House of the Dead: Cult of the Endless Night, #1

By Ian Fortey, Ron Ripley and Scare Street

There is no escape from death itself…

Ghost hunter Shane Ryan has cheated death countless times. But death has a funny way of collecting what it's owed. And when James Moran asks Shane to retrieve a group of deadly spirits and their haunted items, the retired Marine finds himself wading into battle with supernatural evil once more.

Traveling to the estate of deceased media mogul Arthur Hempstead, Shane quickly discovers there is more to this case than meets the eye. Hempstead was more than just a collector of occult objects… He died intent on drawing on power for his own nefarious ends.

But Shane quickly finds out Hempstead was not the only one eager to harness the power of death itself. And unless Shane Ryan can stop them, they'll unleash an evil greater than any he has ever faced.

But first, he'll have to survive a haunted house of horrors. And cheat death one more time…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scare Street
• Release date: Jul 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798224621354

Book preview

Prologue

There was the distinct smell of burnt flesh in the breeze. Not that James Moran was the type of man who spent time in the presence of burning flesh. But over the years, he’d seen some things. Smelled some things. And, generally, he knew well enough when to leave a situation before bad came to worse. And yet, there he was.

The crescent moon provided little light as he drove his old silver Cadillac up the winding driveway of the dark mansion. He flicked on his high beams to get a better view of the area. The house was haunted; there was no need to feed into the drama of it all with a shadowy, ominous approach in the deathly silence.

He was more familiar with haunted mansions than the scent of burning flesh, but that didn’t mean he was eager to enter another one. At least not for any pseudo-thrill one might get from seeing a ghost. He had another goal in mind.

The property was well-secluded despite being part of a fairly prominent neighborhood. One of Hollywood’s biggest producers lived just three houses away. The property was large, shrouded with trees, and surrounded by a large privacy wall, and the house itself was far from the road. A small oasis of a bygone era dropped right into the modern world. Or it had been, anyway.

James shut off the engine, which sputtered faintly—he needed to get a mechanic to look at that—and left the headlights on, pointed at the front doors. There was no discernible style to the home, and he found that more off-putting than the idea of spirits inside. It wasn’t modern, it wasn’t Victorian, it wasn’t Georgian. Maybe it was postmodern. All sleek, odd-angled lines and geometry, but no heart.

He got out of the car. He reached into the right pocket of his suit jacket and retrieved a single key on a slightly worn leather keychain, monogrammed with the letter H.

The burnt-flesh smell wafted to his nose stronger than before, and he frowned. He hadn’t gotten to where he was in life by taking risks, not big ones, anyway. Not ones he couldn’t navigate. But something in the pit of his stomach felt wrong.

The previous owner had died recently. Arthur Hempstead, a sometime customer of James Moran’s, had made a fortune in the publishing industry and used that to fuel a series of investments that made him richer and richer. He was also notoriously reclusive and had rarely been seen in public in the past forty years.

As it happened, Hempstead had acquired a hobby during his career that put him on the very path James Moran walked. Hempstead was a collector of haunted items.

Hempstead’s death had come as a surprise. The man was old, but he seemed in good health. But his loss was James’ gain. He picked up almost the entire estate for a song. Truth be told, he only wanted a handful of items. The rest, he’d offload at a later date to recover the initial investment. A concern for another day.

The key turned silently in the lock, and the door pushed open as quietly as a whisper. James felt a little disheartened. He wasn’t beholden to tradition, but he still had a soft spot for the clichés of a haunted house. The creaky hinges. The dusty corners. Hempstead’s mansion was too modern and too clean. There was nothing to be afraid of.

Not all haunted houses were created equal; James knew that better than most. As a collector, Hempstead knew the secrets of holding spirits safely and securely. It was a risky hobby at the best of times, but he’d been in the game for a long time. He knew what he was doing.

James needed seven particular items beyond mortal understanding, each one tied to the spirit of someone departed. Haunted items, most chose to call them. They were the only reason he’d bought the estate in the first place.

Inside, the house looked nothing like it did on the outside. The postmodern nonsense design was a pure façade. Inside, it looked like a bespoke manor from some English countryside, with dark wood, marble, silver, and onyx accents.

Sheets had been draped over much of the furniture to protect it from dust. Though Hempstead had died just a few weeks earlier, the cold interior already looked like a relic from some bygone era.

James pulled a small flashlight from his pocket. He had no idea where to find what he was looking for, but he’d know it when he saw it. One of the items had even come from his shop. He had minor details about a couple of the others; the rest, he would just have to find on his own.

It made sense that all the items should be together in some sort of secured location. A vault lined with lead, even a small safe or case. As a collector, Hempstead probably would have wanted some way to display them—which complicated matters.

Someone as borderline reclusive as Hempstead might have been less cautious with where he kept his collection. Maybe they were out in the open, for him to enjoy at his leisure. Or the opposite could have been true. As a secretive man, perhaps he had created some kind of hidden vault or room to house his collection.

