by H. P. Bayne
This particular job came with one benefit they hadn’t had the last time they’d dug up a grave.
As far as Dez was concerned, if it was Dunstan Craik down here, he was here for a damn good reason. If Thomas Harrison had killed him, it was only after Craik had been responsible for Beth’s drowning. Dez had no doubt any final battle between the men was just that: a war. If Dez’s guess was right, Thomas had killed him to protect himself and others from Craik’s evil.
It made digging easier. If Dez accidentally clipped the body, it would be disgusting but otherwise wouldn’t bother him in the slightest.
The corpse, if it was indeed here, was farther down than Dez would have supposed. Thomas Harrison wouldn’t have elicited help to bury Craik, surely. In his fifties, he would have had a more difficult task of it than Dez. Of course, the house had been relatively new in his day. The earth in the basement was probably softer.
Several more shovelfuls of earth, several more minutes passing.
Then Dez hit something.
“Sull? I think I found something … Sully?”
“Keep digging.”
The tone of his voice had changed.
“Sully, what’s wrong?”
“Keep digging!”
Then two words Dez really didn’t want to hear. “He’s coming.”
No need to ask who the “he” was. Dez focused in, hammering at the earth, clearing the rest of the path to the body.
At last, he used the spade’s tip to brush at the loosened soil around the area he’d struck and used the flashlight to look.
Hair. Long, dark hair. Beneath it, a bared skull.
“It’s him, man! It’s him! I’ve got a skull!”
“Find the amulet. Hurry.”
Dez hurried.
Relocating the spade’s tip to where he expected the chest would be, Dez dug hard. By now, his arms and shoulders were on fire, his lower back protesting. He didn’t stop, couldn’t.
Dez managed to huff out a question around his movements. “Where is he?”
“Keep digging. Whatever happens, whatever you hear, keep digging. Get the amulet, Dez.”
A response far from comforting.
Another few shovelfuls of earth. Then he hit something solid, something that cracked beneath the weight of his movements.
Please be a rib, Dez thought. He knelt back down, flashlight in hand. He brushed away a little remaining dirt until he saw it.
The edges of two ribs, shirt torn and pushed aside to expose them.
“I’ve got ribs, Sull!”
No answer.
“Sully? … Damn it!”
Throwing Sully’s instructions to the wind, Dez dashed into the hall. Sully was on his knees on the floor, shaking.
“Sully, talk to me.”
“Keep digging, Dez. Please!”
“Shit.” Craik had to be really close.
Natural response would have taken Dez to his brother’s side, but he was right. They needed the amulet.
He ran back to the hole, back to frantic digging. Best he could tell, Craik had been dumped in roughly on his side, so Dez moved slightly to the right and up. He set a new pace, quicker now, harder, not caring what he broke inside the grave. It was no longer solely about Miriam or Lilian or avenging Flynn or Aiden Braddock. This was about protecting himself and Sully.
A ping beneath the blade gave him hope.
The ghost was furious as it rushed Sully like a freight train. Already driven to his knees by what he could only assume was the further opening of the gateway, he felt the power of Craik coming only a moment before it slammed into him. Already dizzy, Sully was thrown to the floor by the psychic impact.
As the force pummelled him, he nearly gave in, nearly brought the other part of his gift to bear. He could control Craik, could consume his energy and use it against him.
Within tumbling thoughts, Sully dismissed any hope he had for control in that manner. Craik was pure evil, the darkest entity Sully had ever encountered. Consuming Craik would open the door inside Sully, would release the darkest parts of himself he’d sought to keep locked away.
He couldn’t risk it, not with Dez so near.
The spirit’s blows fell like physical impacts, striking with enough force Sully had no doubt bruises would result.
Dez was close to the amulet. He’d found Craik’s body. Judging by the ghost’s reaction, it sensed this too.
Sully fought to keep from voicing his pain, knowing it would draw Dez once more from his task. Sully knew now, better than he had coming down here, they were on the right track. Take the amulet and Craik’s power was gone. He’d no longer be what Mrs. Carr called a demon. He’d simply be another ghost, one Sully could deal with as he did any other.
