Came Back Haunted: An Experiment in Terror Novel #10 Read online

  Came Back Haunted

  An Experiment in Terror Novel #10

  Karina Halle

  Contents

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Karina Halle

  “You and me, if the world should break in two

  Until the very end of me, until the very end of you”

  --

  We’re in This Together, NIN

  “All this has happened all before

  And this will happen all again”

  --

  I Would For You, NIN

  For Derry.

  And for me.

  I wrote this for me.

  Preface

  Yes, it’s true. Dex and Perry’s story continues after a few year’s break. Have you missed anything in the meantime?

  I highly recommend you read Veiled, Ada’s novel, before starting this book.

  And you definitely need to read Ghosted before embarking on Came Back Haunted. This novella is told from Dex’s POV, with events leading right up into this book.

  So go check out Veiled first, then Ghosted.

  Then come right back here.

  This book will be here waiting for you.

  Prologue

  There was a man who lived in Hell.

  He hadn’t been there that long, but in Hell, even a second feels like an eternity.

  The man didn’t deserve to be in Hell at all. The last thing he did with one of his many lives was to sacrifice it for a friend of his, someone he had once sworn to protect, someone who proved more complicated than he ever could have imagined.

  But the thing about Hell is that it’s not just a place for the people who deserve it. The murderers, the rapists, the people who lick the ice cream at the grocery store and put it back in the freezer. No, sometimes people are just unlucky.

  In the case of this man, he happened to be in a portal to Hell when he died, so it was easy for a demon to drag him in the rest of the way. Though he wasn’t perfect (and for most of his life, wasn’t even mortal), he certainly didn’t deserve this fate.

  But it was because he was special, because he didn’t deserve it, especially after the numerous sacrifices he’d made for others during his time on earth, that an exception was made.

  Another man, one of his brethren, a mentor, a friend, decided to break the rules and go into Hell to get him out.

  Or at least get him as far as he could.

  To the Thin Veil.

  To a place between worlds where he could stay, safe from an eternity of torture, yet doomed to watch the world he once lived in pass him by.

  He could live with that, though.

  He had hope that one day he could step through and rejoin his friends. Weirder things have happened, haven’t they?

  And until then, he would watch and wait.

  Biding his time.

  It’s unfortunate, then, that this man wasn’t alone.

  Something else, something unspeakably evil, was in the Veil with him.

  Also watching, also waiting.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  Biding its time.

  One

  I was fifteen when a demon told me to burn down a house.

  I know he was my Jacob, a supernatural guide that was supposed to help me navigate my affliction, but in the end, he failed. And so in my mind, he’s always been a demon to me. What else do you call something that revels in your darkness, that pulls you away from the light?

  Sometimes it feels like only yesterday, when it’s been eleven years now, eleven years since my life started to change for the worse. And the better. It’s hard to say when so much good has come out of so much bad.

  Not surprisingly, I was also fifteen when I first started seeing a shrink. A man who never for a moment believed me, who thought I was borderline certifiable. He would listen to me under the guise of wanting to help, wanting to understand. But in the end, he was like so many others. It was easier to medicate me and call it a day. Easier to threaten me with loss of freedom, as if that would make all the ghosts and demons go away.

  Today I’m sitting in the office of Dr. Lana Leivo, who has become a crucial part of my life over these last three years. Going back into therapy was something I’d fought against for so long, but it wasn’t until I mentally hit rock bottom that I realized I didn’t have much of a choice. Thankfully I lucked out with finding a psychologist who listened to my life story, inside and out, no secrets, no shame, and seemed to truly believe me when I told her about my dalliances with the dead.

  And even if she doesn’t quite believe me (I mean, who can blame her?) she listens and offers solutions, like my word is gospel to her, and honestly that’s made all the difference in the world.

  “So, Perry,” Dr. Leivo says to me as I get comfortable on the couch. She has this little scruffy rescue mutt called Porgus who likes to cuddle when you’re feeling sad, but so far he’s snoozing away in his dog bed in the corner. “How are you?”

  The question is always the same, no matter how many (or few) times I’ve seen her. After my mother died I saw her once a week. Now that I’ve gotten my shit together, that’s tapered off to once a month. Progress.

  “Good,” I tell her. My answer is always the same too.

  She gives me a kind smile, taking her time to observe me for a moment. I like that she does this, that she can glean things from me off the bat without having to talk about it. Sometimes I think she can hear my thoughts, but I haven’t dared ask her yet. How easy it would be to lie back and just let her sift around inside my brain and make things right.

