by Mac Flynn
Sebastian shrugged. "Nothing. I had my Phantoms sniff over the entire third floor and some of the fourth until I heard the ruckus downstairs. They didn't find anything."
"Phantoms aren't reliable dogs for finding their own," Cecilia spoke up.
Sebastian turned to her and studied her face. "I judge from your eyes that you must be Cecilia, the child mystic."
"And I judge from your attitude that you must be an idiot," she returned.
He laughed. "I don't seem to be very popular here, do I?"
"This isn't a laughing matter," Ian warned him. "There's a presence here that obviously doesn't want us present."
"But I didn't find anything," Sebastian reminded him.
"Maybe it's because it doesn't see you as a threat," Ian retorted.
Sebastian's smile faltered. "Or maybe it's because you bungled your way through the rooms. How about you stand back and let the professionals handle this?"
"I would if there was anyone else but us here," Ian returned.
Quinn appeared at the door and dropped Cecilia's bag inside the doorway. His own duffel bag hung over one shoulder. "Which one's my room?"
Sebastian sneered at Quinn and moved towards the door. He forced Quinn aside and paused in the doorway to glance over his shoulder at us. "Just stay out of my way. I wouldn't want to have to use my Phantoms on you." And with that cheery warning he left.
"Give me a talisman and I'll have those Phantoms destroyed," Cecilia spoke up.
Ian ran his hand through his hair and shook his head. "I wish it was that easy, but those Phantoms aren't pushovers. I tried to destroy them a couple of times, but the talismans don't work."
Quinn stepped into the room and frowned. "If a talisman won't work then what will?"
"As much as I'd like to figure out how to destroy them, we have a job to do," Ian reminded us. He paced the room and his overcoat floated behind him. His brow was furrowed, and he grasped his hands behind him. "What do we know about this shadow?"
"It doesn't like us," Quinn commented.
"It sees us as a threat," I chimed in.
"And it sees the workers as a threat," Ian added.
"But why not Sebastian and his Phantoms?" I wondered.
Cecilia frowned. "Like doesn't fear like."
I raised an eyebrow. "And that means what?"
"It means they're dark creatures, and so is what we're dealing with. That means those Phantoms probably aren't going to rat out what's here," she explained.
"We are dealing with more than just a poltergeist," Cronus spoke up. All eyes turned to him. "The entity in this house thrives on fear, both from the living and the dead."
"You told me that earlier, but how are you so sure about it?" I wondered.
"It's because he senses the same thing we're sensing," Cecilia replied as her eyes fell on Cronus. "That means you must be a mystic, too."
"What are we sensing?" I persisted.
"I'd like a little info on this, too," Quinn spoke up. "I'm not seeing anything with my eye."
"There's terror in this house, and it's not all coming from humans," Cecilia explained.
I snorted. "I don't know about that. I've been pretty terrified since I came in here."
"Not all the terror you feel is your own," Cecilia continued.
Ian raised an eyebrow. "So what you're saying is there's more than one spirit in here?"
"Many more," she confirmed.
"How many more?"
Cecilia shook her head. "I can't say. It's hard to pinpoint their locations. The same signature is in several places and even for a ghost that's not easy to pull off, but I'm getting the feeling these ghosts aren't really that strong."
"Except for the one that tried to get Enid," Quinn commented.
I rubbed my neck. "That one felt pretty strong to me."
Ian glanced from Cronus to Cecilia. "So what do you two suggest we do?"
"We do not separate," Cronus suggested.
Ian sighed, but a small smile played across his lips. "I suppose I walked into that one, but what do we do besides not split up?"
"We should go back to that room," Cecilia suggested.
"What? Are you nuts?" Quinn asked her as he gestured to me. "Enid nearly got killed and that blood spot wasn't getting any smaller."
Ian leaned his back against the front wall of the room and cupped his chin in his hand. "She's got a point. Whatever that shadow was it wanted us out of that room, so it created the blood spot."
"Or maybe that was a warning it was coming back," Quinn suggested.
Ian dropped his hand and shook his head. "No. I would have smelled the blood the first time the creature entered, but the blood was smelled only after it vanished. There's definitely something in there-"
"Aah!"
