Summary:
Outfoxing the Paranormal #3
OutFoxing the Paranormal’s benefactor, Ms. Montague, has a new assignment for the team: to investigate the haunted asylum Oscar’s grandmother died in. But upon arriving at the site, they find a rival duo of ghost hunters already there.
Between unexpected competitors and the murderous ghost of a former nurse, the pressure is on for Oscar to live up to his family’s heritage and lay the asylum’s ghosts to rest. Can he prove himself by putting an end to the nurse’s reign of terror, or will the asylum claim yet another victim?
Original Book of the Month Review October 2025:
Just when I didn't think the author could get any freakier and creepier than Rattling Bone, book 2 in their OutFoxing the Paranormal series, out comes #3, Into the Dark. I think many of us have preconceived ideas when it comes to abandoned hospitals of any kind but especially psychiatric or asylums thanks to Hollywood and the Travel Channel which has a few shows like the one's our characters are part of. Sometimes having those ideas going into a book can be difficult to overcome, to not be influenced by, to not use as comparison leaving your expectations too high but for me, I can "look the other way". I love going in with an open mind, especially within the paranormal genre.
I went in with that open mind and everything was fresh but I'll admit once an event occurred in the story, and our characters were left dealing with it, I had cinematic memories pop in but instead of comparing the two, I found I was just more freaked out. Instead of watching the scenes unfold on the screen, they were unfolding in my head, scary stuff.
By now the crew of OutFoxing the Paranormal is well established to us readers so that found family connection is familiar but now they find themselves competing with a fellow ghost hunter show, neither of which was aware the other would be investigating. In this entry, we get to see them interact with not only the dead but unwanted living beings as well. Definitely adds a new level of intriguing fun to the story.
For Oscar this is more personal as this asylum is where his grandmother died and he just wants to free the souls who were left behind to find their ever after peace. Between some not so nice spirits and the addition of the other team, he worries that he won't be able to give the souls the rest he desires in the limited time they have. This is definitely a supercharged , highly emotional, freakies of freaky read that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
On a personal note, one of my great grandfather's passed away in a sanitarium. He was an alcoholic who had suffered a brain injury in a farming accident and spent the last few years of his life in a facility. Thankfully it was a healthy and well respected facility but as I read deeper into this story, I couldn't help but be grateful for the fact that it was nothing like the one Oscar and his team investigate. I know healthy ones are much more common than the kind they write books and make films about but sadly those did exist and I imagine the line between the two is probably a lot thinner than most of want to think about. I added this to my review because having that familial history heightened the emotions, the fear, and made me love every nerve wracking, edge of my seat spine tingles that much more.
Chapter One
Howlston Lunatic Asylum, Howlston, WV. 1979
Barbara Fox didn’t have much time left.
She knew it: urgently when she could avoid the drugs, distantly when she couldn’t. Some nurses checked more thoroughly than others. And there had been a stretch of time…one year? two?…when the doctor ordered the whole ward lined up once a day and given injections of Prolixin to render them pliable, no matter what their initial diagnosis.
That had been…bad. She tried not to remember the screaming faces of the dead, crowding around her, desperate to be heard. The drugs slowed her thoughts, made it impossible to concentrate. Impossible to guard herself against their sorrow and pain.
If only that had been the worst of it.
Her tongue spasmed involuntarily, and her hands tightened on the smooth wooden banister running along the wall between rooms. It was meant to help steady patients, and she both hated she needed to use it and was grateful for its presence.
She glanced around, using the curtain of her hair—once her pride, now hanging in lank strings—to hide her gaze. No nurses nearby, so she shuffled a few more feet, closer to the locked door at the end of the ward. Other women wandered the hall along with her, made restless by Haldol or their own minds.
“Get out,” whispered a voice from no living mouth.
If only she could. Barbara didn’t have the strength left to block out the voices of the dead. There was nothing she could do to help them anymore. But maybe, maybe, she could help the living.