The beam of James’ flashlight scanned across cabinets full of curios and shelves of artworks and sculptures from numerous places and times. There was no theme to Hempstead’s tastes in art or decorating. His home was a hodgepodge of ideas and esthetics—eclectic and bordering on messy.

James moved from room to room, discovering little of interest. He opted to change course and head upstairs, skipping several rooms on the main floor. A bedroom, he decided, might be a smarter first step. Perhaps Hempstead was a man who kept things close at hand.

The stairs, an ostentatious arrangement in the center of a marble foyer under a skylight, made no noise as he ascended. Nothing in the house made so much as a groan or a creak, or even a click. Somehow, even the tiled floor seemed to absorb the sound of his shoes. It was as still as a grave, and he found it strangely unsettling.

Creaking and groaning noises were natural in a house and made things seem normal. The deathly still and quiet seemed foreboding… almost anticipatory.

James Moran was not a man who spooked easily. His line of business would not permit it. However, he had an abundance of caution. His instincts and his intellect kept him safe and alive. And for the first time in a long time, he felt like he was betraying those instincts. Something about Hempstead’s house was rubbing him the wrong way.

The second floor was as silent as the first. His flashlight beam exposed more covered furniture and art. Paintings lined the halls, depicting everything from historical battles to dogs to landscapes—but nothing dark or off-putting, as one might expect for someone so thoroughly enamored with collecting the dead.

Soon enough, James found what appeared to be the master suite: a great, sprawling bedroom with one wall made of a floor-to-ceiling window leading out to a patio overlooking what was probably the back garden. In the dark, blackness reflected only his flashlight beam.

He glanced over at a cabinet full of items that seemed entirely mundane and stopped when the sound of wood creaking in the hallway broke the stillness.

It was a single creak, like a foot stepping on a loose board. But he was more than confident there were no loose boards in the house at all. There was no follow-up. Not another creak, or a spoken word. Nothing.

I see, James whispered to himself. He scanned the room quickly. A flash of silver caught his eye as he scanned the king-sized bed, and he moved back quickly.

The nightstand adjacent to the bed had a lamp on it and a small wooden box with a book on top. But in front of all that was a simple silver lighter, possibly a Zippo. No logo or pattern on it, just plain stainless steel that looked mildly scuffed from use. It was unremarkable in every way. Or it would have been to most people.

Acrid smoke then filled James’ nostrils. There was none in the room; it wasn’t real smoke or fire. Just the smell. Charcoal. Burnt meat. Dead flesh.

He hissed behind clenched teeth and turned from the room. The floor behind him creaked, but he did not look back. There was no need.

The flashlight cut a path through the darkness as he returned to the staircase. A gust of cold air licked at his heels, sending goosebumps up his legs and across his back. It fell on him almost like cold water had been dumped over his shoulders. Still, he did not look back.

The paintings on the wall shifted. A low rumble vibrated the floor under his feet, and the paintings shook and rattled. A deep, resonant moan rose around him. The beam of light showed him the way down the stairs.

Dust fell from somewhere above. He nearly lost his footing as the house rumbled as though from an earthquake. In his haste to get a grip of the handrail on his way downstairs, he dropped the flashlight. The light bounced the remaining several steps, then spun as it skittered across the floor. He paid it little mind.

Two steps from the floor, something flew past his head and crashed. A sculpture, a small soapstone deer of some kind, hit the floor with a loud thunk.

The sheets had been pulled from the furniture on the main floor. They sat in a pile in the main foyer, directly between James and the front door.

The light of the crescent moon through the windows was scant at best, aided only slightly by the beam of the discarded flashlight to his left. The sheets were little more than a light smear against an all-black background. But they were visible. And moving.

Sheet ghosts, James muttered. How original.

A scream answered him—shrill, bloodcurdling, and so close that he felt the cold, rank breath of whatever it was. Despite himself, James cowered, crouching down and covering his ears with his hands.

The sound left a ringing in his ears. He tried to shake it off as he hastily made his way across the foyer and around the pile of writhing sheets. One of them lashed out, twisted around itself until it was little more than a cotton tentacle. It missed, though only just, and he increased his pace.

A shadow passed before him, a darkness in the darkness, with no light source around to make it real. Whispers reached his ears: voices compelling him to stay, voices threatening him to leave.

His hand reached the doorknob. A freezing, damp hand touched his own, though he saw nothing.

Where are you going, James? a woman’s voice asked.

He turned to his left, and a face peered back at him from behind a dark lace veil. He couldn’t make out the features, nor did he wish to.

James said nothing. He reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out a handful of loose iron shavings. He tossed them at the veiled spirit, and across the foyer in an arc behind him.

A howl tore through the house. The veiled spirit vanished, and a trio of shadows pulled away as though sucked from an airlock. The sheets fell still, and James pulled open the door.

