Darkside Blues: An Occult Thriller (The Ulrich Files Book 3) Read online

  Why is this happening to me? Why am I seeing such things? Most people, Ulrich believed, went their entire lives without ever witnessing the kinds of things he'd been dealing with in his most recent cases. The odd bump in the night was the most supernatural thing most folks ever encountered. So why, then, was he seemingly cursed with the ability to see the dead? And why now, of all times? Well into his middle age, Harlan Ulrich could count roughly four and a half decades without ever witnessing terrors of this kind. Before taking on the case of the Moonville Sick House, the only ghosts he'd ever seen had been in movies.

  But now he was seeing them with more frequency.

  Alarming frequency.

  Washing his face with warm water, Ulrich wiped himself down with a paper towel and looked into the mirror. His salt and pepper hair was matted down against his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. Lips chapped and cheeks red for the cold, he gave himself a little pinch, the pain doubled for the pins and needles feeling that plagued his wind-sore face.

  You're awake. It was real, he thought through a wince.

  Finishing up in the bathroom, Ulrich exited into the quiet eatery and traded the sleepy cashier two dollars for a medium coffee. Carrying this to an open table for two, Ulrich nodded politely at a number of students with headphones on and plopped down into his chair. Prying the lid off of his coffee, he found it bitter, probably scorched, and could taste a few grounds in it with his first sip. He didn't much care, however. He was thankful just to have a warm cup in his hands, to be sitting in a place with other living, breathing people.

  Running his thumb against the paper sleeve on his cup, he wondered what he'd tell Michael in the morning. There isn't any delicate way for me to put this. What can I possibly tell the guy? That I ran into his daughter again, but that her face looks like it's been run through a wood chipper? He doesn't want to hear that. And anyhow, he's going to be real upset if I tell him I don't want to follow through with the case.

  Teasing out the picture of Vivian in his pocket, Ulrich set it down on the table and regarded it with a frown. The ghastly thing he'd encountered outside of the Prescott that night had most certainly been Vivian. There had been enough identifying features to the apparition for him to feel confident of that, and the location where they'd met had also aligned with that of her death. The spirit, it seemed, was fond of inhabiting the streets and alleyways surrounding the old hotel.

  The aimless spirit set out each night to walk. Why? Were the feelings that compelled her to commit suicide so strong that she remained leashed to this world even in death? Was she simply a lonesome spirit seeking out a friendly ear? Or, perhaps, was she exactly as that vagrant back at the hotel had claimed; a sinister soul, a demon?

  More information would be needed before Ulrich could come to any sort of conclusion.

  Information that he had zero interest in seeking out.

  The window to his right admitted a thin ribbon of cold air through its seams, all but assuring that his mediocre coffee wouldn't stay hot. The line of cars cycling through the drive-thru was visible to him as he sat and pondered, looking up now and then with a fearful narrowing of the eyes as if expecting Vivian Poole to turn up outside the building. The students packed into the place, tapping the keys on their laptops and munching at boxes of donut holes, spared the investigator nary a glance. After all he'd been through in the last hour, the library-like quietude was more than welcome.

  It wasn't the first time that Ulrich had considered backing out of one of these cases. Each time, though, something had dragged him back to it. The dead, it seemed, preferred not to leave him alone until they'd gotten what they wanted out of him. Would that be the case in this instance? Would he have the option to run away, to throw this case out the window if he wanted? Technically, Michael hadn't signed the usual contract. The whole thing had moved forward so quickly that the pair hadn't had the chance to go through the usual bureaucratic process. Money had changed hands, but if Ulrich returned his fee, then--

  The slamming of the restaurant door startled him. Ulrich looked up to find a couple of new faces heading for the front counter; a trio of tall young men in varsity jackets. Their back and forth was loud, disturbing the soothing silence, so that Ulrich decided to enjoy the last of his drink in the car. Standing up, he purchased a more palatable refill and then locked himself into the Passat, allowing the steam pouring off of his coffee to cloud up the windshield.

  He wanted to run, to abandon this line of work.

