Sons of Darkness

by Gail Z. Martin

  He saw a gray figure start across the highway, then be thrown several feet from a phantom impact. After a few seconds, the figure reappeared and began its doomed trek again.

  “Ghosts?” Brent asked.

  Travis nodded. “Yeah. Several, but the one I can see right away is a repeater out by the road. Looks like the poor bastard got hit trying to get across, and never left.”

  “Can you send him on?”

  “Doubtful. Repeaters aren’t sentient. They’re an emotional burst that’s so strong it’s made an impression on the surroundings, which is why some people call them ‘stone tape’ images. It’s like a movie clip that plays over and over. Just a projection, but no soul’s really there.”

  “How do you see this stuff and not go bonkers?” Brent asked. “I mean, for all my weirdness, I don’t see demons everywhere I go, for fuck’s sake.

  “Maybe ‘bonkers’ is in the eye of the beholder,” Travis replied with a bleak chuckle. “The talent has always been there, and I didn’t realize everyone else didn’t see them until I made the mistake of asking about it.”

  “Ouch,” Brent said, probably remembering their run-in with Maria Grace. “So like that kid in The Sixth Sense ?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” Travis glimpsed another ghost off at the edge of the parking lot that bore what appeared to be a bullet wound. From the clothing, Travis guessed the man died back in the 1970s. Somewhere in the long row of rooms, Travis sensed a suicide’s ghost and a young woman who died from an accidental overdose. For some reason, spirits clung tighter to bed and breakfasts or mom-and-pop motels than they did to big chain properties.

  “How do you keep from spending all your time banishing ghosts?” Brent looked up, sincerely interested in the answer.

  Travis had always struggled to explain what it felt like to have his gift to those without psychic abilities. “When you were a cop, you probably didn’t bust every car on the highway that went over the speed limit, or every drunk you saw on the sidewalk.”

  “There wouldn’t have been enough hours in the day,” Brent said. “We went after the ones who posed the greatest threat, and figured we’d catch the others another day.”

  Travis nodded. “Same thing with ghosts. If they aren’t in pain and they aren’t harming anyone, I let them be. Doesn’t mean they aren’t still a distraction.”

  He returned to his chair and started to read Hazel’s research journal of the Bad Times. As he read about the events, he felt sure he could match them to the people mentioned in her diaries, only now he had the additional insight into the supernatural creatures that had been part of the cataclysm.

  Brent tapped away at the keyboard, and Travis hoped he was coming up with a plan to stop the spriggan. Hazel’s unfinished project might not have included everything that she hoped to catalogue, but both the monsters and the locales she described were glaringly familiar.

  “I really can’t believe people stayed in the area,” Travis said as he leaned back and set the book aside. “The same kinds of things happening now happened back then—and I bet they also happened fifty years before that. Some of the locations changed, probably because of where traffic shifted. And there were more train and bus accidents back then, where now it’s been cars. But the pattern’s unmistakable.”

  “So why didn’t everyone just pack up and leave?” Brent took the opportunity to stretch and crack open a new bottle of beer. “Or, to ask it a different way—why didn’t people leave after every previous cycle?”

  Travis took a long pull from his Yuengling and thought for a moment before replying. “Look at everything that’s happening now. No one’s shouting about the area being cursed or saying that this is all some kind of supernatural attack. People just accept that there’s been a run of bad luck. Conspiracy theorists aside, most folks go with the simplest answer. And even when there’s clear evidence that the simple answer isn’t right, people stick with the answer that least threatens their established beliefs.”

  “So you’re saying that people would rather just see bad luck than to wrap their heads around the notion of a demonic attack,” Brent recapped. “Sounds mighty familiar,” he added, sarcasm dripping from his words. “Back when my folks and Danny were killed, the neighbors who had known me all my life thought it made more sense to figure I’d suddenly become a serial killer and somehow snuck back into town that night than that there could be something supernatural going on.”

