by Hannah Marae
After some hesitation, Lazarus said, “Yeah, we’re in. So long as it’s not too far out of the way.”
“Great. I’ll send you the address. Now, what were you callin’ about?”
He shifted the phone to his other ear. “We’ll be coming in, sometime tomorrow most likely, to resupply. We’ve got a mage with us.”
The earpiece emitted a low whistle. “What are the Morgans doing traveling with a mage?”
“It’s just a job.”
“Yeah, that sounds like the Lazarus I know. Should I expect problems?”
“No, I don’t think so. She’s just a woman with a friend in trouble.”
“All right. Call when you get into town.”
“Yep.” He hung up the phone and sighed. A few seconds later, it buzzed as Ignatius’s message came in. He plugged the address into his Maps app and plotted a route. It looked like Lonesome End was an almost two-hour detour. That’d eat up most of the day if the job were quick. That was a big if. He really didn’t want to go back to the truck and explain to the mage that they were already making a diversion.
Still, there was nothing to be gained in dawdling, just more time lost. Begrudgingly, Lazarus trudged back to the others to break the news.
“You’re joking, right?” the mage asked once Laz had finished talking. She turned to Zeke. “Tell me he’s joking.”
Zeke watched with an earnest expression, his hands buried sheepishly in the pockets of his jeans. The look he sent Lazarus was one of reluctant approval, but Zeke was apparently not saying that out loud. Coward.
“I told you this could happen,” Lazarus reminded her. He crossed his arms over his chest and tried not to let himself get heated. Why should Lazarus feel bad? He said he’d help her, but that didn’t mean he’d ignore his responsibilities, especially to go chasing after a gut feeling.
The mage huffed. “Yeah, I just thought you meant there was a chance you’d find a job, not that you’d go looking for one.”
“Hey,” he cut in. “I did not go looking for a job. All I did was call Ignatius about getting supplies.”
She waved her hand, chipped nails flashing. “Right. Ghosts just fall into your laps. How many haunted houses does this country even have, anyway?”
“More than you want to know,” Lazarus replied, even though he knew the question was rhetorical. “Look, the more time we spend here arguing, the longer the detour will take. Ignatius said it should be quick, and I believe him. We’ll be in and out and back on the road by dinner.”
“Ooh, dinner,” Zeke piped in, possibly to break the tension but more likely out of actual excitement. “I could go for a burger right about now.”
With a lingering glare, the mage strode back to the truck.
Suppressing an irritated growl, Lazarus followed. She may have been pissed at him already, but he didn’t care.
If anything, the feeling was mutual.
The truck came to a stop in front of an old church with a rickety man standing out front. Afternoon had settled over the town of Lonesome End. The place was a lot like Nowhere—all crisscrossed streets and charming storefronts—if a bit shabbier. It was less the picture-perfect polaroid of classic Americana than something more lived-in and comfortable, a place that left Eden feeling strangely nostalgic.
The church itself sat on the town’s outskirts, tucked down the end of a long dirt road. A large, multi-storied affair, the building had a peaked roof with missing shingles and a bell tower sprouting from the back. They pulled into a parking lot with cracked pavement and faded lines. It was empty. If not for the man out front, Eden would have wondered if the place was abandoned.
A shiver ran down her spine as she climbed out of the truck. The place was unnervingly quiet, the air completely still. A church wasn’t supposed to feel so cold and unwelcoming. Somehow, even she knew that.Lazarus strode toward the man who waited beside the door. The pastor. He was a thin man, slightly hunched. His claw-like fingers grasped onto the rail of the church’s front step as if he were anchoring himself to holy ground.
“Should I wait here?” Eden whispered as Zeke climbed out behind her.
He shook his head, black hair swinging. “Nah, you don’t want to miss this.”
When they approached, the pastor braved a smile. “You must be the hunters,” he said in a grandfatherly voice that was both warm and surprisingly robust. He clasped his wrinkled hands together, and Eden couldn’t help but notice their nervous fidgeting. “I’m Pastor Jackson.”
