Ghost Walk

by Brian Keene

  “It doesn’t always use that attack, however. It can appear as a benevolent being—a friend or parent or lost love. It appeared to the Celts as a human male with a silver arm replacing its original arm, which had supposedly been lost in battle. It appeared to others as an old man carrying a great wooden staff in one hand, and riding in a seashell chariot drawn by flaming beasts. Again, this was a falsehood. Historians have misidentified it. Archeologists, too—attributing ruins and sites to its name, even though the things worshipped there were far different. Fiction writers like Arthur Machen and H. P. Lovecraft have added to the confusion over the years. One of them even labeled the entity as the Lord of the Great Deep, which is actually Leviathan’s post. In reality, there’s only one, true source of information on this thing—and the rest of the Thirteen. It’s the only source I trust.”

  “Let me guess,” Maria said. “You hear the voice of God?”

  “Please don’t tease me. This is a very serious matter. My source is something called the Daemonolateria.”

  “You know Latin?”

  “It’s not Latin. I know it sounds like it, but the word is from a language not spoken on this planet. The Daemonolateria is sort of a book, although it’s unlike any other book you’ve ever heard of. There are different versions; each copy is unique. Some of it exists on this plane of reality. Other parts exist…elsewhere. Its contents can change, depending on the own er and translation, but much of it deals with all of this forgotten history. It contains methods of stopping or banishing the Thirteen, including the thing we face.”

  “Sounds awfully confusing.”

  “It is. It’s definitely not for amateurs. There’s as much misinformation about the Daemonolateria as there is about the Thirteen. In short, if he wants to be sure, a magus has to build his own version of the book. That’s what I’m in the process of doing. It can be dangerous. Nelson LeHorn’s copy was fairly complete and very accurate. But it also made him paranoid. A lot of people like us coveted it.”

  “‘Like us’?”

  “Magicians. Powwow doctors. Priests. Warlocks. Witches. There are more of us than you think. There are different disciplines and social orders, of course. Some of us are loners. Others have their own little groups and clubs. Black Lodge. The Kwan. Things like the O.T.O. and the Starry Wisdom Sect. Teenagers playing at satanism. Senior citizens giving their money to charismatic leaders.”

  “I thought Black Lodge was a division of the CIA?”

  “That’s what they would like you to believe.”

  “All I know is they’re a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Levi said. “My point is, there are a lot of us—most of whom can’t be trusted. LeHorn became convinced that others might try to kill him for his copy of the book, so he hid several of the most important pages, rendering the rest of the book incomplete and, hopefully, worthless. My father told me of the hiding places that he knew of. One of those pages—the one we need to stop this—was hidden in LeHorn’s copy of The Long Lost Friend. He thought it would be extra safe there. And he was right about that.”

  “So you need to find his book?”

  Levi nodded. “And that’s why I need to speak with Adam Senft. He was the last person to have LeHorn’s book. I need to know where it is now. It might be in his possession, though I doubt it. Senft was certainly dabbling in magic before his wife’s murder, but I don’t think he’d progressed far enough to secrete something like a page from the Daemonolateria on himself while in a psychiatric hospital. Not without it being detected. It’s more likely that the book—and the page—are hidden somewhere on the outside.”

  “What if he doesn’t know where it is, or he doesn’t remember? What then?”

  “There are other ways to find it. Divining would work, but that takes weeks and we don’t have time. So we’ll just have to make him remember.”

  “You said ‘we’ again. I’m not a part of this. Like I told you before, I’m only interested in Senft for my book. That’s why I’m here. God didn’t bring us together. It was just a coincidence.”

  Levi sighed. “You don’t believe what I just told you?”

  Maria chose her words carefully. “I believe that you believe it. But, look—I don’t believe in God in the first place. I don’t believe that He created the Earth, so why would I believe that He destroyed another universe to do it and that it’s been covered up ever since? And even if I did believe any of that, it’s not God. It’s Allah.”

  “I told you before. Allah and God are the same being. Names have power. Those are just two names for the same divinity.”

