Tangled Web

by Gail Z. Martin

  “And we’d both look like a tasty snack,” I finished for him. “Damn.” I ran a hand back through my hair, but I had no idea what to say. So I reverted to our original plan. “Just to be sure, let’s check out those relics I mentioned to Alistair.” I hated to see Teag look so sad at the psychic violence done to the beautiful textiles.

  Plenty of objects on permanent exhibit in the museum carried beaucoup resonance, but there were a couple that always stood out to me like beacons. One was a collection of death photographs from the Civil War, pictures taken of the newly dead by grieving relatives, back when photography was new, rare, and expensive. While the resonance is sad, it’s powerful, underlaid with devotion and love.

  The other was happier, an elaborate silver tea set that had been passed down from mother to daughter for more than a century as the heirloom wedding gift. It carried the vibration of all those happy celebrations, and being near it usually lit me up inside.

  Every time we visited, I could sense both collections from the far side of their respective exhibit rooms. I oriented myself on their energy wherever I was in the museum, like compass points. And now, as I stood in the entry hall, their energy was gone.

  Teag trotted after me as I speed-walked from one end of the museum to the other. The physical pieces were right where they were supposed to be, safe and sound behind alarmed glass. But to my gift, they were lifeless and dull, silent and empty. I felt the loss so hard; tears filled my eyes.

  “They’re empty,” I said, trying not to let my voice break. “Someone’s taken the resonance. They’ve been drained dry.”

  Chapter Five

  Turning an old mansion into a funeral home is all kinds of stupid when it comes to psychic energy. If the place didn’t have ghosts of its own already, it sure stood likely to collect some from all the dead bodies coming and going.

  “You’re sure this is the place?” I asked, as Teag, Father Anne, and I stood outside the Kubler Funeral Home. The white clapboard Victorian sprawled across most of a block. On the plus side, being turned into a mortuary meant someone had the money to keep the house looking like a showplace. But the trade-off lay in how the owners earned that cash, sending the dearly departed on to the afterlife pumped full of embalming fluid and covered in spray tan.

  “I’m sure,” Father Anne replied. “Horace Kubler showed up in my office this morning completely beside himself. Wanted me to come do an exorcism right that very minute.”

  “Exorcism?” Teag raised an eyebrow.

  Father Anne shrugged. “It’s the first thing people think of when things go bump in the night. Unless they’ve been watching ghost hunter TV shows, and then they’re telling me how to do my job at the same time that they’re begging me to come save them.”

  I eyed the rambling white home. The original owner must have had a slew of kids, and maybe servants, too. It definitely had more space than the normal modern family needed with its two-point-five children. If it hadn’t been turned into a funeral parlor, it probably would have been subdivided into apartments or fallen into disrepair. That would have been a shame since it was a beautiful building. Even so, I dreaded going inside. Mortuaries are filled with uncomfortable resonance, for obvious reasons.

  One hand went to my agate and silver necklace as I sought protection and a cleansing blast. Just touching the healing gemstone made me feel better. “Do we know what we’re up against?” I asked.

  “Not completely,” Father Anne admitted. “That’s what worries me.” She had a black shirt with a clerical collar on under her leather jacket, over jeans and Doc Martens. I could see the sheath for a blessed boline knife on her belt, a weapon with some extra mojo for going up against nasty spirits. She wore a silver crucifix on a chain around her neck, and I knew she had a flask of holy water in a pocket, as well as salt and sanctified oil.

  “How long has it been haunted?” Teag asked. He had his hands jammed in his pockets since the night was cool enough for a jacket. While most knives wouldn’t do much against ghosts, Teag had brought his espalda y daga set, as well as his silver whip, an iron short sword, and a silver dagger.

  “Horace says that the house had family ghosts before it became a mortuary and that those spirits don’t trouble anyone. They’re either oblivious to the change, or they seem to have appointed themselves the official hosts,” she added with a chuckle. “He doesn’t want to get rid of them, but he says that since the other spirits showed up, those ghosts seem to be hiding.”

