Read an Excerpt From The Haunting of Room 904 by Erika T. Wurth

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Haunting of Room 904 by Erika T. Wurth, a paranormal thriller out from Flatiron Books on March 18^th.

I’d felt dread the minute Alejandro and I entered Cleo’s apartment. Her face was sallow, stricken; she looked like a thousand ghosts had poured through her, like time itself had come for a final reckoning. I closed my eyes. I could feel something at the barest edge of my senses. Something powerful. I moved further into the ghost at my side, wanting to know more about why they were here, but they faded back into that whispering gray purgatorial world I had only witnessed in dreams.

Cleo had handed me the listing a few minutes after we’d settled in.

The box from the listing she’d found on eBay was black, covered in thick gray dust—it felt sticky, cobwebby. The touch revolting. There were waxy strings holding the lid down and a large, ornate, black lock.

I glanced briefly up at the streetlights through the frosty window, the snow blowing in blue streaks beneath them. It was coming down like mad, the roads covered in gray-brown slush from a late spring snow.

“Just breathe, Olivia,” Alejandro said, patting my hand.

I blinked. Glanced down. My hand was clenched around the listing. “Sorry,” I said, releasing it to the coffee table. I hadn’t wanted to take anything on this week.

“It’s okay,” Cleo said, running one freckled hand through her hair, her eyes flitting briefly to the window, then back over to me. The snow had started to fall even more rapidly, the sky a mass of white.

Buy the Book

The Haunting of Room 904

Erika T. Wurth

Buy Book

The Haunting of Room 904

Erika T. Wurth

Buy this book from:

“So, when did all of this start?” I asked, picking up the mug she’d poured for me when we’d first come in.

“About a week after I got it in the mail. Like I said over the phone, the minute I saw it, I had to have it, there was just something that drew me—I thought it sounded neat.”

“Neat,” I echoed.

Most of the paranormal listings on eBay were haunted dolls, written about in inarticulate script, clearly playing off the popularity of the Conjuring films. This object, however, was unique.

“Go on,” Alejandro said. He generally let me lead the questioning. Sometimes, however, he questioned while I looked around—let my mind search. Though Alejo did a lot of the day-to-day things, like keep our calendar, I needed him with me on gigs to make sure that if I went off the edge, I had someone there to catch me. My mind was strong. But when you were clairvoyant, spirits—or anything else—could get in. And you wouldn’t know until it was too late.

“Then it was little things,” she said, continuing. She sipped at her coffee, and I could see her hands trembling. “I couldn’t find Mousey. I got him when he was a kitten, just a tiny black ball of fur.” She smiled, a small, weak smile. “Then, like in the listing, I’d wake up hearing noises. Moaning. And then the scratches started. I finally found Mousey under the bed—but I couldn’t get him out. He stayed under literally all the time. I tried to throw the box out. I put it in the dumpster outside, but…”

“Please, continue,” Alejo prompted once more.

“It reappeared. The next day—on my kitchen counter,” she said, her voice shaking. “And there was a note on top of it.” I squinted, leaned in.

“It said, ‘There is no escaping your bloodline.’”

That was interesting.

I sat back, still wondering if for all my instinct, I’d misread her, and this wasn’t evidence of a psychic break. Stuff started going wrong in their heads, and then they’d find something to make what was happening real. The problem was, when it was real, sometimes it was because the entity—which was almost always a ghost—had found a vulnerability and wormed its way in.

“I have to ask you something,” I said, smiling reassuringly. “And I don’t want you to take offense.”

She nodded, the corners of her mouth turning down, her eyes narrowing.

“Do you have a history of mental health issues?”

She went pale, then her face turned a shade of pink, then red. “Are you calling me crazy? This is for real. I’m scared for real. That thing”—she paused to point at it—“is possessed. There’s like, a demon or something in it. And I don’t appreciate you questioning my sanity, when it took everything I had to call you.” She stood up, her legs trembling, her eyes filling with tears.

“Sweetie, sweetie.” Alejandro got up and walked over to her, sat down, and patted the seat next to him. “No one thinks you’re crazy, which is like, a totally shitty word anyway.”

Her shoulders relaxed a bit then, and she sighed, roughing the tears from her face with a forearm. “And like, I’m on fluoxetine? So, if anyone’s crazy here, mija, it’s me. Maybe it’s because I majored in English, and all that poetry screwed with my head,” he continued, and patted the seat where she’d been again. “Like all that Poe? Black.”

