The Tower

by J L Bryan

  “You got it.” Jacob switched with me, with some help from Stacey, then grunted as he stood up straight with the heavy gear on his back and in his hands. He gave a smile that wasn't the least bit genuine. “Just fifteen floors to go, right?”

  “Just pretend you're backpacking in the Andes!” Stacey said, peppy as ever.

  “So imagine giant bugs slurping blood out of your face,” I said.

  The light fixture on the wall above us exploded, spraying glass.

  We dropped to the floor, trying to dodge the explosion, but all of us got nicked and cut. I touched a row of tiny stinging spots on my face, and my fingertips came back bloody.

  “Yowtch,” Stacey said, looking at drops of blood welling up all over the back of her hand. “Everybody okay?”

  “Great,” Jacob replied, pulling a sliver of glass from his cheek.

  We regrouped, getting to our feet. The area around us was noticeably darker with the light blown out.

  A similar explosion rang out below us, darkening the way we'd come.

  Then the lights blew out above us, on the third floor, sending bits of glass raining down between the balustrades.

  They blew out on the fourth, the fifth, the sixth...all the way up, glass and sparks popping out floor by floor, like a chain reaction, darkening the way ahead. The light in the stairwell retreated high above us, then vanished altogether when the light fixtures on the top floor blew out.

  We stood in silence, the smell of electrical fires hanging in the air. It was completely dark around us now; as in the basement, even the EXIT signs had lost power.

  “The ghosts aren't exactly rolling out the welcome wagon,” Stacey said, clicking on her light and pointing it up.

  “Then I guess we'll have to...saddle up our...attack horses...” I shook my head, not sure where I was going with that metaphor. “Let's just keep walking, okay?”

  I started up again, my light glinting off broken glass all over the stairs. Good thing we weren't barefoot.

  We walked up through darkness. I heard nothing but the breathing of my teammates—Jacob's laboring a bit as he carried the heavy gear, Stacey's as light and easy as ever—and my own heartbeat, and the crunch of glass under my boots.

  The air grew colder and colder as we climbed up inside the tower.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Our progress was painfully slow. Despite Jacob's heroic efforts, there was no way for him to run, or even jog, all the way up to the sixteenth floor with the weight he carried.

  “Our clients are in danger,” I said. “I'm going to run ahead. Y'all catch up.”

  “I'm going with you,” Stacey said.

  “Stay with Jacob.”

  “No, you should go with her,” Jacob said. “If anyone should be left alone, it's me.”

  “Why? Because you're a big chivalrous dude?” Stacey asked.

  “Because I'm the guy holding the heavy anti-ghost artillery,” Jacob said. “I'll be fine. Besides, the action's up there. Not down here.”

  Stacey shook her head. “I don't like any of us being alone in this tower.”

  “We can't abandon our strongest weapon, and we can't leave our clients alone with these ghosts,” I said. “You choose, Stacey. I'm going up.”

  Then I started racing up the stairs like there was a Dunkin' Donuts waiting at the top, taking them two or three at a time.

  “Go with her,” Jacob said. “She's running into danger. And I'm just slogging through boredom.”

  “All right.” Stacey kissed him, then took off after me. She caught up with me easily, zipping up the stairs like the Roadrunner in the cartoons. I'm surprised she didn't meep meep and then gust right past me.

  We jogged along, and eventually I was panting and sweating. My leather jacket is somewhat useful as armor against ghost attacks, but not a great outfit for running up flight after flight of stairs.

  When we finally reached the sixteenth floor, I was almost grateful for the extreme cold that greeted us, even though it meant heavy ghost activity was waiting ahead.

  The lights were all out in the hallway. The entire floor had gone dark, lit only by the light leaking in through a few windows. I wondered if the interiors of the old building had looked that way during the early years of its existence—gloomy, lit only by the sun and some candles, maybe an occasional gaslight.

  I ran on stinging, wobbling legs to the door to Amberly's apartment. It was locked, but our borrowed key opened it.