  Maybe he'd look into a new career.

  His qualifications were few, but he could likely seek out some toilet-cleaning job.

  If he were a janitor, at the very least he wouldn't be tasked with seeking out horrific ghosts.

  He placed his forehead against the ice cold steering wheel and sighed. Run away, if you want. It won't make a lick of difference, though. You know it all too well. The job isn't done until the spirits say it is. So, the question is... will you try and ignore them? Quit this job and live a normal life? Or will you listen to what they have to say and end this quick? Better to rip off the bandaid fast, isn't it?

  He fired up the car and basked in the protective white glow of the parking lot light fixtures. When the fog had cleared and the windshield was clear enough to see through, he slowly turned out of the lot and started for his apartment.

  Half-way there, the heater was doling out a steady warmth and, finding the streets clear of cars and phantasms alike, his mind was free to settle on more mundane matters. He grew tired of the crappy coffee remaining in his cup. Chucking it out the window, he grimaced. “What a miserable brew. It's coffee in name only.”

  10

  Beardsley was waiting for him in the living room when he walked in, shuffling off his coat. He paused in the entryway, easing the door shut with his shoulder, and fixing the cat in his sights. “What?” asked Ulrich as the feline stood on the back of the sofa and glared at him with his reflective little eyes.

  Those eyes reminded him of Vivian's.

  Shuddering, he threw his coat over the back of the sofa, spooking the cat, and made his way into the kitchen. “Don't look at me like that.” The cat joined him, circling the kitchen island and sniffing the air pensively. Ulrich glanced down at him, running a hand through his hair and pouring himself a glass of mineral water. “You wouldn't believe the night I've had. It's been a long one. And this newest case? I think I might throw in the towel. It isn't worthwhile. It's, uh... it's kind of like the one back at Exeter House, where the two of us met. Remember?”

  The cat's whiskers twitched. Beardsley sat back and stared at Ulrich, offering only a low meow.

  “Look at me. Maybe I really am sick in the head. I'm standing here talking to a cat.” He watched the bubbles in his glass fizz away. “You know what bothers me about this? I met another one... a spirit, right? And someone told me that she's fond of following people around.” Ulrich took a token glance around the kitchen, and much to his amusement, the cat followed suit. “I don't see anyone else in here, though. If she'd come home with me, I think I'd have noticed. You can't miss her. She's got a real, shall we say, distinctive face, that one.” He shrugged and polished off his water. “I'm going to bed. I need to think of some way to hack this and put the spirit to rest. Either that, or I need to start thinking up a really good excuse for ditching the case. To be honest with you, I'm leaning towards the latter.”

  For no reason that Ulrich could articulate, the black cat suddenly sprang back and darted through the living room, bumping audibly into the sofa and charging full-speed into the bedroom. Usually the investigator didn't allow Beardsley into the room after dark; on those few occasions when he'd budged, he'd awoken in the night only to find the cat perched atop his chest, staring at him or pawing feebly at his chin. On this night however, he welcomed the company and hurriedly put out the light in the kitchen.

  Before doing so, Ulrich had a look around the space, hovering in the threshold between the kitchen and living room. There was nothing
—and more importantly, no one—to be seen. Damn cat is just playing games. He always acts weird at night. Undressing quickly, he pulled back the covers and dove into bed, Beardsley perched on the pillow opposite his own.

  Despite the coffee, Ulrich was sleeping well. His caffeine tolerance was enormous, and so it wasn't uncommon for him to enjoy a piping hot cup as a nightcap. It wasn't a chemical disturbance, nor a terrible dream that awoke him that night.

  It was the antics of that damned cat.

  Feeling a bouncing of the mattress near the foot of his bed, Ulrich was nudged out of sleep and groggily sat up, pawing at his eyes. “What are you up to, you ingrate?” He yawned, pulling back the covers and leaning forward in the darkness. “I was trying to sleep, you know?” The alarm clock on the nightstand told him it was just past two in the morning, the red characters on it shining brightly in the otherwise darkened room. Since moving into his new place, Ulrich had installed darker curtains in his bedroom, which did a decent job of blocking out the outside light. On this night he couldn't even see his hand in front of his face.