  “So you say. And so have others. But how do I know that?”

  “You take it on faith! Just like any other belief.”

  She shook her head and sat in silence.

  “Maria,” Levi begged, “I can’t do this alone. I…I don’t have anyone else.”

  “I’m sorry, Levi. I really am. You seem very nice. But I’m not some occult avenger. I wouldn’t mind interviewing you some more, specifically about powwow and your father and LeHorn. But that’s all.”

  “Interviewing me?”

  “If you don’t mind, that is?”

  “Would it matter if I did?” Smiling, Levi nodded toward her digital voice recorder. “After all, you’ve been secretly taping our conversation since we started.”

  “I…” Maria felt her face flush. “I’m sorry. It made me feel better, just in case…”

  “Just in case I turned out to be crazy after all?”

  “Yeah, if you want the truth.”

  “Go ahead and play it back.”

  “Why?”

  “Humor me.”

  Slowly, Maria picked up the recorder, pressed the stop button and then played back their conversation. Except that instead of Levi’s voice, somebody else spoke to her. A different voice boomed from the device. She couldn’t distinguish its sex or age. There was no accent or distinguishing characteristics. It had a hypnotic, musical quality, and flowed like water.

  “MARIA. PLEASE HELP.”

  Maria’s jaw went slack. Her fingers tightened around the recorder until her knuckles turned white. The voice was replaced with a feint, electronic hiss—white noise. Maria advanced the recording, but there was just more silence.

  “How…” She turned off the recorder and looked at Levi, her eyes wide. “How did you…your voice?”

  Levi’s smile grew broader.

  “Let me guess,” he teased, mimicking her earlier taunt. “You heard the voice of God?”

  Maria started to respond, but couldn’t. Her mouth felt dry, her tongue swollen. She tried licking her lips. They seemed puffy. Heavy. Her ears rang. She struggled to sit up straight, but the car’s interior began to spin. Her fingers grasped the seat, but she couldn’t feel the upholstery.

  “Maria?” Levi reached for her, concerned. “Are you okay?”

  Levi’s voice sounded far away, as if he were speaking from the other side of a long tunnel. Maria tried to answer him but had trouble forming the words. She felt weak and her senses seemed deadened. She bowed her head, grasping for something to hold on to. Her hand felt heavy—made of lead. It suddenly seemed very hot and stifling inside the car, yet she was shivering.

  “N-no…I…”

  Then her eyes rolled in their sockets and she fainted.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ken went through the masks and costumes, making sure everything he’d ordered was there. He ticked them off in his head. Werewolf. Gorilla. Boar with tusks. Witch. Evil clown. Phantom of the Opera. Both Boris Karloff’s and Robert DeNiro’s versions of the Frankenstein monster. A leering jack-o’-lantern. A gargoyle. Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Jason Voorhees. Freddy Krueger. Pinhead. A few zombies, including Bub from George Romero’s Day of the Dead. Several different mutants and aliens. Leatherface. The Fly. A man with one latex eyeball hanging down his cheek. Another man with a hard foam axe jutting from his latex head.
And Ken’s personal favorites, masks of veteran horror actors Bruce Campbell and Michael Berryman, cast from molds of their faces. Two of his volunteers were going to dress like the actors’ characters in Army of Darkness and the original version of The Hills Have Eyes. For the former, they’d even built an attraction that looked like the inside of the windmill from the movie. Hopefully, the attendees would recognize it. In any case, these masks would cap the ensembles off perfectly. Satisfied with the results, Ken then double-checked the costumes and found they were all in order, as well.

  “All set?” asked the clerk, a college-aged kid who still hadn’t outgrown the curse of teenage acne.

  “Yeah,” Ken said. “I think we’re good to go.”

  “Sweet. I’m glad you picked these up early. We’ll be busy tonight.”

  “Because of Halloween?”

  “You got that right. We make nine months of rent during the month of October.”

  At the counter, Ken grabbed a few compact discs of Halloween music and added them to the pile. He already had dozens of sound effect and ambience recordings, but a few more wouldn’t hurt.