“I’m Lazarus Morgan. This is Zeke. We—”
Watery eyes lighting up, Pastor Jackson held out his arms. “Ah. God has helped, and God will strengthen.” He looked at Zeke, and then up at Lazarus, his expression cryptic. “A prophet and a man raised from the dead. Fitting names for men who hunt spirits.”
Lazarus grunted dismissively, shifting his weight between his feet. “Family names.”
Pastor Jackson nodded, turning to Eden. “And you?”
“Oh.” She frowned. “I’m Eden. Just Eden. I’m a . . .” she trailed off, unsure of what to say. Just because this man believed in ghosts didn’t mean he knew everything about the world. She realized she had no idea of a hunter’s protocol. Surely they didn’t go around introducing people to the existence of monsters and magic.
Looking over, she caught Lazarus’s eye. He gave a firm shake of his head. “A friend,” she finished, hoping the pastor wouldn’t press further.
“Can you tell us what you saw?” Lazarus pressed, motioning for the preacher to start talking.
It had been going on for months, Pastor Jackson told them, and it was getting worse. The first signs were cold spots. Things went missing and were found where they had no business being: a stack of hymn books moved to the attic, funeral flowers taken to the basement.
“These events were easy to write off as coincidence or some unintended prank,” the pastor said gravely, “but then there were footsteps when no one was there to make them. I’d heard them myself on many occasions, but I always thought—” He stopped and sighed before going on. “I always thought I just heard things. And then the boy saw it.”
“What, exactly, did he see?” Zeke asked, motioning for the pastor to go on.
Eden wondered if this was a routine aspect of every job. The initial talks about being sure it was actually a ghost and not some prank, as Pastor Jackson said. There must be a process to weed out the wild stories from the real hauntings, but were they ever wrong? It seemed wildly inefficient to investigate every supernatural claim to come their way. What if the ghost in Lonesome End’s church didn’t exist? What if they wasted all this time for nothing?
Pastor Jackson hesitated, as if describing the spirit might summon it before them. “He saw a figure. An incomplete figure made from a shimmering blue light. An apparition. I and the others did not believe the story, not at first. I had thought we found the culprit behind our pranks in this child. But then, late one night, I saw it with my own eyes.”
“The apparition?” Lazarus asked, leaning forward with interest.
“It was a woman. I can tell you that much. Like the child described, she seemed incomplete. She was walking up the stairs, fading in and out of existence. If not for the boy, I’d have thought myself hallucinating. At first, that was what I thought. Surely it couldn’t have been a spirit. It was my lack of sleep coupled with the boy’s frightening story. Surely. And if it was a spirit, then what was I supposed to do but pray?”
“So what happened?” Zeke prodded.
“The boy kept to his story, and the local paper shared it as a hoax. The very next day, I received a call.”
“Ignatius Luna,” Lazarus concluded.
Pastor Jackson smiled. “A kind young man. He said he could send a couple of specialists my way to clean this right up, and here you are. My prayers are answered, and my congregation will be none the wiser.”
“Yeah, it sounds like you’ve got yourself a ghost.” Zeke thoughtfully rubbed his chin before turning to Laz
arus. “What do you think, an ordinary spirit that managed to find its way through the veil?”
“Someone with close ties to the church,” Lazarus mused. “Ignatius said there was a graveyard.”
“It’s around the back,” Pastor Jackson offered, looking over his shoulder.
Lazarus nodded enthusiastically. “That’s good. Chances are your spirit is buried somewhere in there. It’s not fully corporeal, either, which means this will be quick. All we’ll need to do is draw it out and release it into the Good Night.”
The hunters went back to the truck to get their supplies, which consisted of several firearms, spelled sunglasses, and a couple of channeling coins. Hades escaped from the bed when Lazarus lowered the tailgate, running off into the desert. Neither of the Morgans seemed worried.
Pastor Jackson led Lazarus and Zeke up the front steps and into the church. Eden followed, coming through the main door into an airy, high-ceilinged lobby with a staircase against the far wall. She looked around. To their left was the arched entrance into the sanctuary, and on the right, a long hallway.