CHAPTER 7
We all jumped to our feet. Cecilia looped her arm through mine. I couldn't tell whether it was out of fright or because she didn't want to be left behind.
"That sounded like that Society asshole," Quinn spoke up.
"Cronus, Quinn, you two come with me. Cecilia, you stay with Enid," Ian commanded us.
I frowned. "But-"
"Don't argue!" he snapped.
The men flew from the room and their footsteps pounded up the stairs. In a short time their sounds faded away. I glanced around us at the bare white walls and shadowed corners. The oppressive silence made me shutter. The familiar chill slid through my body, and my pulse quickened.
"You have to block out the fear from the spirits," Cecilia told me.
"How?" I whispered.
"Focus on yourself," she instructed.
I snorted. "Not a problem for you, huh?"
"I could just not tell you anything and let you shiver there like a scared girl," she snapped.
I winced. "All right, how do I focus on myself?"
"There should be a warm spot somewhere inside your body. Find it," she commanded me.
"A warm spot?" I repeated.
She sighed and rolled her eyes. "You know how you walk through a pool and there's always a warm spot somewhere?"
"Yeah, but I don't think I want to find something like that," I quipped.
"Shut up and listen. It's the same feeling for your mystic powers," she told me. "Your power sleeps inside you until you need it, usually somewhere around the heart. Find it and focus on it. Try to spread it around your body and you'll make a barrier around you that the low-level spirits can't break through."
"And the big kahuna here?" I asked her.
She pursed her lips. "From what Ian told us it'll take a lot more than a barrier to fend that thing off."
Speaking of the men, they returned, and with an addition in the form of Sebastian. His limp body was pinched between Quinn and Ian, and his arms were slung over their shoulders. His clothes were torn into strips and blood trickled from more wounds than I could count.
"Where do we want to put him?" Quinn asked Ian.
"The bed," Ian replied.
"He'll stain the covers," Quinn pointed out.
"Then our clients can take it out of his pay," Ian retorted.
They set Sebastian on my bed and we surrounded his bedside.
"What the hell happened to him?" I asked them.
Ian shook his head. "We don't know. We found him in a doorway on the fourth floor."
"Where are his Phantoms?" Cecilia wondered.
"That's another mystery. We didn't see them anywhere," Quinn spoke up.
I leaned down and inspected one of the gashes. "These look like claw marks," I commented.
"Yes, but not by any large animal. You can tell because they're not very thick, long, or deep," Ian pointed out.
"So not a werewolf?" I guessed.
"No, but an angry spirit could make marks like that," Ian mused.
"A woman?" Cecilia suggested.
Ian turned to Cronus who stood off from our group. "Didn't you say there was a wife?"
"What wife?" Quinn interrupted.
Cronus gave a nod to Ian's question. "The first owner of the house had a wife and female servants."
"And there's no record of any of them after the sale of the house," Ian reminded us.
"Wait, so if it is the wife then what does that mean? That our big baddy is the husband and he's keeping a woman's spirit here?" I guessed.
"Guys, could Ceci and I get caught up?" Quinn requested.
Ian furrowed his brow and folded his arms across his chest. "The original owner of the home, the man who built the Castle, as it was then known, disappeared from all records after he was forced to sell the property."
"So he's the main suspect?" Quinn guessed.
"So far, yeah, but that's just because we don't have anyone else," Ian replied.
"So now that we might know who it is, what do we do about it?" he wondered.
"We go back into that room and see if we can't find out what that ghost didn't want us to know," Ian told him.
"I'll stay here with the idiot," Cecilia offered.
Ian's gaze fell on our unconscious acquaintance and he frowned. "I'd hate to waste resources on him, but I guess somebody should be here when he wakes up. You can come meet us in the room after he does. Otherwise, we'll just come back here and tell you what we found, if anything."
"I could stay here, too," I suggested.
Ian shook his head. "Normally I'd say yes, but whatever is here doesn't seem to be fond of you, so you'd better come with us." His eyes flickered to Cronus. "That is, if this separation is smart."
