Nightmare (29 page)

"File a missing persons report," he replied mechanically, "after I
run you in for breaking down the fence. This is private property."

Derek tried to argue, his temper still flaring. "We've tried filing missing persons reports, we've tried everything we can think
of, and no one will help us!"

If I hadn't seen and done the things I had seen and done in
my life, I might not have noticed what happened next. The brisk night air was subtly and slowly being replaced by a bitter chill. I
doubt Derek or the cop were conscious of the shift.

The cop opened his mouth to argue back at Derek, but the
words caught in his throat. Choking, he put both his hands up
around his neck, trying in vain to pull away invisible fingers that
were squeezing off his ability to breathe. His eyes bulged, and
he started to sway.

I ran, hoping to catch him before he fell to the ground, but
at the last second, his arm flew straight out and I slammed facefirst into his fist.

The next thing I remember is opening my eyes while flat
on my back. The cop was standing above me holding his gun
straight out at Derek, but I could tell from the horrified look on
his face that he wasn't in control of his actions. He didn't look
like he was possessed, either, though. I'd seen a few possessions
and they were nothing like this.

It was instead like a powerful apparition was maneuvering
him like a puppet. It had weakened him first by closing off his
air supply, making the rest of his body malleable. Then it had
pulled his strings, knocking me to the ground and holding Derek
at bay with the cop's pistol.

I tried to sit up but something shoved me back down onto my
back, hard. It knocked the wind out of me, and I was reminded
again of how cold the air had become in the cemetery. I noticed I
couldn't move now. I could no longer raise myself up. Something
was pinning me to the grass.

I could see the cop's finger trembling as it hovered at the
gun's trigger, and I prayed that in the fleeting seconds while I
had blacked out, he hadn't already shot Derek.

My chest felt like a cannonball had landed on top of it, jump-starting my heart and causing it to beat painfully hard. I
couldn't see a way out of this. I had been around the paranormal
all my life, but never had I been forced to fight it.

"Derek?!" I cried out. "Are you hurt?"

His voice came from nearby, and it was high enough up off
the ground that I could tell he was still standing more or less
where I'd last seen him. "Not for the moment."

"Something's here!" I called to him. "I can't move. It's holding me down. It's trying to make the cop shoot you!"

When Derek didn't immediately answer, I found my flashlight on the ground nearby and craned my neck backward on the
ground, trying to spot him. I saw him standing in front of a large
grave marker, but he was perfectly still and his eyes were closed.

Then they snapped open. With more power and authority
than I'd ever heard come from his mouth, he strongly stated, "In
the name of Jehovah the Most High and His Son Jesus Christ,
you are commanded to leave this place! The Holy Spirit compels
you: Be gone!"

The pressure let up from whatever was holding me down,
and I saw the cop's eyes roll up into his head just before he went
limp and collapsed on top of me. A warm air descended upon
us and I wrapped myself in its soothing heat.

Derek appeared quickly and rolled the cop over and off me,
and helped me to my feet. I could see the policeman's chest rising
and falling, but he was out cold.

I looked at Derek anew, swallowing hard. "That was ..." I
couldn't find the words. "That was really good."

Derek was all business, and I was glad to see his maniacal
phase had passed. "Would it be safe to say that that was not the
garden-variety paranormal activity?"

I nodded.

"Right. Let's find that journal."

It was less than ten minutes before we'd uncovered it. As
Derek had suspected, it was buried, hidden just a few inches down
in the sediment of a freshly dug grave. Derek was very careful to
respectfully replace all of the dirt he had to dig up, making it
appear that the ground had never been disturbed.

Per our agreement, he let me have the first look at the journal.
I decided to wait until we were back in the truck and on the road
before I cracked it open.

I skipped straight past the entries on our trips to the back of
the journal, looking for Jordin's final entry. Two minutes later,
my expression must have changed drastically, because Derek
picked up on it.

"What?" he said. "Talk to me."

I stared at the pages again, still not believing the words it
bore. "I don't think Jordin was abducted."

"What do you mean?"

I skipped backward in time through the journal, scanning
page after page. "What's happened to her is something she wanted.
According to this, she had a planned meeting at the graveyard
with somebody who works for DHI, and she wrote in the journal that DHI was going to help her find what she was looking
for. They were going to make it a reality. And a lot of her earlier
entries talk about wanting to reach `the other side,' to see it and
feel it and go there. As in, physically. I think she meant the spirit
realm. All that time she spent investigating the paranormal with
me ... what she was after was a way in."

