Read Experiment in Terror 02.5 The Benson for Free Online Page A

see my own hand in front of me burning a deep red. The shape of the maid though is coming out a steely blue, like the blue I saw in the hotel room.
     
    I look back at her. And I realize I’m talking to a ghost.
     
    “I said, are you filming me? Answer me, child,” she says, her voice angry. She wipes away a tear with a rough swipe of her hand.
     
    “No,” I say quickly and lower the camera. “Sorry, I…what did you say your name was?”
     
    “I didn’t. It’s May,” she answers. “I’d say I’m pleased to meet you Miss Perry Palomino, but I’m afraid I’m a victim of some terrible joke.”
     
    There’s one thing I’ve learned about the dead: they don’t like to learn they are dead. Things kind of go crazy when they do, like their entire existence is shattered and they go along with it. I mean, imagine you think you’re alive and someone tells you you’re dead. Then you start putting together all the pieces and BLAM! Your entire world is ripped apart. The very realization can make most ghosts simply disappear. The acceptance pushes them on into the afterlife, or whatever the next step is.
     
    But for selfish reasons, I don’t want to lose May. I don’t want her to realize she’s dead. Because while I’ve got her here, in this room, I can use her. I can use her to get to Parker.
     
    “When was the last time you saw Parker?” I ask her innocently enough. I still keep the camera aimed at the floor.
     
    “Five days ago,” she says. “He said he’d come by the next day. I was here waiting. He never did. I reckoned…I don’t know. I feared the worst. The very worst.”
     
    “Which was?”
     
    “That he was dead, Miss Palomino. But not by his own hand. No, he that was murdered.”
     
    “By who?”
     
    “The sharks. Who else?”
     
    My face must have contorted into a look of pure confusion because she continues, her voice and demeanor more impassioned by the second.
     
    “The sharks are the fellas who he owed money to. You just don’t lose a boat without losing a few friends. These fellas meant business and I seen them threaten him more than a few times. Parker went and told the police but they do nothing. They don’t have no control. Parker would tell me he was scared. So scared. He’s a man who don’t get scared, you hear that. So if he’s scared, I reckon there’s a reason for it. They are after his life.”
     
    The idea of Parker being murdered by men he owed money to is just as believable as suicide. I don’t know what to believe but I choose to give the ghost the benefit of the doubt.
     
    “Did Parker leave any proof, any records, that these men were after him?”
     
    She closes her eyes for a second and it’s then that I notice a strange transparency about her.
     
    “There was his diary,” she tells me. Her eyes open slowly. “It’s his checkbook. But he would keep a log on the back of the checks he couldn’t write anymore. Most of it doesn’t make much sense to me…if I could talk to him, hear from him, he could tell you himself. I just need to talk to him. Can you find him for me? You said you knew the manager?”
     
    “Yes…but I don’t think it will make much difference.”
     
    “Why is that?”
     
    “Do you know where he would have kept the checkbook?”
     
    “On his person. Where else? What aren’t you telling me? What are you really doing here?”
     
    I look down at the screen and aim it at her. She glows a translucent blue. It’s beautiful, for once, and not scary.
     
    “What happened to Parker?” she goes on, her voice cracking over his name. I don’t say anything but I meet her eye and I know, in one look, that she knows the truth. Maybe not that she’s dead. But that he is.
     
    Her face crumbles. She puts her hand to her head and stumbles backward.
     
    Out of instinct, I go after her, my arms outstretched, hoping to reach her in time before she goes over.
     
    I almost reach her when she smashes against the floor with a