Lovers From Beyond Ep. 10

"Remember that time we faked levitating a table?" Buttons chuckled. "And it was really Bill sitting underneath it and pushing it up with his hands? People still ask me about that night. But a missing technician in an old mental hospital, found later with his clothes off, well, according to Joe Public, that's impossible."

"We should film the next segment in our underwear." Hank considered.

"You're serious?"

"Sure." Hank explained. "We'll make like we're asleep here on the floor. Then we hear some kind of noise and we jump out of our sleeping bags in our underwear. It'll be dramatic."

"Yeah, you can say that because you've got a build like Superman."

"So don't point the camera on yourself." Hank replied. "Nobody's going to see your little man-boobs."

"I hate you." Buttons grumbled. "You can just suck me sideways, you know that?"

"You want to scan over the equipment?" Hank pulled the box with all of the electrical devices over to his side and opened it up.

"We do that every single time." Buttons complained.

"Yeah, but we don't use the footage every single time." Hank reminded him. "Only when we're short on material, like we are now."

"Let's just do that later."

"Fine." Hank relented. "Well, let's film the sleeping bag scene right now, while it's still raining hard outside. With the sound of the rain hitting the windows, and the scary story we've got going on in here, that's enough to make the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe cream in his pants. If we screw it up, we still have plenty of time to do it over."

"You're the boss-man."

"And don't you forget it!"

Hank quickly slipped into his sleeping bag, while Buttons turned his recording device off and set it out at arm's reach.

"Hurry up!" Hank urged. "My sleeping bag's still wet. I'm freezing balls in here!"

Buttons ignored him, as he reluctantly removed his dry jacket and set it aside. He too shivered as he set himself into his cold and wet sleeping bag. "One take, you hear me? If you screw it up, I'm not doing this again. It's too damned cold!"

Hank didn't answer, as he was mentally organizing his words for the next segment.

"Tell me when you're ready." Buttons called out.

Several moments later, Hank replied. "I'll need for you to give me two separate three counts. The first for when I jump out of the sleeping bag, and the second for when you actually start filming."

"Gotcha."

Hank could be heard taking several quick breaths. This action was designed to raise his heartbeat, and to make him appear frantic in front of the camera. Once the man was sufficiently prepped, he said, "Okay, I'm ready."

Buttons did his part. "Here goes. Three, two, one, and we're live."

"Holy shit!" Hank cried out, scrambling up and out of his sleeping bag with as much fanfare as possible. "Buttons, wake up! I just heard something at the back of the house!"

Buttons sat up and reached out for the camera. Before he'd even set it up on his shoulder, he started turning it on. "Three, two, one, and we are recording."

"Did you hear that?" Hank shouted. "Buttons, wake up!"

"I'm awake, I'm awake!" Buttons replied, hoping he sounded half groggy and half excited.

The first few seconds of footage were of the camera lurching about as it settled onto his shoulder. Quickly, Buttons honed in on where Hank stood, filming the man's tense profile as he faced the area where the two bedrooms were located.

"I've got you in focus now, Hank." The cameraman said.

Hank turned toward the camera, a wild, bewildered look screaming out of his face. He shivered on command. "I don't know what just happened, man!"

The camera jerked around again, as Buttons scrambled up and onto his feet. The camera was soon back on Hank's face, zoomed in for a close-up. "What's going on, Hank?"

Appearing exasperated, and maybe even at the verge of tears, Hank said, "I don't know. This place is driving me crazy! We've heard crazy shit in here all night! We heard the floorboards creaking earlier. We thought we heard fingers tapping at the windows, except it's so hard to tell with all this rain coming down."

Buttons turned the camera toward the windows briefly, to confirm to the audience that it was still raining heavily. The camera went back to Hank, from his chest on up, for the benefit of the ladies and the alternative lifestyle guys that watched the show. "What did you hear?"

Hank held his hands up near his face, and shook his head. "It was a crazy noise, like somebody screaming in pain or something. I've never heard anything like that before in my entire life!" His head darted toward the back of the house again. His arm shot out in that direction. "It came from back there!"

"We should check it out." Buttons prodded the man, as he usually did.

