They laughed at him and pointed, their little eyebrows knitted together. Some of them leered, many of them laughed, a few clapped hands to their mouth, reprimanding Baxter for “using a naughty word.”
Shit.
Baxter squared his feet and readied his wrench. He didn’t want to fight unless he had to, and this looked like one of those times.
Remember, just because they look like children, doesn’t mean that they are. They’re imps. Little creatures of the dead. They want to hurt you, cripple you...
“Just know that once I’m forced to fight, there’s no going back.” Baxter aimed his words at the two imps he had originally met, but could not find them among the crowd. All of the boys looked the same, and all of the girls, too. There were minor differences, but mostly they all blurred into one mass.
“Ooo, the big giant is scaaared.”
“He doesn’t want us to get huuurt.”
“I don’t think he understands who he’s dealing with.”
Something hit his shoulder. Baxter spun around, and a searing pain throbbed from the site of impact. He clawed at his back only to find an imp had somehow jumped six feet off the ground and was now biting him.
He plucked the imp off and tossed him back into his brethren.
The others didn’t like that.
They swarmed toward him like insects. Baxter spun and swung his wrench in a tidy arc, bowling dozens of imps aside. His wrench vibrated as it hit the imps, and many were sent sprawling back into the walls where they disappeared.
While Baxter had to crouch slightly to hit them with his wrench, he provided a platform for others to leap onto him. They scratched at him and dug their tiny teeth into his spectral flesh, pulling and ripping hungrily through his clothes.
Baxter stood up straight and swatted at the parts he could reach with his hand and the wrench. He hooked his weapon over his shoulder and swished it like a windshield wiper, relieving some of the pain as the tiny creatures were batted to the floor.
Anger began to fuel him. They had seemed so innocent at first. That’s what happens when you let your guard down.
Baxter fired half a dozen shots with his pistol, each shot clearing three to four of the imps and incapacitating them. With every gunshot, they grew more ravenous, and more of them appeared from the walls.
Baxter tried to fight through the pain as more of them crawled over him like scarabs. He eyed the exit. It was only twenty feet away, but it seemed a greater distance than that. He trudged toward the door, clearing any imps that got in his way, gritting his teeth against the pain burning along his back and the backs of his legs.
He reached the door and placed a hand in front of him. He intended to melt through the door and find a way to Jennie. She’d know what to do, surely? These little cretins must be in her bestiary of specters? Only, his hand didn’t pass right through, as expected. The door was solid.
He tried again, walking straight at the door, but he was rebuffed. He punched at the door but only succeeded in hurting his fist.
What the hell? The only walls or doors I know that can do this are imbued with spectral energy. Only the SIA and the SIS have that technology. Why would it be here?
Baxter didn’t have time to question any further, for as he bashed his fist repeatedly against the door, a strange noise caught his attention from behind. The gnawing bites of the imps retreated as suddenly as they had started, and by the time the last of the gnawing had stopped, Baxter’s blood ran cold.
A rolling roar growled from the center of the room. Baxter closed his eyes and prepared himself for what he was about to see. In his mind he saw a giant tiger or a predatory wolf. He pictured the maw of a giant beast waiting for him, dribbling with saliva, a being created from the collected mass of the imps that had oh so recently attacked him.
When he finally turned around, he was not disappointed.
* * *
Jennie felt their presence the moment she arrived on the upstairs landing. She dashed toward the music room and tried to open the door, but it was stuck fast. She banged with her fist and heard only a faint reply from Baxter, lost almost entirely over the growling of some creature.
Jennie crouched and peeped through the keyhole. She could only make out Baxter in front of her, and some large dark shape beyond him. She focused her attention on filtering her power through the keyhole in order to latch onto Baxter.
When the connection was forged, Jennie activated herself and turned spectral. She made an attempt to walk through the door but found that she was blocked.
“What the…”
Jennie tried again, confusion spreading across her features. The door was perfectly ordinary, if a little outdated in design, so why could she not make it through?