She laughed despite herself, and Alejandro handed her a tissue. She sniffled and dabbed at her eyes, clutched the tissue in her fingers, sat back down, and clasped her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry. It’s just. I’m not sleeping, you know?”

“It’s okay, it’s really okay,” I said, and Alejandro patted her shoulder.

“I don’t,” she said after a few minutes. “I mean, I don’t have a history with depression. Or like, any mental illnesses. Not that I’m criticizing,” she said, her head jerking over to Alejandro.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m gay. We’re like, required to be a little mental, given the meathead homophobes we deal with in this world,” he said, rolling his eyes.

She laughed again, her hand over her lips. Then she sighed heavily. “I did go through some therapy when my dad died. That was rough. I was close to him—and my mom. And there were times…” she said, her eyes going distant, “I thought…”

“Go on, we’re not judging you,” I said.

“I thought that I, well, not that I saw him? But that I felt him in the room. I smelled him, smelled his cologne. It took me a long time to get over that.” She giggled nervously. “But then I did. And I was fine. I was a cheerleader and everything. Had straight As. Went to CU.”

That was how it had gotten in. That little, dark, black hole inside of her.

“I get it. My dad died too,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Cancer,” I volunteered.

“Mine was a car accident,” she said, one finger brushing lightly over her mug.

“Were you in the car?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, the finger stilling.

We were silent for a beat.

“You want me to get you more coffee?” she asked, running one hand through her pale, greasy hair.

“Sure.”

When she got back, she continued. “So, after the moaning, the scratching, the lights flickering, and then, like, this feeling. This feeling of foreboding. And I don’t know how else to describe it,” she said, clutching her hand to her chest, the tissue still trapped between her fingers. “This feeling of doom and darkness in my heart—and, oddly enough, guilt—that’s when it got real. That’s when I started to see things.”

I let her go on. Alejandro took her hand, and she smiled at him, swallowed.

“I’d wake up, and I was standing in front of the mirror, in the bathroom. I don’t sleepwalk?” She cleared her throat, twisted the tissue. “Then it got so much worse. I’d wake up, and behind me, I’d see him. I’d see Daddy.”

She started crying in earnest then, and Alejandro rubbed her back, shushed her gently. We let her cry it out. “But it wasn’t him. His eyes…” she said, trailing off. She shook her head. “And then I began waking up in front of the mirror—with a knife in my hand.”

Jesus Christ.

“That’s when I started searching for help—for, you know, paranormal investigators. Mostly what I found looked scammy. But you two, it was clear from your website that you’re the real thing. Plus, you have really good reviews on Yelp,” she said, ending with a small, uncomfortable chuckle.

She sniffled again, blew her nose, and Alejandro gave her another tissue from the weirdly never-ending supply that he kept in his messenger bag.

“Alejandro, could you hand me the sweetgrass? The shell?” I asked.

He nodded, pulled the flap of his bag, and handed me my materials. There was holy water as well, just in case. I never knew what I was going to be dealing with.

“Oh, the candles too.”

Alejandro handed each object to me with a cloth, and I set them out, my hands folding them down in the proper way. I sat back. “I want to be clear. This is a ceremony, this is not some kind of play Indian thing. I am not a traditional medicine person, and I’m definitely not a priest,” I said, chuckling darkly. “But this is how I know how to respectfully communicate with the dead. My family was tradish, then Catholic, then Native American Church. This is what I know, who I am.”

Cleo blinked a few times, then nodded.

“And the only reason I’m taking payment? Is because I need to eat to live.”

She nodded again. “Do I need to do something?”

“Just take deep breaths. Focus on something in the room that makes you happy. Focus on a memory that makes you happy.”

Alejandro lit the sage and let it burn until it was creating a steady stream of smoke, and we motioned the smoke over ourselves, cleansing. I told Cleo to do the same.

I sat back. Worked hard to clear my head.

Alejandro dimmed the lights, lit the black-flowered candles—my hope being that the spirit would be drawn to the flickering light, and that the light would lead it to the other world.

I closed my eyes. At first, nothing.

“Is this working?” Cleo whispered. Alejandro quietly asked her to keep silent. To focus. To let me focus.

I could hear doors opening and closing throughout the complex. Laughter outside. I closed my eyes again. Thought about Cleo. The box. It had such strange energy. The building went silent again. And I waited. Kept an image of the box in my mind, of Cleo’s guilt. There was something in that, something… inside. I felt a breeze, a light, cold breeze. I knew that the windows were shut. The breeze grew, and I heard distant sounds of women and children. I strained to hear what they were saying, leaned forward into the dark wind of my vision, and it came, clear, grew louder. They were screaming.

