Darkhouse (Experiment in Terror #1) (7 page)

“Dex?” I whispered. “Please answer me Dex, this isn’t funny.”

If he was trying to freak me out, he succeeded, and I knew he would hear the terror in my cracking voice. But still...there was nothing.

I took a deep breath and bent down to pick up the camera. Only it wasn’t a camera at all. It was a flashlight.

Confused, I turned it over in my hands. Did Dex have a flashlight before? I was wracking my brain trying to remember when I heard a low groan. Not the groans of a person (or a thing) mind you, but the impersonal sound of a door opening on its hinges. It came from the door to the right.

I aimed the flashlight into the blackness. For a split second, I was afraid I was going to see something vaguely horrifying like Dex standing in the corner of the room and staring at the wall (yes, the last scene of the
Blair Witch Project
came to mind) but instead the hall was empty. Nothing there except the door leading to the circular room, which was now wide open.

I shuffled toward it and stepped inside.

It was a bedroom. At least it had been at one time. Now all that was left was a thick wooden bed frame that looked partially burnt, a side table with a stack of books, and a wardrobe in the corner. On top of the wardrobe was a porcelain washbasin, with a mirror propped up against the wall. The flashlight’s reflection glared sharply in it.

There was a round porthole-type window facing the ocean, coated with a thick layer of grime and salt. Something about the window registered in the back of my overworked brain.

Had I been here before? Was that...possible?

I took a few steps closer to the window when—

BLAM!

The door slammed shut behind me.

I screamed and dropped the flashlight, the light spraying the walls as it landed on the ground with a clunk. I winced and quickly scooped it up. The light wavered and then started to fade. Panicking, I shook it hard but the bulb had been jarred out of place from the fall. There was still light, but it was growing weaker by the minute. That, or the darkness was growing stronger.

That’s when it happened. That’s when it hit me.

A light from the hallway went on.

The edges of the door glowed amber.

The image seared into my head and, like pieces in a puzzle, it slowly fit together with another image that came shooting out of my memory.

My dream. This was my
dream
. My breath caught in my throat as all the puzzle pieces found each other. The round room, the porthole, the light outside of the door. Sure, I wasn’t standing in a nightgown and barefoot, but it was the same place. It wasn’t possible by any earthly means, and yet…

I wasn’t sure what it meant either. Things were the same but different. Was it going to follow the direction of my dreams? Was the door going to open with some black, shadowy menace enveloping me into certain death? Was the man in my dreams Old Roddy?

Or Dex?

Maybe
, I thought quickly,
this was a dream
. That thought gave me a bit of courage.

I swallowed hard and walked over to the door. I listened. I couldn’t hear a thing from the hallway.

I grabbed the knob and tried to turn it.

It wouldn’t turn. It was stuck.

I yanked on the door, panic rising from the floor. I started throttling the thing, my hands sweaty and slipping. This was my nightmare. My worst nightmare was coming true. I was locked inside. Someone, something, had locked me inside.

“Dex!” I screamed, and started banging on the door. “Please, someone, anyone, let me out, please! Pleeeeeease!” I screamed that last word, loud and shrill, hurting my own ears. Screaming seemed like the only thing I could do.

I screamed again and hurled myself at the door, even though it opened from the inside. My camera swung from my neck and smashed against it but I didn’t care. I had to get out. I put both hands on the knob and pulled until my hands lost their grip and I flew backwards, landing on the hard floor. A pain shot out from my hipbone but I scarcely felt it.

Then everything turned black. The light outside the door disappeared and the door outline faded into the abyss.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up with icy precision. I knew something was on the other side of the door waiting, listening.

I lay on the floor watching breathlessly, my body rigid and braced for action.

The door creaked open, slowly.

At any moment I expected to see a tall, black figure appear in the doorway, make its way over to me, and smother me with its nebulous face.

I waited. The terror was indescribable.

But nothing happened.

I took a few seconds trying to mull the situation over but everything was coming up blank.

