Came Back Haunted (Experiment in Terror #10) - Karina Halle Page 0,15
look at her, hearing the fear in her voice. “I’m seeing what Lucinda is seeing.”
“A ghost?” she whispers, her arm going around her daughter, pulling her close. “Please don’t tell me she’s like you.”
I frown, feeling a pinch in my heart just for a moment. Then I shake my head. “Kids can see things until a certain age. Doesn’t mean she’s like me.”
I look back at the woman, only this time she’s in the middle of slowly turning her head to look at me.
I don’t want to see her face.
BAM!
Something hits one of the large windows looking out onto the street, making everyone in the restaurant jump and cry out in alarm.
My eyes move to the window where there’s a large crack forming in it, some people ducking beneath their tables, others peering outside.
I quickly look back at the woman, but she’s gone.
There’s no one at her table at all.
“What the hell was that?” someone yells out, pointing to the window.
“A seagull,” a man says in horror as he presses against the glass, looking down onto the sidewalk. “A damn seagull just flew into the window. Broke its neck.”
Fucking hell, that’s disturbing. I love birds and absolutely hate window strikes. A seagull flying into a glass, this fast and this low, in the city? Almost unheard of, and yet not the most alarming thing to happen here in the last five minutes.
While the commotion at the window continues, I look back to Rebecca and Lucinda. “The woman is gone, isn’t she?” I ask Lucinda.
She nods. “Yes. She disappeared. The monster did too.”
“Did you get a look at the monster?” I whisper to her.
“Perry,” Rebecca says sharply. “Please don’t scare my child.”
“I’m not scaring her,” I tell her, though it does make me pause. Maybe I don’t have a right to be talking about this with her. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I just…it looked familiar.”
“Familiar?”
I lower my voice. “The woman was holding a leash that went under the table. You know where we last saw that, don’t you?”
The one time in her life when Rebecca Sims saw a ghost was when we were investigating a haunted school on the Oregon coast, which was also an ex-sanatorium where hundreds of children died from TB, as well as from the hands of their evil caregivers. There was a monster there that the children called “the bad thing,” that one devious ghost girl kept on a leash. The bad thing was a demon, and once it was off the leash, it terrorized the three of us. I’ll never forget the look in Rebecca’s eyes the moment she finally saw what we were all so scared of. It didn’t help that the demon was probably the most demented, disturbing creature of all.
And from the look on Rebecca’s face, she’s reliving that fear right now.
“Wow, that was pretty awful,” the waitress says, making us flinch in our seats as she comes back over. “I’ve never seen a seagull do that before. Can I take your plates?”
We absently nod, while Lucinda asks Rebecca if they can go home.
“Sorry this birthday lunch ended this way,” Rebecca says as she pays the bill. She glances at the empty wine bottle. “I have to say, I wouldn’t mind finishing another one of these right now. Want to come back to our place?”
I shake my head. “I would but I have to help Dex with some production stuff.”
I can tell Rebecca doesn’t want to be alone though so I add, “Why don’t you and Lucinda come over? We can pick up another bottle of wine, and I can get it done pretty fast. It’s such a short walk and the sunshine will do us some good.”
She agrees to that, giving me a grateful smile, and though Lucinda puts up a minor fuss at the change of plans, that all changes when I promise her she can play with Fat Rabbit.
The three of us leave the restaurant, the outside feeling so free and bright compared to the restaurant that seemed to turn on us all of a sudden.
But the moment I see that dead seagull, still lying on the pavement with its neck bent at an impossible angle, blood spilling from its beak, the despair comes back. We walk to the apartment, trying to leave it all behind us, but I can’t help but think about the woman at the table, and the broken bird.