Experiment in Terror 03 Dead Sky Morning (42 page)

“Thanks, Dad,” I said, feeling teary. “I love you guys too.”

I staggered out of the bathroom, a weight lifted from my shoulders, and handed the phone to Dex, pressing it into his hand.

“Now it’s your turn. You have a family now. Call your baby mama and let her know you’re dandy, capiche?”

He sucked on his lip, probably thinking of excuses why he shouldn’t. But he nodded and got up. The responsibility must have started to sink in.

He left the diner at the front door and stood outside, lighting up a cigarette and putting the phone to his ear. I couldn’t read his face from the fluorescent glare inside.

He was on the phone for only a few minutes. He puffed on the cigarette, the smoke rising around him and floating away into the night. He stared across the parking lot, transfixed by nothing in particular, thinking about who knows what. Then he stubbed out the cigarette and came back inside.

He hooked the iPhone back up to the charger and sat back down at his seat.

“I think I’m going to quit smoking,” he said brightly.

I cocked my head at him. “OK. Well, good. What brought that on?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I had started thinking about how I would have to change if I was going to be a dad. Smoking just didn’t seem…appropriate.”

“Fair enough,” I said, my heart still lurching about at the mention of his impending fatherhood. I tried to hide the feeling but it was there whether I liked it or not.

“How is Jennifer?” I asked, trying to sound breezy.

“She’s great, actually,” he said taking a slurp of his coffee and grimacing. He waved over the waitress, pointing at his cup for another refill. “She’s not pregnant.”

“Uh…” It was the only word I could form in response to that bombshell.

“Yeah, she’s not pregnant,” he said quickly and with a smile as the waitress refilled his cup. She caught the tail end of that and was giving him an unimpressed look. He noticed, grinned at her and winked.

She shook her head and went back behind the counter to read her
Hello! Canada
magazine. Dex looked at me. “I’m telling you. Waitresses find me adorable.”

I raised my eyebrow. “Let’s go back to what you just said. Jennifer is not pregnant. Are you sure?”

“Well, I’m taking her word for it but she went to the doctor on over the weekend to get a blood test. It came back today as negative. She took two more pregnancy tests. They were all the same. I guess she got a false positive the other day.”

It was sick to admit it but there was a wonderfully giddy feeling rising up inside of me. It made me feel ashamed. I watched him carefully. He seemed fine, but maybe I just wanted him to be fine. I certainly did not expect him to feel like I did.

“Are you OK with it?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’m fine with it.”

“And is Jenn OK?”

He frowned. “I think so. Yeah, I think so. We’re good.”

“So…”
what does it mean now
, I thought. But I didn’t dare ask it.

“So…” he mused.

He took a sip of his coffee. I took a sip of my tea. There was nothing left to say about it. I sat back in my chair. We both watched each other for a few beats. The quiet sounds of the diner filled my ears. This weekend had taken our relationship further than I ever thought it would go. The strip club. Finding out Jenn was pregnant. A night of ecstasy (for me, anyway). The mental institute. Jenn not being pregnant in the end. And yet I was just scratching the surface. We had come so far and, for me, it just wasn’t enough.

I pulled back my jacket sleeve, inspecting the bandages. They looked fine, though I knew we’d both have to go to the doctor as soon as we got back into the country.

I eyed the anchor silly band on my wrist, happy that the roses hadn’t cut it off and smiled. I looked up at him, hoping he hadn’t caught me staring at the band with a sappy and mushy expression on my face. He was resting his chin on his hand and staring out the window. He quickly glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and smiled warmly in return. He saw. And it was OK.

* * *

We were sitting inside the ferry as it motored its way back to Vancouver, the mainland and the way home. Dex was chewing Nicorette, more properly than normal, still deciding to honor his decision to quit smoking. We both stared out the salt–stained window at the sea. The morning was clear, the sun’s streams of light were twinkling brightly on the calm water. Not a hint of red in the sky.

THE END

Keep reading for an exclusive peek at Book Four in the Experiment in Terror Series,
Lying Season…

I woke up with an extremely uneasy feeling and for a few seconds I couldn’t remember where I was. I wasn’t at home. The room was too dark and windowless.

I slowly sat up and tried to get my eyes to adjust. There were a bunch of blinking lights in the corner coming from Dex’s computer and other gadgets.

It was the second night in the last week that I was dreaming about the past. I don’t know why. Normally if I dreamed about weird things, they had something to do with the spirits we were about to encounter. I had begun to rely on my dreams as being prophetic, or maybe a quick glimpse into the mind of a dead person (as lovely as that sounds). But I was dreaming about high school and things that I had pushed out of my mind with the help of medication, doctors and therapy sessions. I didn’t like how they were suddenly coming up now. I hope they didn’t mean anything. They couldn’t. It was all the drug use, that’s all it ever was.