  “Great. We’ve got ghosts that scare other ghosts,” I muttered.

  “What about the new ghosts?” Teag prompted.

  “They’re big on pranks—but some of the tricks have an edge to them,” Father Anne replied. “Hiding objects is one thing. Breaking them is another. And Horace says that the new ghosts ‘feel’ different. Edgy, angry, maybe even dangerous. He’s already had one person quit, and another started carrying salt in her pockets, a squirt bottle of holy water in her purse, and as he puts it, enough religious jewelry to put Madonna to shame. The singer, not the Virgin Mother,” Father Anne clarified.

  “Anything else?” I had the feeling we didn’t know enough about the problem, but that might mean Horace didn’t, either.

  “Yeah.” Father Anne looked like she deeply regretted giving up smoking. “And I don’t like it. He said he keeps hearing things in the walls, moving around. And last night, one of the bodies was damaged.”

  “Damaged how?” I asked, although the hair on my arms rose, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the cold night.

  “Chewed on,” Father Anne replied. “Nothing actually missing, but Horace thinks that might have been because he made a lot of noise going into the mortuary and interrupted whatever it was.”

  “Chewed?” Teag echoed. “Shit. That sounds like more than a ghost.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Father Anne replied.

  Horace had given Father Anne a key. He and the other workers had made themselves scarce since no viewings or services were scheduled. Father Anne let us in the back door. The security lights made it bright enough to see where we were going, although they gave everything a bluish glow right out of a low-budget horror movie. I shook the dog collar on my left wrist, and Bo’s ghost appeared beside me. I kept my athame in my right hand, but I had iron shavings and salt in my pockets, a spray bottle of holy water, and an iron knife.

  The main floor of the funeral parlor looked like a well-appointed private house—with five living rooms, and no kitchen or dining room. Without the bustle of a crowd coming to pay respects, I could feel how huge the old mansion was. It felt cavernous and cold, despite its designer-perfect decor and upscale furnishings.

  “The upstairs are all offices,” Father Anne said. “Horace said there haven’t been any problems up there. Nothing in the front rooms on this floor either, although this is where the regular ghosts show up when they’re active. No surprise, since they would have remembered this house as a family home.”

  “So the problems are in the back, where the bodies are handled,” I guessed. My gut knotted. I’d been to a few morgues, but funeral homes seemed so much more personal, maybe because they were in old houses. With everything we dealt with, I knew that dead bodies weren’t anything to fear. But my hindbrain wasn’t listening to reason, and I hoped I didn’t look as reluctant as I felt to head down the hallway to the “business” end of the mortuary.

  The building felt cool when we entered, but the temperature had dropped enough between the front of the house and the back that I had goosebumps. Once we went through the doors to the section of the building that held the preparation rooms, the funeral home looked much more like a hospital or a morgue than its homey reception areas. Gleaming white tile covered the walls to shoulder height in wide corridors made to wheel gurneys to the workrooms. Compared to the tasteful decorations in the parlors, this part of the building felt spartan and empty of personality.

  We moved slowly, alert for trouble. I wasn’t thrilled about s
tretching out with my gift, but I knew that would be part of what was needed when I agreed to come along. I tuned into my psychometry, tentatively extending my senses in case Horace’s problems stemmed from a cursed or haunted object that had hitched a ride with one of the dearly departed.

  “Can you read anything?” Teag stayed close beside me. Teag knew I’d be vulnerable when I focused on the impressions, and he was good at watching my back.

  “I don’t think the ghosts are tied to an object,” I said, since my spidey sense wasn’t honing in on a particular location. “As for the ghosts themselves, I’m sensing less sadness than…surprise.” I paused. “Everyone always thinks they’ve got more time, and then—wham.”

  “You might have given me the theme for next Sunday’s homily,” Father Anne said. “I bet that ‘Wham—You’re Dead’ would make people look twice at the church’s sermon sign.”

