OUR LAST NIGHT: an edge of your seat ghost story thriller Read Online Free

dizzy thoughts coming in blinks. I unwrapped my fingers from the weapon and identified the culprit. The Mosin’s sinister bayonet, a whites-of-their-eyes CQB infantry weapon, had pierced the plastic. And the pad of my thumb. Still no pain. I couldn’t see how deep, exactly, the ancient Soviet spike had gone — and then through the semi-transparent part of my thumbnail, I saw a black dot. Okay. Question answered.
    The world wobbled. I tasted stomach acid in the back of my throat.
    That synthetic voice: “Front door is ajar.”
    Our home alarm system does that sometimes — if you don’t fully close the front door, the lock doesn’t engage and it can be pushed open by the slightest change in air pressure. Obviously, I didn’t give two shits about the front door right then.
    I gritted my teeth and slid the seventy-year-old Soviet bayonet out of my thumb. Maybe it was the blur of shock, but I swore it took longer than it should have. Inches and inches of black metal kept coming out of me, like an optical illusion, like ribbons unfurling from a magician’s sleeve, before the tip finally slurped out. The pop echoed up the veins in my arm. Still no real pain or discomfort, just the unsettling knowledge that it should hurt and didn’t. My blood stained the Mosin Nagant’s plastic bag in a gratuitous B-movie splash of shiny beads. I couldn’t drop the rifle — that would leave another dent in the wood — so I leaned it against the fridge.
    “Stay,” I told it.
    “Front door is ajar—”
    “Shut up.”
    I saw her turn—
    I reached the bathroom sink, my mind a churn of half-thoughts, and the first rolling wave of pain hit. Viciously sharp, like a scalpel jammed under my thumbnail. My knees jellied and I grabbed the sink. I hoped the antique bayonet hadn’t left a shard in there, like stabbing yourself with a graphite pencil. I ran the faucet full blast, filling the sink bowl with pink water.
    Tetanus? I doubted it. The blade wasn’t rusty; too much Soviet preservative slopped on it. But I wondered what sorts of decades-old industrial solvents and chemicals had sloughed off inside my thumb. Circulating in my bloodstream right now.
    A bang reverberated from the kitchen, startling me. The rifle must’ve fallen over anyway. Another dent.
    “Front door is ajar.”
    From the living room I heard a reptilian hiss. Adelaide’s pet lizard sometimes reacted to commotion.
    In the fogging bathroom mirror I fought a stupid, crooked smile. It was kind of funny. I hadn’t even taken the Mosin Nagant out of its mailing bag yet and it had already ruined my kitchen flooring and cost me half a thumbnail. Of course, I knew it was an accident and nothing supernatural. And, obviously, I’d only imagined Adelaide turning to face me on that dock; you can’t affect a memory of 2011 with a loud noise from 2015. I was depressed, not crazy. But the adrenaline was intoxicating, and maybe — just maybe — this could turn into an interesting twenty-four hours.
    What were Holden’s words, back at Jitters?
    Let’s ghost-hunt this little Russian bastard.
    Amen to that.
    And as for my very first encounter with Adelaide Radnor, back on that FrightFest dock? The little area had no other exit, so I’d taken her hand and led her back into the claustrophobic plywood maze. She’d been reluctant but there was no other way. We had to backtrack. Backward is forward, I’d told her.
    Backward is forward.
    Outside, I heard the lope of a motor and gravel crunching underneath tires. Holden was here now.
    * * *
    “What happened to your hand?”
    I’d mummified my thumb in a hasty bandage of gauze and scotch tape before coming out to meet him in my driveway. I didn’t answer his question. I watched him pull something from his back seat, and it wasn’t a camera bag. “What’s that?”
    He hoisted a weighty cardboard box over his shoulder. “A surprise.”
    He’d accidentally parked his Ford Explorer (affectionately nicknamed Dora, as in Dora the