Mack's Back!
Phantom Pains is here. The Day of the Dead is a great day to pick up a new spooky read. Follow Mack in his continuing misadventures as he heads to a small coastal town with a big secret, and a haunted house that's claimed two women's lives, and is eager for more.
At first, I thought it was a clever special effect, and I looked up to the broken window expecting to see a camera pointing down, but there was just a black mouth rimmed with jagged glass teeth. The body was so still, the face that looked out toward the lighthouse so peaceful, that you could easily make the mistake of thinking she was sleeping, if her
head wasn’t turned almost all the way around on her shoulders.
The people watching also seemed to wonder if it was a trick, like maybe the dead face would do a one-eighty and right itself, and the woman might stand up and walk back inside Pemberton House. No one spoke, but I did notice a
few cell phones out, capturing the moment for posterity. I broke the invisible line and squatted over the body. That snapped the tension and voices rose at once.
“Don’t touch her.”
“Oh my god. Oh my god.”
“Call the police. Call 911.”
“Did anyone see what happened?”
I checked her pulse. It seemed like the thing to do, even though she couldn’t be alive. She was still warm, warmer than my hand after my walk in the cold wind. I smoothed her hair back from her forehead and closed her eyes with my fingertips, those deep green eyes that had seemed so fierce and full of life hours ago. With those eyes closed, Dana Sinclair looked even more like she was sleeping, like at any moment she might wake and start terrorizing Manny
and the entire set again.
My hand on Dana’s skin began to tingle, and for a second, she didn’t feel warm but hot, too hot for a live woman, let alone a dead one. My ears rang and a violent shiver came over me. I snatched my hand away from her but
it didn’t subside.
My vision went white and I was there, blind, on my knees and paralyzed as fear flooded into me. My heart raced and the shivering became a full-body tremor. A knot formed in my throat and I realized it was a scream, a primal yell building in me, the knot growing all the way into my chest until the pressure was so much, too much, and I had to let it out. I opened my mouth, or the scream did, forcing its way out of me and… nothing. There was no scream, only
a puff of breath that crystalized in front of me and dissipated like smoke. That’s when I realized my vision had returned, and the knot inside me was gone, along with the
tremors.
“Are you all right, man?” The hand on my shoulder made me jump. I spun and saw it was Hank, his look equal parts curiosity and concern. “You kind of wigged out there for a second.”
“I’m good,” I said.
“You sure?” He pointed at my face and I knew what he was going to tell me before the words were out. “Your mouth is bleeding.”
From Chapter 1 - Phantom Pains
At first, I thought it was a clever special effect, and I looked up to the broken window expecting to see a camera pointing down, but there was just a black mouth rimmed with jagged glass teeth. The body was so still, the face that looked out toward the lighthouse so peaceful, that you could easily make the mistake of thinking she was sleeping, if her
head wasn’t turned almost all the way around on her shoulders.
The people watching also seemed to wonder if it was a trick, like maybe the dead face would do a one-eighty and right itself, and the woman might stand up and walk back inside Pemberton House. No one spoke, but I did notice a
few cell phones out, capturing the moment for posterity. I broke the invisible line and squatted over the body. That snapped the tension and voices rose at once.
“Don’t touch her.”
“Oh my god. Oh my god.”
“Call the police. Call 911.”
“Did anyone see what happened?”
I checked her pulse. It seemed like the thing to do, even though she couldn’t be alive. She was still warm, warmer than my hand after my walk in the cold wind. I smoothed her hair back from her forehead and closed her eyes with my fingertips, those deep green eyes that had seemed so fierce and full of life hours ago. With those eyes closed, Dana Sinclair looked even more like she was sleeping, like at any moment she might wake and start terrorizing Manny
and the entire set again.
My hand on Dana’s skin began to tingle, and for a second, she didn’t feel warm but hot, too hot for a live woman, let alone a dead one. My ears rang and a violent shiver came over me. I snatched my hand away from her but
it didn’t subside.
My vision went white and I was there, blind, on my knees and paralyzed as fear flooded into me. My heart raced and the shivering became a full-body tremor. A knot formed in my throat and I realized it was a scream, a primal yell building in me, the knot growing all the way into my chest until the pressure was so much, too much, and I had to let it out. I opened my mouth, or the scream did, forcing its way out of me and… nothing. There was no scream, only
a puff of breath that crystalized in front of me and dissipated like smoke. That’s when I realized my vision had returned, and the knot inside me was gone, along with the
tremors.
“Are you all right, man?” The hand on my shoulder made me jump. I spun and saw it was Hank, his look equal parts curiosity and concern. “You kind of wigged out there for a second.”
“I’m good,” I said.
“You sure?” He pointed at my face and I knew what he was going to tell me before the words were out. “Your mouth is bleeding.”
From Chapter 1 - Phantom Pains
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