by Ron Ripley
The two of them stood across the street from the Mill. They had finished a bottle of malt liquor between them and their courage had received the necessary boost.
“Ready?” Ruby asked.
“Ready,” Marian answered.
As one, they stepped off the curb and began to cross the street.
They hadn’t even reached the halfway point when a pair of headlights, set on high, blasted them.
Ruby let out a string of curses and Marian joined in. Over their angry words, a man called out, "Where are you going?"
Marian let him know what he could do with his question, and the man laughed.
“You two want some money?” he asked.
The inquiry silenced both of the girls.
“Turn your damned headlights off,” Ruby yelled.
The lights went out.
Marian and Ruby rubbed at their eyes and Marian said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You two were going to go into the Mill,” the man said.
Marian opened her eyes and looked at the speaker. He was a short, fat white man dressed in what looked like an expensive suit. The car he stood next to was a black Mercedes. Gold rings decorated his fingers, and Marian wondered if it would be better to just rob the man.
The thought evidently crossed his mind as well, because he pulled open the left side of his suit coat.
From where Marian stood, she could see the grip of the pistol in a shoulder holster.
“How much money are we talking?” Ruby demanded.
“Come a little closer,” he said. “I won’t bite, and I know you won’t.”
Not with that nine you're carrying, Marian thought angrily.
With cautious steps, she and Ruby approached the man. When they got within five feet of his car, they stopped.
He smiled at them, a flash of gold teeth. There was a strangeness to the man that set Marian’s own teeth on edge, and she knew he was bad. He was someone who liked to hurt people, and for nothing more than to cause pain.
“What do we need to do?” Ruby asked.
“It’s easy,” the man said, his voice smooth. “Keep an eye on the Mill for me. Soon, probably in the next couple of days, two men are going to come here. One will have a scar down his face, and his eye will look like a damn cotton ball. The other will be bald. No hair at all."
“What about ‘em?” Marian asked. “What do you want us to do?”
“Kill them,” the man said.
Ruby shook her head as if she hadn’t heard the man.
“What?” Marian asked.
“Kill them,” he repeated. “Now is this something you can do?”
He asked in the same calm voice Marian’s grandmother used when she wanted to know if Marian could go to the bodega for her.
A look in the man’s eyes showed he was serious.
“Yeah,” Ruby said, putting bravado into her voice. “Sure it is.”
The man smiled. A wide, grotesque expression that made Marian’s stomach tighten.
"I'm glad to hear that," he said. The man leaned into the car and then took out a briefcase. It was black leather and locked. His thick thumbs spun the correct combination, and he flipped up the latches, the metallic clicks loud in the night.
The stranger opened the case and turned it towards the girls.
Inside, were two stacks of hundred dollar bills, two handguns, and two clips. Everything was wrapped in plastic.
“The pistols are new,” the man explained. “They are nine millimeters. Fifteen in the clip, one in the chamber for a total of sixteen rounds. There are ten thousand dollars split into two piles of five. The weapons are cold. They were stolen from a gun store in Maine before you were born. The bullets were prepared by our gunsmith, they cannot be traced via any manufacturer.”
Marian had seen weapons and cash before, but it had never been offered to her.
“Will you do it?” the man asked.
“Hell yeah,” Ruby said, laughing. Marian nodded her agreement, unable to take her eyes off the money.
“Now,” the man said, closing the briefcase and locking it. “The combination is three, two, one. Nice and simple. I will know when the men are killed because someone will be watching the Mill.”
The calm way in which he stated the fact brought reality back into focus.
He smiled and handed the briefcase to Ruby.
“Now,” he continued, “if you get the bright idea to try and do anything other than that which you have agreed to, I will kill you.”
Marian looked at him, heard Ruby inhale to say something and then stop.
There was a mad glint in the man’s eyes. Part of him, Marian saw, hoped they would do something wrong. Anything.
“I can assure you,” the man said, his voice pleasant, “that you will take an extremely long time to die. And you won’t beg for death.”
“No?” Marian asked, her own voice sounding faint and strange.
“No,” he whispered. “Because the first thing I do is cut out the person’s tongue.”
He smiled at them again, winked, and got into his car. The engine purred into life, and the man put it into gear. Marian and Ruby watched him back the Mercedes up a few feet, then shift gears again.
The stranger beeped the horn twice in a friendly goodbye and drove off.
Marian looked at the briefcase in Ruby’s hands and wondered what it was they had actually agreed to.
Chapter 33: Planning and Preparation
“How’s the head?”
Shane winced at the sound of Frank’s voice. He squinted and looked across the room to where Frank sat.
“You’re pretty damned heavy,” Frank said, taking a sip of coffee. “I honestly thought I was going to have to drag you into the downstairs bathroom to get you cleaned up.”
Shane closed his eyes and let out a groan. His head ached and something pulsed unpleasantly behind his eyes.
“You’re not hungover,” Frank said.
“No,” Shane agreed, his voice sounding like a tire driving over broken glass. “Hit my head.”
Frank nodded. “You’ve got a bump the size of an egg on your forehead. I’m surprised you didn’t split your skull open.”
