Gheist

by Richard Mosses

  “I’m going there now.”

  “It’s the other way.”

  Kat had thought she was working in a shitty job at a shitty hour in a dodgy part of town, but no one there had ever given her this much sour attitude. She was just about ready to punch him in the nose. “Hey, sweetheart,” said Clint. “Keep cool.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kat said, bringing up her best smile. “It’s my first day, I’m still getting lost.”

  “Pull your socks up, if you don’t want it to be your last.” The man returned to the casino floor.

  “Thanks, Clint,” Kat said. “I was close to giving him a Glasgow kiss.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” Clint said. “I’m sure we’re all glad we didn’t get to find out.”

  When they passed the main door into the kitchens, Kat got a glimpse into Nirvana. She had to hold herself back from nipping in to find a tray of tasty finger bites. Maybe crab puffs, or little salmon and cream cheese blinis, or tiny Yorkshire puddings with a curl of rare beef and horseradish. Focus, Kat. You can stuff yourself silly once this is done.

  They were nearly at the stairs leading down to the vault. Kat turned the corner and a guard was sitting on a chair doing Sudoku. She backed up before he noticed her. Amy hadn’t said anything about a guard being here. Kat looked around. No cameras. Not exactly her fault, but she might have noticed someone walking down the corridor and not coming back in to view again. Too late; if they had the luxury of complaining about close calls later then she’d bring it up then. Right now, they had to get past this guy.

  “Any of you got any ideas?” Kat said to Clint, Jack, and Fingers. Had she brought too many along? Did she really need Clint and Jack for this?

  “We could stab him,” said Fingers.

  “How are you going to do that?” said Jack pretending he didn’t know what Fingers meant. “None of us have a knife. How about you make his gun go off? Or we ask Amy to call him on his radio?”

  “The gunfire will bring everyone runnin’,” said Clint. “We don’t need that.”

  “I don’t know if Amy can actually speak to him,” said Kat. “Send him a text message though, that might work.” She went over to the nearest camera, made sure no one else was about. “Amy there’s a guard here, can you help?”

  Amy left her post watching the casino and monitoring the comms systems and formed in the service corridor. “What do you need me to do?”

  “There’s a guard in a camera blind spot. We need to move him. Can you try sending him a text message from his wife or something?”

  “How was I supposed to know he was there?” Amy said.

  Kat paused for a moment. She was pretty sure she’d been calm and collected despite being so close to her heart she felt it beating as though it was just in front of her. Each beat was like a big bass drum resonating through her chest. Worse her emotions were so strong. Her nervousness about the job was climbing into anxiety and panic. She just wanted to run. She wouldn’t feel this way anymore. She was doing just fine without her heart; it would just get in the way of her new life. Someone had to wait tables. No shame in it. Maybe she could work here. She already had the uniform.

  Someone dropped a dish in the kitchen, it sounded like falling cymbals and broken glass. There were even a few mocking cheers.

  Kat came back. She breathed in, held it, and breathed out. “I didn’t mean to imply you’d done anything wrong. Can you help us move him?”

  Amy nodded and grinned like a little girl about to have her favourite ice cream. “I’m sure I can.”

  Stepping round the corner, Amy approached the guard. He had two phones. The one with the push to talk facility must be for work. She reached out to the other and looked through the call records. He phoned someone called Lyndzee Lash most. There didn’t seem to be any contact with other women, assuming Lyndzee wasn’t a guy, although he did receive a call once in a while from his mum. Apart from the name raising some suspicion, Lyndzee never seemed to call him. Then again maybe that would get his attention.

  I want to see you, Amy sent. Now.

  The guard looked around before lazily taking out his phone. He nearly dropped it. Where? He fumbled in reply.

  I’m in the parking lot. The sprinklers are on and I’m getting wet.

  A frown crossed the guard’s face. Who is this?

  Shit. That had gone wrong real fast. Maybe she could salvage it. What’s wrong? I thought you wanted to meet?

