Page 34 of Dead Vengeance

“I’m so sorry.” I stroke a hand down his back, trying my best to console him. “I know that was awful. It’s over now.”

“No.” It’s barely more than a whimper. His head turns back and forth, as if he could erase what just happened from both our minds.

I feel so shit. Truly, so shit. I’ve scared him half to death just by existing near him.

“No,” he repeats, then he pushes himself up, using my chest for leverage. “It wasn’t that. It was but…” He stumbles a few feet away, dropping onto a bench, looking as exhausted, as fucked up, as I feel. A hand tears into his hair. “All those people…”

I drop down next to him, giving him time to process what he’s just seen. And he takes it, staring straight ahead, tear-streaked face a mask of horror, until finally, “That was my brother in there.”

My insides twist into a sick knot.

His gaze runs back to the door, fear and sadness carved into every feature. “I saw my brother.”

I don’t say a word. Every lie that wants to pour out of me tastes so bitter on the tip of my tongue.

Should I tell him he didn’t see him? That it wasn’t real? That’s the line I usually give people because it’s so much less terrifying than the truth.

“It was him,” he insists, as if I’d presented the arguments in the face of fact. “He was here. In this hospital. He was here. He’s been missing for five years, and now he’s…” His head drops into his hands, and his whole body convulses with emotion.

I run a hand over his back, trying to comfort him, trying to catch up, to take in the enormity of what he’s just said. “You were… um—”

“That was real!” he shouts. When he sits up, his eyes are frenzied, fierce. “That was real, and you can’t tell me it wasn’t.” His finger points sharply towards his cut cheek. “This wasn’t real? Is that what you’re going to tell me?”

The shock of his fury is like a slap in the face, knocking my senses back into me. I don’t want to lie to him. And he deserves better than that. “I won’t tell you it wasn’t real. I felt it. And I saw it. I understand. But Liam, it also wasn’t.”

“He was there,” he cries. “How can you say that?”

“Because this is what it does. The… the thing.” With a shake of his head, his eyes latch onto mine, searching for understanding. “This is why I called you, Liam— The ExorSquad. This is why I needed your help. What you’re seeing, what just happened to us… it’s not a ghost. I don’t know what the fuck it is, but it’s not a ghost, and whatever it is, it just did that.”

“What do you mean it just did that?”

“I mean the thing in my house can do that. It can make you see things. It can control your reality just like that.”

He frowns in sheer disbelief, then throws out, “Then why did you call me to come fix a ghost?”

“Because I don’t know what it is! And I thought you might know.”

“How should I know? I know fuck all about ghosts—I know fuck all about anything!” His knee turns so sharply that it jabs into mine as he swivels to face me. “What I want to know is, why the fuck do you know so much about them? Why are you always one step ahead of me? Why are you the one calling me for help, then you’re the one taking me out of the hospital like this is some daily occurrence for you? You aren’t even scared, not like I am. Why are you just sitting there like…”

He’s realised he’s shouting by the time he stops. Furious and hurt, and I can see it all. This is officially the worst, most fucked up first day at work any man ever had. And I want to fix it. But he’s so perfectly, exactly correct that I don’t think I can.

I will try, though.

“I know about ghosts because…” Yeah, okay, maybe not the whole truth. I can’t tell him or any living person on the planet the whole truth. Maybe just a small dose of it. “Because there are several ghosts haunting my house. I… have learned a bit about them, how they operate. What kind of things to avoid doing around them. I’ve studied them, and… to be honest, I wouldn’t have had to call you if it were just a regular ghost. But this thing, it gets inside your head, and it makes you see things that aren’t there.”

“I know he was there.” Liam’s lips are set hard, as if I’m trying to talk him out of it. Which I guess I am.

“But look now.” I wait for him to turn his head with that same mixture of fear and dejection while he assesses the hospital entranceway. “Like a bad dream. It’s all gone.”

“Then how did it do this?” Again, he points to his face. “And why did I see my brother?”

“I don’t know.” And that’s perfect honesty. “It has powers that go beyond anything I’ve ever se-read about. I can’t pretend to be an expert here, beyond the fact that I’ve had a few dealings with it. But it has never followed me away from home before. And I never thought you were in that sort of danger.”

“That sort of danger?” he spits back. “Just normal danger, then? Like what happened to Raul?”

“That was a ghost. That wasn’t… this.” His forehead creases, and he searches my eyes as if he’s trying to figure out if I could be lying about that too. “You saw it yourself. You saw that ghost. You saw Raul try to shoot it, and you saw it react. It was, in a manner of speaking, self-defence.”

His lips part in shock. “You’re defending the ghost for almost killing Raul?”