  Travis nodded. “A lot of people have immediate family or friends affected by what’s been going on, but for others, it’s second or third-hand. So they might feel upset about the deaths or be frightened, but they won’t have enough details to find a supernatural explanation believable.”

  “And the people who do have first-hand exposure are so wrapped up with their loss that they aren’t going to notice the weird pieces that don’t make sense, or they’ll figure that it’s warped by their emotions,” Brent added.

  Travis nodded. “Yeah. Which makes Hazel and Isabella so remarkable. Hazel realized that more was going on than met the eye, and Isabella must have also believed. She couldn’t win the fight in her own era, so she left us all the information she could, hoping someone else would pick it up the next time the cycle came around.”

  Brent leaned from one side to the other to crack his back. “The internet is surprisingly unhelpful about how to kill a fey-creature. At least, if you want information that doesn’t come from a TV show or a role-playing game. But…even those seem to agree on a few things. Salt, sugar, iron. Silver, if they’re dark fey, which these might be since they’re murderous little bastards. Oh, and we should wear our clothing inside-out when we go to fight them and put stale bread in our pockets.”

  “Seriously?”

  Brent shrugged. “I don’t make this stuff up. At worst, we look like we were on an all-night bender.”

  “I can live with that,” Travis said. He slid down in his chair and gestured toward the ledger. “Hazel got everything right—the zombies, the suicides near Peale, the disappearances. Even the ghouls and some other monsters we haven’t seen, but that might mean people who encountered them didn’t know to connect with us.”

  “If they didn’t call Doug or Father Ryan, they wouldn’t,” Brent agreed.

  “Hazel told me that the mines were the key, and that ‘it always ends with fire.’ In her notes, she kept coming back to the Zimmer mines, specifically mines eight. I’ve got to think that, she didn’t pick that location by accident.”

  “I did some poking around on local history, from a little different angle,” Brent said. “I documented all the really big disasters, going back a hundred and fifty years, so three cycles. And I looked at some of the legends told about this area.”

  “And you’re going to tell me that Peale—or Cooper City—was built on top of a Native American burial site?” Travis asked, still snarky despite how tired he felt.

  “Worse. Seems like the tribes in these parts avoided this area completely. Said there were ‘bad spirits’ in these hills. Even their hunters stayed away, and there were stories that those who didn’t—native or settler—often weren’t seen again.”

  “Fuck.” Travis finished his beer and set the empty bottle aside. “So if the evil goes back that far, maybe it got its feast from making the deer die off, or setting the forest on fire.”

  “Or maybe it didn’t use to be as big and powerful as it is now, without a couple hundred years of stupid people living right next to it and giving it big meals.” Brent looked annoyed, and Travis couldn’t blame him. Human arrogance, either the denial that anything supernatural could be real, or the insistence that anything occult couldn’t hurt anyone, often made his job that much harder and got lots of people killed.

  “Does Hazel’s journal happen to suggest how to shut the nexus down?” Brent idly turned the bottle between his fingers. “You said it was a collection of her commentary as well as the research she documented.”

  “I don’t think we can stop a genius loci
permanently,” Travis replied. “Not according to everything I’ve read. Although maybe we can starve it down to be less powerful the next time. But Hazel seemed to think it could be shut off before it had run its course—before the big fire.”

  “How?”

  “In her notes, she recounts an old legend about a powerful wizard who found a traitor among the legions of the dead. The ‘traitor’ could close the portal between the realms from the other side.”

  Brent’s eyebrows rose. “Really? That sounds like something out of a video game. Maybe this lady missed her calling. She should have worked for one of the gaming companies.”

  “I don’t know what resources Hazel had, or if she ever found out that anyone around her had psychic abilities,” Travis replied. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to go stand in the park downtown nowadays and announce what I can do with a megaphone. People are way better about those things now, but I still might get run out of town by the church crowd. It would have been worse in Hazel’s time, or before.”

  “So we have you, and Derek, and Jason—and maybe some of your other Night Vigil friends?”