What felt like a boot connected hard with Sully’s side, the force moving beyond flesh, deep into tissue, muscle and organ. All resolve to bite down his pain dissolved into a scream.
“Sully!” Dez’s voice was panicked. A moment later, it was nearer. “Oh my God.”
Another blow. Sully felt his body move with the impact.
He cried out, but managed to end by grunting out an order. “Get the amulet, Dez! Now!”
Again, Dez obeyed, his boots thundering against the floor, back into the room—and hopefully this time he’d stay there. It was the only way.
Craik didn’t chase him, as if he knew the physical pain he wished to inflict would have no impact on a non-psychic. Against Sully, he could act as if encased in flesh and blood with the power to use pain as a tool. He’d beat Sully to death if it was the last thing he had the power to do.
As suddenly as the beating had started, it ended. Sully felt it, as clearly as if he could see Craik. The power and energy around the spirit had been a hurricane of hate and evil.
Dez had just calmed the storm.
“I’ve got it!” Dez’s voice grew louder as he regained Sully’s side. “Sully, I’ve got it!”
Sully opened his eyes and stared up at the tower of Dez above him. “Yeah. I know.”
“So does that mean he’s gone?”
“Nope. It means you’ve created a molehill out of a mountain.” Sully didn’t move for a moment as he ran a mental scan for injuries. He ached, but not so badly he was worried about broken bones or internal damage.
“Do you see him anywhere?”
Sully gave the area a visual sweep. He thought maybe he’d see Craik—very likely a homicide victim—when he was no longer protected by the amulet. “No. I don’t. But he’s here and he’s pissed.”
“Why don’t you see him? I doubt he’s in that hole because he died by natural causes.”
Given what Sully had figured out about his gift, the answer came to him quickly. “There was nothing unjust in his death. If Thomas Harrison killed him, he must have had reason enough the spirit world doesn’t need me to right a wrong. Dunstan Craik started a war. Thomas just finished it. If he killed Craik, it was to save himself. Nothing unjust in that.”
Sully had yet to decide if he could stand. With the hole still open, the hall continued to spin around him. Dez knelt next to him. “You okay?”
Sully nodded. “More or less.” Pain and threat easing, he turned his mind back to the task at hand. “I think I’m going to need you to help me get farther down the hall, away from here. I don’t think I can get there on my own.”
Dez had Sully up in one quick move. The quick repositioning nearly had Sully emptying his stomach, but he held on, eyes sealed shut while Dez lugged him away. He imagined they were nearly back at the main room when the dizziness began to abate.
Sully tried to walk on his own but found his toes barely touched the floor. He cracked open his eyes to peer up at his brother.
“I’m good, Dez, thanks.”
Eyes wide, Dez drew up short. Sully followed his forward stare into the main room.
Mrs. Carr stood behind the bureau Dez and Sully had sat on earlier. Though dimly lit, Sully saw enough of her eyes to know they were fixed on th
em.
“I see you’ve found the amulet,” she said.
Sully glanced back to Dez. He had draped Sully’s right arm over his shoulders and was grasping his wrist to hold him there. Hanging from Dez’s right hand, dangling from a hardened leather cord, was the tarnished silver amulet.
“Yeah,” Dez said. “We did. After we take care of one or two things, we’re going to destroy this thing.”
“No, you won’t,” she said. “You’re going to give it to me.”
Dez laughed. “What? Forget it.”
And then Mrs. Carr brought up a handgun.
17
“This belonged to my former master,” she said.
Dez thought back to what Sully had said about the vision of Lilian and Abel’s deaths. “That’s the gun Bill Garver used to kill Abel, isn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?”
Sully tugged his arm free from Dez but stayed at his side. “Lilian showed me what happened. Garver shot Abel and beat Lilian to death. I suspect they’re buried out in the woods, possibly in the same spot Garver later put Miriam.”