A cacophonous howl erupted from the room, and at that moment, Jennie’s patience was lost. “Ah, well. Who needs keys and locks when you’ve got a Big Bitch?”
She drew the ancient pistol from her holster, the unique firearm that somehow looked like it belonged in a time far beyond this one, and blasted the door handle. The wood yielded, leaving a large splintered crater that allowed her to boot the door open.
“Freeze, shit-bags!” Jennie yelled, announcing herself to the room.
Her jaw nearly dropped when she saw what was in front of her.
A monstrous dog, large enough to occupy almost the entirety of the room. Although she wasn’t familiar with dog breeds, she could easily say that it was closer to a Rottweiler than it was a chihuahua. Its fur shone with spectral light, and its eyes were dilated into pure whiteness. It reared on its haunches and snapped its massive jaws at Baxter.
Jennie smirked. “I see you’ve found a new pet.”
“I don’t want one!” Baxter protested. “I’m not even sure it’s a dog. A few seconds ago, it was dozens of tiny people.”
“People?”
“Imps.”
“Oh,” Jennie replied, readying both her guns and eyeing the creature. “You really should say things clearly the first time around. It saves a load of time in re-explaining.”
“I’m sorry, but in case you haven’t noticed, Cerberus is keeping us company, and he looks hungry—”
Baxter dived sideways as the dog snapped at him, missing his form by mere inches. The dog frowned and howled at the ceiling once more.
“Not Cerberus,” Jennie clarified. “Cerberus has three heads and guards the entrance to the Underworld.”
Baxter gave an incredulous laugh. “You talk as though Cerberus is real.”
“You talk as though he isn’t.” Jennie’s arms fell by her sides as her head tilted. “What are you, creature? I’ve never come across a specter that can avoid detection and shift forms like this, too. Usually one, not the other.”
She snapped from her thoughts when the dog whirled on her and bared its teeth. She shot at the ceiling and the specter flinched, recoiling and letting out a booming bark. Parts of the creature’s form separated and rejoined, as though it was about to shed its skin, then thought better of it.
“Not used to firearms, no?” Jennie slowly holstered her weapons. “There. See? We’re no threat.”
Baxter was backed against the wall, his pistol at the ready if he needed it. “Jennie? I’d highly advise against un-arming yourself.”
Jennie looked out from over the top of her glasses. “Really? You’re going to preach to me about how to deal with specters?”
She spread her arms wide and matched the dog’s gaze. It was a fearsome thing, looming fifteen-feet tall. Its maw could swallow her whole, and that’s what she was counting on.
“Hey, bitch. How about you sort yourself out, eh?” She clapped her hands. “Dinner time!”
The dog appeared to grin, before rearing back and then springing on top of her. Jennie disconnected from Baxter and allowed her mortal form to take the brunt of the chomp as the dog’s mouth enveloped her whole.
The dog couldn’t feel a thing. A confused growl rumbled from its throat.
“Sor
ry about this, pooch. It’s just the way it has to be.” Jennie quickly latched onto the dog, returning to her spectral self. Now that they were ghost on ghost, Jennie felt the cramping confines of the dog’s throat. She pressed her hands and feet to the sides and trapped herself in its gullet, causing the dog to choke.
The dog reared up, then retreated back into the corner of the room, as if by shrinking, it might free the blockage. It coughed, it spluttered, it wheezed, and still Jennie held firm.
The strangest part of it all, as Jennie held on for the strangest rodeo ride she had ever experienced, was the flood of memories and emotions that pulsed through the great creature. They came to her in camera flashes, causing her blood to boil as she focused her energy on keeping the dog in check.
A woman in a cream frock, her hair slick from the rain, standing before a house that looked like this one, but where the grounds were neatly kept and the interior maintained. Another flash as the woman looked out from the nest of her four-poster bed at a man and a gaggle of small children.