  She tilts her head, her blonde hair falling to the side. Dr. Leivo is surprisingly young. I’ve never asked her age, but she looks like she’s in her early thirties at most. “Good,” she eventually says, smiling again. “But things are different now, aren’t they?”

  I look at her for a moment, wondering what exactly she was able to get from my expression. Then I suck on my lip while I think that over, because she’s right. Things are different from the last time I saw her.

  I slowly nod. “Yeah. Some things have changed. Big things. Big changes.”

  “Change is good, Perry,” she says to me. “Why don’t you start with the biggest change and we’ll go from there.”

  I can’t help but smile. “The biggest change? Well, we’re selling the apartment and we’re moving. I don’t know when—we haven’t put the apartment on the market yet, nor have we started looking, but still.”

  “Wow,” she says. “That is a big change. You’ve mentioned before that you wanted to move, right? That the memories…”

  “They aren’t all bad memories,” I say quickly. “There are good ones too.”

  But sometimes it feels like the bad memories have imprinted themselves into the floor. There’s a bloodstain on the hardwood that won’t come out, no matter how hard I try to clean it. Blood that bled from a dead girl, long after she died.

  I bat the image of
Abby out of my brain, hating that even though it’s been nearly four years since I saw her in the apartment, she still has a hold on me. But I guess that’s what happens when someone gets inside your soul like that.

  “Perry,” the doctor says gently.

  I snap out of it, give her a quick smile. “The apartment is fine, really. But yeah, I’ve wanted to move. The location is great, I really do love living downtown. The only thing is, it’s never quite felt like…ours. You know? Like it’s always been his, but never really mine.”

  She nods. “So what motivated the move? Did you have a discussion with your husband or…?”

  “Not exactly.” I suck on my lip again, letting the incredulous feeing wash over me. “We came into some money. A lot of money.”

  She straightens up, crossing her delicate ankles in her cropped beige pants. “May I ask how?”

  “Two weeks ago, just before Halloween, I’d been getting messages and emails from a man—Harry—who wanted to use our services. And I don’t mean like our video production services through Haunted Media. I mean…our abilities.”

  “To see ghosts?”

  “Yeah,” I say carefully, grateful that she said it. “He said he had a wife who died and he wanted us to talk to her.”

  “Wanted you and Dex to talk to her?”

  “Yes. And I ignored the messages because I thought he was a loon and the last thing I wanted to do was step back into that world. But he didn’t give up easily. He found out where we lived. Waited for Dex to leave the apartment and then accosted him. Told him the deal.” I pause. “Only what he told him, and what he hadn’t told me, was that he wanted to pay us one hundred thousand dollars.”

  She blinks at me, mouth falling open. “You’re kidding me.”

  I shake my head. “I thought the same. That it couldn’t be real.”

  “A hundred thousand dollars to…”

  “To just go into the abandoned house and talk to his dead wife.”

  “And so you did it?” She looks surprised when I nod. “I know how often you talk about that life and how you’re so glad you’ve put it behind you.”

  “I know,” I say with a sigh. “I know, and I really had to think about it. But…I don’t know, it was making Dex really happy. Like happier than I’d seen him in a long time. And that, plus the money, which we need, I figured…maybe it was worth the risk.”

  “And was it?”

  I shrug, looking down at my hands, at the chipped dusky blue nail polish. “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Did you get paid?”

  “We did,” I tell her, meeting her eyes. “But I don’t feel good about it.”

  She frowns. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, we did what Harry asked. We went into the house, though it wasn’t exactly how we thought it was going to go down. He wasn’t even there, his weird stepson was there to show us around, like he was giving us a tour. Time just…flew by. And by the end of it, we hadn’t talked to her. We hadn’t talked to anyone.”

  “So you feel like you don’t deserve the money, is what you’re saying.”

  “Yeah.”

  She crosses and uncrosses her ankles again, leaning back in her chair to study me. “Do you want to talk about what you saw in there?”

  “What makes you think I saw something?”

  “Did you?”

  I close my eyes for a moment, quickly going over what happened in my head on Halloween night. There was Dex, my sister Ada, and her boyfriend Jay. We were all in Halloween costumes. Harry’s stepson, Atlas Poe, met us outside the house and brought me and Dex inside, while Ada and Jay waited in the front yard.

  I clear my throat. “The house had some crazy fucking vibes, that’s for sure. It was so weird inside, dark, bigger than it should have been. Like a chasm. Like it would never stop, like it led to somewhere…deeper.” I shake the feeling out of my head. “Dex said he saw a woman, a ghost, and specifically heard a woman talking to him in his head. I believe him, of course, but I didn’t see or hear her.”