They’d finally taken Suzette to the medical ward, once her deep, wracking coughs became too frequent for even the overworked nurses to ignore. She’d gotten sick the night Barbara heard the voice of a dead man talking to her in the next room over. Over time, what had been a light cough attributable to the dust and pollen changed into something wet and gurgling as her lungs began to rot.
She wasn’t the first to go this way. If Barbara didn’t act, she wouldn’t be the last, either.
Gritting her teeth, Barbara shuffled closer to the door. The ward was a quiet one, most of its inhabitants drugged to the point of somnolence. Sometimes the nurses got sloppy, forgot to lock a door. She just needed to get lucky.
Lucky. A bitter laugh bubbled somewhere deep inside, then died before reaching her lips. Lucky didn’t tangle with a murderous ghost, get possessed—however briefly—and end up here.
They said the ghosts weren’t real. Said she was schizophrenic, then gave her drugs that made everything so much worse.
She wasn’t getting out of here alive. Scott, her baby boy, was almost a man now. She’d never dance at his wedding, never hold a grandbaby, never…
Tears threatened; she squeezed her eyes shut to keep them in. No use worrying about things she couldn’t change, that was what her mamaw always said. What happened outside these walls was beyond her reach forever.
But in here…
A rot infected the heart of this place. She could smell it sometimes, during the night when the ghostly creak of gurney wheels rolled past her door. A stink of gangrene and pus, a wound so infected and so deep it sickened everything around it. Turned orderlies mean, depressed nurses, and twisted the minds of the poor souls who’d come here needing help and found only overcrowded halls and electro-shock. In the worse cases, it crept into bodies and corrupted them, drowning lungs or inflaming organs.
Her defenses were paper-thin, torn apart by the drugs, but she was still a spirit-worker like her mamaw. Put on this earth to help bring peace to the dead, and thus to the living they haunted.
There were so, so many dead here who needed help she could no longer give them. But maybe, if she could burn out the rotten core, she could save the living like Suzette. With luck, cauterizing the wound would let the harmless dead move along as well.
Not much farther. She was almost at the door. Barbara glanced around again, saw no nurses, and reached for it.
The handle turned. They’d forgotten to lock it.
Moving as quickly as she was able these days, she swung it open—and stopped in her tracks.
A big woman loomed in front of her, dressed in a nurse’s uniform, the trailing skirt and frilled cap long out of date. Her eyes locked with Barbara’s, blazing with fury. Her mouth opened, stretched wider and wider, far past any human limit.
“Get back!” The words roared from the hollow cavern of her ghastly mouth, accompanied by a frigid blast that stank of freezer-burned meat.
Caught off guard, Barbara cried out and staggered away. Her twitching muscles betrayed her; she fell heavily to the floor, banging one elbow.
Within seconds, living nurses hurried into the hall, drawn by the sound. “Damn it, Deirdre, you left the door unlocked again!” one of them shouted. She walked toward the door, oblivious to the dead woman.
“Stop!” Barbara yelled at the ghost. “I can help you! Why couldn’t you have just let me through?”
She sounded crazy, she knew it, but what else could she do? Other nurses grabbed her arms; she tried to fight, biting and scratching wildly until she felt the sharp sting of a needle in her biceps.
No. No, this had been her one chance. Suzette’s one chance. They’d watch her from now on, make sure she swallowed her pills, maybe even confine her to her room. She struggled to get free, but already her limbs felt heavy and her thoughts began to fuzz.
“Call Dr. Dixon,” ordered one of the nurses restraining her. “She needs to go back to the fourth floor. And lock that door!”
The nurse closest to the door shut it, never realizing she stood only inches from a dead woman. Through the crack as it closed, Barbara saw the phantom nurse nod firmly, as if at a job well done.
One more life ruined.
Jordan L HawkJordan L. Hawk is a trans author from North Carolina. Childhood tales of mountain ghosts and mysterious creatures gave him a life-long love of things that go bump in the night. When he isn’t writing, he brews his own beer and tries to keep the cats from destroying the house. His best-selling Whyborne & Griffin series (beginning with Widdershins) can be found in print, ebook, and audiobook.
If you want to contact Jordan, just click on the links below or send an email.
No comments:
Post a Comment