  “Oh, no!” Stacey shouted as we ran into the dark apartment. Her flashlight found a boy sprawled across the carpet. For half a second I thought it was Lawrence, writhing across the floor to attack me in his floppy little-boy suit again. But that was just the head injury talking. It was Dexter, twelve years old and dressed in a Dr. Who t-shirt and boxer shorts.

  The boy was unconscious. The coffee table beside him was smashed, a glass panel in its top shattered.

  “Dexter!” Stacey knelt beside him, trying to rouse him. I plunged ahead, stabbing my flashlight deeper into the dark, silent, freezing apartment, calling out for the other family members by name.

  I ran into Hyacinth's room first. Her furniture had been thrown around, posters torn from the wall, bug collection scattered across the floor. I checked the closet and under the bed, but there was nobody there.

  Dexter's room was next, and it looked like it might have also been the scene of a struggle or a whirlwind—although, honestly, the boy's room had already kind of looked that way before.

  Nobody was there, either, so I ran on to the master bedroom.

  Amberly lay on the floor in a braided, puffy-sleeved purple gown. The side of her face was swollen. A winged skeleton lay beside her, broken in half to reveal the clay inside. More trolls and wizards littered the floor.

  Something moved in the darkness under the bed. The portion of the sheet that hung there rose toward me, indicating that something was reaching out from under the bed to grab my face.

  A pale hand shot out of the space below the bed and seized me by the shoulder before I could pull away. A grunting, angry sound came from under the bed—the dead aren't always very articulate.

  But this wasn't the voice of the dead, I soon realized as the hand continued its desperate grip on me, and as I whacked at it with my own hand. It was warm and alive.

  I pointed my light under the bed and saw Thurmond there. Ropes bound his arms in place to the underside of the bed, one on either side of the heavy frame; he'd just barely been able to reach out to me. His mouth was crammed full of dirty socks. Blood ran down the side of his face.

  “Hang on,” I said. I pulled the socks from his mouth so he could fill me in while I cut his ropes. I had a boxcutter in my utility belt, but the ropes were thick and would take a sec.

  “It was Vance,” he said quickly, his voice hoarse like someone had just scraped his windpipe with a dirty sock. “He got her.”

  “Vance...your uncle that died?” I hacked away at the nearest rope. “He's a ghost now?”

  “Not dead,” he said. “He's...it was a trick. He's still alive. And he took Hyacinth.”

  “Took her where?” I finished one rope, got up and bounded over the bed, and started sawing at the other.

  “Up to the roof. He's going to kill her.” Thurmond struggled to wriggle free from under the bed, and I helped as best I could. He was weak, barely conscious. “How's Amberly? Dexter?”

  “Amberly's right here.”

  “Is she...?” He crawled over to her body.

  I checked her pulse. “She's alive. I'll go to the roof now.”

  I left Thurmond with Amberly, and I dashed back to the living room, where Stacey knelt over Dexter.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “Alive.”

  “So's the mysterious Uncle Vance,” I said. “He's taken Hyacinth to the roof to kill her. Come with me.”

  “You got it, boss.” Stacey left the boy there, and we ran back to the stairwell.

  While we ran up, we also glan
ced down at Jacob; we could see his flashlight beam several floors below as he lumbered his way up.

  “We're headed for the roof now!” I shouted down. “Meet us there.”

  “Great,” Jacob called back weakly. “Just two extra stories.”

  When we reached the seventeenth floor, I stopped Stacey and pointed to the door. “Go collect the trap with Elton's ghost inside.”

  “Right now? But it's an emergency—” She pointed up.

  “That's why I'm going to the roof. And you're joining me up there as soon as you have that fiery ghost in hand.”

  “Ah. You've got a plan.” Stacey tapped the side of her head.

  “Not really. But we'll have to make my nonexistent plan work, somehow.”

  I turned and started up the final set of stairs. I hated leaving the clients behind, but it sounded like Hyacinth was the one in immediate danger.

  ROOF ACCESS, the door said at the top. DO NOT OPEN. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  I reached the door and shoved the handle.

  It didn't budge.

