Genre: Supernatural, Noir, Thriller

I, Too, am Not

(NOTE: This is just a sample. Please contact me for the fully copy.)

1

             My friend is a fucking idiot. She’s chewing on her food like she hasn’t eaten in weeks, but, shit, she looks like it too. There are the permanent eye-bags, sunken and black. Her almost-black eyes are dimmed unlike how they usually are when on a hunt. I can tell that she’s waited a bit to tell me, and I’m grateful. I only like the best of the best cases, and she’s my nose on the ground. I wait for her to finish. My plate’s already been licked clean moments ago.

             “Sorry.”

             “Yeah, you should be sorry. Watching you eat is disgusting as fuck.”  

             I dodge a crumpled napkin.

             “I’ve been chasing a lead. It’s a big one, Jackie. Big.”

             It starts to rain a bit, and the view outside the window is getting blurrier. Getting home is going to be such a pain.

            “Yeah?”

             “Yeah.”

             Hannah pulls a manila folder out from her beaten-up leather bag. She puts it in front of me, right on top of a spot of grease.           

             “Christ, Hannah. You said it was ‘big’, right?” I see her roll her eyes. “And don’t you think it’s about time that you got rid of that dirty – “

             “Oh, get off my ass. Just open it.”

             I shut up and wipe my greasy fingers. Someone must show class around here. I open it and start reading:

LOS ANGELES – On a Sunday afternoon, the City of Angels would mourn for the death of billionaire philanthropist Alistair Yang. As much as he made from his multiple businesses, he gave twice the amount. People from all corners of the world (“The journalist is a flat-earther.” “Can you please just read?”) had felt the benevolence of this one, charitable man. His fifty organizations were all non-profit, and he made sure to keep its financial accounts all transparent. He is survived by his three children, William, Blake, and Cathy Yang. Unfortunately, his wife had passed two years prior to a rare disease.

I put the cut-out to the side and get greeted with a close-up shot of a beaten up face of middle-aged Asian man.

             Hannah tells me all she knows. They correspond with the notes she scribbled on bits and pieces of paper.

             “The house they live in is like ancient. Old. Before the damn Revolutionary war.”

             She shuffles through numerous pages and takes out a picture of the house in question. It looked like it just jumped out of the pages of a history book. I squint closer. She whacks my head.

             “You’ll ruin your eyes.”

             “They’re already ruined.”

             “Ruined further then.”

             I make a motion for her to continue her explanation. She picks up another photograph. This one is of … I don’t know. Something I can’t see, and that is always cause for concern.

             “A hallway?”

             “It sure is, genius. What’s important is what happened in this hallway.” She points to another file on the table. It is a witness report, an interview of some sort.

             “It was around 3 A.M. I checked my phone as soon as I heard some loud thump, so that’s how I knew. I’m not even a light sleeper – it was loud. And when I ran outside, I saw nothing at first. It was cold, though. Colder than it should have been, especially in September. Can you please describe what happened? Yes, my apologies. I can’t really think cohesively right now. Anyway, the hallway, right? I see no one. Then, I look further down the hallway and I see this black lump on the floor. I had to get closer. Then I saw it was my dad, and I… I admit I screamed. Did you see anything else? Besides my dad’s dead body? Yes, yes now that you asked… I glanced up and this - I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this white shimmery thing. Right in front of the main entrance. And one second it was there, one second it wasn’t. I think I was hallucinating, because, because… Because?  I’m not admitting that.”

             “Fuck.”

             Hannah nods. “Fuck is right.”

2

             I was not one to believe in Ghosts. The capital “G” ghosts. Not the ghosts of your pasts or whatever shit white people say to themselves. But, Ghosts. Course my mom grew up in rural China and that’s all they believe in. That and damn communism.

             I’m kidding. Communism is a myth.

             One day, when I was 25 years old, I experienced something that could not be explained. I can’t admit that this event changed me, but the evidence points otherwise. I’m here - based on one witness testimony - in this dingy, roughed-up Toyota on the way to the Yang estate; the car is so sensitive that I feel every movement in my ass. It also doesn’t help that I can barely see past the thick trees on both sides of the car.

             “They didn’t hire a gardener or something?

             Hannah is driving and steers carefully around the large rocks that litters the pavement.

             “No. But, it’s fine. I memorized – “

             The car is lifted high then low, fast, and I hit my head on the roof from the sudden impact. Before I even yell, Hannah is out of the car.

             “Shit - fuck. What happened?” I follow her. It’s a bit dark by this point. I wave my cell phone flash-light around to look at the damage.

             “I thought I ran over something…”

            There’s nothing under the car or behind it. I’m shivering and impatient to get back in with the heater on full blast.

            “Let’s just leave it. Come on.”