“Oh my God,” Cleo said, and Alejandro shushed her quietly.

“There is someone here. Something… trapped in the box,” I said, leaning in, opening my eyes. I stared at the box. I could feel it now. A presence. Not masculine… not exactly feminine. And anger. Oh, such anger and grief, it was overwhelming, my chest growing tight. I could hear whispering coming from it—desperate, furious whispering, in a language I only faintly recognized. I strained to listen, to understand. There was so much fire in that voice.

Alejandro was beside me now.

A bolt of blue light began pooling around the box, swirling. I began to pray in Apache, prayers for peace.

The blue light fired from the box and hit me. I rocked back.

“Oh my God!” Cleo squealed, standing up.

“No, no—sit down, let her do what she needs to do,” Alejandro said, but I could hear the fear in his voice.

The being swirled around me, nearly inside me.

“They… their name is Nese. This means two,” I said. “They were two-spirit. They were… a sacred person. Cheyenne. They were killed at the Massacre…” I focused as hard as I could, closing my eyes to concentrate. Oh, God, the images. I was going to be sick. The violence. The sheer, unadulterated cruelty. I’d read about this countless times, but to watch it hit me so far down deep, I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover. My eyes flew open just as the lights snapped back on, and the box flew over to the wall, smashing into it, over and over, as if it was trying to break itself open.

Cleo began moaning, Alejandro telling her that she had to remain calm or this wouldn’t work at all. The moans diminished to whimpers.

“Nese, why are you in a dybbuk box?” I asked.

Sobbing. All I could hear then as the lights snapped back off was sobbing and noises from different, dark corners of the room. Whispering, the scratch of the inhuman voice radiating fury and sadness. So much that my body physically hurt.

“Tell me. Tell me so we can help you get out,” I said. “Help you to the other side.”

The whispering was indecipherable at first, but eventually it came through in a language I could understand. The white men came for us while the men were hunting.

Oh my God, no. No.

I am a Hēē măn ĕh h’. I was honored. I blessed marriages. I was pure luck. When they came, they murdered almost all. They did unspeakable things. I tried to protect the babies, one survived. She found me. Through her I can see outside.

Here lights flickered again, and the sobbing turned into one long, rageful moan.

“Nese, please, we want to help you,” I said. “Please. I am N’de. I know how to bring you home. I know the way if you’ll only let me—”

I can’t go home. The voice turned bitter, rageful.

The blue light fired forward again, the lock bursting open, but this time the light went straight into Cleo, who began to convulse, her eyes closing, the blue light a circle on her chest.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” Alejandro said, scrambling up.

We watched, and I prayed, and finally, Cleo’s body went still.

She opened her eyes, and Alejandro and I both sat back, hard.

Her eyes were black.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“Cleo?” Alejandro said.

She smiled.

“Nese,” I said, a short, panicked warning in my tone.

Her smile grew wider.

“Nese,” I repeated, Cleo’s gaze turning to me in one sharp, almost robot-like motion. I shuddered. This being was angry, and understandably so.

“Nese, talk to me,” I said, standing up. “Just,” I said, tripping over my own feet and barely recovering, “talk to me.”

Cleo’s smile stopped abruptly. “You have freed me. I am allowed blood. Her ancestor murdered me, kept my hair, put my spirit in this box when I tried to stop him from doing more evil.” Her voice was bifurcated, metallic almost.

She stood up, her smile reappearing. “Cleo,” I said, and her smile faltered. “Think about your father,” I continued, panic rising in the back of my throat, thick and rich.

Her eyes seemed to come back then, hazel just beginning to peep through the deep, cavernous dark, but then they blackened once more, and her smile disappeared. She turned her head as if she heard something in the distance.

She headed for the kitchen.

“Your father loves you,” I said, tripping as I peeled off the couch, feeling stupid, ineffectual.

“Why the kitchen?” Alejandro asked, right behind me.

“Well, it’s not to bake a quiche,” I hissed.

Both of us stopped at the arched threshold between the kitchen and the living room.

Her back was to us, her body against the counter.

“The hell is she up to?” Alejandro whispered.

I was just about to call her name once more when she turned around, a knife in her hand. She was laughing again.