  Ur not Lynz.

  I’m outside, waiting 4 u.

  Leave me alone. He shoved the phone deep in his pocket, ignoring her next three texts before switching his phone off.

  “Looks like I crashed and burned,” Amy said, miming the sharp decent and explosive impact with her hand. “Something going on there I don’t understand. Not sure I want to.”

  “I don’t know what we can do now,” said Kat. “If we try anything else, he’s bound to get suspicious.”

  “There’s maybe somethin’,” said Clint.

  “Like what?” said Kat.

  “Wait and see,” he said, smiling.

  “This should be good,” said Fingers. “Let’s see what the old boy’s got.”

  Clint turned the corner and filaments of ectoplasm knitted themselves together. As Clint walked into the film it draped over his ghostly form. As he put it on, he coalesced in front of the guard. Dark tendrils started to snake in across his vision. “Say, Pardner, you got a light?” he said, hamming it up, a spectral cigarette hanging from his lips, walking toward the guard.

  The guard looked up from his Sudoku book, dropped his pencil and the loss of blood paled his face. Clint had never seen anyone actually look green before. He staggered to his feet, one hand on his holster. “Get…Get back. I’m warning you.”

  “It’s okay, son. I don’t mean you harm,” said Clint.

  The guard drew his gun. “I’ll shoot, I swear. Just get back.”

  Clint knew a bullet wouldn’t hurt him, but it would alert everyone nearby. He stepped forward and reached for the gun. The moment he touched the guard’s hand he felt himself drawn into the body, shedding his shell-like flakes of sunburnt skin. And now he was aiming at Kat’s head. Clint spun the body to the left, while taking his finger off the trigger. He was rotating like a Wurlitzer at the county fair. The body had momentum he couldn’t stop. The next thing he knew he was teetering on the edge of the stairs. He tried to swing the guard around, instead he lost balance and fell hitting the concrete hard and sliding down the rest of the steps.

  “Shit,” said Kat rushing down the steps. The fall had looked bad. She felt the guard’s pulse, checked his breathing. He seemed to be okay. Thank God for that. No one needed to get hurt. This was supposed to be a victimless crime. Except she was a victim. Amy was a victim.

  “My man, Clint,” said Fingers. “Who knew you had it in you?”

  With a great deal of effort Kat pulled the guard to the bottom of the steps and put him in the recovery position. This was bad. She took the gun from his hand and put it back in the holster. She didn’t know what else she could do.

  She turned to Clint who was standing on the stairs where the body fell. “Clint?” He didn’t respond, a vacant look on his face.

  Kat was regretting not keeping the anchors with her. She could have used Clint’s to get through to him. She didn’t know what to do. She was torn, concerned about her friend, and the guard, but needed to get on with the job. The sense of guilt was so strong that she felt sick. She breathed deep and tried to will it away. “Guys, can you talk to him? Jack? I need Fingers to help with the vault door.”

  “Sure. I’ll look after him,” said Jack. “Hurry, we don’t know how long the guard will be out.”

  Fingers and Amy followed Kat over to the vault.

  33

  The vault wasn’t one of those huge dramatic ones she’d seen on TV or movies with a massive round door held on with huge hinges, but it was still impressive. A solid piece of metal about eight feet high and three
feet wide it almost spanned the corridor which was clearly carved out of the bedrock. On either side of the door were two solid pieces of metal that seemed to be embedded into the sandstone. Each had a keypad with an LCD display and a key hole.

  “I’m just going to check on things,” said Amy, before leaping into the camera pointed squarely at the vault door.

  “Think you can manage both at the same time?” said Kat.

  Fingers stroked his chin. “I guess I’ll have to, won’t I? No going back now.”