“I’ll take upstairs,” Lazarus said as he surveyed the lobby. “Zeke, check out the sanctuary?”
“On it.” Zeke walked off, heavy boots thudding against the polished floorboards, shotgun slung over his shoulder, the pastor trailing behind.
Eden decided to join Lazarus as he made for the second floor.
The stairs led up to a long hallway. There were no signs of ghosts, at least not that Eden could see. She followed as Lazarus stepped to the side of the hall and withdrew something from his pocket.
“What’s the plan?” she whispered, leaning close.
“You can talk normally.” He turned over a set of mirrored aviators in his hands, the same pair Eden had imbued in the truck. “Lesser spirits don’t fully interact with our world until you force them to.”
“What does that mean?” Eden asked, her voice still low despite Lazarus’s reassurance.
“It means she—the spirit—is going about the tasks she would have done in life. Hearing us talking as we walk down the hallway shouldn’t draw her attention.” He put the aviators over his eyes. Eden appraised him. It wasn’t a bad look highlighting his sharp cheekbones and sloping nose.
“Why would she do that?”
They started walking down the corridor, stopping to peer within an open doorway. Lazarus stepped inside, looking around a makeshift library with leatherbound tomes on metal shelves. A desk with an old computer sat beneath the window, the monitor covered by a note saying to speak to Pastor Ford for access.
“Because she doesn’t know she’s dead,” Lazarus replied. He backed out of the room, and Eden followed. “What do you know about the Good Night?”
She bit her lip. Sometimes Mab talked about the Good Night, usually as a curse or a warning. It was in the realm of death and spirits, things Eden avoided. She couldn’t explain it, but the thought always made her uneasy, like a bad dream she couldn’t quite remember.
“It’s like Purgatory, right?”
They entered another room, this one with a series of low tables and miniature chairs. A blackboard read Jesus loves me in a child’s handwriting. Eden walked over and grabbed a piece of chalk, drawing a smiley face on the board.
“It is Purgatory,” Lazarus said. “Souls go there to pass through into the afterlife. But not all of them move on. Usually, the ones that stay have unfinished business or traumatic deaths. Greater spirits fester within the Good Night, growing stronger and more aware, clawing at the veil until they slip through. They tend to come through at places of significance.” He surveyed the board and grinned, then he turned back to face Eden. “Maybe it’s where they died or somewhere they had strong ties to in life. Most of them are lesser spirits, though. Completely harmless and unaware of their departed state. They just slip through the cracks.”
“That’s kind of sad,” Eden murmured as they returned to the quiet hallway. The sun found its way through the long windows, marking the passage of the waning day. Her thoughts drifted toward Mab, out there somewhere, in trouble. The sooner they found this ghost, the sooner they could get back on the road.
Lazarus stalked down the hallway, taking in every inch through the lenses of his spelled sunglasses.
“And you think that’s what happened with this one?” Eden stopped to look over a bulletin board attached to the wall. Her eyes skimmed over event fliers for high school dances, youth groups, study sessions, and baptismal announcements.
“It makes the most sense. Moving objects is pretty tame stuff, so far as spirits go. The spirit probably thinks she’s helping. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s some old lady who couldn’t let go of this place.”
Eden glanced at Lazarus, who had come to stand beside her in front of the board. He was entirely at ease, with none of the broody tension that seemed to follow him around. If Eden didn’t know better—which, she supposed, she didn’t—she’d think he was having a good time. Like he spent his entire life waiting for these moments.
“If she’s not causing any harm, why not let her be?” Eden wondered. “Do you always get rid of a spirit even if they’re not hurting anyone?”
“She has caused harm, though,” Lazarus pointed out. “Just look at how spooked the pastor is. People don’t mesh well with ghosts. And the longer a spirit remains in our world, the more aware it becomes. With awareness comes strength, and eventually, you get a poltergeist. So yeah, we send them all back.”
“How do you do it?”
Lazarus looked down at her and smirked. “You’ll see soon enough. C’mon.” Then he turned and kept moving down the hall.