Derek scrunched up his face in some combination of confusion and disgust. "Are you saying she wanted DHI to make her
go all Flatliners?"

"I don't think she had a death wish," I replied. "But she definitely wanted to find a way to bridge the divide, reach through
the veil, and ... well ... visit the spirit realm. There's something
she felt like she needed to do there."

"What? Why?"

"She doesn't go into detail about her reasons," I said, holding
up the closed journal.

He eyed me significantly. "But she told you herself. Didn't
she."

I was saved by the bell. My phone rang.

"Ms. Peters?" said the male voice on the other end.

Uh-oh. I was about to receive more threats, just like the last
time DHI's artificially created apparitions had reached out and
touched me-when my dorm room had been destroyed.

"Who's asking?"

"It's Pierre Ravenwood."

"Oh! Right, yes."

"I'm just calling to let you know that I've been taken off of
the story. My editor allowed me to pursue it as an indulgence,
but her patience ran out when-in a last-ditch effort to save the
story-I filled her in on your `ghost manufacturing' theory. I was
able to talk her out of firing me, but I've been assigned a different
beat. I'm sorry I can't help you anymore."

My mind spun. "But what about Durham Holdings? Did
you ever find anything out about them?"

"DHI's secrets are buried deep. That headquarters of theirs
in Copenhagen is literally some kind of fortress. They're just untouchable. I couldn't even get anyone at their upstate office
to return my calls."

I sighed loud enough that I'm sure he heard it.

Then my head popped up. "Wait, what `upstate office'?"

"Durham Holdings has an office building somewhere in
upstate New York. It was built prior to the opening of Ghost
Town, but apparently it's so small it wasn't worth making a deal
about. There were no press releases or announcements about it,
of any kind."

My heart beat faster, new thoughts pummeling my mind
and stirring up dust like an old bag of flour. "Do you have an
address?"

"Sure, but I told you, there's nothing to it-"

"Mr. Ravenwood," I said, "it'll take us some time to get there,
but if you can meet me at that address a few hours from now, I
promise you'll leave it with the story of your career."

I stared out of my window, feeling a plan start to come
together. It felt good. I couldn't stop the grim smile that formed
on my face.

But when I turned to share the news with Derek, he was
staring at me, pale white.

"What?"

"Your neck ..." he whispered.

Something stung a bit at the back of my neck, and I had the
sense that it had been stinging for a few hours now, but I hadn't
taken the time to stop and really notice it. I didn't need a mirror
to see what it was.

"You're marked," Derek said.

MARCH 20TH

I couldn't sleep, so I cursed the name of Jordin Cole as I lay in
my bed.

And not just any curses. I used the good ones-the ones my
mother uttered in Spanish when she was really mad. The ones
she knew were bad enough to require a visit to confession.

It was all Jordin's fault, after all. I wouldn't be able to sleep
now. If she'd just listened to me, she wouldn't be in any danger
while I lay there trying to rest. Instead, she'd completely ignored
my advice and left to investigate the church in Mount Hope
alone, about an hour ago.

What was she thinking? I understood obsession; my father
had his own unique brand of it when it came to his work. I knew enough about the subject to perceive the difference between
obsession and desperation.

Jordin was desperate. Desperate to contact her parents? I
wasn't so sure about that anymore. This went way beyond an
addiction to paranormal investigation. She had something much
more personal at stake in all this, and only now was I beginning
to see just how far she was willing to take it.

Whether it was her parents or not, apparently she was crazed
enough to risk her life for it. But at this abandoned church, it
wasn't just her mortal life that would be in danger.

And if my suspicions were right about her somehow attracting the extreme amounts of activity we'd observed on our investigations ... then I didn't even want to think about what she
might attract at a place this bad.

I angrily muttered something under my breath in Spanish
as I threw my covers off and got out of bed.

Mount Hope Methodist Episcopal was surrounded by a small
wooded area on all sides, but rather ominously, the ten or twenty
feet of the woods that touched the tiny old church was dead. It
was like the ground had been salted and nothing could grow
there. Even the sickly brown hue of the dirt looked cursed.