other just to talk, but every contact I have with him is still important and I still get stupid butterflies every time I see his name pop up on the call display. This time, he’s calling to talk about our episode at The Benson.
“How’s it all looking?” I ask as I sit on my bed, listening to my younger sister Ada argue with my dad downstairs.
“Oh it’s looking fucking fantastic, kiddo,” Dex says, his voice coming in low and smooth over the line. “I just want to hug you for keeping that camera rolling while May was talking. I’ll have to run it over some other footage and do that little subtitle thing underneath but it really helps our case, especially when you get that blue shit on screen. That really is something.”
“Best show ever?” I ask, amused at his praise.
“Well,” he says slowly, “it probably would have helped had I been around but you did OK on your own.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“There’s something else, too, you should take as a compliment.”
My eyes perk up and I sit up a bit straighter, putting down my Spin magazine. “What’s that?”
“Pam just called me. She said she handed over the checkbook to the police who are having a division look into it or something. Anyway, the point is ever since our visit , all the haunting in the hotel has stopped.”
“What do you mean, all hauntings?”
“Well she says she usually gets some sort of feedback each day. Since our shoot , there hasn’t been any. I don’t know what that means but she seems to think that whatever you did down in that laundry room…well, I guess you cleared the place.”
“So I’m an exorcist now?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, kiddo. You’re miles away from being Father Merrin and for all we know the haunting could start up again. I’m just saying…next time you feel like being hard on yourself because we aren’t making a difference and there’s no point to any of this…I dunno. Don’t. Because you did good here. You did good.”
I let Dex ramble on a bit more to please my ego and then we hang up. Like the other times before, I still don’t know what to make of my ghost hunting. I don’t know how I got roped into doing the show, how I ended up being a magnet for the supernatural and what on earth it has in store for me. The only thing I do know is that it’s dangerous and I’m compelled to keep doing it.
But I also know that even though someone is dead, is doesn’t mean they’re beyond help. And for every ten ghosts that try and kill me, if I end up saving one of them, it might be worth it after all.
Though you may want to remind me of that, next time I’m locked in a coffin or something.
The End. For now.
Continue the ghost-hunting adventures of Perry and Dex by reading:
Darkhouse – Experiment in Terror #1
“There’s always been something a bit off about Perry Palomino. Though she’s been dealing with a quarter-life crisis and post-college syndrome like any other twenty-something, she’s still not what you would call “ordinary.” For one thing, there’s her past which she likes to pretend never happened, and then there’s the fact that she sees ghosts. Luckily for her, that all comes in handy when she stumbles across Dex Foray, an eccentric producer for an upcoming webcast on ghost hunters. Even though the show’s budget is non-existent and Dex himself is a maddening enigma, Perry is instantly drawn into a world that both threatens her life and seduces her with a sense of importance. Her uncle’s haunted lighthouse provides the perfect catalyst and backdrop for a mystery that unravels the threads of Perry’s fragile sanity and causes her to fall for a man, who, like the most dangerous of ghosts, may not be all that he seems.”
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Red Fox – Experiment in Terror #2
“In the forgotten town of Red Fox, a Navajo couple is tortured by things unseen