  I’d learned a long time ago that dark humor can get you through a lot of bad situations. But even as I cracked a smile at her comment, I felt a shift in the energy around us. Unlike a real medium, I can’t summon the dead or make a connection with a reluctant ghost. My gift works best when I can touch an object that belonged to the departed, and then I can read the memories “imprinted” into its resonance. But if a ghost wants to make itself send or heard, I’m maybe a little more tuned in than the average person, and I suspect my abilities attract spirits who probably see my energy like a candle in the darkness.

  The air grew even colder, and I saw Teag shiver. “You feel it, right?”

  Teag nodded. “Yeah. Temperature’s dropping. And I’m picking up on a vibe that’s trying to make us turn around and leave.”

  “Dread,” Father Anne said quietly. “Something is trying to keep us from going down the hall.”

  A breeze picked up. All the doors and windows were closed, and no air conditioner put out a gust that whipped our hair and made jackets flap. We passed a door marked “Storage” and heard a crash that sounded like an entire row of shelves had tipped over. When I opened up the door, a barrage of shoes, belts, hats, and other articles of clothing pelted me, hurled by invisible hands.

  I yanked the door shut, catching a man’s tie half in and half out. The mismatched pieces littered the floor in the corridor, and I tried to make sense of the impressions I picked up.

  “They’re angry,” I said slowly. “But not at us. Angry at something else. Something that hurt them. I think…they’re trying to tell us to turn back.”

  We were a few feet from the double doors to the big preparation room where the bodies were kept. That’s when I heard it—a skittering, scratching sound way too loud to be rats. We all exchanged a glance, and I knew Teag and Father Anne had heard the noise, too. The loud shriek of wrenched metal clearly came from inside the mortuary room. We readied our weapons and rushed inside.

  “What the hell are those?” Teag breathed.

  Four pale, naked creatures looked up from where they had wrenched a steel refrigeration drawer off its track, leaving it pulled out askew and revealing the corpse inside. The creatures had the same fish-belly white color as the dead body. Their joints and spines seemed unnaturally visible through nearly translucent skin, and their heads looked overly large for their bodies. Skin stretched tightly across their faces, flattening their features, and the black eyes that turned their gaze on us were as cold as a snake’s. Too-long fingers gave their outsized hands a skeletal appearance. But for as bony as their bodies were, the intruders’ distended bellies looked bloated, and when their black lips pulled back in a snarl, I could clearly make out rows of razor-sharp teeth.

  “Damned if I know, but they’re trying to eat the bodies.” Leave it to Father Anne to get to the heart of the matter.

  “Ghouls.” They both turned to look at me. “Pretty sure that’s what they are.” I’d never seen any myself, but I’d heard about them. And now it looked like we were going to have to fight them.

  The creatures turned on us and hissed, which might have been their language, or a warning. They were unarmed, but their fingers ended in sharp claws and I didn’t want to see their teeth close up. We faced off against them, as each side sized up the opposition. My athame dropped down from my sleeve into my hand, and Bo’s ghost let out a low growl.

  Everyone moved at once. Ghouls are damn fast. They scattered, not just left and right, but two of them skittered up the walls and across the ceiling. Bo dove for one of the ghouls still on the floor. I aimed my athame and sent a stream of bright, cold energy that tore one of the creatures off the ceiling and flung it across the room. It slammed into one of the stainless steel autopsy tables with enough force to have broken a human’s spine, but the creature got up and shook itself off, eyeing me like a tasty morsel. They might eat dead flesh, but ghouls probably don’t mind a warm meal when they get the chance.

  Teag’s silver metal whip snapped out, snaking across the back of the other ceiling ghoul, and the sharp, coiled blade opened up a gash from shoulder to hip that dripped foul, black sludge instead of blood. The ghoul shrieked and let go, managing to twist in mid-air like a falling cat so that it landed on its feet in a crouch.

  The creature sprang at Teag, but his long knife came up fast, impaling the ghoul with its own momentum. A downward slice gutted the monster, and a hard swing sent the ghoul’s head rolling.