“Bill Garver was a disturbed man,” Mrs. Carr said. “He was poisoned by the evil of Dunstan Craik.”
Dez stared at her face, trying to see what was going on in her brain.
“Yeah,” Sully said. “That’s what happened. Garver was already dark and twisted, and Craik used it and made it worse. The amulet gave Craik power he should never have had. It needs to be destroyed.”
“No. It doesn’t. And I won’t let you.”
She aimed at Dez and pulled the trigger.
The bang was earsplittingly loud, bouncing off the concrete and brick just as Mrs. Carr’s bullet thankfully had. The power of the kickback brought her arms up, breaking her aim for a moment and providing an opportunity to escape. Too far to execute a tackle, Dez grabbed Sully’s arm instead, tugging him back down the hall.
Toward Craik’s grave.
Sully made it to the room before collapsing, dizziness back in full. Dez had dragged him inside and now shoved him back against a wall. The sound of a door banging shut followed by a click told him Dez had locked them in.
A few moments later, a shot sounded from the other side of the door.
Dez pushed Sully to the floor and dropped next to him. He was speaking, but it took Sully a moment to make sense of what he was saying through the gunfire-caused ringing in his ears. “Stay low. She’s trying to blast her way in. Listen, man, you remember saying how Craik managed to egg bad people on all these years? Well, Mrs. Carr isn’t exactly woman of the year, is she? I think he’s poisoned her too. Get him back in the portal or whatever it is, and seal it up. Maybe that’ll stop her.”
Easier said than done. But Sully had learned long ago how to work through challenging circumstances.
He kept his eyes squeezed shut, blocking out the whirling room, and nodded.
If he could learn the reason why he got so damned dizzy every time he was near this gateway, maybe he could fix the problem.
The solution he settled on wouldn’t help much. As a psychic, he was sensitive to it. As he mentally felt around its edges, he discovered it wasn’t so much a doorway as a tornado. Like a tornado, its spout drew in the things around it.
But not any things. Energy. Spiritual energy.
And Sully knew what he needed to do.
“Dunstan Craik!” he called out. “We have your amulet! You’re useless without it and you know it! Come and get it!”
“What are you doing?” Dez asked.
“Trust me. When I tell you, throw it in beside the body.”
“You mean, give it back to him?”
“Trust me. Just do it.”
Sully refocused. He could feel Craik nearby, hovering somewhere in the hall, perhaps next to Mrs. Carr.
Another gunshot sounded. This time, a ping followed, and Dez yanked Sully down even nearer the ground.
“Ricochet,” Dez warned. “Stay low.”
Counting on Dez to watch his back in the physical world, Sully returned to the psychic one. Craik was nearer, right outside the door. He was afraid of the vortex, but his mind was increasingly focused on the amulet. He could stay on this side without it, but he’d be nothing more than a miserable, relatively harmless spirit. At best, he could funnel his rage into poltergeist activity, but what was throwing an occasional knife next to riding rotten apples while they killed?
“Craik!” Sully shouted. “You know you want it, you bastard! Come on, you fucking coward! What’s a damn vortex next to you and all your power if you can get it back?”
He felt it like an incoming punch as Craik’s energy broke through the door, heralded by another gunshot.
“Dez, now!”
Sully didn’t open his eyes to see, but even around the ringing in his ears he picked up the sound of the amulet striking earth.
Craik dove in after it. Sully knew immediately when he’d gone, the air around him seemingly less stifling, easier to breathe.
“Get the amulet,” Sully said. “He’s inside. I need to seal it.”
He heard movement next to him as Dez crawled away and waited until Dez was once again next to him.
“Got it. Do your thing.”
Sully focused next on the portal, picturing the tornado as if through an open door. The door separated them from the turmoil on the other side, separated this world from the dark one. Reaching out with his mind, Sully made the door real. He pictured its thickness and strength. He touched it, feeling the smooth lacquer.
It didn’t need a handle. Nothing needed in or out ever again.