  “Well, we’ve not actually broken into anything, just done some trespassing,” said Kat, smiling, but she could feel it, only a few feet away. She could feel it, beating fast, almost inside her chest. Kat reached out and touched the metal with her fingertips, hoping perhaps to feel the beating from the other side as well. Frustration took her and Kat had to resist thumping her fist on the door; she was so close and yet there was nothing she could do herself to get any closer than this. What was taking Amy so long? Kat started back up the stairs as it was better than waiting.

  “Where are you going?” said Amy.

  “Clint,” said Kat. “How are things?”

  “We have another problem.”

  Great. What now? Kat encouraged Amy to continue.

  “I thought I could just get into the electronics and override them myself, but the codes need to be input manually. The keypress itself generates enough power to send the signal into the lock system. It’s isolated from the rest of the electrical systems until the keys are turned and the codes are input. That way the door can’t open.”

  Anyone would think they hadn’t been planning this for months. Obviously, it still hadn’t been enough. Hopefully the next bit wouldn’t be so hard. But it was where Amy got caught last time. “It’s okay, Amy,” said Kat. “We’ve asked a lot of you.” Kat looked at the keypads. They were too far apart. Even if they had the codes she couldn’t enter them quickly enough herself.

  Was it the proximity to her heart or did she have good reason to feel intensely angry and paranoid? Amy had had a chat with Mrs Danton. They only had Amy’s word about how that all went down. This could still be a costly trap. How convenient that a guard gets overlooked and an essential part of how the vault works isn’t investigated.

  “Can you get the codes? We need two, right, from the generators?”

  Amy made a face. “I think there’s a way, without stealing two generators. If we’re lucky I can get into the authentication server inside the lock, it still needs power to work. Instead of doing some incredibly complex math with some prime numbers and a cryptographic algorithm based on the time and some number embedded in the tokens, I’ll just intercept what three numbers it expects to be input. But we’ll have to be super quick and cross our fingers my reading the codes doesn’t trigger something or change them.”

  “I wish I knew what you were talking about,” said Fingers. “Cryptographic algorithms? Don’t you just miss the days when a lock was a lock and all you had to do was lift some pins and turn the handle?”

  “Great,” said Kat, just about keeping up. “We still need a second body to put the numbers in. Okay, I’ll be back in a moment. See if you can access the codes. Fingers, we’ll need you to practice your old-school talents pretty soon, so limber up.”

  Kat returned to the stairs and walked to where Clint and Jack were standing. Clint was still in a fugue state.

  “No change,” said Jack. “How’s it going?”

  “We’ve discovered that the electronic lock isn’t so easily opened. Amy is investigating our only hope of pulling this off, but I’m going to need your help. Are you up to pushing a few buttons?”

  Jack sneered at her, eye teeth bared. He turned his head and Kat could see his skull. “Course I can. That isn’t going to be our problem. I knew this was a bad idea. We’re going to get caught and then it’s all over. The Commissars will come and throw us into a state worse than death.”

  Kat blinked. His ferocity came and went so quickly, but this close to her heart she felt real fear and finally got a glimpse into who and what she’d been dealing with all this time. She took a breath and tried to move these troublesome feelings aside. “Jack. We don’t have time for this. The only people we need to worry about are the Dantons. You’ll need to push hard and quickly.”

  “Just show me,” said Jack, flexing his fingers. “What about Clint?”

  “I’m sorry. We’ll just have to leave him for now. Hopefully he’ll be back to his old self by the time we leave.”

  Amy came back when they got to the vault door. “I think I can do it,” she said.

  “Okay. Let’s get this right,” said Kat. “Fingers, you need to turn both locks at the same time. Amy gets the codes. Jack and I punch in the codes. Then the door should open. Everyone ready?”

  Kat was finding it hard to stay calm. She felt jittery from all the adrenaline which seemed to be being pumped constantly into her, like her body had forgotten how it worked. Her legs were unsteady and she thought she was going to be sick. Nearly there, now. Nearly there.

