The Dex-Files Part 1

The Dex-Files.

An Experiment in Terror Companion Novel.

Karina Halle.

FROM THE AUTHOR.

Greetings my fair readers. You are about to go where very few people have gone before inside the mind of Declan "Dex" Foray. I must warn you that if you haven't read all the books in the Experiment in Terror Series (including OLD BLOOD! It's very important to understanding this book, all the books), put down your e-reader and go do so now. Go on. I'll wait.

If you have read all the books, feel free to carry on. I wouldn't want the series (which is told from Perry Palomino's POV) to be spoiled for anyone. Now, I must warn you that Dex's head is not always a pretty place. You probably know that already and that's why you love him (or want to kill him. Same difference). It's a place that sometimes doesn't make sense. One minute it's dark and terrible, the next it's completely s.m.u.tty and perverted. I tried to clean it up but you know what you can't bleach this man's brain. So, if you're OK with graphic s.e.x, swearing and the usual Dex Foray, f.u.c.kery, well...I think you're in for a treat.

PROLOGUE.

I was six years old when I got my first taste of h.e.l.l.

I woke up to a horrible howling noise, like a dog caught in the throes of deep emotional pain, agony that went beyond the physical. It was chilling. Terrifying. Like, make your b.a.l.l.s shrivel up into p.r.i.c.ks of ice sort of terror. It quickly plucked away whatever ignorance my sleep had thrust on me and slapped me in my young face. This wasn't a dream. This was as real as all h.e.l.l. There was a monster in my house, the kind that preyed on little boys, but it wasn't under my bed or in my closet. It was next door. Or, as it seemed to be, the floor below, scratching and howling its way from the kitchen.

It was my mother. And from the sounds of gla.s.s breaking and furniture scuffling, my dad had found her. The howling intermixed with his booming voice, his threats, his pathetic cries that betrayed the collected man he was always trying to be. It sounded ugly. It always sounded ugly but tonight I was especially scared. When a vicious cry was followed by the sound of someone being shoved into a wall, I'm not ashamed to say I promptly wet myself. p.i.s.sing your pants seemed the only thing to do when the monster was loose and I made a silent, naive prayer to the man upstairs, praying that it was my mother who was thrown against the wall. I'm callous, maybe. I've been called worse. But if it were my father, and he was out cold, she'd come looking for me next.

I thought about pulling the covers over my head and hiding from it all like a coward, but that never worked. I would pretend all I could that my blanket was my invisible cloak and it would shelter me from everything bad in the world but I learned at a very young age that there was no such thing as shelter. Maybe I would have been safer if I didn't care. Maybe indifference could have been my protector. But I still loved - and feared - my parents. That love is what scared me. It gave them the upper hand. They sure as f.u.c.k didn't love me.

I heard a shuffling from outside my door, slow and light. It was only Michael, though it rattled my wee body to think things were bad enough that he got out of bed. Michael was just three years older but he might have well been another decade. He was the golden boy, the child of light. I was the runt, the child of dark. I feared. Michael didn't.

I quickly jumped out of bed and scurried across to the door, purposely missing the part of the floor that I knew squeaked. I turned the k.n.o.b silently and saw Michael's shadow just down the hall, heading toward the stairs. Half of him was lit up by a dying night light.

He stopped as soon as he heard me and though I could barely see it, I could feel the look. It said go back to bed, you'll get us in trouble. Only I could get us in trouble just by being awake. I still don't know why my mother had it in for me. Sometimes I think she saw a lot of herself in me, even at such an age. That's a f.u.c.king terrifying thought. I'd be lying if I said that, and other things, didn't keep me up at night.

That look though from Michael, that was the most I'd ever seen him scared. It felt good, selfishly good, to know he wasn't inhuman, that he feared things too. Maybe not the way I did, but h.e.l.l if I hadn't been wondering if my brother was born without a soul. Now I knew he was just older and better at hiding it than me.

I opened my mouth to say something but he placed his finger to his lips. We listened. The wailing had stopped. There was no more noise.

The fresh p.i.s.s felt cold against my legs and I was suddenly, acutely embarra.s.sed of what I had done. It's d.a.m.n funny how Michael had that effect on me.

Even funnier was how I remember reaching out for his hand, looking for some sort of pathetic comfort in my blood relative, my Mikey. He jumped as if my very touch startled him or scathed his skin. Yet he let me hold his hand, even though it was tiny and clammy and I grasped him hard, until bone rubbed against bone. I never felt as grateful to my brother as I did at that moment, for not letting go. Yeah the a.s.swipe would let go later. f.u.c.k, he'd order up my own execution if he could (don't think he wouldn't try). But at that moment, I wasn't alone.