He could see Craik’s face on the other side, horror-stricken, pleading.
Too bad.
Sully held the dead man’s eyes as he slammed the door shut.
The dizziness fell away immediately, and he slumped, exhausted but at peace.
“It’s done. Craik’s gone and the door’s shut.”
“I know,” Dez said. “No idea how, but I know. I can feel it.”
At some point, the gunfire in the hall had stopped. What it meant, Sully didn’t know. The psychic world he could get a handle on. The human one, not so much.
That was where Dez came in.
Dez crawled closer to the door to study it before returning to Sully. “There’s a decent gap under the door. You have your knife on you?”
Sully dug his multipurpose knife from his coat pocket and handed it over. Dez returned with it to the door and pulled the blade. He got as low as possible, all while staying just the other side of the door, protecting himself as much as possible from potential gunfire. Aiming his flashlight under the door, he angled the knife beneath it, using it as a mirror.
His head shot up toward Sully a second later.
“She’s on the floor,” he hissed. “Gun’s on the floor beside her.”
“Dead?”
“No idea. Unconscious, at least.”
“You sure it’s not a trick?”
“I’m sure we can’t stay in here with Jacob on the way and her armed. I’m going to open the door. Stay on the other side and be prepared to push it shut if I tell you.”
Sully nodded and got to his feet as Dez did, flat of his hand on the door.
Dez met his eye as if to ensure they were good to go. Sully gave another nod, and Dez yanked the door open.
Silence. Dez charged into the hall, and Sully moved around the half-open door to follow.
By the time Sully entered the hall a couple of seconds later, Dez had already given the gun a boot down the hall. He passed the knife back to Sully so he could check the woman.
The reason for her fall became clear as Dez bunched up the woman’s open coat from the inside and knelt to apply pressure to a bleeding wound on her right shoulder.
“Backfire,” Dez said. “Can’t imagine anyone’s cleaned or tested that piece of junk in decades. It’s a wonder she didn’t blow herself off the back wall the first time she fired it.”
“Want me to em
pty it?” Sully asked.
Dez shook his head. “Leave it. Be less complicated for the investigation if she’s the only one covered in gunshot residue. She’s the only one who’d use it, and she’s not doing any more shooting tonight.”
With his free hand, Dez pulled the amulet from his pocket. “What do we do with this?”
Sully took it and pocketed it, wanting it out of his sight immediately. “My vote is for giving it to Raiya. She’ll know how to destroy it safely.”
“Good plan.”
“I don’t get it. Why’d Carr want the amulet?”
Dez shook his head. “No idea, but she’d better be prepared for disappointment. All that work just came to nothing.”
Sully waited upstairs for Leo while Dez stayed to guard Mrs. Carr and ensure she didn’t need additional first aid.
The upstairs felt different.
Sully didn’t hate the house any less; the dark memory of Thornview Hall still held. It would forever be the place where multiple people had met tragic and unjust ends.
But it was quiet in a way it never had been. Sully wouldn’t ever buy the place, even if he were rich enough to afford it and had nowhere else to go. But it would do for someone. The thought of someone else—a young family, even—moving in here no longer felt like a disaster waiting to happen.
A high-end SUV pulled up within ten minutes of Sully’s coming upstairs. He opened the door to greet Leo, and quickly noted the presence of the little girl hunkering behind his legs. She eyed the house with dread, her expression only slightly more pained than her brother’s.
“I know it’s the middle of winter and everything,” Leo said. “But is there a way we could talk outside? I swore to myself I’d never set foot inside this house again, and I’d rather not make an exception now.”
Sully was all for it. “Wait in your vehicle. I’ll tell Dez where we’re going. Oh, and could we borrow your phone to call the police? Mrs. Carr accidentally shot herself while trying to kill us.”
Leo’s eyebrows fired up his forehead. “What?”
“Long night,” Sully said.
By the time he returned to Dez, phone in hand, Mrs. Carr was awake and writhing on the floor in pain, clutching her shoulder.
