Experiment in Terror 05.6 The Dex-Files (5 page)

I hoped she wasn’t a cop.

My hand made contact with the camera, and from the initial feel I was copping, it didn’t seem like much damage was done to the outside. My fingers instinctively found the light and switched it on. I let out a breath of relief as the darkness was violently illuminated.

As was the girl, lying on the ground beside me. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving.

Shit, shit, shit.

I got on my knees and placed my hand on her neck, feeling for a pulse. She stirred a little and moaned, which meant she was at least partially alive. Not dead. I hadn’t killed her. So I had that going for me.

I couldn’t see her properly in the competing darkness and blinding glare, but she seemed damn young. She was small, with a round face that glowed ghostly pale. A camera hung from her neck and onto the floor. Without thinking, I reached up and brushed a strand of black hair off of her forehead. She was warm, almost feverish. Still not dead.

At my touched she moved a little and tried to open her eyes, raising her arm up to block out the light.

“Don’t move,” I said, my voice coming out broken and hoarse. The last thing I needed was for her to wreck herself even further. Just because she was alive, didn’t mean she was well.

She dropped her hand reluctantly and I took the light away from her face, placing the camera down on the ground beside her head. It created crazy shadows along the planes of her face. Her pert nose turned into a beak. If I let my imagination run away with me, there were a million things she could have morphed into. I was lucky I hadn’t skipped my pills earlier, like I had been thinking about doing.

I touched her face again, just to make sure she was still a person. She was. She was still soft, and warm, and alive.

Was I being creepy?

Her eyes fluttered open and I could barely make out a shade of blue in them before panic tore them wider and she tried to jerk away.

I pressed her shoulder down to the ground to keep her still.

“Seriously,” I told her. “You might be really hurt. Please don’t move.”

She obeyed and lay back down.

“I’m OK,” she said through dry lips. Her voice was light and scared. But she didn’t sound like she was in any trauma. Her eyes searched my face without really seeing me.

I still had one hand on her shoulder and the other on her face.

I was definitely being creepy.

I took my hands away and inched back a bit to give her space to breathe — and me space to run. She looked no older than 20, so she obviously wasn’t a cop but she was here, in a place I had no right to be. I eyed the hall in the darkness, wondering if getting out of the building was going to be as hard as getting in. I hoped she wasn’t about to call for help. Or press charges.

She eased herself up and looked warily around the darkness, her eyes focusing on the cam-era. I could see the wheels turning behind those shadowed eyes, wondering what the fuck was going on.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. Even though she technically ran into me, I had to placate things before they escalated.

“I was upstairs and I heard this crazy clatter from down here,” I explained, my voice speeding up as my heart raced. There was too much adrenaline in my system and the medication was screwing around with it. “And I thought maybe it was the cops or something. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I thought I could get out of the way I came in, but I saw you there, and then I saw the window probably at the same time you saw the window and I’m…I’m so sorry if…well, you’re obviously OK.”

There was a pause. She didn’t seem to buy any of that.

“Who are you?”

The million dollar question. What would my answer be today?

“That depends on who you are,” I said honestly.

In the shadows I saw her cock her brow.

“I asked you first.”

Why did I have to run into the most questioning people? I exhaled and reached back into my pocket. My new business cards were printed just last week – she’d be the first person to have one.

Whoever she was.

She took it from her hands, hesitant, like I was handing her poison. So suspicious. Tsk, tsk.

I picked up the camera and aimed it at the card. It gleamed under the light. So did the chipped polish on her gothy-looking fingernails.

She read it out loud and flipped it over, then looked up at me, somehow even more confused. The light lit up her face better.

“Are you from West Coast Living or something?”

I let out a small laugh. “Fuck no.”

I started to rock back on forth on my feet, needing an outlet for the energy that was rumbling inside my bones. She was a curious little thing, but something about her made me nervous. Wary. Like she could be even more dubious than I was. Like she had a million secrets to tell and I would never hear any of them.

Whoever she was.

“Well, Dex Foray, I have a feeling that whatever you guys are doing here tonight, you’re doing so without the permission of my uncle, who owns the lighthouse.”

Shit. Fuck. Shit.

Her uncle owned the lighthouse. I felt the routes in my brain rewire as they prepared for the extra adrenaline, the gallop of my heart.

But…wait…

“There’s no one else here,” I said. “It’s just me.”

She laughed, clearly not believing me.

“Look, I don’t care,” she said and there was just enough ease in her voice to make it true. “I’m not going to report you. I shouldn’t even be here myself. Just get your crew together or whatever and get out of here before you do get in trouble.”

I stopped rocking. What the hell was she going on about? My crew?

“It’s just me,” I told her again. “Did you see someone else here?”

She frowned but kept her gaze on mine. “Yes. I heard you upstairs, and I was going to go out the window, but I saw the shadow of someone pass by. Outside.”

A shudder ran down my spine and roll of nausea waved through me. I skid a bit closer to her, my pants dragging on the damp ground.

“Are you sure you saw something?”

If she had seen something, and it obviously was not me, then I was hooped up the ass. Maybe she was too, but I just couldn’t get a proper reading on her. That weird energy slinked off of her in bursts and messed with my head a little bit.

“Yes, I saw someone,” she said with a tinge of doubt. “Someone walked past the window, swear to God.”

I wasn’t sure if her God was one I could hold truth to.

“Where did you come from? Did anyone come with you?”

Like your uncle…or the cops…or your 250-pound MMA boyfriend.

She shook her head. I placed the light closer to her face, feeling like I needed to do a bit of interrogating to get to the bottom of this. She winced at the glare.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I…well, nevermind.”

“Nevermind?” she spat out. Her eyes narrowed and not from the light. “You just broke into my uncle’s lighthouse. Don’t you tell me to nevermind.”

Whoa. All I was going to do was apologize again for doing exactly that. Well, fuck. Forget it. I was done. I was out of here.

With a grunt, I got to my feet and stretched up into the moonlight that was now creeping from the nearby window. It would be an easy escape. I picked up my foot to go, but I stopped.

I couldn’t leave like this.

She looked so helpless at my feet. And I did have manners somewhere.

I reached for her hand. She eventually took it, feeling all too tiny in mine, and I brought her to her feet. She staggered a bit, almost keeling over, her camera swinging, and all I could think about was maybe she fell a lot harder than I thought. Maybe she wasn’t really “all there” and we’d need an ambulance after all.

I put my hands on the sides of her arms and stepped closer to her, trying to keep her from faltering. She was short as hell and that was saying a lot since I wasn’t very tall to begin with.

“You OK?” I asked, already knowing she was the type who’d say she was fine even if her limbs were chopped off. I saw a flash of something – hope? — in her eyes before she twisted us around and I was illuminated and her face was hidden in the dark. I searched out her features but couldn’t get them. It was unnerving to not see the round pale face and watchful eyes.

“Just a bit dizzy,” she said. The fact that she admitted that much didn’t sound very good. I began to think where the nearest hospital was, whether I could get her there in the Highlander, if I would need to call her uncle first. Who would then slap me with some trespassing charges and a possible assault charge, because men were dicks and no one would believe a girl could run into me, especially not one pixie-sized.

“Good,” I said, trying to look into her eyes, trying to keep things light. I smiled, thinking it might help my cause. “Promise not to sue?”

“I won’t. Can’t speak for my uncle, though.”

Damn it! Just where was he anyway? Why was she exploring a lighthouse in the dark with-out him?

“Why are you here?” I asked, more and more curious about this little goth girl.

She dropped her gaze to the ground, even though I couldn’t see her anyway.

“We’re having a bonfire at the beach,” she said. Her voice went higher, younger, and I got the distinct impression that she was feeling guilty about something. “I got sick of hanging around teenagers and wanted to come here. My uncle never let me come here when I was younger. I didn’t tell anyone, I just left. I was hoping to film stuff.”

Hoping to film some stuff? As if she couldn’t get any more intriguing. What kind of stuff, exactly. What had she heard about the lighthouse?