At the end of the corridor, a narrow staircase was tucked into a small alcove. At the top, Eden and Lazarus found a large attic, low-ceilinged with bare rafters and boxes packed in from one end to the other. Eden didn’t see anything unusual, so she turned to leave, but Lazarus stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“Wait,” he said in a low voice. “She’s here.”
Goosebumps pricked Eden’s bare arms. Without realizing it, she shrank back against him. Her arm brushed against Lazarus, and she jumped. “Where?”
At the end of the aisle, something shuddered, coalescing into a flowing blue form. Eden could barely make out a figure, a human shape buzzing and rolling as if composed of static. It drifted serenely down the narrow spaces between the stacks, more a force of nature than the remnants of a human soul.
Eden’s breath hitched, and she wondered if she’d ever seen anything so sad. So strangely beautiful. It was like looking at an alien, a creature from another dimension. The spirit looped down the path, floating through boxes and crates until it reached the end of the hallway.
Then, without warning, the static blinked and disappeared.
The mage jumped.
Her hand shot out to grip Lazarus’s bare forearm tightly. The contact sent shivers down his spine, throwing him off balance. He looked down to see her eyes wide, lips paling in the cold. If she thought this was bad, he hoped she never had the misfortune of encountering a poltergeist.
Lazarus grabbed her hand and removed it from his arm. Then he calmly reached into his pocket and took out a channeling coin. He held the disk loosely in his hand, not yet ready to activate a sigil. As Zeke said, they were running low on coins, and every shred of power was crucial. The last thing he needed was to burn through the coin’s reserves too early.
The spirit reappeared across the attic, resuming her lazy drifting. He knew the mage would see her as static, viewing the soul with the naked eye. From behind Lazarus’s spelled lenses, the ghost held the form of a middle-aged woman, heavyset with her long hair in a braid. But the structure was partial. As Pastor Jackson said, she was a spirit in fragments, entire pieces wisping away and then struggling to reform. Capturing her would be easy. She hadn’t even noticed them.
Checking that his glasses were secure, Lazarus stepped in front of the mage and broke the silence with a low whistle.
&nbs
p; The spirit looked sharply in their direction and then disappeared. Simultaneously, every bulb in the attic went out with a pop, showering them with glass. The mage yelped as the room darkened, the only light coming from the spirit that rematerialized in their path. In stuttering motions that dipped in and out of view, the ghost moved on them, one hand weakly reaching out as she swept down the aisle.
Lazarus held up an arm to make sure the mage stayed safely behind him. There was no way in hell he was letting her get anywhere near a spirit, even a minor one.
He took the channeling coin and pressed it onto the tattooed palm of his right hand. As soon he made contact, the sigil flared to life. A light emitted from his palm, a feeling of power traveling up his arm and into his core. The spirit flashed and reappeared directly in front of him, her ghostly hand reaching for his cheek.
Flinching, Lazarus dipped to the side, herding the mage back toward the stairs. He wanted to tell her to go downstairs, find Zeke, go somewhere safe, but there was little time for words. The spirit made another grab, her half-formed face painted in confusion, mouth working like she was trying to speak. Lazarus took an instinctive step back. Extended contact with a spirit, even a weak one, could be deadly. That was unless a hunter took proper measures, like the empowered sigil blazing on his palm.
He reached out and grabbed the ghost by the shoulder. The contact curled through her like ripples in a pond. A measure of awareness came over her as she looked down at Lazarus’s hand. He brought it up to her cheek, guiding her eyes into his own.
The ghost’s eyes watered as she caught sight of herself in the mirrored sunglasses. Then they went wide, her form briefly solidifying, and Lazarus knew he had her. As he watched, the spirit broke apart into wisps of light that rose to dance against his glasses, soaking into the lenses like the mage’s spell.
And, just like that, it was over.
Quickly, Lazarus removed the aviators and tucked them back into his pocket. The spirit would remain trapped within them until he set her free. With any luck, that wouldn’t take long. He turned, seeing the mage hovering behind him with a faint smile on her face.
