Epilogue
. . .
One Year Later
“Is there anyone here with me right now?”
I sit on a cold and creaky hardwood floor in the middle of an empty house surrounded by stationary night vision cameras, a thermal camera, a cameraman with his own shoulder camera, and one of the members of my team, Frank.
Frank’s great. Doesn’t actually believe in ghosts, which is weird considering all we’ve seen by now, but he’s great.
The flashlight is set up in front of me. I’ve already explained to any potential ghosts, and viewers, how the flashlight works. I shift slightly to relieve the itch the mic is supplying.
The light does not flash, but there is a knock on the wall.
“Was that you?” I ask. “Because if you’d rather knock, we can do that. Same system. One knock for yes, two for no.” I look at Frank, and he shrugs. I keep talking. “So, let me ask again, is there anyone here with us right now?”
One knock on the wall.
I keep asking the ghost questions and eventually bid them a goodbye.
“Was that evidence enough for you, Frank?”
He scratches his gray beard. “Could have been the pipes.”
“Talkative pipes,” I quip back.
Not believing is his thing. If I really wanted him to believe, I’m sure I could find something of substantial evidence, but I figure it’s fine to let him live in blissful ignorance of all that is truly happening in this world.
We continue to hit more rooms of the house. We’re actually in the mansion that Kit tried to take me to at my suggestion. Voyager’s Mansion. Though, we asked the residents for permission to be and film here this time. And I made sure to bring my EpiPen.
There’s a team of four of us, and we typically split into two groups.
The other two, Marlon and Kerry, have great chemistry, so they’re typically together and me and Frank go together.
The believer and the skeptic. A true Mulder and Scully without the aliens and sexual tension.
Frank is a sixty-something-year-old gay man, so the sexual tension will never be there.
Also, I’m still very much in love with my demon.
We’re shooting the third episode for my very own show: Paranormal Quest. The pilot was a success with test audiences and the network, so now we’re shooting six episodes for a first season. If these episodes do well, we’ll shoot more.
We wrap the night at four a.m. I bid the team and crew farewell and drive back to my apartment.
Shooting the show has been so much fun, even though it took forever to actually get to shooting it. It’s been a year since my meeting. The pilot will drop about a month from now.
I quit my job at the bookstore, because even though we film at night for the most part, there are also daylight shots of research involved, and it was all too much to keep that job. Joanne promised I would be welcome back, if the show failed.
The first episode was shot in New York, the second in New Jersey, and now we’re in Connecticut. If this is successful, we won’t only shoot in the tri-state area, but I think they will want to stay in New England. At least for now. That’s all right with me—New England is hella haunted.
I managed to get Kit a part-time job on the show as a researcher.
That means he gets to travel with me if traveling is involved.
He also got himself a job, similar to what he had back in Sacramento.
We altered his resume to fill in that little ten-year gap, and he had no trouble securing the job he has now.
It’s mostly remote, so he’s available to travel with me.
I pull into a spot in front of my apartment, locking the car behind me as I ascend my steps.
I enter my apartment quietly, knowing Kit will be asleep.
Hazel greets me at the door with a loud meow, scolding me for being gone.
Typical. I bend down to give her a few scratches before she decides my debt is paid.
I know I said I wasn’t going to have Kit move in, but it got to the point where it felt silly to have him get his own place, so we decided he shouldn’t.
I tiptoe into our bedroom and see Kit thrashing in the bed. Another nightmare. I quickly strip down to my T-shirt and underwear and climb in beside him. He doesn’t wake, but he folds into me and calms.
This doesn’t happen every night, but it’s unfortunately a common occurrence.
The nightmares will likely plague him for the rest of his life.
He’s been going to a therapist and tried out a therapy group for previously incarcerated persons.
We figured that may be as close as we could get for someone who was incarcerated by Hell.
He stopped going, though, because he couldn’t be fully honest about his experience without people thinking he should be institutionalized.
However, he did find an online forum with people who have been to Hell.
There aren’t a lot of people in the group, and Kit is convinced most of them are bullshitting, but there is one other person there who speaks too truthfully about Hell to have never been there.
They haven’t detailed what exactly got them down there and out, but Kit said something about them being called an Executioner.
Monster hunters, Kit explained. People wrapped up in a world neither of us are too keen on getting involved in.
This group has helped Kit a lot, just having someone he can be completely honest with besides me.
He nuzzles into me, and I stroke his hair, my eyes wide open.
Even though I’m exhausted, I’m still too energized to sleep.
I look over to the dish on the nightstand that holds my engagement ring.
I usually take it off before filming, because I’m afraid I’ll lose it somewhere and won’t be able to get it back.
The diamond is small, but I didn’t even need there to be a diamond. Kit bought me the ring and proposed again once we got back from California. This time down on one knee, in the kitchen while I was brewing coffee. I obviously said yes again. We set a date for six months from now.
I sink further into the bed and kiss Kit on the forehead.
“How’d it go?” he murmurs.
“I can tell you in the morning,” I whisper. I should have known he was awake.
He sighs as I turn on my side and he wraps his arms around me, pulling me closer to his chest. “I hope you caught lots of Caspers and no Bloody Marys.”
Yes, that did make sense to me. “I did. Go back to sleep, kitten.”
“No.”
His breath slows, and he’s asleep moments later.
I close my eyes, too, settling into him, feeling calm, comfortable, and exactly where I should be—in his arms.