  Throwing a leg out in a blind effort to bump Beardsley out of bed, Ulrich felt his temper mounting. “You damned cat, cut that out!”

  The bouncing, soft yet noticeable, persisted all the same.

  Losing his patience, Ulrich reached to the nightstand and took up his cellphone, tapping the screen and introducing just enough light into the space to make his eyes hurt. He sat up and waved it in front of him, trying to zero in on the cat, but instead found something else.

  The breath fled from his lungs, leaving his chest tight and throat grappling against a scream. The phone left his shaky grasp, clattering against the floor and disappearing under the bed, where its luminescence promptly faded.

  There was no cat at the foot of his bed.

  The pressure on the edge of the mattress was that of a single, human hand pressing into it. Squatting on the floor in front of the bed was a pale figure, slowly rising so as to climb up onto the mattress with him. A gentle tug came at the opposite end of the covers; a thing against which Ulrich put up no resistance. The bedclothes were pulled gently to the floor and still the intruder worked furtively to climb atop the bed.

  He'd gotten only a peek at it in the light, but he'd been close enough to know for certain who it was that now sought to join him in bed.

  A lacerated face like a mask made of hamburger. A shattered jaw that left the mouth perpetually open. As Ulrich gasped and recoiled, falling off the side of his bed in the process and landing hard on the floor, two pinpoints of yellow light blinked to life, giving depth to pitch-colored sockets.

  Loosing a labored groan, it was all Ulrich could do not to surrender to the petrifying fear that enveloped him. He cast himself across his bedroom floor, crawling quickly on all fours, until he knocked into the door head-first. Reaching upward, he felt around for the doorknob and haphazardly yanked the thing open, feeling the floor vibrate subtly behind him.

  Foreign palms could be heard to thump against the carpet, and the dragging sound of a limp body followed soon thereafter. She was crawling towards him, pulling herself across the floor; a glance towards the bed proved it. Those beady eyes, glowing pustules, followed him as the pale figure gave chase across the carpet like a centipede. Cold, white hands sank into the fibers; bruised, blackened nails reached out for him. From the mouth that never closed, a fat, discolored tongue hanging from one corner, there erupted something like a laugh, and with it, the closest thing to a smile that such a battered countenance could present.

  The cat stormed from the room just ahead of him, darting between Ulrich's arms and taking refuge behind the living room sofa. The investigator propelled himself through the doorway and immediately reached back to shut the door. Slamming it as hard as he could, Ulrich held the door closed for everything he was worth. He kept a single light on in his apartment each night, a lamp in the corner between the kitchen and living room, beside his turntable. He was infinitely thankful for the light it gave him, under the circumstances.

  Imagine then his dismay as the bulb began to flicker and dim. The color changed somewhat, taking on an uncharacteristic yellow color before fading into almost total darkness. From the other side of the bedroom door he could feel the weight of Vivian's hands. She didn't pound at the door, didn't call out to him, but merely pressed her weight against it. She could be heard to slump against the wood, her fingers traveling across the panels blindly. Then, to his horror, two sets of white, writhing fingers materialized underneath it, in the narrow seam between the carpet and the door. Those fingers squirmed like dying grubs, the blackened nails affixed to them digging into the woodgrain discordantly.

  Ulrich took a step back, careful to hold the door closed, and considered his next move.

  Running away and never looking back should have been an easy thing to do, however this wasn't merely some job he could abandon at will. This time, he'd brought his work home with him.

  Literally.

  Pulse pounding in his temples and brow dressed in fresh sweat, he looked around the living room in the dying light and measured the distance between his bedroom and the front door. If he let go of the doorknob, Vivian would undoubtedly escape, leaving Ulrich and the cat but a few moments to exit the apartment.

  But where would they go? Who could they call to fix this problem?