  Trent nodded. “A lot of them don’t have abilities that would be much use in a fight. But Derek and Jason and I have talents that could definitely help. And you, Doug, and Father Ryan can watch our backs—maybe Michael, too.”

  “Michael?”

  “He works night security in Clarion. Used to be an Army Ranger. Had a situation kind of like the one you ran into in Mosul with Mavet, only with what was probably a nest of vampires. He was the only survivor. The Army patched him up and gave him a psych discharge. He doesn’t have any special paranormal abilities, but he used to be a sniper.”

  “Damn. That could be handy.”

  “Yeah. That would make seven of us for the actual fight, and I can tap some of the other Night Vigil folks who have clairvoyance or far sight to see if they can provide intel.” He grimaced. “I wish I could count on getting a vision with lots of useful information, but I can’t control when those come, or what I see.”

  “Sounds like a better plan than anything else we’ve had,” Brent said, finishing his drink. “How about we go toast that son of a bitch spriggan tomorrow. And at least we can bring the Silverado killings to an end.” He looked pensive. “Do you think we’ll find any of the people he’s kidnapped still alive?”

  “No idea,” Travis replied. “But if they are, we’ll bring them home.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Brent fell back asleep hard after breakfast the next morning. Travis left to return Hazel’s book, but Brent promised himself a little more shuteye. His dreams had been dark but fragmented, enough to keep him from sleeping well without allowing him to remember any of the images when he startled awake. Exhausted, he pulled the covers over his head and promised himself he’d get up in an hour, maybe sooner.

  He was on the football field at his high school, tossing the pigskin back and forth with Danny. Brent glanced down at his right hand and saw the scar he’d gotten in the Army from a sharp piece of metal, so he knew time hadn’t changed for him, but Danny remained frozen at eighteen, as young and perfect as he’d been the last time Brent had seen him alive.

  The football grazed his shoulder, jarring him out of his thoughts. “Oh no, too slow!” Danny mocked with a wide grin as he strode closer. All Brent could do was stare, drinking in the sight of his brother, feeling the familiar chasm open in his heart.

  “I missed you,” Brent managed as Danny closed the gap.

  “Looks more like you missed the ball, bro,” Danny replied. His smile vanished. “And you’re missing the point.”

  The football field vanished, leaving them in the gray antechamber Brent had experienced before. “What point, Danny? What do you know?”

  “You’re running out of time. Check the date. It’s later than you think. I’ll help you any way I can, but you’ve got to move fast.”

  “Do you know where the kidnapper stashed his victims? Can you tell me anything that’ll help us shut this down?” Brent begged. Already Danny’s image had started to blur, and the antechamber began to lose its definition.

  “It’s the deep places. Mines and wells. Gonna be fires of hell if you don’t stop it. I’m here for you.”

  Brent thrashed awake, kicking clear of the thin motel blankets. He sat up with a gasp, then sagged with relief that Travis hadn’t witnessed his breakdown. The sense of fresh loss that always followed dreams about Danny washed over him, dredging up the grief and guilt that were never buried deep.

  “Fuck,” Brent groaned, dropping back onto the mattress as he tried to regroup. He knew how quickly the memories of his dreams could fade, so he rolled over and grabbed for a pen and paper, scribbling notes so he could share Danny’s warnings with Travis. Maybe they were just the product of his imagination. But now that he knew more about Travis’s abilities as a medium, his doubts about the reality of Danny’s visits lessened. He hadn’t relived a remembered conversation; Danny’s words sounded spot on for the situation with the hell gate and genius loci. Brent just wished the dead would learn to skip the riddles and speak plainly. Or maybe they do, and it’s us mortals who are always a step behind.

  Brent took the supply list and headed out. Travis had left him the keys to the Crown Vic, apparently opting to walk back to the archive. A stop at the building supply store yielded large bags of rock salt and a couple of boxes of small iron hardware. The local Walmart offered iron buckshot, lighter fluid, hairspray, sugar cookies, and powdered coffee creamer. Brent didn’t care what kind of skeptical look the clerk gave him, relieved that the young man didn’t seem to realize just how flammable some of the items were.

