by Nash, Bobby
Recovering quickly, she was back on her feet in an instant, her eyes scanning the darkened rafters of the high ceiling above for any sign of her quarry. It was a tough one to follow as it faded in and out of the shadows. Like the previous attack, it happened fast, followed by an even quicker retreat. She thought it felt more like it was acting on instinct than following an actual plan of attack.
“Do you see it?” Joshua Demerest, her fiancé and partner on this hunt shouted as he sought cover next to a pillar along the far wall with their gear. There were five other similar pillars situated around the circular room.
“No! I…” Alexandra started, then she caught a glimpse of it. She pointed as the ghostly image came into view. “There!”
The ghost swooped down as if to dive bomb the both of them only to swerve at the last possible moment, just out of reach, and swoop back toward the rafters. She wasn’t sure what this creature had been when it was alive because it was hard to identify in its current state. Was this a human who took on a new form after death? Was it a supernatural being when it was alive? Was it a Stay Behind or something else? There really was no way to determine which, if either, scenario best fit, as the facts were limited. Only the ghost’s upper body seemed solid, although just barely so. Although she did not know the specifics behind this ghost’s story yet––and there was always a story––she recognized the being as a water spirit. Made up almost entirely of ethereal vapor, the ghost left a fine mist in its wake, which made it appear as though it had wings. Where its legs should have been was simply cloud-like streaks of condensation.
“What is that thing?” Joshua shouted.
Alexandra smiled. This was not his first encounter with the supernatural, and it was definitely not the first time he had seen a ghost, but some part of Joshua’s brain refused to accept the existence of ghosts at face value. Joshua was always looking for a rational explanation that could explain away the evidence of what he saw before his own eyes. She found his inability to take things at face value charming.
“Stay back,” she told him. “Let’s see if it’s willing to talk to us.”
“You want to talk to it?” he asked, incredulous at the thought. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Do you know another way to find out what it wants?”
“No.”
“Neither do I,” she said, tossing him a wink. “So… we try to communicate.”
Joshua shrugged. He knew better than to argue with her, especially in this area where her expertise clearly trumped his. “You’re the boss,” he said.
She smiled.
Normally, on a job like this, her father, the world-renowned expert on all things paranormal, Hans Holzer, would have been leading the charge. Not that she didn’t enjoy tackling cases with her father, but Alexandra was ready to venture out on her own. Plus, she worried about her father. He sometimes forgot that he was not as young as he had once been. She and her mother were afraid he was going to hurt himself if he kept wading into danger like he was twenty years younger.
On the other hand, she enjoyed taking the lead and showing her famous father that she could handle the job on her own or at least with Joshua at her side. She knew there was still a lot she needed to learn, but she was also a firm believer in the hands on approach to education.
It didn’t get more hands on that this.
She stepped out into the center of the room and held her hands, palm up, out to her side to show that she carried no weapons.
“I just want to talk,” she said in an unemotional voice and listened to her voice echo into the rafters.
The room in itself was not huge, although the high ceilings gave the ghost plenty of space for those not bound by a pesky little thing like gravity to freely move about. Technically, the room was a tower that was part of the old St. Matthew’s church. The church had closed decades earlier when the congregation fell on hard times during the War. When the money ran out, the land and building had been reclaimed by the state where it lay fallow. The building’s structure had begun to deteriorate under the crush of time and disuse. Then, a few months ago a private investment group bought the land and building at auction with the intention of restoring it to its former glory and turning it into a quaint motel that catered to a clientele wealthy enough to stay in such spacious and unique surroundings.
It was a good plan.
Until the new owners discovered the secret that had been locked within the tower long before the church closed its doors. It was they who inadvertently set the screeching ghost free when they opened one of the jars they found stacked in the heart of the tower.
Fortunately, one of the contractors was familiar with the Holzer family business and placed a call with Alexandra’s answering service after letting his fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages.
She and Joshua arrived less than an hour later.
By then, the ghost was mighty angry.
Small barred windows placed high up the tower wall provided the only natural light in the tower. Small alcoves for torches had been set in recesses around the tower, but at present they were all empty. The lanterns Alexandra and Joshua brought with them provided some light, although they were not powerful enough to brighten the entire room. Shadows made excellent hiding places for their ghastly foe and there were plenty of places around them where it could lay in wait.
The room was spartan in terms of décor, with only a simple set of old wooden shelving against one wall that tapered with each shelf above the large bottom level about knee high. Each shelf was roughly eight feet long and the shelves were filled to capacity with glass jars of various shapes, sizes, colors, and designs. There were forty in total. The only thing each jar had in common was a handle and a long thin neck that was topped off with a thick piece of cork and sealed with an even thicker coating of wax earmarked with the seal of the Church of Rome. No date was recorded on the seals, which told Alexandra that they were old, much older than the tower itself.