"The second floor is safe, so she may come," Cronus replied.
My face fell and my shoulders drooped. "Yay."
Ian led the way in front of me with Quinn and Cronus behind me. Our little group marched up the dark stairs and onto the third floor. We stepped inside the first right-hand room and looked around. The doors to the room and the closet lay on the opposite walls from where they'd started. I admired Cronus' handiwork.
"You're really strong," I complimented him. He stood beside the doorway and ignored me.
Quinn walked over to the splotch on the wall and Ian took the closet. "Looks like that blood spot didn't get much bigger after we left," Quinn commented.
"That confirms it was just a distraction," Ian returned as he peeked his head into the closet. I noticed he kept his hands firmly clasped to the door frame. "I don't see anything in here."
Quinn and I wandered over to the closet and stood behind Ian. "So what did drag you in there?" Quinn asked him.
Ian shook his head. "I'm not sure. It felt like a dozen pair of hands. They shoved me against the far wall and pinned me there. I couldn't break loose until I transformed."
Quinn leaned back and furrowed his brow. "That doesn't sound like the thing that attacked that Society guy. Whatever got him wanted to play rough."
"You're right," Ian agreed. He stepped deeper into the closet and disappeared behind the wall that stood to the right of the doorway. We heard his hands pound against the walls.
"Wait a sec. That sounded different," Quinn spoke up.
Ian pounded the spot again. "You're right. Now let's hope our clients aren't too cheap."
There came a terrific slam. Quinn and I rushed into the doorway and Quinn shined his flashlight into the space. Ian stood before the wall that made up the right side of the closet. A hole was punched in the wall and there was a blackness inside it.
"A hole?" Quinn guessed.
"A hidden space," Ian corrected him.
He widened the hole with his hand, but jumped back when something white fell from it. The thing clattered to the ground and splayed out its long, thin body. Quinn shined his flashlight on the floor. I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand.
It was a human hand.
There wasn't any flesh left, but there was no mistaking those bones. Ian stooped and picked up the hand. He turned it over and frowned.
"This hand was severed," he told us.
"What? How can you tell?" Quinn asked him.
Ian pointed at the stump. "There are saw marks here." He stood, and as he did his shoulder knocked against the wall. More white things, more hands, fell from the hole. "Jesus!" Ian yelped as he jumped back.
Cronus appeared behind us. "What is the matter?" he questioned us.
"We've found skeletons in the closet, but only their hands so far," Ian quipped.
"Male or female?" Cronus wondered.
Ian lifted his head from the bones and glared at Cronus. "Does it really matter?"
I pointed at the bones. "It might matter to them."
"The records have a detailed inventory of the slaves that were owned by Black. These may be them," he suggested.
I felt the color drain from my face. "So what you're saying is we're dealing with the ghost of a murderer?"
"Possibly," Cronus agreed.
My face fell. "I liked it better when it was just a poltergeist."
"We'll excavate this closet and see how many hands are here. Maybe the rest of the bodies are in the rear of the hole," Ian mused.
I made way for Quinn to help Ian, and in a few minutes the rest of the wall was dismantled. They spread out the bones in two rows on the floor in the main part of the room and stepped back.
"Eleven pairs of hands," Ian announced. I shuddered and shut my eyes. It was terrible to see so many people laid out like that. Ian turned to Cronus. "How many servants did Black have?"
"Ten," Cronus replied. He walked over and knelt in front of the rows of hands. "The size of the hands indicate these were all adults."
"I suppose we don't have to read their palms to know their futures," Quinn quipped. We glared at him, and he cringed and shrugged. "Sorry."
"Can you tell their gender?" Ian asked his partner.
"Male and female. Six men and five women," he replied.
Quinn glanced between Cronus and the white bones. Other than a slight variation in sizes and thickness I couldn't tell the difference.
"How can you tell from these?" he asked Cronus.
"The wear on the bones, and the thickness and length," Cronus answered.
Quinn shrugged and shook his head. "Nope, still not seeing it. Anyway, we have hands, but where are the rest of the bodies?"
"And why were the murdered," Ian added.
"But who were they? I mean, are we sure they're that old?" I spoke up.