  Travis was back at the motel by the time Brent returned with packages and lunch. “Find anything new?” he asked.

  “I called Simon Kincaide. Told me the same thing about the fey hating iron and salt. He wasn’t sure the bit about wearing our clothing wrong-side out and having bread in the pockets would help but said it wouldn’t hurt. He did say that fresh cream made good bait to draw a fey out of hiding and that horseshoes over a doorway are supposed to stop them from entering. For what it’s worth.”

  Brent thought the lore on fighting fairies sounded like something out of a Dungeons & Dragons session, but hours of searching online hadn’t turned up anything better, and Simon had a friggin’ Ph.D. in folklore, which ought to be good for something.

  “I scanned through the information Hazel started to compile about the 1918 cataclysm,” Travis said, digging into the burger Brent handed him. “The interviews she did with people who had survived that period matched up with what happened in 1968—and what’s going on now. And I did find a map of the mines—took a picture of it in case you didn’t find anything better.”

  Brent shook his head. “Everything I found is partial at best. You know what it’s like around Pittsburgh—so many old mining companies got bought, went bankrupt, or had their offices catch fire that no one has an official, complete map of anything. It’s just as bad here.”

  “Yeah, half the time no one knows there used to be a mine under a neighborhood until the street—or a house—drops into a hole,” Travis replied.

  Travis sent the photo of the old mine maps to Brent, who pulled them up on his laptop and did an overlay with the I-80 map showing the disappearances.

  “If I draw lines like the spokes of a wheel from each place someone vanished with the black truck, the hub would be here,” Brent noted, letting his mouse hover over the point of convergence.

  “Zimmer Mine number eight,” Trent said, looking up to meet Brent’s gaze. “And here’s another bit of news—there wasn’t a mine number nine until later when a second access shaft was built. So when Hazel’s cataclysm happened—and the 1918 event—there was only mine number eight.”

  “I’ve got the ammo,” Brent said, crumpling up the wrapper for his burger and tossing it into the trash. “Let’s go spriggan-hunting.”

  The old Zimmer Mine road was barely visi
ble after decades of abandonment. Weeds and brush filled in the track, but nature had not yet obliterated the man-made gap between the older trees. Once he knew what to look for, Brent could clearly see the path. They took the Crown Vic as far as they dared, then loaded the supplies into their backpacks and began the hike.

  “The weeds have been flattened,” Travis pointed out.

  “Yeah, your car might not be able to get through here, but a four-wheel-drive pickup could, easily,” Brent replied. “I’d say we’ve come to the right place.”

  All of the disappearances had occurred at night, and everything Brent had found about the spriggan suggested it was strongest in the dark. That made daylight the best time to fight it, assuming they could lure it from its hiding place.

  Tension churned in Brent’s stomach, as they neared the closed mine. He’d gone back over the disappearances, committed the list of names to memory. Those that had been gone the longest, he doubted they would find alive. But the most recent victims might not be dead yet, and he clung to that thin hope.

  “There it is,” Travis said, pointing to where a black pickup sat in the shadows beneath a stand of trees. Nearby, the remains of the buildings that had once supported the mine could still be seen amid the overgrowth. The concrete arches of a loading area, the metal scaffolding of a tipple, and the tumble-down bricks of a small office building were almost all that remained of the once-busy mine. Not far beyond, weathered boards and a rusted steel grating blocked the entrance to a large hole carved into the side of a steep hill.

  “Can you get anything with your ESP?” Brent asked.

  Travis rolled his eyes. “I hate that term. Next, you’ll want to know if I’ve heard anything on the psychic hotline.” He paused, and his gaze lost focus. “There’s a lot going on near here, a lot of energy, and most of it’s bad. Ghosts in the mines—no surprise from all the collapses and fires Hazel documented. It’s dangerous work in the best of times. Violence—maybe a strike? And over everything, it’s like there’s a dark film, an oily residue that’s just…evil.”