  “Want to add a fog machine, Mr. Ripple? I can give you a discount since you bought so much.”

  “That’s okay. To be honest, the ones you guys have here are too small for my needs. The Ghost Walk has a creek that flows through one part of it. We’re gonna use dry ice. Drop it in the creek and place buckets of it at intervals along the trail. According to some haunt enthusiasts I’ve talked to online, once it starts evaporating, the dry ice should have the same effect,”

  As he handed the salesclerk his credit card, Ken’s cell phone rang, playing the main orchestral theme from Young Guns II. While the clerk rang up his charges, Ken glanced at the phone and saw it was Terry calling.

  “Hey,” he answered. “What’s up?”

  “The police were here.”

  “W-what? Why? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Rhonda and Sam. The kids from the high school? Turns out they never went home last night. Their parents called it in. Last time anybody saw them was here, at the Ghost Walk.”

  “Yeah,” Ken agreed. “I saw Rhonda yesterday evening, before Maria and Rudy showed up.”

  “I told the cops that. They want to talk to you about it when you get a chance.”

  Ken twitched. “Why? They…they don’t think I had something to do with it, do they?”

  The clerk looked up from the register. Ken turned his back on him.

  “No,” Terry said. “At least, I don’t think so. They found Sam’s car in Lancaster this morning, parked at a supermarket in Columbia. That’s all they’d tell me. Don’t know if they ran off together, or had a fight, or what. I wouldn’t worry about the cops thinking we’re involved. You know how kids are. Remember the shit we used to get up to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The cop left a business card for you and wrote his cell phone number down on the back. I told him you’d be out running around most of the day but would get back to him as soon as you could. I also gave him two free passes. Hope that’s okay? He seemed really into the Ghost Walk.”

  “Sure,” Ken said. “That’s fine. I’m finishing up at the costume shop right now. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Sounds good,” Terry said. “I just figured you’d want to know right away.”

  “You did the right thing. Are the others saying anything?”

  “The cop talked to Cecil, Tom, Russ and Tina. Jorge ain’t back yet with the lime. I walked out here to the field so I could call. You know how bad cell coverage is in the woods.”

  “Okay. Hold down the fort. I’ll be there soon. And Terry?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let Cecil and the others know that I’d appreciate it if they didn’t go blabbing about this. We don’t need that kind of publicity, and it’s not going to help the cops find them.”

  “Agreed.”

  Finished, Ken disconnected the call and stuffed the cell phone back in his pocket. Then he turned back to the clerk, who was holding out the store copy of his receipt and a pen for him to sign it with.

  “Everything okay?” the clerk asked.

  Ken nodded. “Fine. Just one of those days, you know?”

  “Tell me about it. Seems like I’m having one of those lives.”

  Ken signed the receipt. “Ever get the feeling something bad is coming? You don’t know what, but you can feel it—looming like a thunderstorm?”

  The clerk stared at him. “No, can’t say that I ever have.”

  “Oh.” Ken shrugged. “Must be me, then.”

  “I’ll give you a hand loading up,” the clerk offered. “And then you can be on your way. Bet you’re excited! Tomorrow’s the big day.”

  “Thanks,” Ken said. Then he muttered under his breath, “It’s just getting more exciting all the time.”

  “Time to piss,” Cecil Smeltzer announced.

  “Thanks for sharing,” Tom McNally said. “Want me to hold it for you?”

  “No need. This ain’t no union job and we don’t work for the state road crew. Doesn’t take two men to hold my pecker. It still stands up every time. Unlike you younger guys with your Viagra.”

  “You get a hard-on when you piss? Maybe you’d better see a doctor about that.”

  “No, sir.” Cecil frowned. “I don’t guess I will. You get to be my age, any visit to the doctor involves him putting his finger in your ass.”

  The sound of their laughter filled the forest.

  “I’m gonna go back to the field,” Tom said. “Check in with Terry. See how he made out with that cop. You want anything from the cooler?”