“Too much scar tissue,” Shane said.
“Too thick,” Frank retorted.
“That, too,” Shane said, sighing.
“What do you remember from last night?” Frank asked.
“Nothing,” Shane replied. With tremendous effort, he sat up, head hanging down and blood pounding in his temples. “Not a damned thing. What happened?”
“Evidently you drank more than usual,” Frank said. “Then you threw up. At least twice, and fell into it. You were a hell of a mess.”
“I’m sorry,” Shane apologized.
"That's not the worst of it, though," Frank continued.
“What?” Shane asked, lifting his head up. “What else did I do?”
“Nothing you did,” Frank answered. “Jack Whyte is back.”
Shane blinked, his mind processing information far slower than normal. “Wait. What?”
“Jack Whyte,” Frank repeated. “The Englishman.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Shane said. “How in the hell is that even possible? His bond with the button was destroyed. Oh no.”
Frank raised an eyebrow.
“His bones have to be nearby,” Shane said. “Where did you see him?”
“He walked into the pond.”
That simple statement sent a chill through Shane. His heart raced, and he forced himself to breathe through his nose, trying to calm down. He cleared his throat and said in a low voice, "The pond."
Frank nodded. “Do you think his bones are in there?”
"Maybe," Shane said. "I sure as hell hope not. He might have a pretty good radius for travel, though."
“Is there a way we can find out?” Frank asked. “Historical society maybe?”
“Yeah,” Shane said. He winced as he nodded his head. “Over on Abbott Street
. Maybe the library too. They have a pretty good collection of histories about the city.”
“Okay,” Frank said. He paused and then asked, “Shane, what’s up with the pond?”
Shane hesitated, sighed and said, “You know the house is haunted.”
“Yeah,” Frank said, grinning. “Kind of figured that one out.”
“Well,” Shane said. “There was another ghost. Someone bad, and she was in the pond.”
“How bad?” Frank asked.
Shane glanced at the clock, saw it was only eight, and remembered the historical society didn’t open until ten.
“Bad,” Shane said. “We’ve got some time. This will take a little bit.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “Let’s hear it.”
Shane took a deep breath and began to tell Frank about Berkley Street.
Chapter 34: Forced to Believe
Kurt and Marie sat in the Main Street Diner next to City Hall. They had finished their breakfast and their coffee. The waitress had taken the dishes away, and the two of them sat in the booth, ignored by the other patrons. Marie knew the owner and had told Kurt they wouldn't be bothered.
He tore his napkin into small strips. A nervous habit he thought he had broken himself of after his divorce.
As he shredded another piece, Kurt realized he hadn't after all.
In a low voice, he said, "Ghosts are real."
Marie nodded.
After the shock of Bill’s death, and going to Shane’s house, Kurt thought that Marie would reassure him that the whole thing wasn’t real. That it was all just madness.
She hadn’t though.
“How can they be real?” Kurt asked, picking up another piece of napkin.
“I don’t know how,” Marie said. “I just know that they are.”
"But it doesn't make sense," Kurt said, his disbelief and anger spiking. "None of it does. You die, and you go to heaven, or you go to hell. Damn, maybe even purgatory. But you don't hang around."
Marie watched him, her face impassive.
"It doesn't make sense," he grumbled and tore the piece in his hands apart.
“It doesn’t have to make sense,” Marie said. “Nothing does. All we can do is accept what our senses tell us in this regard. You saw what happened to Bill. I’ve seen other things that I don’t want to talk about, let alone remember. The point is, Kurt, that we have to accept what we have seen, and what we’ve experienced.”
He grunted but didn’t speak.
After a few minutes of silence, he reached up, rubbed the bare skin of his scalp, and asked, "Do iron and salt really work?"
“Yeah,” she said. “They work. And so does fire.”
He blinked. “What?”
She explained to him how they salted and burned the bones of ghosts. How it was the only way to destroy them.
“What happens if you don’t?” Kurt asked.
“Then you don’t get rid of them,” Marie said. She sat back in her seat and fixed her ponytail. Her face was harsh, her eyes hard. Kurt had worked with her on a handful of cases. Nothing more than grunt work, but he had always been respectful to her. Which she had reciprocated.
“So you think this is something we can do?” Kurt asked. He dropped the last piece of napkin and stuffed his hands under his legs, making certain he didn’t pick up another one.
“Of course, it is,” she answered. There wasn’t a trace of doubt in her voice.
“Is it as dangerous as they said?” Kurt said.
“Yes,” Marie replied. “They didn’t oversell it, and they didn’t understate the dangers. There is a chance we’ll be killed. Or worse.”
“Worse?” Kurt scoffed, shaking his head. “What the hell could be worse?”
“Your soul might not be allowed to leave,” she said.
The idea struck him like a fist, causing him to blink and shake his head. Then a horrible thought arose.
“Marie,” he said, pulling his hands out from beneath his legs and putting them on the table. “Is Bill’s soul there?”
“It might be,” she replied.
“God in Heaven,” Kurt whispered, and he dropped his head into his hands.
