The Dark Man by Desmond Doane Read Free Book Online

says, “Make it go away, Ford. You know how these things operate, right? Get it out of here.”
    “I wish it was that easy.”
    Craghorn is standing beside me now, whimpering and whining. The sounds coming out of his mouth aren’t words—at least not English ones—and it takes me a moment to realize that he may be muttering in an ancient language, powerful words that died thousands of years ago. I’ve heard it before, but only a few times, and only in the presence of something like this.
    Craghorn also attempts a pathetic escape. He stumbles and falls back onto the couch, trying to shove himself deeper and deeper into the cushions, pushing farther away from this invisible entity that’s stalking him.
    I can’t believe that something this mighty hasn’t manifested yet. Perhaps it’s using the available energy to communicate with Craghorn.
    Every inch of my skin prickles, and I feel the humming, vibrating sensation coursing through me. I feel weakened, as if it’s stealing my energy. I’m dizzy, exhausted, like I haven’t slept in days. My chest is heavy. I have an emotional anvil sitting on my heart.
    “Ford?” Detective Thomas tries to get my attention. “What’s going on? You okay?”
    I’ve been in this situation before, hundreds of times, and normally I can handle this.
    But when it rolls past, I know I’ve never encountered something as … as strong as this. Like a wave slinking toward the shore, the pressure, the sensation of death pushes by me.
    Craghorn shoves his body away with a foot planted firmly on the hardwood floor, the other leg pathetically moving up and down, trying to gain a foothold and failing. He arches his back and turns his head sideways, whimpering, “No. No, please. Don’t.”
    And then I watch as a handful of his shoulder-length hair is lifted and his head yanked to the side, pulling him from one side of the couch to the other.
    I am goddamn terrified. Why? The smallest explanations often carry the most weight.
    This is bad.
    Very, very bad.

CHAPTER SIX
    Mike Long is like a brother to me. Or he was until the night I went through with exposing Chelsea Hopper to that thing in the attic.
    We built Graveyard: Classified up from a few piddling online videos years ago to the international powerhouse that it was before the network ripped it from primetime. We met in a junior-college film class, bonding over horror movies and the mutual adrenaline rush we got when we were trying to film our own in places where we didn’t have permission. The night we sneaked into an abandoned mental hospital with six cheerleaders who were half-naked and drunk, was the last night we would ever work from a poorly written script.
    When we captured that full-bodied apparition, a woman in a white nightgown, who seemed to be pleading with us to help her, that’s all we needed to go back again and again, giving up on fictional stories and trying to capture real ones on camera.
    We never saw her after that night. Perhaps it was enough for her to know that someone had received her message, and she passed blissfully on to the next phase of the afterlife. We, too, moved on to other decaying insane asylums and old factories, homes, churches, antique shops, and lighthouses. Anywhere that was supposedly haunted, we would ask permission and perform an investigation, then upload our videos online. Hundreds of thousands of followers would flock to them, and it wasn’t long before a group of producers from The Paranormal Channel came calling, offering better equipment, an actual film crew, and contracts that promised more money than we had ever thought possible from a weekend hobby.
    Mike and I, we were inseparable. He was my best man when I married Melanie from wardrobe. He made David Letterman and Ellen laugh. He was the straight man to my crazy, gung-ho attitude when it came to paranormal investigations.
    We’ve only spoken once since the show was cancelled. His end of the conversation consisted of three words: