Dead End by Stephen Osborne

Author:Stephen Osborne [Osborne, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 8

“YOU SURE you’re up to this?” I asked.

Robbie cocked an eye at me. It was accompanied by a sarcastic twist of the lip. “I’m good. But then, I just had the energy zapped out of me the last time we were here. I didn’t sail through the room and go splat against a wall.”

We were in Jason Church’s house, milling about the kitchen. Well, I was milling about. Robbie was sitting at the small dining table. He was, to be fair, pretty solid and healthy looking. He was wearing a Colts football jersey under his high school letter jacket and well-worn jeans. His hair was mussed and sticking up in places, which never made sense to me. He could appear in any clothes he wore while he was alive and could give the impression of being perfectly groomed if he so wished. Why not make the extra effort and have combed hair? He had, on many occasions, explained to me that it was easier to look like he felt. So he must have been feeling all messy haired. Even after a lifetime of dealing with ghosts, there was a lot I didn’t understand. Personally, I went nowhere with messy hair.

It was the middle of the afternoon. After leaving Mark Callahan, I’d run some errands and arranged a thing or two, but I’d rushed to get things done so I could get the feel of the Church house during the day. There was no guarantee old Doc Moore wouldn’t rear his ugly head during daylight hours, but according to Jason, the paranormal activity went on mostly at night, so I wanted to see if the house had a different feel while the sun was still out.

And, for the most part, it felt like any other house on a cold November day. But there was an underlying something, a little nag in the back of my mind, telling me danger was lurking close by and I shouldn’t let my guard down even for a second.

I paced the kitchen, letting my senses stretch out. To help concentration, I closed my eyes briefly. I pictured the tiles I was walking on, the wall, the refrigerator. I could see them all in my mind’s eye. And there was something more there. It was as if every board, every appliance, every thread of carpet in the house, was infected. Doctor Moore’s evil was a cancer, and it coated everything around him.

Opening my eyes, I paused to look at the spirit sitting slumped in the chair at the table. Somehow, seeing Robbie like that made me remember our first Thanksgiving together. He’d insisted on taking me to his parents’ house for the annual feast. I hadn’t met Mr. and Mrs. Church before. They had been nice, if a little reserved. They were still getting used to the idea that their beloved son had a boyfriend. We had been twenty years old. When the call to dinner came, Robbie had made sure we had seats together and had slumped down just as he was sitting now.

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