Lying on the polished stone floor was one of the jars made of a thick frosted glass. The cork lay nearby; knocked loose when the glass jar fell from its perch on the shelves. Alexandra suspected that the glassware had been knocked off its position on the lower shelf to the floor when the new owners and their workers broke through the sealed off entrance to the tower. Judging by the damage done to the entrance that she had noticed when they arrived, it was simply dumb luck that more than one jar had not been damaged. Thankfully, releasing one spirit was enough to scare her clients off from opening more. She did not find the thought of having to deal with a room full of the beasties appealing.
As she had explained to her companion when they first arrived and examined the open glass container, “it was only the thickness of the glass that kept it from shattering on impact.”
The attack from above started almost the instant they stepped into the room so Alexandra has not been able to examine the shelf or the treasures held there. She had a suspicion about the glass jars, but did not want to speculate until she was certain.
Unfortunately, her little friend flying above wasn’t about to allow her time to do just that.
“Can you understand me?” Alexandra asked the spirit flying around in circles above. “We are not here to hurt you,” she said when it did not reply.
“I don’t think he wants to talk,” Joshua said.
“You might be right,” Alexandra said. “Had to give it a shot though. Please, talk to us.”
It was no use. If the ghost could answer, it was choosing not to do so. If not, then it truly was like a wild animal and that made it dangerous.
“What now?” Joshua asked.
“First things first,” she said. “We’ve got to get our ghostly friend here back inside his cage.”
“His what?”
Before she could respond, the ghost dove toward her again, with loud piercing shrieks echoing off the rough stone walls. It was as if it had heard her thoughts and acted accordingly. Maybe he’s not so far gone as
I thought.
Alexandra realized that capturing this spirit was going to be easier said than done as she sidestepped the clumsy attack. She narrowly avoiding the monster’s razor sharp talons, which, in spite of belonging to a ghost whose body was completely transparent, were quite solid and could easily slice through flesh and bone.
The ghost arced back toward higher ground, but not before bumping the edge of the shelf where Joshua took cover. The antique wood shuddered under the impact and threatened to topple over and spill the remaining glass jars to the stone floor.
She couldn’t let that happen.
If her theory was correct, and she was fairly certain it was, those jars had to remain safe and secure. I’ve got to wrap this up before it realizes that… she started, but even as she wished it otherwise, Alexandra could tell that the ghost realized that in its current state, it was still able to touch the wobbly wooden shelf.
Too late.
“Head’s up, Josh!” she shouted as the ghost swooped into another dive, this time headed straight toward the giant glass and wood target in the room.
Joshua stood between the angry ghost and the shelf with only a wooden baseball bat to defend himself. There was no reason to believe that the wood from his Louisville Slugger would have much effect on the ghost, but sometimes a swinging bat caused an instinctive fight or flight response.
He swung the bat and the winged ghost veered away.
Joshua smiled in momentary triumph, but the moment was fleeting. Instead of heading back to safety in the rafters above, the ghost flew in an arc that took him back toward the floor, and the intruders who waited there with far more speed than before.
This time Joshua decided not to press his luck, especially once he saw the winged beast’s claws bared as well as its mouthful of sharp teeth. The ghost screamed an ear-piercing howl the entire way. Joshua dove out of the ghost’s trajectory, managing to escape the sharp claws by only inches.
While her fiancé kept the ghost busy, Alexandra got to work. She searched her tool belt for anything that might help her stop the ghost before someone got hurt, or even worse, before the ghost found his way outside of the tower. The fact that it was still stuck in the tower told her that the stone walls that made up the former church had probably been coated with a special glaze or contained a metal that ghosts could not pass through. She had heard stories of such things from her father and others over the years, but this was the first time she had ever seen a practical demonstration.
Of course, the open hole where the sealed up door had once been was wide open. It would only be a matter of time before her quarry found its way out––unless she stopped it first.
Her belt held several items she had procured in her travels as well as some hand-me-downs from her father’s own bag of tricks. Through Hans Holzer’s journals, Alexandra had learned much about ghost hunting. Sadly, nothing she carried would work against this angry water spirit. That meant she had to try other alternatives.
There were generally three options open to her on a hunt.
She could destroy the ghost, which was often easier said than done. A water spirit, like the one she faced here, was tough, but the greatest enemy of water was fire. A fire, or excessive heat, could destroy a water spirit. Unfortunately, the absence of anything flammable other than the shelves they were trying to protect made that position a tricky one at best. She kept lighter fluid in her pack, but that alone wouldn’t be enough to stop the ghost she dealt with now.