  Cursing under his breath, he tapped the door with his foot, as if hoping to shoo some animal on its other side, but if anything Vivian only became more animated.

  “Leave... leave this place!” he uttered, out of breath. “I have nothing for you. I was hired to find you, to speak to you, but I never intended for this. Get out of my home!”

  Sensing the threat, Beardsley tore across the living room and began pawing frantically at the front door. The cat loosed a pained meow, as if to plead with his owner.

  Slowly, the white fingers beneath the door were withdrawn. Standing sentry in the doorway, Ulrich was careful not to loosen his grasp on the knob and waited for the light in the corner to cease its flickering. No longer could he feel Vivian's weight on the other side of the door. Possibly, he hoped, the spirit was retreating. Maybe she'd gotten the picture, had realized she was unwelcome.

  From behind came a loud hiss. Ulrich found Beardsley standing near the door, hackles up, hissing in the direction of the lamp. In the corner, where the light came only in brief spurts, Ulrich glimpsed something taking shape. It spread out from the shadows slowly, a black stain, which waxed and waned with the blinking of the lamp. Gradually, the stain took shape, became something more than queer, growing shadow.

  The bulb in the lamp burned with white-hot brightness, the element inside it rattling and sending a faint burning smell hurtling through the air. Beside this lamp, where the stain had grown, there now stood only a slouched human form with tangled brown hair and a vestige of a face.

  “V-Vivian,” gasped Ulrich, his back hitting the bedroom door. All the while, the cat yowled and hissed as though prepared to fight to the death.

  Struggling to remain upright, Ulrich slowly raised his eyes to meet those of the specter, which peeked out at him deviously from behind her wild brown mane. He wanted to challenge her, to to order her from his home, but he didn't have the voice for it. Pressing his back to the nearest wall, he felt the neckline of his T-shirt moistening with sweat. Peering around in his periphery, he looked for something, anything, he might use as a weapon to ward the thing off, but came up empty-handed.

  The ghost was in his home now, had followed him all the way from the Prescott.

  Vivian, who had been confined to a wheelchair in life, had limped and shambled and crawled all the way to his doorstep, and was now staring him down from across the room. For a moment the air was crowded with the smell of rot; it came in waves, entered his mouth and nose as he stood agape at the fearful intruder, turning his stomach.

  From across the room, he heard the clicking of bone on bone. The broken jaw twitched, and the thing's bloat
ed tongue rolled a bit lower as Vivian cocked her head to the side. From the turntable beside her, Ulrich heard the familiar crackle of static on the speakers. Quietly, the opening notes of Sinatra's “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” filled the apartment, the record turning sluggishly so that the song skipped and lagged unnaturally.

  "All right," managed Ulrich, "you're in my home. W-what do you want with me, hm? Why have you c-come here?" He pressed himself to the wall, fearful that the thing might actually answer him.

  A wheezy breath escaped the specter's shattered maw and Sinatra's croon was whisked off of the turntable only to be replaced by a low, crackling voice. "LIAR. LIAR. LIAR." Whilst speaking through the device, Vivian drew up a single finger and pointed at the investigator, jagged black nail sticking out at him like a dagger. "LIAR. LIAR. LIAR."

  Ulrich swallowed down his fear just enough to force a reply. "What is it I've lied about? I don't... I don't understand." Beardsley hadn't ceased his hissing, and was sitting low to the ground, stubby tail sticking bolt upright and fangs on full display.

  The refrain went on, growing in volume. "LIAR. LIAR. LIAR."

  And then, with a growl of static, the voice stopped.

  And with it vanished Vivian.

  The specter had disappeared from the corner within the blink of an eye, and the lamp glowed normally. The cat calmed down almost immediately, though Ulrich's recovery was a far more gradual thing. Shuffling through the living room, looking over his shoulder with every pace, he leaned against the back of the sofa and waited for her to materialize once again. When she did not, Ulrich braved a short jaunt to the corner where only moments before she'd been standing, pointing at him. The air seemed colder there, a pocket of winter surviving despite the yawn of the furnace, but no other sign remained.