A crazed woman, dressed like a priestess, but seen through fading eyes. She chanted an incomprehensible incantation before everything went black.
Children crying.
The pain of a grieving mother.
Jennie narrowed her eyes. They had been the first accidents in this house, the first ghosts to have accommodated the halls. But what about the rest? She saw a montage of three brothers laughing and sharing drinks. Blood splattering the walls. A slow-motion video reel of the house falling to ruin.
It was no wonder the people of the neighborhood called this place the monster manor when enough people had died here to create such an amalgamation of spirits. Specters who could…
What? Conjoin? Become one? This gives a whole new meaning to a workplace union.
The creature began to sputter and flicker like the static of an old TV. The dog’s limbs weakened, and from its skin came the shape of dozens of individuals, children, or things that may once have been children, breaking free of the host.
“Baxter, help them along, would you?” Jennie called from the depths of the throat.
Baxter readied his wrench in his hand and hacked at the dog’s leg as though he were felling a tree. The leg shook and flickered, and after the third hit, exploded into a dozen imps who tumbled out and rolled on the floor, momentarily dazed.
That was the first building block. Baxter went for the back leg, and it caved faster than the first. Jennie felt the dog lower to the ground, and the firm channel of its throat became soft and fragmented as the dog weakened and became what it had originally been from the start.
Soon enough, Jennie was standing on solid ground. The floor was littered in dozens of tiny impish creatures, but that wasn’t what caught Jennie’s attention the most. In the center of where the dog had been, were a man and a woman, holding hands.
Their faces were contorted with anger. Dark hair hung lankly over their faces. Though there was clearly a power within them that was impressive, Jennie couldn’t feel them at all. There was no spectral reading whatsoever. Not even a hint.
They stared at each other for a moment before Jennie broke the silence. “I’m sorry we had to do that. We only attack when we ourselves are attacked.”
The couple remained silent, staring at Jennie with dark eyes.
Baxter took a few tentative steps toward Jennie’s side. His hand adjusted on his pistol and the woman’s eyes flicked toward the firearm, then back to Jennie.
Jennie spread her arms out to her side. “This house has been inhabited by darkness for far too long. I know that pain can make the darkness in death alluring, but there is more to life than scaring children and living in solitude, believe me, I’ve seen worse situations turn into brighter futures.”
The man’s arm flexed. His jaw clenched as though he was biting back a thought. The woman simply leered.
“Your residency in this property has caused quite a stir over the years,” Jennie continued, a shadow of a smile on her face. “Your time here has been tortured. Surely you are tired of the anger? Surely you long to be free of this…this…pain?”
A sudden explosion of atrocious sound came as the woman let out a pained scream. The man closed his eyes, waited out the cry, then calmly spoke.
“You know nothing of torture, spectral stranger. This house is all that we have. It’s all that we’ve ever wanted. We will not surrender it for death, nor honor. You are trespassers, and you will leave, never to return, as have so many over the years. Leave us to rest in peace, or you will face your own undoing.”
Jennie frowned. “We can’t do that, I’m afraid. I can’t stand to see specters suffering, so…”
“And what will you do?” the man hissed. “Heal us of our wounds? Strike us into the abyss? Exorcize us from all that we have ever known?” His face twisted into something that didn’t resemble humanity anymore. The imps around them began to scatter as dark energy leaked from the couple. “If you shall not listen to reason, then we have no option but to impart the wrath of all that we know!”
They rose from the floor, the woman’s eyes wide and her mouth agape. Her hair floated around her as if she were now trapped underwater. A dark cloud seeped and grew around them, filtering into the room like ashen cigarette smoke.
“This house and all within it belong to us! There is nothing beyond our control. You do not understand the extent that we and the house are one, and you come here with the audacity to eject us from our nest? To coo us from our residence? You are a new breed of stupid, human…”
Jennie raised her eyebrows, only slightly unsettled by the sudden swell of energy, more so because she still had trouble sensing it within the reaches of her power. Baxter had a signature she could feel a mile off, this couple had nothing.