  Cecil shook his head. “No, I’m good. I drink anything else, I’ll just have to piss again.”

  As Tom strode away, he called over his shoulder, “Careful you don’t cut your dick off with that machete while you’re pissing!”

  “Young people,” Cecil muttered. “No respect for age or beauty.”

  After Tom was gone, Cecil drove the blade of his machete deep into a rotting tree stump. Splinters of dry wood fell to the ground around the stump’s base. When he let go of the handle, the machete was still vibrating from the force he’d put behind the blow. He grinned, flashing his dentures and feeling happy. At his age, he was lucky if he could lift the machete most days, let alone swing it hard.

  Volunteering for this Ghost Walk had been good for him, more than he’d even at first suspected. Initially, Cecil had gotten involved because he liked Ken Ripple and appreciated what the younger man was doing to honor his wife’s memory. Ken and Deena had gone to Cecil’s church for a while. Good people. Deena had one of those smiles that made people feel better, no matter what kind of day they were having. Ken had stopped coming to services after Deena’s death. Cecil couldn’t blame him much. Cecil’s wife, Gladys, had been gone two years now, struck down in the night by a blood clot. But if she hadn’t been such a bitch to him for the last thirty years of their lives together, then maybe Cecil would be pissed at God, too. Instead, he was secretly grateful.

  Maybe it was the fresh air or just the fact that he’d been more active these past two months than he’d been for the last five years, but Cecil felt better. Healthier. He felt strong again, like he had in his forties and fifties. The exercise was definitely helping. He’d swung that machete all morning long, stopping only to drink coffee and talk to the police officer, but his back and shoulder muscles barely ached.

  “Yes, sir,” he whispered. “Maybe I’ll head on down to the Lutheran Home’s Senior Center tonight and see if I can’t meet a lady. Play a few hands of strip cribbage.”

  He left the trail, pushing through the undergrowth. Although Tom and Terry were up in the field, Russ and Tina Farnsworth were around somewhere, putting up cornstalk walls along parts of the trail. Wouldn’t do for Tina to come strolling down the path and find Cecil with his penis hanging out of his pants. She might get one glimpse of it and leave Russ for him.

  He stopped after
he’d gone about fifty yards. He glanced behind him. The brush was dense enough that he couldn’t see the trail, which meant that nobody could see him either. Satisfied, Cecil unzipped his pants and freed his penis. Rather than the usual pathetic trickle, his stream was strong.

  A twig snapped somewhere behind him.

  Cecil turned his head, but couldn’t see anything. He focused his attention on the business at hand again, amazed by his renewed vigor.

  “Yep,” he breathed. “Hard work does a body good.”

  Then he thought of his brother, Clark—a reminder that honest labor didn’t always have the same positive results.

  Cecil tried not to dwell on Clark. For years, he’d refused to speak or think about him at all. He’d put all of his brother’s pictures in a shoe box and hid them in the attic, beneath Gladys’s cross-stitch collection and a pile of old record albums. He’d tried to contact his nephew, Barry, a few times over the years, but the boy had turned out just like his father, and Cecil had given up. Talking to Barry just made him think of Clark. Thinking of Clark caused pain, so the easiest way to deal with it was to pretend his brother had never existed.

  But, Cecil was learning, these days it wasn’t so easy to ignore the past. Maybe it was because he was lonely, or that he had so much free time on his hands since he’d retired, but lately, he thought of Clark more and more. The pain was just as strong now as it had been back then, like an old scar that had been reopened and was bleeding out fresh again.

  Cecil felt haunted.

  While Cecil had taken a good job at the paper mill, Clark Smeltzer had gotten work as the cemetery caretaker for the Golgotha Lutheran Church in Spring Grove. At first, Cecil had been a little jealous of his younger brother. Sure, Cecil had union benefits and a fine hourly wage, but Clark’s position entitled him to a home along with his weekly paycheck. He and his family lived across the street from the cemetery in a house owned by the church. They stayed there rent free, paying only for their utilities. It was a good job.

  Until Clark fucked it all up.