We made our way down the stairs, holding hands. You'd think it would be less scary without the yelling and the d.a.m.n woman howls, but the silence was hazed with suspense and unheard threats, and forget the smell of urine emanating from me, I was this close to s.h.i.tting myself.

When we reached the floor we heard a very slight tinkling of gla.s.s. We both froze and Michael's grip on mine intensified. Just for a second. But it was enough.

The sound was followed by a groan. Then a flopping sound of body and skin against shiny tiled floors. This wasn't good. This was very, very bad.

I wanted to turn and run. I think I may have tried. But Michael held me there and we both watched as a dark figure came crawling out of the door to the kitchen. She moved on the floor like a drunk snake. That's what she was, after all. A f.u.c.king drunk snake out to eat us alive.

She didn't get far. Her arms were outstretched and reaching for us but she got two feet before she gave up and pa.s.sed out. She smelt like wine and evil. Like sweat and sadness. Of all the feelings that hit me at that moment, I felt...bad. Looking back, I pitied her.

Michael and I stood there, staring dumbly at our unconscious mother. Michael's eyes were hard in the darkness, tiny pinp.r.i.c.ks in the black. I wonder, did he feel hate toward her? Did he still love her? Did he feel loved? Or was he as confused as I was, forever mixing up love and hate and fear and females. I'll never know. I don't think I even care.

The spell of shock wore off when we heard another sound from the kitchen. My father was stirring. My first instinct was to run and hide. I feared him in a different way. That I'd get a spanking for wetting my pjs. That I'd be told I was nothing but a f.u.c.k up (not so much in those words, I was six after all, but I got the gist. I'm no dummy). But he didn't notice in the darkness. He appeared in the doorway, standing over my mother, with an expression of hopelessness and utter disdain on his face. This is what I get, it said.

Instead he said, "You boys are getting a nanny. We can't live like this."

Same difference, I suppose.

My name is Dex Foray and I'm a hypocrite. Proud of it, too. I call my mother a monster but I'm the one who took her last name. Maybe because unlike my dad, she never left me. There's something to be said for sticking around...even if it kills you.

I'm a hypocrite because I can't stand weakness in others, even though I'm born of weakness myself. I dish it out and then laugh when they try and dish it back. Like I'm above it. And sometimes I think I am.

I'm a hypocrite because I hunt ghosts and I've pretended all this time that the ghosts haven't been hunting me.

And I'm a hypocrite because I judge people. I judge the f.u.c.k out of everyone I meet, from their music tastes, to their jobs to their lifestyle choices. I judge them but f.u.c.k them if they dare judge me. They think they understand this monster in me, the monster in all of us. But they don't.

They don't know where I've come from.

They don't know my side of the story.

But now you do.

AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL.

"Hey Dex. Way to f.u.c.k my girlfriend, you d.i.c.k!"

That was the only warning I had before Chase Huntington steroid monkey and douchef.u.c.ker extraordinaire punched me right in the face. I don't know if you've ever had a fat, pharmaceutically pumped fist meet your eyebrow ring and eye socket at the same time but I gotta tell you, it's not fun.

There was a black explosion of pain and I stumbled backward and hit the wall, dropping my joint to the ground. My friend Toby gasped and I couldn't tell if the f.u.c.k was upset about the joint or that his bandmate was injured. I was seeing stars out one eye and squinting angrily at Chase with the other.

"What the h.e.l.l was that for?" I cried out as Toby quickly scooped up the joint from near my feet.

"Are you f.u.c.king deaf?" Chase bellowed, taking a step forward, his fist raised.

Oh right. The whole girlfriend f.u.c.king thing.

It was true. Not a misunderstanding by a long shot. But I was going to play it that way, especially as I saw the hungry eyes of our nearby cla.s.smates focus on us from across the yard, sniffing the potential blood in the air. Kids, they always liked a fight, especially one between a jock and a skid like me. This was David and Goliath level here, people. One scrawny, pierced 15-year old f.u.c.k up against an 18-year old who failed high school twice because he couldn't spell his name properly.

I mean, what, they were really going to believe that Amanda Layne, Chase's gorgeous, straight-A student, gymnastics champion girlfriend would sleep with someone like me?