“Now, let’s not resort to name-calling,” Jennie quipped.
The man erupted in a sudden fury of black smoke, his and his partner’s eyes were shining white beacons, guiding them through the fog. “Begone!”
And then something happened that Jennie had never experienced before. The doors behind her flew open, and a flurry of wind attacked her and Baxter. She braced an arm against the sudden onslaught, but it was too much. The wind dragged them both, pulling them out of the room with monstrous force.
“Hold on, Bax!” Jennie shouted over the wind, but it stole her words. He whipped out of sight, a blur of spectral energy, and disappeared from the room. Jennie’s feet slipped, and she scrambled to clutch the door jamb and hang on.
The shadowy couple was a thunderous cloud and the imps had vanished, disappearing to Lord-knew-where. Jennie squinted through eyelids assaulted with winds and tried to latch onto the pair, to grip them and form some kind of anchor that would keep her in the room.
Her fingers slipped, and she was taken. The wind was unnatural, carrying her on gusting currents which trailed toward the front door. The door was already open and waiting to expel her, and just a few seconds later, her ass hit the soft, damp grass of the lawn. The house coughed her out, then the door slammed shut.
A groan came from the tangles of weeds beside her. Jennie looked across to find Baxter in an uncomfortable knot on the lawn.
He rolled over and straightened himself up, hand massaging his head. “Well, that could have gone better.”
Jennie glanced up at the music room window, dismayed to find that the room now stood in solitary darkness. She huffed. “That’s certainly one way to put it.”
Somewhere from the depths of the house, they could hear the cackling of the poltergeists.
Chapter Four
Route 95, Virginia, USA
Jennie white-knuckled the Mustang on the ride back to Washington.
The highway was almost entirely clear, with only a few semi-trucks and eager businessmen returning from their late-night meetings with their concubines. Clouds drifted lazily overhead, catching the moonlight and turning them a ghostly silver.
They hadn’t spoken for thirty minutes. Baxter watched
the world whizz by outside the window, sensing that Jennie needed time to think.
That was one thing she loved about Baxter, he could read a room. She thought back to all the sidekicks Queen Victoria had given her over the years, remembering their endless chatter and their grating admonishments of her actions.
Jennie chewed her tongue. She couldn’t make heads nor tails of it at all. It should have been an easy job, a walk in the park, but the specters had taken her by surprise.
When was the last time that had happened?
She had read a stack of books and newspaper articles on the monster manor, or, to give it its proper name, Mendleson Manor, and every glimpse of spectral activity had correlated to some kind of presence living there.
She had expected poltergeists and little more. Perhaps a ghoul or a run-of-the-mill specter who hadn’t been inducted into the possibilities of what the spectral world could offer, but whatever that thing was…
It wasn’t entirely natural.
Is any of this natural?
The worst part of it all was that Jennie had allowed herself to get excited. To have cleared Mendleson Manor would have been the icing on the top of the cake, the best way to conclude a job well done in Virginia’s capital.
It seemed that her investment was not going to pan out—at least for now.
“Seems a shame to go home empty-handed,” Jennie announced at last, declaring an end to their silence. Not that it had been complete silence, what with the roaring of the Mustang’s engine and the faint crooning of Billie Eilish playing on Jennie’s phone.
“Empty-handed?” Baxter scoffed. “Rogue, we’ve just spent a week in Richmond dealing with sensitive spectral issues. On your own, you exorcized a two-hundred-year-old poltergeist from Richmond City Hall. Together we gave a warning to the group of cocky specters haunting the Boy Scouts of America. We made connections with a four-hundred-year-old army general who now has your cell phone number and promised to guard the McGuire Veterans Hospital and guide specters into their new life, and still you’re unsatisfied?”
Agents, Agreements and Aggravations: In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service™ Book Three Page 3