My stomach dropped, and I worked to steel myself.

“This is so not good,” Alejandro said, his fingertips going briefly to his forehead.

She grasped the knife tightly, laughing and laughing, lunging, just a little. I jumped back, though it was hardly necessary.

Alejandro put his arm out to protect me, shoving me behind his body. He was beefy as hell from working out. He did it to be pretty, but he also did it to protect himself from murderous homophobes—and the dead.

She went stiff, silent. “I have no issues with you,” she said. “But this one needs to leave the earth before she does evil.”

Alejandro pulled his switchblade out, flipped it in his hand. “I don’t want to use this? I’m also like, two-spirit, but you’re being a bitch.”

I squinted. Yikes.

“I don’t want to hurt Cleo. But I will if you take one more step,” Alejandro said, his dark eyes narrowing.

Nese laughed, a deep, throaty laugh.

I guess they were okay with being called a bitch.

Nese put the knife up to Cleo’s throat. I realized in that moment that it was quite likely we would be blamed for this. That maybe if we hadn’t gotten involved, we wouldn’t have made it worse.

Alejandro could feel me flailing.

“You can do this. You’ve got this,” he said, his hand squeezing comfortingly down on my arm.

I focused. Thought of my mother. My father, gone these many years. And momentarily of my sister, grief circling my heart.

I took a breath. “Nese, you know your people have survived.”

The black eyes receded. Came back.

“I know some of your people. They live all over this city. And your ancestors? They want you home.”

“They would be happy that I took her blood,” Nese said, the knife pulling drops from Cleo’s neck.

In all honesty, though I had nothing against Cleo personally, Nese wasn’t wrong.

“What if I told you that what had happened has not been forgotten? Give this girl a chance to know what happened all those generations ago.”

Nese’s mouth opened slowly, and a long scream of rage poured forth. She pulled the knife closer.

I closed my eyes. “Cleo,” I said, switching tacks, “think of your father—tell Nese you know you will do what you can to understand and to reckon with your ancestor’s sins. Nese. You were a Roadman. Go deep inside and think about what you would have done if a spirit like yourself had come when you were alive.”

Their eyes flickered. “You are N’de?” they asked, their eyes going soft.

I nodded.

“I will give you the key,” Nese said. The eyes went hazel, the knife clattering to the floor.

I felt my body nearly go limp, and Alejandro’s arm came up to steady me.

“I wasn’t sure that was going my way,” I said, listening to the sound of Cleo wailing.

“Girl, me either,” he said, walking up to Cleo.

We comforted Cleo. Told her that she needed to atone. I wondered if she’d act offended, tell us that what her ancestor had done wasn’t her fault, but she didn’t. She said she hadn’t known about any of this, that she wished someone in her family, or at school for that matter, had educated her. She said she would go to the site of the Massacre and apologize. That she would donate to the American Indian College Fund. That she would send a formal, public apology to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes on behalf of her ancestor.

As I took it from Cleo, I wondered about the dybbuk box. It was perplexing. The way it had sat in someone else’s closet. How it had found its way onto eBay. And then, finally, straight into the hands of a woman whose ancestor had murdered Nese, the spirit trapped in the box.

Glancing down at the box as we walked home, the snow having dissipated, I noted that the strings had been broken, the lock popped, the box opened. There was a figure in clay—what looked to be a golem, bound in more string. I closed it. When I got home, I’d call my ex Sasha. The box and the golem were certainly of Jewish origin. He was a scholar and rebel rabbi who’d left traditional Jewish practices far, far behind when a body he was preparing for a funeral came raging back to life. Perhaps he could tell me a little more about the box, so that I could store it properly.

I stopped. “What do you think Nese meant by ‘I will give you the key’?”

Alejandro shrugged. “You know the dead say crazy things.”

“I guess,” I responded. The day was sunny now, the clouds having parted, the snow already melting on the ground. The way home was pleasant, trees lining the sidewalk, the sweet, trilling sounds of finches singing in the air. But the warmth didn’t penetrate my skin. I could feel something coming, a ghost train running through the hollows of my heart. A kind of lonely whistle you hear when you’re half asleep, not awake enough to know where the horn is coming from, not asleep enough to stop yourself from jolting back to consciousness with the kind of fear you don’t even remember the dawning of.

Excerpted from The Haunting of Room 904 by Erika T. Wurth. Copyright © 2024 by Erika T. Wurth. Reprinted with permission from Flatiron Books. All rights reserved.