“Two weeks ago, just before Halloween, I’d been getting messages and emails from a man—Harry—who wanted to use our services. And I don’t mean like our video production services through Haunted Media. I mean…our abilities.”
“To see ghosts?”
“Yeah,” I say carefully, grateful that she said it. “He said he had a wife who died and he wanted us to talk to her.”
“Wanted you and Dex to talk to her?”
“Yes. And I ignored the messages because I thought he was a loon and the last thing I wanted to do was step back into that world. But he didn’t give up easily. He found out where we lived. Waited for Dex to leave the apartment and then accosted him. Told him the deal.” I pause. “Only what he told him, and what he hadn’t told me, was that he wanted to pay us one hundred thousand dollars.”
She blinks at me, mouth falling open. “You’re kidding me.”
I shake my head. “I thought the same. That it couldn’t be real.”
“A hundred thousand dollars to…”
“To just go into the abandoned house and talk to his dead wife.”
“And so you did it?” She looks surprised when I nod. “I know how often you talk about that life and how you’re so glad you’ve put it behind you.”
“I know,” I say with a sigh. “I know, and I really had to think about it. But…I don’t know, it was making Dex really happy. Like happier than I’d seen him in a long time. And that, plus the money, which we need, I figured…maybe it was worth the risk.”
“And was it?”
I shrug, looking down at my hands, at the chipped dusky blue nail polish. “I’m not sure yet.”
“Did you get paid?”
“We did,” I tell her, meeting her eyes. “But I don’t feel good about it.”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we did what Harry asked. We went into the house, though it wasn’t exactly how we thought it was going to go down. He wasn’t even there, his weird stepson was there to show us around, like he was giving us a tour. Time just…flew by. And by the end of it, we hadn’t talked to her. We hadn’t talked to anyone.”
“So you feel like you don’t deserve the money, is what you’re saying.”
“Yeah.”
She crosses and uncrosses her ankles again, leaning back in her chair to study me. “Do you want to talk about what you saw in there?”
“What makes you think I saw something?”
“Did you?”
I close my eyes for a moment, quickly going over what happened in my head on Halloween night. There was Dex, my sister Ada, and her boyfriend Jay. We were all in Halloween costumes. Harry’s stepson, Atlas Poe, met us outside the house and brought me and Dex inside, while Ada and Jay waited in the front yard.
I clear my throat. “The house had some crazy fucking vibes, that’s for sure. It was so weird inside, dark, bigger than it should have been. Like a chasm. Like it would never stop, like it led to somewhere…deeper.” I shake the feeling out of my head. “Dex said he saw a woman, a ghost, and specifically heard a woman talking to him in his head. I believe him, of course, but I didn’t see or hear her.”
“That wasn’t the dead wife?”
“No, I don’t think so. Atlas said it was someone else. Anyway, we explored the floors and honestly other than the oppressive, sketchy nature of the place, I didn’t see anything until the end. Until I saw a river of blood flowing out from under a locked bathroom door, before it retreated. The lights suddenly went on and, well, then I saw things.”
“Things?”
“People. Dead people. Ghosts. Whatever. And then they disappeared and that was that. We left.”
A tiny smile lifts the corner of her mouth. “You say that all so simply.”
“It was surprisingly simple.”
She leans forward, her elbows on her knees. “Perry. For as long as you’ve been coming here, you’ve been very straightforward about what you’ve seen. You’ve also been very straightforward about how your gift, your ability, has made you feel. You’ve told me you’ve seen ghosts throughout the years, even after leaving the show. You’ve also told me that you don’t tell your husband that you do.”
“It’s just not a big deal. I’m used to it. But he’s protective of me and I don’t want him to worry.”
“I know that. Which is why I’m a little concerned about how flippant you’re being about the whole ordeal. You just willingly stepped back into a part of your life you were more than happy to leave behind. I know money is a huge part of it, but this isn’t something to be taken lightly. This is the bigger change here, bigger than getting the money, than wanting to sell your apartment. You need to come to terms with that.”
I think that over, inspecting my cuticles now. My heartbeat has picked up the pace and I can feel it pulsing against the anchor tattoo on my wrist.
“I don’t want to come to terms with it,” I tell her quietly.
She nods slowly, pausing. “How did it make you feel? When you agreed to do this, when you went into the house and saw the things you’ve been trying to hide from?”
“Scared,” I admit. “Of course I was scared. But I think I was more terrified at the idea of doing it than actually doing it. I was afraid that it could ruin us. You know, there was so much pain after my mother died, after Dex um, well...I was so afraid that doing that, inviting the dead to communicate, to be seen, that it would pull us back into that pain.” I exhale, my breath shaking. “But when I went inside, it was like the fear was gone. Well, okay, the fear was still there. But it had changed into something thrilling, I guess you could say.”
“A positive emotion?”
I smile faintly. “I think so. I felt both scared and comfortable? Like I was doing something I knew how to do, even if it wasn’t a particularly nice thing.”
“And what did it feel like, to have your husband at your side through all of that? When you saw the ghosts at the end, and he saw them too, when you realized you didn’t have to hide that from him anymore. What did that feel like?”
“Relief,” I admit. The truth was, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Dex has been on medication for a few years now and we don’t really talk about ghosts anymore. I don’t tell him what I’ve seen, and I’ve assumed he hasn’t seen any, because the man would definitely tell me. Neither of us knew what to expect. But when he saw the lady in the dark, then I knew it hadn’t really left him.
And I was somewhat relieved. As hellish as it is to see the dead, his history with medication has been complicated. Now we knew the drugs were working with him this time around. He’s able to get better, manage his anxiety and ADHD through medication, without it affecting who he really is at heart.
“And how did he feel about it? You said you hadn’t seen him that happy in a long time.”
“He’s ecstatic,” I tell her, smiling because it’s impossible not to smile when I’m thinking about how happy Dex has been lately. “He wants to go back and do it again.”
“And will you?”