  Everyone nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Fingers eased himself into a lock. Despite his confidence, this was still a matter of two firsts for him. Two locks at a time would be hard, and although they were the same design he’d never seen this unusual style before – the keys would be cylinders with bumps raised along the surface. Also, each lock had the capacity to take any one of the three keys to accommodate the combinations of who would be present to open the vault. While all the excitement over codes was going on, he’d been studying, but wished he’d had a chance to practice – this was turning out to be a real amateur operation. Still it would allow him to shine even more afterwards when the tale got told. Not just one but two impossible locks.

  Carefully he insinuated himself within the first lock, gently testing the pins. There were more of them than he was used to having to manipulate, given that there were enough here for three different keys. If he forgot one, then the lock wouldn’t open.

  Fingers positioned what he thought was the right sequence of pins and rocked the barrel to see if it would open. The lock was stuck. He needed to figure out what the problem was. He probed deeper into the lock and found he also needed to push into a surface at the back to release a catch and allow rotation. No that still didn’t do it. Whoever came up with this system sure knew what they were doing. Darkness was beginning to creep into Fingers’ vision. He was too close to give up. Think of the legend.

  Perhaps both keys were essential to the mechanism moving? Perhaps it was all one lock? Ha, you’re a genius. That made it easier for him. He felt along the surface at the back and followed it down via some levers beneath the door and up into the other lock.

  The clouds were forming and he started to feel heavy and weak. Just a little longer, just a little more. Come on.

  He extended himself into the other lock and followed through into the same pins as before. No. That’s not right. Two different keys would be used. His awareness was focussed into a tunnel, all else was a black maelstrom making it harder to see, harder to think.

  Fingers remembered a sequence of pins he’d almost tried before. He pushed them into place. Pushed the original lock’s pins again. Pushed the back plate from behind both locks. And turned. The darkness closed in.

  Jack was concentrating on the keypad when the locks rotated in unison.

  “Amy, what have you got?” Kat asked.

  “Kat, push 24061314,” said Amy. “Jack, push 17450819.”

  It was relatively easy to alter the course of something in motion, to drop items from up high, knock them over. This was a solid push. Eight solid pushes. He thought of the years of humiliation at the hands of his father, about how no one ever took him seriously, not even Kat. He hated how they all laughed at him, at his concerns. He was a force to be reckoned with, even now.

  He stabbed the first button like he was putting his knife into the dog’s guts, the second punctured his father’s eye, the ba
ll bursting like a soft-boiled egg, the jelly spilling along the blade, he got three more into his father’s chest and one into Clint’s abdomen when the darkness circled in. Wait, when did he knife Clint? There within the fading light was a grey movement, it was a Commissar, he was sure of it, watching him, waiting. Ghosts shouldn’t be doing this, acting in the land of the living, not with purpose. It was too late. If he was lucky he’d drone out. He sneered, stabbing two more digits like he’d taken down that kid in the alley, who’d laughed at his knife. Who was laughing now?

  What was the final number? Jack felt so tired. Dark patterns weaved across his sight. How old would his daughter be? He should be looking out for her, not doing this crap. If only he knew where she was. He stabbed at the 9 like he’d stab at Kat for making him do this.

  The sequences went into the door just after the locks rotated. There was a pause, like somewhere someone wasn’t sure whether or not to open the vault. They needed time to decide.

  There was a metallic clunk from behind the lock panels. Four more clunks followed, deeper, from the vault door. Slowly the door opened as a motor struggled to shift its weight.

  Inside was the cash vault, just as Amy described, racks of chips and bundles of cash, the metal cabinet just a few feet inside.

  Kat took a step forward. She felt faint. They were nearly there. She couldn’t believe it. They’d opened the main vault door. Just the cabinet, which may be trapped, but nearly…

  “Hello, Ms McKay. I thought I’d been quite clear during our last chat. I didn’t expect to see you again,” said Danton Junior, his voice a growl. How did he get behind them so quietly? Did they set off an alarm? “That’s quite some feat you’ve pulled off. Credit where credit is due. Why don’t you come with me? My grandmother would like to congratulate you on your success.”