"Judging by the age of the bones they were buried behind the wall over a century and a half ago," Cronus revealed.
I looked around at all the tense faces. "Then I guess that means we're really dealing with that Black guy."
"That's what it looks like," Ian commented.
"So what do we do with an angry ghost? An exorcism?" I guessed.
Cronus stood and turned to me with a deeper glare than he'd ever given me before. I started back and pressed my arms against my chest to protect myself. His voice was tense and cold.
"An exorcism is not an option," he told me.
"We've probably left the others long enough," Ian spoke up.
"But what about the rest of them?" Quinn reminded him.
Ian shook his head. "We can't do anything for them at the moment. The house is too big, there's too few of us, and it's dark."
"And there's a psychotic male ghost trying to kill us all," I added.
"That, too. We'll just leave our finds here until tomorrow and show our clients our prizes," he suggested.
My eyes flickered over our grisly finds. "But shouldn't we do something about them?"
"What do you suggest?" Ian asked me.
I shrugged. "I don't know. Bury them? Put them in a box?"
Ian pursed his lips and glanced up at the ceiling. His voice was quiet and tense. "That's not a bad idea, but I think we might find more of them before the night is over."
CHAPTER 8
We returned to the bedroom I shared with Cecilia and found her seated in a chair by the small table. The 'patient' on the bed was awake and in a seated position atop the covers. His back leaned against
the headboard, and he sat very still. That didn't stop a shaky smile from slipping onto his pale lips.
"I suppose I owe you guys some thanks," he hoarsely whispered.
Ian grabbed the spare chair from the table, turned the back towards the bed, and took his seat with his legs straddled around the back. "We'd rather have an explanation. What happened to you, and where are your Phantoms?"
Sebastian shrugged, and the effort made him wince. "I don't know the answer to either of those questions."
Ian raised an eyebrow. "Then what do you know?"
"I know I walked into one of the rooms with my Phantoms in front of me, and suddenly the whole place was pitch black," he told us. He pursed his lips and his eyes narrowed on Ian. "Then I felt a pair of hands with sharp claws rip and tear at me. The next thing I knew I was here." Sebastian studied Ian with pursed lips. "You wouldn't happen to know what happened to me, would you?"
Ian snorted. "No, and if I would've attacked you I wouldn't have kept you alive to have this conversation."
Sebastian smiled and sank against the headboard. "Just thought I'd ask, though I'm a little curious to know what happened to my Phantoms."
"I sense they're in the house, but I can't tell where. There's too much spiritual interference," Cecilia spoke up.
"We might have found out why there's so much," Ian commented as he turned his attention, and his chair to her and the rest of us. "It seems somebody had fun with a hatchet a century and a half ago, and there's a bunch of body parts throughout the house."
Cecilia frowned. "That would explain why I sense the same weak spirit in several parts of the house."
I raised my hand. "How does that explain it?" I asked them.
"A weak spirit is trapped to their earthly remains," Cecilia explained. "If the body is dismembered and the parts are separated then a weak spirit can be in multiple places at once."
The room where we were attacked. Can you sense the spirits there any more?" Ian inquired.
She shut her eyes, and after a moment shook her head. "No."
Ian straightened in his backward chair and smiled. "Good. That means if we find all the parts then we won't have any more people pushed into closets-"
"-and maybe even bring out old Black," Quinn finished.
"How would that bring him out?" I spoke up.
Ian lit a cigarette and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. "If Black is the guy who murdered those people, which isn't a sure thing, then he'll be pretty mad at our finding their bodies and neutralizing his victims."
"But how does finding their body parts neutralize them?" I persisted.
He took a puff on his cigarette and blew out the smoke. The puff floated into the air and slowly disintegrated. "These spirits want to be found. Whoever controls them probably ordered them to drag me into that closet, but they didn't have to knock me into the wall. They're chain to this earthly existence isn't their bodies, but their bodies being hidden. They want people to know they're trapped in the walls, and when someone finds them that's enough to get them to where they need to be going. That's why Cecilia can't sense any spirits in that room. They've fled those parts of their bodies."
