Free OUR LAST NIGHT: an edge of your seat ghost story thriller by TAYLOR ADAMS Page A

cloaked in these things, warming their wrapped hands over barrel fires, fiddling with their Mosins and SKS’s, grinning for impromptu group shots. You can buy Russian greatcoats at army surplus stores; stiff, itchy robes that chafe your skin and reek of mildew and spray-on mite killer. They weren’t pretty, but they’d keep you alive when the wind chill hit the negatives.
    So that was it. I’d dreamt a uniformed Red Army ghost walked into my house and tore Adelaide’s savannah monitor in half. One of the Head-Scratching Rifle’s prior victims, maybe? Trapped in a hateful, mind-melting eternity, seeking gory revenge on all living creatures, great and small? Sure, sounded good.
    Step one complete. Ghost seen.
    Step two: how do I avoid becoming one, myself?
    “Holden, I have a hypothetical question.” I ran out of air and remembered to breathe, sucking in a coldness that stung my throat. “In theory, if we . . . if we proceed with this investigation tonight and we do find a demonic entity attached to the Mosin Nagant, how would we fight it?”
    He put down his pen. “You don’t fight demons, Dan.”
    Rookie mistake. I adjusted my goals. “How would we . . . survive it, then?”
    “We’d destroy the rifle, obviously, because that’s the demon’s vessel. The physical object that anchors it in our world. We’d bury the pieces, or better yet, drive up to White Bend and throw them in the river—”
    “Why is that better?”
    “Some mediums believe . . .” He looked embarrassed. “Well, that unclean spirits can’t cross bodies of water.”
    I shook my head. “It already did. It’s from Russia.”
    “Surviving it, though . . .” He sipped his coffee and stared out at the teriyaki place across the street. “There’s a lot of popular misconception about demons, Dan. People think that they’re just asshole ghosts. They’re not. They’re not even human. Never have been. They don’t just regard us the way we regard insects, because . . . well, we don’t dump salt on slugs for fun. Cruelty is their language. They feed off human pain, weakness, sin . . .”
    “Well, excellent.” That pretty much summed up my life after Addie died.
    “The biggest mistake you can make is trying to understand one,” he said. “Don’t even try to wrap your mind around them. Your mind will stretch, rip and bleed. They exist outside of time, on lower dimensions, in dark, cold places incompatible with human life. Places far from God. If a demon, well, has you, it’s like crossing the event horizon of a black hole. Doesn’t matter if you move up, forward, back, or even go backward in time , because when you’re in it, all routes take you in the same direction. Down.”
    “To Hell?”
    “Like I said, your brain will bleed—”
    “Do you believe in Hell?”
    “I believe in God.” He finished his coffee. “And I covered all this demon stuff at the Hostess factory. Remember?”
    I didn’t. But it had been one of our highest-rated episodes, raccoon corpse and all. I stood up, wobbling on slushy knees. “I . . . I left my wallet in my car.”
    I was lying, of course. I told myself that my migraine was pounding and I just needed fresh air, but that was also a lie. My headache had vanished. I really just wanted to pop my trunk and get another look at that Mosin Nagant. I needed to see it with my own eyes, to verify that the rancid, plastic-wrapped thing was here in my trunk on Friday afternoon and not on my dining-room table on Saturday morning. It was my link, a sinister thread connecting dream and reality.
    “You’re sure you’re okay?”
    I pushed through Jitters’ front door and out into the parking lot. The coldness pierced my hoodie and my skin erupted in goose bumps. Gritty snowflakes stung my eyes. The afternoon sun burned lantern-like, lost behind a thick cataract of clouds.
    I checked my phone again. 3:45 a.m.
    Not good.
    Apparently I’d broken time and space so severely that the sun was shining at three in