  My flashlight found the old keyhole; it was flecked with rust, as though nobody had opened this door in years. That couldn't possibly be true, though. Someone had to come up for maintenance occasionally, right? Someone besides the long-dead ghost haunting the disused maintenance manager's office?

  The lock was resistant, and let out a loud squeal when it finally did turn.

  I took a deep breath. The books and papers in my backpack—Stacey's backpack, actually—were weighing me down, and I considered dropping the pack, but its contents were all I had to connect me to these ghosts.

  I heaved open the metal door, which let out a rusty scream. So much for any element of surprise on my part.

  A short set of water-stained concrete steps waited just beyond the door, and I ascended them the rest of the way up onto the roof.

  The first thing I noticed was the wind. It blasted me hard, lashing my ponytail across my face, howling in my ears. I stabbed my flashlight ahead as I squinted into it, thinking it might be a ghost attack.

  I didn't see any ghosts, not at first.

  What I saw was a tall, broad-shouldered man with gray hair, dressed in a hooded black raincoat, gloves on his hands. Uncle Vance, whose childhood room below was full of sports trophies. He still looked big and strong today. Not dead at all.

  In one hand, he held an old-fashioned straight razor with an ivory handle, the kind of thing guys used decades ago. Blood dripped from its tip.

  His other arm was wrapped around the neck of his twelve-year-old niece, Hyacinth. She was gripping his arm with both hands, gasping for air, her eyes wide with fear as she stared at the long razor blade in front of her face.

  He'd already gouged her with it in a few spots around her face and neck. Blood splotches were visible on her shirt, even among the assorted tie-dyed pastels. More blood drops had fallen onto the asphalt in front of her...and onto the Spirit Mirror, which Vance had apparently brought out. A small amount of blood had collected at the bottom of the convex black mirror. More had spattered the hand outlines on one side.

  “Vance,” I said, “What are you doing?”

  “You shouldn't be here,” he said. “This is a family matter. Not that my nephew's lake-trash wife would ever understand that. Calling in private detectives.” He shook his head.

  “Let go of your niece,” I said. “She hasn't done anything wrong.”

  “None of us have!” Vance snapped. “You think that matters to him?”

  “To who?”

  “Oh, you don't know? I thought you were supposed to be the expert paranormal investigator.”

  “Clyde?” I asked. “He's the one that's been stalking and killing your family members. Why would you do that for him?”

  “You don't know the whole story,” Vance said. “My father told me. Not before he died. After. When I summoned him and made him explain it to me. I summoned him with that.” He gestured at the blood-spattered Spirit Mirror. “I doubt he ever told anyone in life, but he told me all about it after death. Didn't you, Father?”

  Vance looked past me. I hesitated to turn and follow his gaze, because maybe it was a trick...but really, he already had the knife to the girl's throat. He was already in charge of the situation for the moment.

  So finally I did turn, and I saw the dead man standing in the shadows by one of the big, rusty HVAC machines that dotted the roof.

  He was a burned corpse in a good suit, his face blasted open and turned to ash, pieces of his skull visible. His lidless eyes stared at me, unblinking, like a lizard's. He wasn't all the way there, either, but faded to transparency and nothingness on one side, a partial apparition through which I could see the distant, glowing windows of a much taller skyscraper down the street. I shuffled a little bit away from him.

  “Albert Pennefort,” I said. “You don't look much like your statue.”

  “Do not mock Father,” Vance said. “He's been through enough, both before and after his death.”

  “You have to release the girl, Vance,” I said.

  “I can't. That's the choice I must make. The choice Father made. The ghost gave him a choice, you understand? When poor Aunt Catherine broke her bones, and was feverish, the ghost came to Father. The ghost said one of them must die, Catherine or Father. The ghost said whoever lived would go on to great success in life. So Father chose, and Catherine died. Father's parents died soon after, and Father became an extremely wealthy sixteen-year-old. And he lived a long and happy life. Didn't you, Father?”

  The burned man's smoke-stained teeth parted, and he let out a grunt with a flap of his burned tongue. Maybe he was a little more articulate when speaking directly to his son.