And so, propelled more by instinct then consciousness, I leaped to my feet in one go and took off like a shot.

I ran through the door without casting a glance around me. I ran down the stairs until I slipped on the turn and was launched against the slimy, weeping black wall. I had no time to be horrified at the grossness. I regained my footing and leaped over the last few steps and on to the ground floor.

I wheeled towards the open door and burst through.

BLAM!

I collided into something large and heavy. Again.

I let out a blood-curdling scream and I stumbled from the impact. I might have had an out-of-body experience at that moment. I never knew I could scream like that.

The figure was screaming back at me. I didn’t know if it was an echo or what, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out.

I scrambled on my feet, slipping a bit from the goo under my treads, and the thing reached out and steadied me.

“Perry!” I heard it say.

How did it know my name? My head reeled, my heart pounded, and all instincts still told me to run for my life.

I was about to when it shook me.

“Perry! It’s me!”

Me? Dex?

No.

In the light of the waning moon, Matt thrust his face in front of mine.

“Holy fuck, you scared the hell out of me,” he whispered, his voice cracking.

“Matt?” I asked incredulously. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here? Perry, what the fuck? What are you doing here?”

“Matt?” I could hear Tony’s voice calling from upstairs. “Is that her?”

I turned and saw Tony coming down the stairs, his phone in one hand and a huge industrial-looking spotlight in the other. He saw me and let out a sigh of relief.

“Perry, thank God, I almost called dad.”

Matt put his hand on my shoulder. “What are you doing in here?”

I had a hard time composing my thoughts and my breath, so I just shook my head and gave myself a moment.

The twins stared at me, more curious than concerned.

“What were you screaming about?” Tony asked.

“Did you leave this?” I managed to ask Matt, holding up the dying flashlight and ignoring Tony’s question.

He nodded. “Yeah I put it there so Tony could find his way back downstairs. If he used that spotlight in here it would blind us all. This thing is pretty intense.”

“Huh,” I mused, not sure what to make of that. “Was that what that blinding light was?”

The twins looked at each other and shrugged.

“Ada was shining it on the lighthouse from the outside,” Matt said.

Ada. Her name sounded so sweet and familiar.

“Where is she? Is she OK?” I asked anxiously.

“She’s fine,” Tony said warily. “She and Whiz are waiting outside. Are you OK?”

“Yeah, why?”

Matt laughed. “How drunk are you? Next time you want to go exploring the lighthouse, just tell us, OK? I mean, are you fucking nuts coming here? Alone? At night? This place gives us the creeps in the daytime.”

Tony nodded. “I can tell some fucked up stuff has gone on in here. We even get phone calls from ghost hunters and shit wanting to film it. It has a history or something.”

Ghost hunters? Filming? Suddenly it was all beginning to make some sense.

And then I remembered Dex.

“Did you see anyone else in here?” I said slowly. “Or hear anything?”

They both shook their heads.

“You didn’t even hear me yelling? For Dex?” I asked.

“I heard you screaming your head off,” Tony said. “Who’s Dex?”

I shook my head. Scratch that. Nothing made any sense at all.

“We should go back,” Tony said gently, perhaps sensing my mental fragility. I nodded, done with talking. We carefully exited the lighthouse through the broken window. I hoped I never had to step inside of that place again.

There was a comforting sense of normality outside. Ada and Whiz were making out around the corner. OK, that wasn’t the first thing I wanted to see but the minute she saw me, she stopped sucking face and came running over. She threw her arms around me. Not a normal move from her.

“Thank goodness!” she exclaimed, slurring. “I thought you were dead. Or that maybe you jumped off the cliff.”

“That’s nice,” I said blankly.

We started walking back towards Uncle Al’s place.

“Did ya see anything fucked up?” Whiz called from alongside Ada.

“I thought I did,” was all I said. If Matt and Tony were roaming the lighthouse while I was inside, and they didn’t see any sign of Dex, maybe Dex never existed. Maybe he was just another one of those imaginary friends of mine, long lost since childhood. I looked down at my camera. It wasn’t working, which meant any proof of what happened would have to wait until I got it fixed. I hoped it wouldn’t cost me a lot of money.