She let out a small gasp and started fiddling with something. Her camera. I picked up mine and shone the light on her and while she was squinting uncomfortably at the glare, I took her SLR in my hand and peered it over. Aside from scratches that were probably there before, there was no damage.

“It’s fine,” I told her, trying to sound reassuring. “I thought you wrecked the shit out of mine when you ran into me.”

I patted my camera which made the light bob against her face. She didn’t look very impressed. Who could blame her.

“You’re right,” I said, before she could. “Who cares? I probably deserve to have this camera smashed.”

Even though it would put me back at square one. I couldn’t think about that.

Thump.

I froze. The sound had come from upstairs. Where I had just been. Where nothing else had been. Unless…

I looked at her, putting the light closer to her face. It was Bad Cop time again.

“You sure you came alone?” I whispered.

She replied, “Are you?”

I nodded. She didn’t. It then occurred to me that I had no clue what her damn name was. She never offered it up. I didn’t know anything about her.

This could have all been a trap. They might have known I was coming here. I don’t know how, but maybe they saw the Highlander from a distance. Maybe trespassers were a weekly occurrence. Maybe they lured ghost-hunters here and then robbed them. Or raped them. I’d probably let little miss doe eyes do the honors, but I had no idea how strong her uncle was.

She dropped her eyes from mine and looked at the window. The only easy way of escape.

But if she was thinking of running, that meant she was afraid. It meant she didn’t know who, or what, was upstairs.

And if they didn’t come with her…they were already here.

I leaned into her and smelled something like a fresh breeze radiating from her neck. It took me a moment to find my tongue, find the words to say, “Are you one hundred percent sure that no one else came with you here?”

I wanted to pull away for her response but that energy, that smell, kept my nose and mouth locked near her neck for just a few more seconds.

EVEN DEEPER

“Oh come on, just shoot the freaking zombie already!” Matt or Tony yelled at me. I couldn’t tell which one. They both looked the same and sounded the same – deafening.

I’d been playing video games with Perry’s cousins for the last hour while she checked her emails and we waited for night to fall. My zombie-hunting “skills” seemed just as useless as my ghost-hunting skills and the noises and the graphics were fucking up my equilibrium. I mean, shit. After what went down in the car, running into that psycho, Dame Edna lady again, I was surprised it took me this long to realize everything was doing my head in. I had enough.

“That’s it,” I said, throwing my controller down on the couch and getting up. “I’ve died for the last time.”

The twins made a noise in unison. It sounded like false disappointment. It was eerie.

Then they continued playing like I had never even been there. Also eerie.

And nerdy.

I made my way over the kitchen and started to pull out my notebook from my overnight bag. It still smelled like apple pie here, the one that Perry managed to bake earlier. What possessed her to try baking was beyond my cloudy brain. Just one more thing to scribble down on my mental notepad headlined PERRY and sorted: things I needed to get to the bottom of.

It was good too. Not the best thing I’ve tasted in my life, but it was good considering she ran-domly cooked it in her uncle’s place. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had homemade apple pie. Had I ever? The only time I could think of was the God awful Christmases with Jenn and her white-ass rich folks, and if I knew them, they probably ordered those pies from some epicurean pie catalogue for old farts.

But the thing is, it wasn’t so much what it tasted like but what it smelled like. The damn pie smelled like home to me. But apple pie didn’t exist in my fucked-up youth, and if it had, it wasn’t at the hands of my mother. Perhaps a nanny had baked every now and then. I don’t know, I didn’t care to remember that shit. That whole period was blocked out for very good reasons.

But the smell still stirred up memories that never could have existed. It felt…like, warm. Good. Honest. How the hell did those things belong in my life?

I looked at Perry as she came into the kitchen and sat down at the table across from me. Her face was anxious, like she was having another battle inside that head of hers. There was something about her that stirred up the same feelings. Maybe this had nothing to do with apple pie at all. Maybe it’s that she made it, and when she handed over that first slice and met my eyes, I could see she made it for me. And no one had ever made me anything.