Chapter 35: Information Gathered
Shane stood with Frank in the kitchen. The afternoon sun poured through the windows over the sink while the two men looked out the glass of the back door. Wind rippled the surface of the pond and bent the stiff reeds back. Branches, still bare of leaves, resisted the wind’s efforts, and dark clouds raced by in the sky above.
Shane reached up and scratched the remnants of his left ear. The tattered flesh ached more often than not, and when he was concerned about something, anything, he had a tendency to scratch them. He dropped his hand down to his side and looked at the pond.
It reminded him of his childhood and all the terrible things that had occurred. The water was never restful to his eyes, never peaceful. It held dark secrets and threatened violence.
And now the ghost of Jack Whyte had slipped into its depths.
Shane was certain it meant that Jack could enter the house.
Shane sighed and turned away from the window. He went to the table and sat down in one of the chairs. Frank joined him a moment later. The former monk looked anxious, which was an expression Shane hadn’t seen on the man’s face before.
“It’s supposed to be nearby?” Shane asked.
He had already asked the question twice before, and Frank had answered it the same number of times.
Frank answered it again.
"Yeah," the man said without any hint of aggravation. "No one's sure exactly where the tree was. It came down in some storm, and they harvested the wood. There had always been a rumor that a murderer had been lynched from it, but that was all. Just a rumor.”
“Well, we know it’s not,” Shane said. He rapped his knuckles on the table. “Damn.”
“We need to take care of this,” Frank said. “Before we even think about going into the Slater Mill. We can’t leave him here to wait for us.”
Shane wanted to. He wanted to unleash Courtney on Jack, but such a plan could backfire. Given Courtney's tenuous state of mind, she could attempt to destroy Jack, destroy Shane, or sit and watch them tear each other apart.
And for once, unfortunately, Carl was no help. Jack Whyte was stronger than the ghosts in the house. Even combined they wouldn't be able to face him. This, Carl had told him, was confirmed by the fact that he had been able to return to his bones. Not all of the dead, it would appear, could remain after an item they were bound to was destroyed.
“What are you thinking about?” Frank asked.
“How strong he is,” Shane answered.
Frank nodded. “The question is, do we try to take him alone, or do we try and do it with Kurt and your friend, Marie?”
Shane’s shoulders slumped. “Good question.”
Frank was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "We could use it as a dry run."
Shane waited.
“Listen,” Frank continued. “You told me Marie can handle herself.”
Shane nodded.
“And Kurt’s no slouch. I mean he recognized an issue at the Mill. He’s got some basic skills as a cop,” Frank said, “which means he should have a good baseline for disciplined responses. I think we might be able to work with this.”
“I don’t know,” Shane said, scratching at the stumps of his missing fingers. “Being able to handle a police situation is a far cry from dealing with an enraged spirit.”
“I know,” Frank said. “And I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful. But seeing how powerful Jack evidently is, we’re going to need more than the two of us. And, since we’re bringing Kurt and Marie into the Mill with us anyway, we should do a test run.”
“This is going from training wheels to a Harley Davidson Panhead,” Shane said, unable to keep the doubt out of his voice.
“Well,” Frank said. “I was thinking of asking for a little more help as well.”
“From who
?” Shane asked.
“Carl,” Frank replied.
Shane sat back in his chair. “Carl?”
Frank nodded. “If Jack can make it as far as the pond, then it means Carl can make it as far as Jack’s bones. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right?”
“Yeah,” Shane said. “Yeah, I think you’ve got something.”
“Now we don’t need Carl to do anything other than help run some interference with Jack,” Frank continued. “He doesn’t have to go toe to toe with him. Carl won’t have to do anything other than serve as an early warning system. Just an alarm. He can keep his eyes open, and when, or if Jack shows up, then we can retreat if we haven't gotten close enough to the bones."
Shane thought about it and then grinned. “Damn. I think that might work out.”
“We’ll just have to ask Carl,” Frank said. “And if he says yes, we’ll get in touch with Kurt and Marie.”
“Okay,” Shane said, standing up. “Let’s go talk to Carl.”
Frank got to his feet, and the men left the kitchen together.
Chapter 36: Impatient for Results
Kurt had met with the psychologist that the Police Department had assigned him. The woman, Dr. Lee, had been compassionate without treating him like a child and Kurt had appreciated that.
She hadn’t signed off on a ‘Return to work’, and Kurt was fine with her decision.
It would give him time to do what needed to be done.
Since his discussion with Marie, Kurt had been wracked with worry. All he could picture was Bill, as a ghost, trapped somewhere in Slater Mill. Imprisoned and kept from Heaven. Shane and Frank hadn’t set a time for going into the building, Frank informing him that preparations weren’t done yet.
But Bill was Kurt's partner, and there was no way Kurt was going to let the man’s spirit continue to be held in the Mill.
Kurt stood in the shadow of the old powerhouse, the smokestack rising up from it to stab at the night sky. From his hiding place, Kurt could watch the Mill. Fewer people than usual walked near the building. Or even within a hundred yards of it. The only sight slightly off was a teenage girl who sat in the playground.