Not that I could remember all that much about the dreams. I knew my friend Tara had been in it, maybe Dr. Freedman, my old shrink. Nothing scary had happened. Yet there was something so disturbingly realistic about the whole thing that my heart was pounding away and I was sweating profusely. I felt the sheets. They were damp. Jenn would probably burn them by the time I left.

Earlier that evening, Dex had cooked Jenn and I dinner (his cooking skills were still surprising) and I had a bit too much wine with it. Just to calm the nerves. Actually, we all had imbibed a tad much, which made the conversation easier. Probably helped that we all ate in the living room, watching TV, and didn’t have to stare at each other. I had avoided looking at either of them, the conversation I had with Dex still fresh in my head. We were putting it all past us.

Now my head was spinning from the dream and I was thirsty from the night sweats and the wine. I didn’t want to get up for a glass of water, the black room was a bit creepy, and it was always weird being in someone else’s place in the middle of the night, but if I didn’t, I’d never go back to sleep. I carefully eased myself out of the single bed, unsure if I was going to walk into anything in the blackness. I made it to the door, opened it quietly, and poked my head out into the apartment. Their bedroom door was closed. The bathroom wasn’t. Fat Rabbit probably slept with them. I hope he messed up their sex life.

I tiptoed to the kitchen, my socks silent on the floor, careful not to wake them or the dog, and plucked a glass from a high cupboard and filled it up at the kitchen tap. The garish, yellow streetlights from outside came in through the balcony doors, filtered by a gauzy curtain that moved slowly, teased by a draft. Even though the apartment was small and beautiful, there was something so…strange about it. Strange and off-putting.

I finished my drink and filled the cup up again, mulling it over. There was no reason for me to be creeped out and yet I was. I listened hard; I could hear the comforting sound of someone’s light snoring in the bedroom, the occasional subdued rumble of a car outside, the tick of a clock on the wall. Everything was normal for a middle of the night Monday but that inkling of the unknown was undeniable. The hairs on my arms were rising with each second I stood there.

I gulped down the rest of the water and quietly placed the empty cup in the sink. If I hung around any longer I would just freak myself out.

I started to walk back to the room, wondering if perhaps I needed to go to the washroom, but something made me pause as I passed through the middle of the apartment.

It was
that
feeling.

That nauseating, lung-seizing feeling that someone, or
something
, was standing behind me. I could feel it, feel this solid presence at my back, watching me.

I wasn’t alone.

And I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I felt frozen, my legs locked to the hardwood floors.

Then…

A dripping sound. My ears were so fine-tuned that the sound made my heart jump. A steady, slow drip. Had I turned off the tap properly?

But I knew it wasn’t the sink. The splatter didn’t echo, it fell in small, thick pats and from a greater distance. If it wasn’t the tap, what was dripping?

I looked at my door. It was so close. I could run into the room and lock it. I could prop the bed up against the door for security, pull the covers over my head and pray for sleep. Or I could swallow my pride and run into Dex and Jenn’s room like a child who has had a bad dream.

Or I could turn around. And see that there was nothing to be afraid of. Then my fears would be put to bed and I would follow.

I tensed up and very, very slowly, turned around on the spot.

I expected that if anyone was behind me, they would be way back in the kitchen.

This was not true.

There was someone…

Right behind me.

I was face to face with a…
being
…covered in graying skin that puckered in the shadows. Their chest had caved in to a red abyss. Their neck looked like a piece of fraying string cheese and could barely hold up their head, which was gruesomely flattened, wider than it was long, like it was smashed in by something heavy, leaving part of it open and exposed, a mixture of brain matter, blood and bone. The blood flowed freely off this gaping wound and fell onto the ground in sticky, wet splotches. The sick source of that rhythmic pattering.

The eye closest to the wound was destroyed, only a hole of gray goo remained, and the other eye fixed itself on me sharply. It was a female eye, puffy, with running makeup underneath. She almost looked like she could be crying, but…

She smiled at me. And it sounded like wasps buzzing.

I finally screamed.

Despite taking self-defense classes, Karate, bootcamp, my instinct wasn’t to stay and fight. It was to get the fuck away from it. With nothing in my head but absolute horror, I turned and tried to run back to my room. My socks lost traction and slipped out from under me and I was down on the floor with a frightening thud, lying at the feet of a buzzing dead girl.

Special thanks to my editor Bob Helle (you’ll get on Team Dex one day), to my friends, family and “my book club” for their support and to all the book bloggers who have taken the time to read and review the Experiment in Terror Series. I love you all and your encouragement keeps my chin up and my best foot forward.

For more information about the series, please visit:
www.experimentinterror.com

Follow the author on Twitter at @MetalBlonde

Become a fan of the EIT Facebook Page by liking us at
www.facebook.com/experimentinterror