I Met the Owner of America's Largest Private Collection of Haunted Objects, And Now My Life Will Never Be The Same

I Met the Owner of America’s Largest Private Collection of Haunted Objects, And Now My Life Will Never Be The Same

“Ah…” Mikey said with a smirk as he held up the hand he had place over Janet’s and pointed to his ring finger, revealing what looked like a small wooden shark’s tooth fixed to the bottom of his wedding ring. “A piece of the actual cross Jesus was crucified on. Most of the corpses you’re going to find around here are hardwired to some facet of the Judeo-Christian faith. Nine out of ten times, this little baby right here will force the reanimated vessel into a sort of hard reboot, reducing them to ash before you can say ‘walking dead guy.’ Or girl in this case.”

“Right, sure… And WHY do you have dead people coming after you?”

“Currently?”

“Yes, why are the living dead infiltrating your home CURRENTLY?

Mikey shrugged and said, “The price you pay for putting a necromancing con-artist out of business.”

“Okay, hashtag real talk? That DOES sound like an awesome story.”

“Plus, I’ll pay you. A lot. Tell him, Grace.”

Grace stopped sweeping up Janet to shrug and gesture at the floor as she said, “You think I’d be here otherwise?”

I took a beat to consider this and then sighed as I finally said, “Fuck it. Why not?”

“Hizah!” Mikey cheered, raising his arms.

Grace responded to his enthusiastic gesture with an amused smirk as she continued to sweep up ash and Lynn quickly turned to examine the iPad in her hands; a ruse meant to conceal her reflexive eye-roll though something on the screen seemed to genuinely catch her attention.

“Why am I detecting motion in the backyard?” Lynn said as she tapped at the iPad and then showed it to Mikey. He examined the screen and was about to respond when the telephone on the table in front of us began to ring. Just a reminder; this was the same landline telephone from Janet’s story. Its cord was currently coiled up beside the phone and very much NOT plugged in.

By the third ring, Mikey reached out a hand to answer it but I managed to stop him by shouting, “WHAT?!”

“What?” Mikey said, echoing my question with his hand hovering over the ringing phone.

“How is answering that NOT a terrible idea?!”

“Now I’m getting exterior-breach alerts for the front and side motion-detectors as well,” Lynn said to no one in particular. Mikey turned to glare at the ringing telephone.

“It’s fine, I promise. It’s just Linus attempting another stunt from his big bag of sad parlor tricks. It would almost be adorable at this point if he wasn’t trying to murder me and everyone I love.”

I set down the fire-extinguisher I had been clutching and opened the voice-recorder app on my phone as I said, “Linus the NECROMANCER?”

“That one, yeah.”

“Well, at least put it on speaker so we can all hear,” I said and Mikey nodded before pressing a button on the phone labeled “SPEAKER” as I held my cell to it and set the app to “RECORD”.

Mikey grinned and leaned in close to the phone as he said, “Hey there, Linus Infection. Bad news. It looks like you’re gonna be short one meat-puppet for dinner.”

What we heard in response was several voices (none of them Linus; I checked and he is definitely NOT in there) speaking in unision. It was hard to decipher what they were actually saying at first but after listening to the recording several hundred times, I’m pretty sure it was…

“WHEN THE HOARY DARKNESS DIED, ITS BODY WAS BURNED AND THE ASHES SCATTERED TO THE WIND. IT WAS FROM THESE ASHES THAT MAN FIRST AROSE AND THOUGH CAPABLE OF SO MANY TERRIBLE THINGS… SOMEHOW HE BECAME CONVINCED THAT WHAT PUT HIM HERE HAD DONE SO WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.”*

*[Credit goes to Mikey for the “hoary” part because I thought they were saying something COMPLETELY different.]

Just as the line went dead, we heard Mauricio shout from somewhere down the hall, “Michael?! You need to come see this…”

Lynn, Grace, and I followed Mikey out of the interrogation-room and then down a second hallway which lead into a spacious den. The room’s far wall was almost entirely comprised of a single bay window looking out onto Mikey’s expansive front lawn. Through this window, we could see what looked like a thin film of black smoke crawling across the lawn and slowly-but-surely approaching the house.

“What the fuck IS that?” Mauricio asked Mikey as we entered the room. The smoke began to climb up the outside of the window, flattening against the glass and reducing our view to an opaque black void.

Mikey replied, “The Hoary Darkness.”

Mauricio nodded at the wall of smoke. “Well, tell that bitch get off my lawn.”

A face suddenly emerged from the wall of black smoke. It was the face of a girl I was dating at the time, her eyes tightly closed and her expression one of pure agony.

“Peepaw?” Grace muttered, a look of disbelief on her face as she began to approach the window.

“That’s not your Peepaw,” Mikey said as he quickly placed a hand on her shoulder. “Okay, everybody! Panic-room now!”

Mauricio let out a defiant scoff as he pointed a thumb back toward the kitchen and said, “My sauce is gonna burn.”

“Panic room NOW!” Mikey repeated as he glared at Mauricio, who responded by rolling his eyes and gesturing for us to follow as he said…

CLICK TO THE NEXT PAGE…

When Joel isn’t writing creepy-ass short stories, he can be found scripting and acting in subversive comedy sketches on YouTube. You can follow Joel on Twitter or support him on Patreon, if you’re into that.

Keep up with Joel on Twitter