Occult detective fiction

The Curse of the Deadly Gym part 5

Before I can knock, Ackerbee opens the door and looks at me nervously.

“Come in, come in!” he loudly says with false cheer.

I walk past him to the hallway. His wife is sitting in the living room, listlessly watching television. She doesn’t even react to someone coming into her home. I study her profile for a few moments. Her blonde hair is short, just barely coming down to the base of her neck. Her cheeks are sunken. She looks thin, but not a healthy thin. The kind of thin that either hints at the fact that she isn’t eating, or that someone is stealing her health.

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The Curse of the Deadly Gym part 2

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Ackerbee looks sheepish and says, “I uh, stalked her one day. I followed her to gym and after waiting twenty minutes I went inside. There’s this one class she’s taking and you can watch the people exercising through the glass. So I watched her exercise. There’s this new instructor; he’s maybe only been there for two months at most, and that’s around the time she started being more tired.”

“Un hunh,” I mutter. I’m wondering if the reason she’s tired is because she’s busy doing the instructor after class.

“I’m watching these people exercise and the instructor starts yelling at them. And I see this misty light coming from the people as he’s yelling at them and it’s going toward him. This light comes off my wife and she looks paler and more unhealthy than before and the instructor suddenly looks healthy and flushed. I’d never seen anything like that before and that’s why I’m here, because I can’t explain it!”