Oleander House: Bay City Paranormal Investigations, Book 1

wrong,” Andre added helpfully. “That’s a good way to describe it.”
Bo met Sam’s gaze, professional curiosity overtaking the sadness in his eyes. “So you’re dreaming about this house as well?”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I think so,” Sam said. He licked mashed potatoes off his fork, simply to watch Bo watching his mouth. “I can’t ever seem to focus on my surroundings, and there’s no windows or doors, but it feels like Oleander House. If that makes any sense.”
Bo licked his lips, unconsciously mimicking the movement of Sam’s tongue. “You said earlier that your dream was much worse than before, just like Andre’s and Cecile’s. Can you elaborate on that?”
Panic flashed through Sam’s mind. He fought it down and made himself hold Bo’s gaze. “It started like before, with me having sex with someone whose face I couldn’t see. But this time, I dreamed that you and Amy were both dead. Torn apart.” And the thing inside me killed you , he added silently.
Bo stared blankly at him for a moment. Sam could practically see the wheels turning in Bo’s brain as he put two and two together. Then his eyes got fractionally wider, his cheeks went pink and he looked away. Sam smiled grimly at his half-eaten dinner. He knew Bo had realized he was the anonymous lover of Sam’s dreams.
“That’s pretty fucked up, man.” David’s voice was unusually serious.
Andre slipped a protective arm around Amy’s shoulders. “Bo, did you and Amy find out anything in Gautier?”
“A few things,” Bo said softly. “I found a couple of articles in well-respected parapsychology journals about places with characteristics similar to Oleander House. As in violent deaths under mysterious circumstances, each one with witnesses who survived and were physically unhurt, but psychologically devastated.”
Andre laughed without humor. “That sounds like us, all right.”
“There’s one other thing I found,” Bo continued, “I found a short piece from 1962, about an abandoned house in Chicago, where a homeless woman was found dead. Her system was chock-full of a chemical that the medical examiner couldn’t identify.”
“That’s interesting,” Cecile spoke up hesitantly, “but what’s it got to do with us?”
“You’ll see.” Bo leaned forward, hands clasped together. “A few days after the body was found, a teenage boy was brought into the psych ward of the local hospital. The police I.D.’ed him as a prostitute, they’d picked him up several times before for soliciting. They said his name was Jonah, they didn’t know his last name.”
“Let me guess,” Amy said. “He was catatonic.”
David’s eyebrows shot up. “What, he didn’t already tell you?”
Amy shrugged. “We got distracted.”
Bo shot her a stormy look. “To get back to the subject at hand, no, he wasn’t catatonic. He was diagnosed with acute psychosis. Kept babbling about a monster that came out of the air and killed the homeless woman by biting her.”
“Wow. Just like that little girl that died on the tour. And you said her blood was full of an unknown chemical too.” Sam tapped his fork against his plate. “This is starting to sound familiar.”
“I know. Wait’ll you hear this.” Bo’s eyes glittered with the light of discovery. “Jonah had a friend who was with him the day that woman died. They slept in the abandoned building during the day. Once he was medicated enough to be halfway rational, Jonah told the doctors that strange things used to happen sometimes when he was with his friend in that building, like weird noises and black fogs and things. And get this. He said that after the monster killed that homeless woman, it disappeared into thin air and took his friend with it.”
There was a moment of tense silence as everyone absorbed this information. Sam remembered the sensation of the alien intelligence squirming in his mind, trying to break free, and shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“That sounds like what Josephine was trying to do,” Amy said, echoing Sam’s thoughts. “She wanted to follow whatever killed Lily to the place it came from. Maybe she succeeded.”
“You think Jonah’s friend somehow made the ‘monster’ he was talking about appear, don’t you?” Andre asked, nervously fiddling with his fork.
Bo nodded. “I do, yeah. And I think it’s possible that the same sort of thing has happened here at Oleander House.”
Cecile picked up her iced tea and took a sip. Her