Page 58 of Haunted Spurs

Oooohhhh...

A wail echoes. It's a broken, gurgling sound.

Emma violently flinches and hides her face in Levi's neck. "Oh my God... is it a ghost?" she stammers, terrified.

"Don't say stupid shit, Emma. Ghosts don't exist," Emerson snaps, his rational stubbornness clashing with the cold sweat beading on his forehead. "It's a hidden Bluetooth speaker, I'd bet my degree on it."

But before Emerson can take a step toward the room, the temperature in the hallway drops drastically.

The wall sconces above our heads flicker, emitting an electrical buzz, before snapping off completely at the end of the hall.

And right from that sudden darkness, behind the group, a shadow emerges.

A man wearing a long slicker raincoat. His face is covered by a raw leather mask, crudely stitched together with dark twine. In his right hand, he grips a lumberjack axe. The blade is dark, dripping. He advances toward us slowly.

Josh, who had been petrified on the bathroom threshold alongside Sam, whips around at our gasps. Then he lunges forward.

"You sick son of a bitch, the joke's over!" he roars.

He winds up his swing, aiming straight for the intruder's masked head.

But... he just punches air.

There is no impact.

His fist passes right through the masked figure's skull, as if the killer were nothing but thick smoke and holograms. Josh loses his balance from the force of the empty swing and stumbles forward, slamming into the opposite wall.

"What the fuck...?" Josh pants, looking at his hands.

Pure panic seizes the group. The illusion vanishes.

"It's a spirit!" Emma screams. Her voice is shrill, on the verge of hysterics, as she clings desperately to Levi's shirt.

"Don't be absurd, Emma, calm down!" Emerson fires back. He pushes his glasses up with a trembling index finger. "It's clearly an optical illusion. A high-definition 3D holographic projection! A lighting trick from production to scare us..."

"It wasn't a trick!" she cries, shaking her head. "We woke it up!"

"I'm telling you, it's just smoke and mirrors, there is physically no one in this house capable of hurt—"

Emerson's rational explanation chokes and dies in his throat.

From the absolute pitch-black end of the hallway comes a noise. Like a wet sack of meat hitting the hardwood.

It rolls. Thud. Rolls. Thud.

Something rolls out of the shadows. It slides across the wood, bouncing with a squishy sound, and slowly comes to a stop, smearing the floor with stains until it bumps right into the toe of Josh's boot.

Time freezes. The air in my lungs turns to lead.

A head.

It's Dustin's severed head.

His hair is a dull, matted tangle, soaked in fresh red. His eyes are wide open, glassy, staring blankly ahead in an expression of pure, blood-curdling terror. The jagged edges of his severed neck leave an unmistakable dark trail.

No one has time to scream. No one has time to process the horror.

Because, from the dark end of the hall, footsteps begin to echo.