Chapter 1 - Prologue

Victor’s hand trembled as he picked up the coffee and breakfast sandwich. Breakfast was usually two orders of egg & cheese on a croissant, plus a donut (or two), but his appetite wasn’t nearly up to snuff today. He plodded down the street to Mason Park, and slumped onto a bench to wait, and wait. It was still too early to start making calls, or to expect emails back from the list of psychics and shamans and witches and, frankly, hucksters that he was desperate enough to contact.

The sandwich tasted like cardboard, and he found himself unable to finish more than half. His belly growled, but he couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for his favorite breakfast. Though his conscience nagged him about wasting food, he tossed the rest into the trash by the bench and sipped his coffee, his fourth of the day at eight thirty-seven AM. That, at least, tasted right, and Lord knew he needed the caffeine.

A question that had been bothering him since two AM surfaced once more in his mind: how much force does it take to push a man well above four hundred pounds out of bed? His friends could barely budge him even when he was a teen, and he was a hundred (or maybe two) pounds heavier now.

It has been a fine evening -- when compared to the other evenings he'd spent so far in his new home. He’d been sound asleep, eye mask, CPAP, bite guard, and cozy blankets all in place, when a violent shove crashed into his side and sent him nearly flying out of bed. At first, he thought he might have been dreaming, sleepwalking maybe, but the bruise on his hip, the frantic cacophony of whispers, the sight of his bed floating several inches off the ground, sheets flying around the room convinced him otherwise.

The rest of the night had been spent in his living room, with every light in the house on, looking up any and every business in the area who claimed to know anything about ghosts. Sure, they all seemed like scams, but the activity had only escalated, every week a new terror. He couldn’t take another month of this.