Speed Dating With the Dead by Scott Nicholson Read Free Book Online

Therefore, you are trying to prove a foregone conclusion rather than collect data in an impartial manner.”
    “What’s your point?” It was the common response of those in a weak position. But at least she had the authority to stop sleeping with him if necessary.
    “You’re in high dudgeon,” he said.
    “I have no idea what ‘high dudgeon’ means.”
    “Me, either, but whatever it is, you’re in it.”
    Ann scrolled through some programs on the laptop. She wasn’t in the mood to argue or play, which were usually the same when it came to Duncan. She’d seduced half her male assistants, and one of her female assistants, since securing her Ph.D., and Duncan was the first she’d actually almost loved. “You know what’s ironic?”
    “You as a NASCAR queen?” he said, his hand creeping toward his belt.
    She was wearing blue jeans and a Dale Earnhardt sweatshirt, her hair tied back in a pony tail instead of flaring in the usual defiant and deranged curls. The biggest insult was the Carolina Panthers ball cap clamped down on her forehead. But the disguise had worked when, during her preliminary scouting expedition, she’d blundered into a cramped rear room where the hotel staff sat sullen and tobacco-soaked. She didn’t quite have the wrinkled, defeated look of the permanent underclass, but she had passed for some sort of laborer, because she’d given a conspiratorial wave that said, “This place, what can you do?” One of the maids had even directed her to the service stairs, where traffic was minimal.
    “Shut up and listen for a change,” she said. “I’m trying to be objective here.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Assuming 50 people are here focusing their energy on ghosts, what if the combined electromagnetic force of their brain circuitry slightly altered the normal EMF state of the hotel? And subsequently that alteration led to hallucinations, feelings of disorientation, and a sense of being watched or touched?”
    “You mean the power of wishful thinking?”
    “Or maybe just projection or self-fulfilling prophecy.”
    “That’s the whole trouble with the supernatural,” Duncan said. “It’s beyond the laws of nature and, as such, can’t be measured, quantified, or compared. It’s like arguing religion. Say a child is swept away in a flood but gets snagged on a tree branch and survives. The rescue is called miraculous proof of God’s mercy, but what about the people who drowned?”
    “They come back as waterlogged ghosts?”
    “Have you noticed,” he asked, “that most of our conversations are in the form of questions?”
    “And this is a bad thing?”
    “You love to be bad.” Duncan rolled off the bed and stood behind her. He kissed the back of her neck and then peered over her shoulder at the computer screen. “Hey, did the light level just change in the attic?”
    “What if we accidentally discovered irrefutable proof of the afterlife while trying to debunk it?”
    “It would be a miracle,” he said.
    Ann clicked through the files on her computer. She had five more doctored videos and a folder full of superimposed still images. She’d spent one on Digger, but she could use that one again. Maybe she’d wait until several true believers were around to witness proof of the impossible.
    She switched to the view from the hidden spycam in the attic. Light fluctuated and she wondered if Digger had returned for a second look, but the shadow fell still. She smiled. Such imaginative impressions would have sent the average ghost hunter into a paroxysm of bliss.
    “We’ve got a few hours to kill before showtime,” she said, turning to meet his kiss.
    “Want to continue this conversation in bed?”
    “Will you shut up already?”

 
     
    Chapter 8
     
    People called him The Roach.
    Rodney Froehmer wasn’t sure whether it was because he could fit through impossibly tight crevices or because he was likely to survive nuclear winter as the last living human in a post-apocalyptic world. Either