Well she did. Don't ask how I did it, I think I give up some kind of "I don't give a f.u.c.k" charm or maybe it's the long hair and eyebrow ring. Or maybe it's because I'm very, very persistent and I more or less cornered her in the darkroom after photography cla.s.s and shoved my tongue down her throat and gave her a taste of something she couldn't say no to. A Dex sample, totally free. She didn't have to buy the thing, but she did.

I'm a good product.

For whatever reason it worked and a few days ago I was going down on Amanda underneath the bleachers (yeah, yeah how cliche but chicks dig cliches). I think I ate as much dirt as I did p.u.s.s.y but she seemed to like it. No, scratch that, love it. I could tell from the way she screamed out my name until I had to put my hand over her mouth in case someone heard us. The bleachers soon led to her car (she's a year older) and I took some perverse pleasure in the fact that I was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g something Chase prized very dearly. It made me feel like I was The s.h.i.t. She wanted me. He wanted her. I walked away clean.

Or at least I had until Chase found me during lunch hour. I knew this was coming, I just had hoped I wasn't stoned at the time so I could have had a little more warning. I could have devised a better plan than the one that came into play.

"How dare you accuse me of something like that?!" I hollered back in mock disgust and rubbed at my eye which I knew was going to black and swollen very soon. "I wouldn't touch that s.k.a.n.k with a ten-foot pole."

Big mistake.

The gathering crowd gasped.

"Dude," Toby said under his breath before toking away.

This time I did see the fist coming. I planned on it. No guy worth their salt wants to hear their girlfriend being called a s.k.a.n.k, even if she was a s.k.a.n.k (and, come to think of it, she really was - though I was no better).

Chase lunged for me, but I was smaller and went lower. I tackled him at the waist and it was only surprise that allowed me to knock him off his feet. We hit the ground and fumbled for a bit until I managed to straddle him much like I wanted Amanda to straddle me (she was too shy or some girly bulls.h.i.t) and I delivered a few quick jabs to his jaw and a crushing one to the nose. He cried out in pain, at the crunch and blood and then literally threw me off of him.

I rolled for a few feet expecting to have Chase's overpuffed Nike sneakers crushing my face at any second but there was nothing. I opened my eyes and blinked at the sky. Something was blocking it. Something fat and round like the sun.

Princ.i.p.al Gould.

From what he saw, the scruffy, troublesome Dex Foray had randomly attacked Chase Huntington, one of the star football players and heroes of the school. No wonder Chase kept failing, why leave a place where even the Princ.i.p.al worshipped the ground you walked on?

I (barely) had the chance to defend myself physically but there was no way I could do so by talking. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but Gould shot me that look that said I would only harm myself more by talking.

I took my chances.

"He attacked me!" I protested, trying to get up to my feet. I shot Chase a look and wasn't surprised to find him shrugging and looking totally innocent. I then looked to Toby.

"Tell him what happened," I said frantically.

"Uhhhh," Toby said through glazed eyes and at that moment we realized that getting in a fight wasn't our biggest problem. Toby was caught red-handed with a joint in his hands. I admired the b.a.l.l.s (or blunted stupidity) on the kid because instead of sticking up for me he puffed on the joint at supersonic speed before Gould s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of his mouth.

"You boys are coming with me."

I had been at my new high school for two years now but time hadn't eased anything. I had been happy at my old school in Manhattan, happy with my life before my pa decided to up and go. Leave me and my brother Michael behind with nothing but our crazy mother. OK, maybe not happy as a "pig in the s.h.i.t" type happy but I was certainly happier. Here, in Brooklyn, I never found my place. I coasted through life f.u.c.king around, barely going to cla.s.ses, doing a lot of drugs fifteen-year olds should never do, doing a lot of girls fifteen-year olds should never do. Ha.

At my new school I came in as the brooding, mysterious f.u.c.k-up and I remained that way in the eyes of everyone, Princ.i.p.al Gould especially. This wasn't my first fight either. The first day of school some drooling a.s.shole found out I had come from the Upper West Side and said I was a tighta.s.sed prepster. How the h.e.l.l he got tighta.s.sed prepster from my uniform of cargo pants, Misfits tee shirt and boots was beyond me, but it p.i.s.sed me off enough to lay the smack down on him. Unfortunately, the drooling a.s.shole was also bigger than me and that fight ended with my face in the dirt. Still, my reputation as being a sc.r.a.pper was sealed.