Hank gulped. In the gesticulations of his face, the viewers at home would be able to see Hank's growing resolve. They could witness for themselves that Hank wasn't just getting filled with courage, but with anger as well. The big man nodded with unwavering resolution. "For all those women that died before their time, yes. We have to check it out!"

There was a time when each and every member of the ghost hunting crew had considered how they were sensationalizing and capitalizing on real-life tragedies. A couple of people didn't have the heart to do such a thing for very long. Hank and Buttons, and the remaining members of the team, had all rationalized it in this fashion. They were entertainers, and their job was to entertain the masses. Buttons already knew that Hank was great at giving people what they wanted. The cameraman could already see Hank as being the leading man in an action movie, sometime in the near future.

Like a small tank made of muscles, Hank took a handful of determined strides toward the empty expanse of the dining room. "Is that you, Armand Goode? Why don't you step up to me, like you did to all those poor, defenseless women? You got what it takes to go toe to toe with a real man, Armand Goode?"

This really was turning into an action movie, Buttons smirked as he paced close behind. The man's smirk was short-lived however, by what they heard next. Certain things and noises could be expected in the modern world. Those things the human mind could relate to and instantly comprehend. But some things the Ghost Bustin' crew heard during their jaunts defied conventional explanation.

Take what had happened at the Homestead Valley Hospital, for instance. Buttons and Hank had been filming there, strolling down an empty hallway with litter on the floor and graffiti on its walls. They were wondering exactly where Bill was going to scamper across the hall and cause them both to jump out of their socks and start ejaculating both curses and shocks.

Bill had done his part, but right after, they both heard a sickening wave of terrorizing shouts and threats. It felt as if the Devil's circus had just arrived and was setting up some kind of demonic parade exclusively for their benefit. And right after the first, jolting wave of surprise and shock, had come a second wave of fear and panic. That was when the two men realized that whatever was now lurching their way wasn't coming simply to socialize, but to greet them with a hideous, murderous intent.

It was one of the few times that Buttons had seen genuine, glowing fear evident in Hank's face. At that moment, all thoughts of Bill's well-being and safety were quickly swept away by an overriding wave of panic. That same sort of thick fear was what Buttons was seeing on Hank's face now. What happened at Homestead Valley Hospital was happening again in Middleton Heights.

The clamor they both heard could have come from the deepest bowels of Hell. It sounded like the screams of a thousand people, all being tortured at once. As if that wasn't enough to rip shudders and short gasps from the two men, there was another, worse noise behind that. It might have been the laughter of Satan himself, filtering through the shock of screams. That demonic voice boasted and gloated over the uncountable number of souls that had been dragged down into the black depths.

Although Hank's arms were poised like a wrestler's, and his hands were half curled into fists, the normally intrepid adventurer was visibly shaking. Incredibly, he took a step forward. "It's coming from the second bedroom."

Against Buttons' prayers, Hank willed himself to approach the open bedroom door.

What ghastly monstrosity awaited them in that room, Buttons wondered. He gasped out a quick, "Wait!"

Hank paused, giving Buttons just enough time to hurry back and reposition the flashlight that still lay bright and cheery on the floor. For good measure, Buttons turned on the second flashlight as well, flooding both the living room and dining room with powerful glare. The cameraman rushed back to his customary position of between three to five feet from where Hank stood.

Hank reached out for the door of the second bedroom, to open it fully. That's when a sudden, powerful wave of nausea and dread emanated from the room and threatened to make them both spill their guts.

"We should get out of here!" Buttons yelped. If anything scary came out of that bedroom, he'd be damned if he didn't feel like smashing his expensive recording instrument right on top of its head.

"Bill said he felt this way, right before he came back into the present." Hank reminded him. "And whatever happened to Bill, something very similar is coming from inside of this room. This is why we signed up to be ghost hunters, Buttons. This is where we're going to make history."

Clad only in his boxers, Hank stepped inside, just as another wave of revulsion swept through the bodies of both men.

Although his every instinct tore at him to flee, and to put as much distance as possible between him and whatever horror lay in that room, Buttons dutifully followed.

The next wave to hit them brought with it a thick curtain, as deep and black as the grave. Both men found their willpower and their fortitude waning. A moment after that, they were gone from our present-day world.