. It was scary, sure, but thrilling too.”

He shook his head, as if in wonder at his young, naïve self. “When I got older, I started hanging out in forums online. Talking about ghosts, psychic stuff, anything paranormal. That’s where I met the other guys. Joey, Mike, and K-Kyle.”

He trailed off, as if all he could see was those long-ago days. Dr. Lawson cleared her throat. “So you decided to meet up and hunt ghosts?” she asked.

“Yeah. We went to a couple of locations, got some hits on the EMF, what might have been an EVP. Spooked ourselves plenty, but it was fun, too.” He glanced at Zeek. “You said you have a show.Seeking the Unknown.”

“Zeeking the Unknown,”Zeek corrected helpfully. “My friend Adrienne and I look for ghosts—she’s really smart, and?—”

“Thank you,” Dr. Lawson cut in. “We get the picture.”

“You understand, then,” Trey said. “The adrenaline, the feeling you’re brave enough to go places other people won’t, the excitement when you think you’ve seen or heard something…”

Oscar nodded. Before he’d realized he was a medium, he’d been drawn to ghost hunting for all the reasons Trey mentioned. Curiosity, excitement, the sense of touching some part of the past that still lingered…it was part and parcel with the decision to explore abandoned locations in the search for ghosts.

“Yeah,” Zeek said. “I get what you’re saying. But something went wrong at the asylum?”

Trey stood up and fetched a half-full whiskey bottle from the forest of empties crowding the TV table. “You could say that. Right from the first, we felt like something was watching us.” He took a swig straight from the bottle as he sat back down. “The EMF readings we got were erratic—there and then gone. We tried to capture some EVP, but we never listened back tothe recorder, after…well. Not a lot seemed to be happening, to be honest. Just enough to keep us curious. Then we got to the fourth floor.”

He drank again, as though wanting to forget the words even before he could speak them. “You might think I’m a liar for what I’m about to tell you, but I don’t care.”

“We believe you,” Oscar said. “Trust me, all of us have seen things.”

Trey’s throat worked. “We’d heard there was a shadow person on the fourth floor. Staff who worked the night shift saw it crawling along on the floor.”

Zeek shuddered. “Yeah, I saw it last night. Super creepy.”

“You did?” Trey stared incredulously. “You’re not going back inside after that, are you?”

Zeek looked taken aback. “It’s sort of my job?”

“What about you?” Oscar asked, before they could get sidetracked with a discussion about the questionable wisdom of their choices. “Did you see it?”

“Yeah.” Trey idly began to pick at the label on the bottle in his hands. “It crawled on the floor, like it couldn’t stand up, but it had a head and arms and legs like a person. We were at the far end of the corridor, and we could see it coming closer, just at the very edge of the light. I about shit myself, but Joey yelled at me to take a picture. I brought up the camera, but it disappeared before I could click the shutter. That’s when…that’s whenshecame.”

He shivered and closed his eyes, as if that might keep the memory from playing out in front of them. “She looked like maybe she’d been a nurse. I could see right through her, but she wasthere. She was like a cold wind, and she came right at us,screamingto get out…”

He fell silent. After a long moment, Dr. Lawson prompted, “What happened then?”

Trey snorted. “Are you kidding? We ran for our lives. I don’t know if she followed us—at the time I was convinced she was hot on our heels, but looking back I’m not so sure. We reached the stairs and started down, and Kyle…” His voice caught, and he blinked rapidly. “He fell. Landed bad at the bottom of the stairs on the third floor. Everyone else kept running, but I…he was my best friend. We’d been meeting up outside the regular group. There wasn’t a day gone by that we didn’t call or chat online. I couldn’t leave him.”

---