Read Experiment in Terror 06.5 And With Madness Comes the Light for Free Online Page A

the woman. I nodded in her direction. “Hey,
what’s the deal with the Walking Dead reject over there?”
    He frowned and looked past me. “What do you
mean?”
    “I mean,” I said, watching her do her death
dance. “What’s her deal? I always see her here, just…acting like a
zombie.”
    Paul gave me a funny look and popped the
wine into a paper bag. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,
Dex.”
    I looked at the lady and back at him. “Uh,
you can’t see that lady there?”
    He shook his head. “I think quitting smoking
might have done something to your brain.”
    It wasn’t quitting smoking that did
something to my brain. Oh fucknuts. There was no lady, was
there?
    I quickly handed him the five dollars and
snatched my wine up off the counter. I eyed her form differently
now, the jerky way her limbs moved, the fact that I always saw her
in the same place, doing the same actions. She wasn’t a zombie, but
she was in fact dead.
    I got myself out of the store, feeling the
heebie jeebies crawling up and down my skin, and Fat Rabbit and I
practically ran across the road to my apartment. Even though the
lady wasn’t a threat (not yet anyway), I was scared shitless. I
wasn’t used to seeing them alone, and I suddenly needed Perry’s
embrace and comfort more than anything in the world.
    Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Dean
and Seb to show up. Unfortunately, I’d drunk the bottle of wine
already. They never even had a chance.
    “You’re getting a nice head start, aren’t
you?” Dean said as he placed a six-pack of beer in the fridge. I
guess he figured he’d need to bring his own.
    “Well, I just saw a ghost, so I’m feeling a
bit…uh, on edge.”
    Seb and Dean exchanged a look. Dean frowned,
his eyes cautious underneath his glasses. Seb just laughed and
tucked his long hair behind his ears.
    “Awesome,” he said, cracking open a beer.
“You saw a ghost, that’s rad.”
    Seb was always kind of a stoner. Swap kind
of for totally. I had a feeling he was a cast member on That
‘70s Show at one point but he got fired or something and now
just lived his life stuck in that world. I mean, it’s an off the
wall theory, but I see ghosts, so what the fuck do I know?
    “Yeah, Seb. A ghost. And it’s not awesome.
It’s scary as shit.”
    “Right on.”
    I shook my head and wished I had more wine.
“Beer me,” I said, holding out my hand. Dean sighed and tore a beer
off the rings, handing it to me.
    They pulled up the barstools and we tried to
talk about a chick, Clarissa, that Seb was attempting to bang, but
the conversation kept coming back to ghosts. As if ghosts were more
interesting than sex. Nothing was more interesting than
sex.
    “So, like, I totally thought Perry was like
ghost whisperer,” Seb said, rocking back and forth on the stool,
“and you were just the camera guy. I didn’t know you saw ghosts
too, dude.”
    I twisted the metal ring around and round
until it snapped off the can.
    “Normally I don’t. I’m…” I shot them both a
quick glance. They were watching me intently. “I’m off my
medication. I was put away in a mental institute back in college
because I saw ghosts. They thought I was crazy. They put me on
meds—robbing me of my real life while they were at it—and I stopped
seeing them. I haven’t taken any pills since December.”
    Both of them grew silent. Seb looked
confused and Dean’s face hadn’t changed. He still watched me
carefully, judging my sanity, or if perhaps I was a big fat liar. I
didn’t blame him. I hoped he’d still be my running buddy, but if he
wanted to hang out with saner people, I definitely wasn’t the right
fit for him.
    “But you’re not crazy,” Seb offered slowly,
as if reading my mind. “Just because you see ghosts doesn’t mean
you’re crazy.”
    I shot him a smile. “Doesn’t it? That’s
never what the doctors said.”
    He took a long yet thoughtful sip of his
beer. “I think doctors don’t know shit. I bet if