  “But his children still died. Miriam went off the roof...” I gestured to the ledge. “That was probably Clyde, too. And Marcus died pretty young, when he was thirty.”

  “But not me,” Vance said. “Because the ghost came to me as a child, too. He gave me the choice. My sister Miriam or me. And I chose her. It was only much later that I would learn Father had made a similar choice...when I summoned Father's ghost and made him confess it.” Vance looked triumphant. Hyacinth, still clutched tight in his arms, was looking over the ledge beside her at the huge drop below.

  “And one day you'll be nothing more than a ghost,” I said. “Do you want to spend eternity here, trapped in your family's building?”

  “I won't,” Vance said. “I'll be free. My children will be...and my grandson. He's not even two. If someone from his generation must be sacrificed to appease the family curse, it won't be my grandchild. It will be my brother's.” He brought the knife closer to the girl's face.

  “Can't you see Clyde is controlling you already?” I asked. “If you kill her, you'll be even more under Clyde's control. Completely under it. Forever. Believe me, I know about these things.”

  “Because you're a paranormal investigator? To me, you're just a troublesome little girl. This is my home, my family, and my burden to bear. But now I suppose we'll have to kill you, too, to keep you quiet.”

  “Put the knife down,” I said. “Let her go. Your family can still get free of Clyde. I can help.”

  “There's no purpose in empty promises.” The doorman came up from nowhere, from shadows, as full an apparition as the first day I'd seen him. He stood near the charred-face ghost of Albert Pennefort. I thought I could see more scrawny, wraith-like shapes moving in the shadows behind him, near one of the big, silent ventilator machines. They looked like bundles of black sticks and black wires, not very clear at all. “Let things take their course, as they must.”

  “You want to talk about empty promises?” I said to Clyde, trying to keep my hand and voice from trembling. He looked as harmless as the day we'd met him, taking him for a tired-looking parking attendant. “You made a deal with Albert, but you killed his daughter. Is Miriam back there?” I pointed to the barely-formed wraiths lingering in the shadows behind the dead doorman. I looked at Albert. “Can
't you see that Clyde betrayed you? He killed your daughter and your son. And that was after you told him to kill your sister and spare you.”

  If my words had any impact on Albert's ghost, I couldn't see it. His facial expression was unreadable, thanks to his charred and partially missing face, his eyes that could only stare, the lids and brows having burned away.

  “What about Millie?” I looked at Clyde. “Did you reach out to her as a young girl, too? Teach her to hate her family? Maybe even enough to kill them?”

  “He told me only the truth.” Millie emerged from around the side of the area with the rusty metal roof. Not her girlish ghost-form this time. She'd risen from the bed, awoken from her long coma, and now moved toward Clyde, her eyes bright, her long gray hair hanging limply over her shoulders.

  “That's impossible,” I whispered. “You can't just get up and walk after a year in a coma...”

  “All things are possible through him. Aren't they?” She smiled at Clyde as she approached him. I realized her bare feet were hanging limply, barely scraping the asphalt of the roof, as if her body were possessed and levitating rather than awake. “He knew the truth. My family are murderers. You have no idea.”

  “Did you rig Elton's bomb to explode while he was setting it up?” I asked Millie. “Maybe to detonate when he tried to set the timer? You were a smart girl. You could have figured that out.”

  “Who, me?” She smiled. “I wasn't involved. Just ask any of my family's lawyers.”

  “And who wrote the twenty-page manifesto that Elton supposedly mailed into the newspapers before the bombing?” I asked. “I hear Elton didn't like to write very much. But you wrote a lot, didn't you? Poems, articles, and editorials for The Great Horned Owl. I think you wrote that manifesto and put Elton's name on it, and mailed it yourself. A confession on his behalf, taking all the blame for the bomb, to keep people from looking too closely at you.” I reached around and unzipped the backpack, then brought out a poem she'd written; I'd snapshot it with my camera, like all of her articles in the Owl, but printed this one out. “This was you. A confused, conflicted girl, who grew up in a tower full of ghosts.”