I sighed with some effort, suddenly overcome with acute mental and physical exhaustion.

I was so tired that when we finally made our way back to the house and put out the bonfire, I nearly passed out on the pull-out couch with my clothes on. Ironically, drunken Ada was the more coherent one.

“What is mom gonna say when she sees you passed out in your clothes?” she admonished.

I nodded at that and slipped into my nightshirt and pajama pants. I threw my clothes on the floor. Papers and change flew out of the jacket. Ada picked up a piece of debris and peered at it.

“What’s this?”

I looked closer. She was holding a business card in her hands.

“Who is Dex Foray?” she asked, looking up at me.

I snatched it out of her hands and turned it over in mine. He
did
exist.

“A ghost,” I said dreamily, before falling fast asleep.

CHAPTER FIVE

The ride back to Portland the next day was strangely silent. I was busy mulling over the events from last night, twisting them over and over again in my brain, which was drained from my restless sleep. My sister was hungover as hell and already made my dad pull the car over so she could vomit. I hadn’t talked with her about what happened in the lighthouse. In fact, I couldn’t bring myself to talk to anyone about anything. I felt profoundly different, and as scary as it was to dwell on the unexplained, it gave me a sense of importance. I couldn’t go back to small talk and polite nods.

My parents were silent too. My dad was furious with Ada for drinking, and I am sure he was also mad at me for letting her drink. My mother wasn’t mad, as far as I could tell, but she was constantly eyeing both of us in the rear view mirror.

I turned away from her prying eyes and looked out the window. Fall had arrived overnight. The sunshine was gone. The wind hurled itself at our car and tore green leaves off of the trees, scattering them in the air. The air conditioner in the car was off, adding to the silence.

I hadn’t really come up with any solid conclusions about the night before. Radiohead’s
OK Computer
was playing on my iPod and lulling me into a sort of dreamland, blurring reality. I started second guessing everything that I thought I was certain of.

And that left me at my dream. It was the thought I always ended up with whenever I replayed the scenario through my head (which was most of that morning). Had I really dreamed that? It didn’t seem possible. In fact, how could it be? How could I dream something and then
live
it?

Then again, though it was similar, it was still not the same. Which either meant I was psychic in some really useless way or it was a huge coincidence.

What really scared me was if I had to experience the other dream I had. I wasn’t looking forward to a dark figure standing ominously at the foot of my bed.

And Dex. Dex had also been dancing around my head. I was so close to writing off that whole encounter as a figment of my imagination but the business card that Ada found was proof that he was in fact real.

I just wish I knew where he went, what he was doing there…and who he really was. There was something so maddeningly intriguing about him. His voice, his eyes, his mannerisms, his intensity—I wanted to learn more. And I wanted to know if he really was a so-called ghost hunter. I mean, I had been going to my uncle’s for a long time and though I’ve heard weird stuff about the lighthouse, this was the first time anyone mentioned it being haunted, let alone attracting attention from the paranormal community.

I cleared my throat. “Hey, Mom, Dad…”

“Yes, pumpkin,” said my mother.

I hesitated, trying to figure out the best way to pose my question.

“Um, I heard from the twins that they keep being contacted by like the
Discovery Channel
and stuff like that. Something about the lighthouse being haunted.”

My parents exchanged strange glances. My dad shrugged as casually as he could muster and eyed me in the mirror.

“That’s all nonsense, Perry. There are no such things as ghosts.”

“I’m not saying there are ghosts, Dad, I’m just saying it seems a lot of people think there are. In Uncle Al’s lighthouse. Kinda weird, right? Did you know about that?”

I watched my parents carefully. Ada did too, now that she was awake. They exchanged another glance and I could detect a barely perceptible nod from my mother.

“No, sweetie, sorry I don’t know what the twins have been telling you,” he finally said. “Probably pulling your leg. You know how they are. Always trying to scare you.”