Gould ushered us into his office, the dungeon of doom as we liked to call it, and gave us a threatening lecture that made his cheeks puff out and turn all red. He said he was going to call our parents...actually he shot one look at me and decided that Toby was the bigger issue here.

It was a smart move. My mom would have been drunk on her a.s.s and he would have gotten an earful from her. As much of a mess as my mother was, you didn't f.u.c.k with her children. Only she could f.u.c.k with her children.

So Toby's mother heard all about how her son broke the law by smoking pot at school. Of course Princ.i.p.al Gut had to bring me into it anyway he could and made it sound like I was the bad influence on Toby. Phhfff. Toby was bad before I even showed up.

I'm not sure how much Toby's mom, who was a whippet-shaped dream muncher, really cared about the fact that I got in a fight and it must have gotten through to Gould, because when he was done with her, hanging up the phone in a sweaty huff, he looked at us both with frustration.

"You're both suspended for the rest of the week," he growled. "Go home."

Woo hoo! All right! No school!

That's what most kids would say. I mean, with suspension you had the lecture and grief and disappointment from your parents, but after that you didn't have to go to school, and your cla.s.smates would talk about you for months like you're a real bad a.s.s.

Notice I said most kids. That wasn't the case for me.

I actually liked school. No, wait, I take it back. I actually liked being at school. Cla.s.ses and teachers could kiss my perky a.s.s, but school wasn't home. And any place that wasn't home was a place I wanted to be. My mother worked nights and she was home during the day. It was bad enough having to see her for a couple of hours after cla.s.s where, if I was lucky, she'd throw a cheap frozen meal in the microwave for me and Michael. If I wasn't lucky, Michael would be out with his friends, my mom would be in rage mode, and I'd have a belt mark on my neck for looking at her wrong.

I exchanged a grim look with Toby, who no doubt would be grounded during his suspension and thus no band practice nor access to weed. This was going to suck.

In the months to come, I'd look back at that moment and want to pull my hair out. I wanted to yell at myself, tell myself to not go home. Go anywhere else. I wanted to hold onto that feeling that things couldn't get any worse when they very well could. I wanted that ignorance back.

But there was no turning back.

I went home. I was hungry and bored and even though I hung out at my favorite record store for a few hours, killing time, my house was calling me.

I knew it was a mistake the minute I walked in. Our place was small as all h.e.l.l, with sad, peeling blue walls that looked silly against the relatively fancy furniture that we salvaged after dad left. The apartment normally had this moldy smell about it, like death clung to the walls, but that evening it was another smell. It was the stench of melted plastic and it stung my nostrils something bad.

I quietly placed my backpack on the floor and shut the front door behind me. Living in an apartment was hard when you had a mom who liked to scream and yell and cry and puke a lot. The neighbours, even the drug dealers, must have hated us. I had this weird feeling that this was going to be another epic disturbance and I hoped the other tenants weren't home.

The next thing I found weird, aside from the gross stench, was the silence. Usually the TV was blaring, or you could hear the sound of my mom pouring herself a drink, or she was yammering en Francais to far-off distant relatives who didn't want anything to do with her nonsense.

But there was nothing.

It was f.u.c.king creepy.

I crept down the hallway, wishing I'd worn my Vans to school instead of the combat boots. Wherever my mom was, she knew I was coming.

I looked in the kitchen. Empty.

I peeked in her room. Empty.

I peeked in Michael's room. Empty I stopped outside my door. It was closed. I always closed it but I knew she was in there. The G.o.d awful smell of burning plastic filtered out from under the doorframe.

Along with a tuft of smoke.

Holy f.u.c.king s.h.i.t.

I put my hand on the k.n.o.b and before I could hesitate any longer, I whipped the door open.

My mother was on her hands and knees in the middle of my room. I had a terrible sense of deja-vu, like I'd seen this before. My mother wasn't very original with her drunken terrorizing.

But that's not what caused my heart to fill with ice. That's not what made my skin crawl with disgust and righteous, bubbling over anger.

All of my records were sprawled out on the floor in front of her. My precious vinyl collection that I had worked for so long to acquire, paid for with the paltry change I scrounged up over the years. The music my mother said was the work of the devil.

She hadn't said that lightly. It turns out she very much believed it for my mother was lighting my records on fire. Let me repeat that. She was lighting my f.u.c.king record collection on fire. Half of them were reduced to a nauseating pile of melted black vinyl, producing a stench that made my eyes water. Maybe I was crying too, I don't know. Call me a p.u.s.s.y for shedding a tear but those records meant absolutely everything to me and she was destroying it.