3

             Hannah opens the door with a copy of the house keys. We tug our luggage over the threshold, wheels hitting the hard-wooden floor. We take a moment to look around. This is Hannah’s first time at the house at night. According to her, it’s much different.

Standing in the grand foyer, I can hear all the sounds that go through the house. Creaks, croaks, even the occasional ticks of a grandfather clock. Whoever the Yang’s hired to clean the house did a pretty good job. The walls and the floors shine from the polish when hit with the moonbeam.

I look up. A giant window near the ceiling looks outside, illuminating the dark interior. Chandeliers are placed apart from each other in equal increments. Grand. Everything is grand.

             “The rest of the family is staying at a hotel not far from here. They’re spooked.”

             “I’m surprised they weren’t spooked just by living here on the daily. How big is this house, anyway?”

             I see Hannah furrow her brows. ‘Big’, she mouths at me. Helpful.

             Just by glancing near the main entrance I see lots of pictures hanging on the wall. Pictures of the three children – all of them snapshots of various moments in their lives. Right above the fireplace is a large portrait of a young couple. I presume it’s Mr. and Mrs. Yang when they were younger.

             “How much do you think these Grecian urns cost?”

             Hannah looks over from unpacking. “Dunno. But they have them all over the house, along with, like, gold candelabras and silverware. It’s basically a gothic mansion at this point. The whole house is decorated like an Edgar Allen Poe short story.”

             I bend down to unzip the heavy camera bag I slung over my shoulder when I got out of the car. Thermal cams, EVP devices, and some gimmicky-thing called the Spirit Box. Don’t worry if you are getting bombarded with all this machinery talk. Thermal cam is self-explanatory. EVP recording machines are used to record ghost sounds that only show up in electronic recordings. Then, the spirit box.

             I fought with Hannah when she suggested that we buy it for future investigations. She insisted that the machine would cycle through all of the radio stations, get to some… really weird frequency in which ghosts communicate. Sometimes noises come out. Whether or not they’re actually from spirits is something we always debate on.

             I set up a few small EVP recording devices around the living room and one near the entrance. There is too much area to cover, so I can only maximize what I have the best I can. The entire first floor is, yes, large, but also dripping with money and expensive furniture. Every time I walk into a room, I’m hit with the kind of musty smell you expect when years of dust and disuse accumulate.  

             Despite my awe at this exuberant show of wealth, I am reminded of the likeness the house has to another in my past.

             Back in ’05, I stumbled across another case just like this one and in a similarly decorated mansion. A family of six was scared shitless of apparitions and misplaced items. The scariest moment for them was when the youngest child had almost drowned in the shower. The parents luckily got to him in time, and the doctors couldn’t explain why his lungs were full of water despite not being submerged at all.

             I was called in with Hannah in tow. It took us a few weeks, but the family was cleansed, and the house was back to being old and creepy. Everything but haunted.

             “Let’s go check the hallway.”

             Hannah and I make our way up the grand staircase. The temperature drops as we get to the cold spot. Cold spots are places where the weather is drastically colder than the surrounding area. People like to take these as signs of paranormal activity – but sometimes there are just scientific reasons for it. A draft from a vent pointing to the cold spot, or because California is so damn cold, the low humidity causes the moisture to just evaporate from your skin. Logical conclusions.

             My job is to make sure that we cancel out anything that could explain the paranormal away. What’s left is what’s left. And that is where Hannah comes into play.

             “Okay, Blake, the youngest Yang child, said it was right outside her bedroom. Which is…” Hannah squints at her memo pad. “Right here.”

             She looks up and points the flashlight at a door. There’s nothing to distinguish it from the other doors in the hallway which in total has six doors lined down from both sides.

             “So, Blake lived here. Where was the father sleeping?”

             Hannah gestures to the furthest door in the back.

             I open the door.

             Shit.

             The fucking smell.

             Inside the room, there is a large bed. It takes up the most space – and leaves none for any other thing. No dressers, no tables or chairs. Absolutely spacious but emptier all the same. Odd. It doesn’t seem to match up with the rest of the house.

             At this point, I’m covering my mouth and nose with the front of my shirt. Where the hell is that smell coming from? Bed? Floor?

             I check the sheets first, not touching it of course, but I lean in just a bit and I almost gag right then and there.

             There’s a massive spot near the edge of the mattress and it’s covered with yellow stains. It doesn’t take a great detective to know that it’s urine.

             “Hannah!” I startle myself due to how quiet the rest of the house is.

             The door swings open and a sound of gagging immediately follows.

             “Jesus fucking Christ!” Hannah backs out and I can see her eyes are watering. I meet her outside of the room and close the door behind me. We both take a huge breath.

             “So, anything you want to tell me about the great, prestigious Alistair Yang?”