  “That wasn’t the dead wife?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Atlas said it was someone else. Anyway, we explored the floors and honestly other than the oppressive, sketchy nature of the place, I didn’t see anything until the end. Until I saw a river of blood flowing out from under a locked bathroom door, before it retreated. The lights suddenly went on and, well, then I saw things.”

  “Things?”

  “People. Dead people. Ghosts. Whatever. And then they disappeared and that was that. We left.”

  A tiny smile lifts the corner of her mouth. “You say that all so simply.”

  “It was surprisingly simple.”

  She leans forward, her elbows on her knees. “Perry. For as long as you’ve been coming here, you’ve been very straightforward about what you’ve seen. You’ve also been very straightforward about how your gift, your ability, has made you feel. You’ve told me you’ve seen ghosts throughout the years, even after leaving the show. You’ve also told me that you don’t tell your husband that you do.”

  “It’s just not a big deal. I’m used to it. But he’s protective of me and I don’t want him to worry.”

  “I know that. Which is why I’m a little concerned about how flippant you’re being about the whole ordeal. You just willingly stepped back into a part of your life you were more than happy to leave behind. I know money is a huge part of it, but this isn’t something to be taken lightly. This is the bigger change here, bigger than getting the money, than wanting to sell your apartment. You need to come to terms with that.”

  I think that over, inspecting my cuticles now. My heartbeat has picked up the pace and I can feel it pulsing against the anchor tattoo on my wrist.

  “I don’t want to come to terms with it,” I tell her quietly.

  She nods slowly, pausing. “How did it make you feel? When you agreed to do this, when you went into the house and saw the things you’ve been trying to hide from?”

  “Scared,” I admit. “Of course I was scared. But I think I was more terrified at the idea of doing it than actually doing it. I was afraid that it could ruin us. You know, there was so much pain after my mother died, after Dex um, well...I was so afraid that doing that, inviting the dead to communicate, to be seen, that it would pull us back into that pain.” I exhale, my breath shaking. “But when I went inside, it was like the fear was gone. Well, okay, the fear was still there. But it had changed into something thrilling, I guess you could say.”

  “A positive emotion?”

  I smile faintly. “I think so. I felt both scared and comfortable? Like I was doing something I knew how to do, even if it wasn’t a particularly nice thing.”

  “And what did it feel like, to have your husband at your side through all of that? When you saw the ghosts at the end, and he saw them too, when you realized you didn’t have to hide that from him anymore. What did that feel like?”

  “Relief,” I admit. The truth was, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Dex has been on medication for a few years now and we don’t really talk about ghosts anymore. I don’t tell him what I’ve seen, and I’ve assumed he hasn’t seen any, because the man would definitely tell me. Neither of us knew what to expect. But when he saw the lady in the dark, then I knew it hadn’t really left him.

  And I was somewhat relieved. As hellish as it is to see the dead, his history with medication has been complicated. Now we knew the drugs were working with him this time around. He’s able to get better, manage his anxiety and ADHD through medication, without it affecting who he really is at heart.

  “And how did he feel about it? You said you hadn’t seen him that happy in a long time.”

  “He’s ecstatic,” I tell her, smiling because it’s impossible not to smile when I’m thinking about how happy Dex has been lately. “He wants to go back and do it again.”

  “And will you?”

  “I think so. Only because it doesn’t feel right to take the man’s money and have nothing to show for
it. I want to do it right this time, connect with his wife. Earn it. Of course Dex wants to film the damn thing.”

  “Like your old show?”

  “No,” I say adamantly. “Nothing like that. To be honest, I’m not even sure he knows. In the past, before my mother died, we talked about becoming paranormal…well…investigators. I know that sounds ridiculous. Do you know who the Warrens are?”

  “Of course. The couple who investigated Amityville, the Enfield Poltergeist, the Smurl Haunting, and many others.”

  Wow. That’s impressive knowledge for a psychologist. Perhaps treating me has rubbed off on her.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I used to think that could be us. Using our abilities for good instead of exploitation. That’s another reason why I agreed to go into the house. The man wanted us to talk to his wife, to pass on messages. I felt like I could help.”

  “That’s a noble way of looking at it,” she says. “But it’s one thing to say it and another to do it. Would it be just this once, or would you make it a thing?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. And I really don’t. “I have a hard time thinking it could be a career.”

  “You’d be surprised what people pay for. Though I guess you already have proof of that.” She presses her lips, rubbing her nude lipstick together. “Has your relationship with Dex changed since then?”

  I run my tongue over my teeth, my heart doing a little backflip in my chest.

  “A little.”

  “How so?”

  I feel my cheeks go hot already. Man, this always happens when I talk about sex with her, or with anyone, really. “Our sex life has, um, picked up.”