  Meanwhile, the ghoul I’d thrown against the autopsy table was ready for round two. Its squeal sounded hungry and furious, and it ran at me on all fours, like a huge, ugly attack dog. Bo was still busily harrying the third ghoul, and Father Anne was busy with her very own monster.

  I sank my gift deep into the resonance of my spoon-athame and blasted the ghoul again. But this time I held the blast as long as I could; moving forward as I kept the creature pinned against the wall. The dark red stain around its mouth brought to mind images I didn’t dare dwell on, and I closed the distance between us at a dead run, so I didn’t have too much time to think.

  My knife blade sank deep into the ghoul’s chest as I ended the blast from my athame. The ghoul dropped to the floor at my feet. I swung the sturdy knife with all my strength, as its razor-sharp blade sliced through the monster’s neck and the head fell to one side with a wet thud.

  By the time I looked up, the fight was over. Bo had kept one of the ghouls cornered until Teag could lop off its head. For being a ghost, Bo has a very real bite, and teeth marks suggested that for once the ghoul was on the receiving end of being chomped. Father Anne stood over the body of the fourth ghoul, spattered in ichor and breathing hard from the fight.

  The once-pristine preparation room looked like something out of a zombie movie, with gore sprayed across the white tile walls and black pools of stinking ooze puddling around the headless bodies. Teag navigated carefully over to the morgue drawer that the ghouls had pulled from the bank of refrigerated shelves on one wall.

  “Doesn’t look like they had time to start on dinner,” he observed. “Other than the damage to the drawer, the body doesn’t look chewed.”

  I turned to Father Anne. “Does the funeral home have a crematorium?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Probably,” I replied. We walked over to the big sink against the far wall and washed, scrubbing the awful liquid from our hands, arms, and weapons, and mopping at our clothing with wet paper towels.

  While Teag and I cleaned up, Father Anne pulled out her phone. “Horace,” she said. “We’ve solved your problem, but you’re going to want to handle the clean up before your employees come in. I’d suggest waiting fifteen minutes, and then heading over here. If anyone asks, say that the alarm tripped. The vermin that chewed on the bodies are dead, but it would be best if you burned them…when no one’s looking.” I couldn’t hear Horace’s side of the conversation, but Father Anne smiled. “You’re welcome. And if anyone asks—we were never here.”

  “Do you think the ghosts are gone?” Teag asked as we made our way back out to the driveway
. None of the spirits bothered us as we walked through the corridor, and we encountered no strange wind or odd cold spots.

  “I don’t think they meant to hurt anyone,” I replied, looking over my shoulder but seeing only the shadowy hallway. “They were trying to warn Horace and his people away from the ghouls. Maybe they were the spirits of the people in those drawers, who didn’t want to get eaten.”

  “Seems reasonable to me.”

  “So unless the ghouls come back, the new ghosts are probably going to rest easy,” Father Anne said as we put our weapons into the trunk and got into the car. Teag drove, and I slumped back against the seat as he pulled out of the parking lot without the lights on.

  “Is this kind of thing happening elsewhere, and we never heard about it?” I asked.

  “First time for me, too,” Father Anne replied. “And since the dead rising kind of goes with my job description, I figure there would have been chatter in my professional circles if other people were getting calls for exorcisms and the like.”

  “So back to the idea about everything being connected,” Teag said. He flicked the lights on when we were a block away and drove carefully at the speed limit.

  “Explain what you mean by ‘everything,’” Father Anne said from the back. We took turns filling her in.

  “Ghosts going bonkers, everyone’s on edge, strange break-ins and missing relics, zombies and ghouls, and something’s draining energy from charged objects—how does it all fit together?” I asked as I wrapped up our tale when Teag pulled up in front of my house.

  “I don’t know—but there has to be an answer,” Father Anne said as she got out of the car. “And in the meantime, be careful. Until we know who’s behind it, we don’t know where the next attack is coming. So watch your backs.”

  I opened my door. “Want to come in?”

  Teag shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m going to head back. Anthony had a continuing education class that went really late, and if I hurry, I can clean the ghoul guts out of my hair before he gets home.”