Free The Dark Man by Desmond Doane

me fast forward. This one comes through five minutes later.”
    It sounds like they’re still in the bedroom. Mike again mentions the dark, suffocating energy. He feels dizzy, as if there’s a buzzing between his ears. Craghorn coughs. “You good?” Mike’s voice asks.
    “It feels like …” Craghorn answers. “Feels like something is squeezing my throat. I have to get …”
    And then the rest of his words are mumbled, because a deep, guttural voice barrels in over top of Craghorn and says, “ Guilty … bitch … is mine .”
    It’s so harsh, so evil, that the words feel like rusted razor blades carving my skin, and I recoil. I feel a wetness on my upper lip and realize that my nose has resumed its bloody waterfall. Part of me thinks that’s natural.
    Part of me thinks it isn’t.
    “You’re bleeding again,” Mike says, with more concern in his voice than I would expect from someone who recently smashed my nose with his forehead.
    I wipe my upper lip and study my slick fingertips.
    This is a warning.

The three of us retreat to the front stoop. It’s like climbing out of a freezer and stepping on the surface of the sun. The smell out here has changed. It’s no longer that ever-present hint of coastal air. I think it’s sulfur, or maybe it’s my imagination. I could be projecting, feeling like it’s trapped in my clothes. I’m trying awfully hard to convince myself that it’s not, but the fact that Mike sniffs his T-shirt and grimaces is proof enough.
    Craghorn again confirms that the female voice belonged to his wife, Louisa.
    He hasn’t fully emerged from the black, impenetrable fog that seems to be hanging around him. However, he seems slightly more willing to converse now that he’s heard her voice.
    Mike gently peppers Craghorn with questions, trying to coax more information out of him, while I excuse myself to call Detective Thomas. Mike is a skilled interviewer when it comes to pruning information from a flustered client, while I work best with the dead.
    I move down the sidewalk until I find an acceptable level of shade, out of the direct heat, and it occurs to me that we’re in a situation where “hot as hell” and “cold as hell” are both true and relevant. It’s hotter than hell out here, and Dave Craghorn has been living inside the cold hell of his house for months.
    Detective Thomas answers on the third ring. “Yeah?” He sounds agitated, but then again, that appears to be his normal state of existence. “You find anything?”
    I explain what Mike caught on the audio recorder—the female voice and the demonic one—repeating it word for word. Then I add, “It’s bigger than what we thought. We’d like to do a full night investigation, and as a matter of fact, I recommend it.”
    “What? Why? You caught Craghorn’s wife apologizing, and this thing saying she was guilty. That tells me that the infidelity, the thing with the diary, it’s spot on, so I should definitely be focusing on that as a motive.”
    “Yeah, but motive for who?”
    “Craghorn, the mayor, some hired hitman.”
    “I don’t get the sense that Craghorn is your guy.”
    “All due respect, Mr. Ford, but you can leave the detective work to me.”
    I tell him I understand, though I hold my tongue, choking down what I want to say. I get this more often than I’d like. These police departments call me in to aid in an investigation because they’re stumped, I’ll tell them what I learned, and sometimes they get attitude if they feel like I’m upstaging their authority and skill sets.
    Sometimes it’s merely pride that gets in the way, and I get that, I really do. I wouldn’t want anyone making a guest appearance on Graveyard: Classified and telling me all about how I was screwing up a paranormal investigation as much as a detective wouldn’t want anyone telling him he’d been chasing the wrong tail on a murder case.
    However, there are times when I have to push back. I live with enough darkness on my