He stepped out and closed the door behind him, using his key to lock it before straightening and smoothing his suit. That had not gone as he had expected at all. If he had to guess, not one of the seven was secured. That was a problem.

James left the porch and returned to his car, starting the engine with another concerning sputter. But first, he’d need someone better suited to entering Hempstead’s mansion and finding the items inside. Things were turning out to be more of a hassle than he’d hoped. A potentially fatal hassle.

To handle it, he’d need someone unafraid of death.

Chapter 1: A Helping Hand

The sun was too hot for a spring day in New England. Shane Ryan didn’t enjoy a scorching, cloudless day. He’d had enough of desert life on the other side of the world; he didn’t need it at home as well. A sunburnt scalp was hardly the result of a walk around town that he was looking for.

He’d felt restless that morning and left before the sun rose, just walking with no specific destination in mind. He smoked, and he thought, and he smoked some more.

Nothing in particular was eating at him, but sometimes it felt as though the house was becoming too demanding. Not the others in it—the spirits he shared his life and his space with—but the entire idea of the place. The idea of his life, such as it was. It grew to be too much sometimes. Better to go for a walk than punch a hole in one of his walls.

He had no name for what frustrated him. No source or reason for it all. Or maybe he did. Maybe it was everything at once. His life, after all, was not a normal one.

Eloise had taken to bullying Thaddeus more than usual. The two spirits, eternally stuck as children, had matured beyond any living person in many ways, and in other ways had become frozen in time. Eloise had a penchant for cold violence, for instance.

The Davis sisters tried to keep her in check, and even Carl tried to rein her in now and then. But other times, Shane had to speak with her and get her to settle down. It was, in a perverse way, a family dynamic. It was not exactly what he had signed up for.

Other lives were normal, he was sure. People who went to Disneyland and ate homemade macaroni and cheese. People whose basements weren’t full of dark spirits that oozed evil intent. That was probably a real trip, having a life like that. But he wasn’t sure he could handle it, either.

He bought another pack of smokes at a corner store on his way home when he realized he’d already smoked nearly a whole pack.

The house at 125 Berkley Street waited for him, darkly foreboding and hiding secrets that passersby would never know. While the neighborhood beyond was alive with signs of spring from chirping birds and trilling insects to blossoming buds full of color, Shane’s home was different. No bird roosted on a tree branch there. No bees buzzed through the garden. It was, for better or worse, a place of death, now and forever.

Carl was the only ghost in the house out and about when Shane returned. His friend greeted him at the door with a smile and a nod.

That was a long walk today, my young friend, Carl said in German, a brightness in his voice that matched the day.

Yeah.

Troubled mind?

Shane stared at him flatly, and the ghost chuckled.

Just asking. It’s good that you are getting out and doing things since… He let the sentence peter out. Shane knew what he meant. It had been a rough go since he had lost Jacinta. They all knew it. There was no need to discuss it further. The past was past and all that.

I’m fine, Carl.

Of course, Carl agreed. They both knew that this was a conversation Shane wouldn’t have with him. With anyone. There was nothing to say. And yet, Carl brought it up, nonetheless.

He’d not been in the house for more than two minutes when his phone rang. Carl said nothing and waited in patient silence while Shane answered.

Shane, a familiar voice intoned.

James, Shane replied. James Moran was not prone to making calls for no reason, and though Shane hadn’t heard from the man in a while, he already knew the nature of the call.

I wonder if I might trouble you to come by sometime to have a chat. I have an important business matter that needs to be addressed, and I’m afraid it’s a bit beyond my area of expertise.

But within mine? Shane asked.

Very much, I should think, the older man responded.

Shane had done enough favors for James in the past to know what that meant. In truth, he was relieved to hear it. It would give him something to focus on, something to channel his restlessness toward. It was a distraction. It sounded appealing.

I’ll be there shortly, Shane said before hanging up.

Such a life! Carl remarked. Always coming and going. Mr. Moran has a problem?

Probably, Shane said. I’ll find out more.

Anything that kept him from having to deal with the petty family squabbles among his domestic ghosts was for the best. Maybe he never should have put down roots. Connections just came with pain and complications. When he turned the key in the car and pulled out of the driveway, it sounded better by the moment to be completely free of it all.

A flash of pain pierced him as he considered a different family, a different path.

No, he couldn’t think about that. It wasn’t productive. He needed his head in the game for whatever had scared the normally imperturbable James Moran.

At the moment, he just hoped there would be a good fight on the other end. He craved one right about now. Pain was about the only emotion he felt comfortable with. At this point, all his scars and daily aches and twinges were just old friends.

He headed out of Nashua and took the quiet back roads to Moran and Moran. The storefront that the older man owned was quaint, charming, and very unassuming—to most people. And why shouldn’t it be? It was an antique shop in small-town New England.

Behind the scenes, of course, James catered to a different crowd. He trafficked in haunted items: things most people would consider cursed, or even evil.

James Moran himself was