Page 4 of I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

“Thanks. I’ll let you know next week.”

My answer isn’t going to change. I’m not interested in celebrating the holidays, I just need to survive them. The best way to do that is by pretending they don’t exist in the first place.

“Great!” She brightens up again. “See ya then.”

I slide into my old Ford Escape and am nearly out of the lot when I slam on the brakes. “Shit!” I groan, dropping my head onto the wheel. I forgot to fax the report.

I don’t bother parking again, just pull up to the curb and hop out. I’ll have to be quick so I don’t miss my window to make it home before dark. To my annoyance, the doors are already locked. They’re supposed to stay open until six.

I ring the buzzer a few times. Despite Luke’s and Debra’s cars still being in the lot, neither lets me in. Thankfully, the back door is nudged open with an empty paper towel roll and I slip inside. “Thank you, Ted and your nicotine addiction,” I mutter, jogging up the stairs.

The lights in the office are off, steeping the space in a red emergency glow. I’m halfway to my desk when a thump sounds from Luke’s office.

His blinds are closed and the lights are off, although a soft glow permeates from under the door, like a candle.

But why would Luke have candles and thumping noises coming from his office?

“No way,” I breathe, horror filling me as what might be a groan floats toward my sweet-summer-child ears. There is no way that Luke and Debra are doing the dirty right now. No way. She could be his grandma.

But maybe he’s into older women. Maybe he’s embarrassed or, if it really is Debra, doesn’t want to start what would surely be an HR nightmare.

Maybe that’s why Debra was so sleepy today.

My hands fly to my mouth. I should leave.

Luke’s muscled physique flashes in my mind. He’s taller than me by a solid few inches, and I’m taller than Debra by at least half a foot. He’d overpower her easily. Could Luke be hurting her? Once the thought is planted, it’s like a weed. I can’t leave without being sure.

Steeling myself to be traumatized, I quietly march down the aisle of cubicles until I get to Luke’s door. The groaning is louder here, but no, that’s wrong. It’s more like gurgling.

Dear God.

Past the gurgling, another sound hits my ears that’s even more peculiar. Chanting. And in what sounds like Latin, or something equally ancient.

Before I can consider the lasting damage this might do to my retinas, I peek through the small window on Luke’s door.

My inhale is sharp, full of all the disbelief that floods me at the sight. Unlike my fears, Luke and Debra aren’t in the nude getting freaky on his desk. But this might be worse.

Luke’s desk is shoved against the bookshelf, leaving an open floor where a blue tarp has a pentagram painted on it in what looks like blood. Candles are lit at the five points, and in the center, Debra writhes. Her jaw looks like it is unhinged from the rest of her skull, the gurgling sound thanks to a shadowy black mass getting pried out of her by an unseen force.

In the opposite corner of the office, Luke’s face is twisted with cold, dark fury. Chanting spills from his lips as he reads from the book I saw on the ground earlier.

“What the hell?”

I slap my hands over my mouth, but it’s too late. Luke’s eyes wrench away from Debra, widening in shock as they meet mine.

That break in concentration is all it takes. The shadows suck back into Debra’s body, her neck rolls, and her eyes snap to me, pools of inhuman black.

And faster than any seventysomething woman should ever move, she lunges for me.

Two

One second, there is a door between us.

The next, there isn’t.

A blast of hot air scorches my face as the window I’m peering through shatters, the wood around it encased in flames that turn it instantly to ash. Debra’s body rams into mine with the force of a linebacker gunning for a Super Bowl ring. We go flying into my desk and the breath beats out of me as we skid over the laminate surface.

The monitor I spend 80 percent of my day cursing at to load faster crashes to the ground only a second before we do. My squeaky rolly chair breaks my fall, but glides away quickly, leaving my head to smack onto the plastic carpet protector.