Most of the time, she simply set the ghost free from its tether to the Earth and let it roam freely to the afterlife. This was always her preferred choice, but one that had to be weighed carefully. Most of the entities she encountered were scared and simply lashing out in their fear. Freeing them not only ended the threat posed by the wandering spirit, but sent the ghost onward to the afterlife. She wasn’t so certain that would work in this case. The spirit they faced had been imprisoned so long that it seemed little more than a beast.
That left the third option. Containment and banishment. This option was certainly the most difficult of the three and unfortunately for her, there was no official handbook explaining exactly how to do that. Oh, there were tried and true methods, but not all of them worked on all spirits. Just like the living, the dead came in all shapes, sizes, and creeds.
This was her first water spirit so she was flying blind.
Then her eyes fell once again on the shelf full of jars. She knew they were important and she thought she understood their purpose, if not how they worked. The jars were different, some older than others, different sizes, different colors, but all used a frosted type of glass and all had tall necks with cork stoppers and thick globs of wax to hold them in place.
“Can you keep him busy a few more minutes?” she called to Joshua, who reclaimed his dropped bat.
“I can try,” he said.
“See if you can draw him away from the shelves.”
“You got it.”
As Joshua ran to the opposite side of the room, waving the bat and shouting to the ghost above, Alexandra moved quickly toward the shelves. Kneeling next to the lowest level, she touched one of the jars. It was cold to the touch and she wondered if the glass was frosted or if the contents inside were causing the frost. Using her palm, she rubbed the frost off of the one nearest her and peered inside. For long seconds she saw nothing and was beginning to doubt her theory.
Then an eye blinked inside the bottle.
Startled, Alexandra lurched backward and lost balance. Landing on her backside was undignified, but there was no permanent damage done. Only her pride was bruised. There was no time to worry about bruised backsides or pride though. The jar wobbled on the shelf so she moved quickly to steady it. Her guess had been correct.
These jars acted as prisons for ghosts.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered. Both she and her father had often discussed the possibility of creating a containment vessel for those spirits that couldn’t easily integrate into the great beyond or were simply too dangerous to let roam the Earth. Thus far, all attempts at creating a stable containment unit had failed, but now she knew it was possible. Someone a long time ago had learned the secret that eluded her and her father.
Whoever ran the church before the tower was sealed off knew how to imprison malevolent spirits. It was an important breakthrough. Alexandra was excited at the prospect of researching it further. She was equally excited about the prospect of sharing this newfound information with her famed father.
“Alex!”
But first, she and Joshua had to deal with their immediate problem.
“Lead him toward me!” she shouted as she scooped up the empty jar from the floor in one hand and the cork topper in the other. “This way!”
Not needing to be told twice, Joshua was at her side in a shot. “What’s the plan?”
“We’ve got to get him…” she pointed toward the entity that was still eyeing them from high above. “…in here.”
Joshua looked at the jar with its opening of roughly two inches and then up at the ghost who had attacked him. “You really expect to fit that thing in there?”
“Yes,” she said. “All of these jars are full of ghosts just like our friend up there.”
He spun to look at the jars. “There’s dozens of them! Are you telling me that––?” His voice trailed off and he didn’t finish the thought.
“Yes, I am.”
“This is insane, Alex!”
She smiled again. “That’s what makes it fun.”
“You call this fun?”
Before Alexandra could answer, their shrieking friend summoned up his courage and was once more on the attack. He flew straight toward her and she wondered if it understood what was about to happen. She wasn’t exactly sure she understood it herself.
The water spirit’s facial features shifted as it tried to veer away but couldn’t. As though being pulled by some unseen suction, the water spirit was pulled inside the lip of the jar. It str
uggled to escape, clawing at the air, the jar, at anything solid it could hold on to.
In the end, it was futile to resist and the ghost was sucked completely inside.
Alexandra slammed the cork in place and held it there with her hands, putting all of her weight on it. From inside, she could feel the ghost pushing against the cork and the force of her hand.
“We need to seal this thing quickly!” she shouted.
“How?” Joshua asked, looking around the room for anything that they could use.
Alexandra pointed with her chin. “The bag!”
He grabbed it and began emptying the contents onto the uneven stone floor. “What do you need?”
“I don’t know! What’s in there?”
Joshua smiled as he pulled a miracle out of the bag.
“Perfect!” she said.
Joshua tore off strips from the sticky fabric-like roll and quickly duck taped the cork to the jar. As an added measure he then wrapped some long strands another few times around to make sure it stayed in place.
Alexandra let go and the cork remained seated firmly in place. Only then did she allow herself a moment to exhale. She dropped to the floor and stretched out her sore legs. She looked across the space at her fiancé and smiled. “Good thinking,” she said.
Joshua held up the roll and shook it back and forth in his grip. “Never leave home without it,” he said with a laugh.
Alexandra joined him and they laughed until their sides hurt. It had been a close call but they had won and the case was closed. It would bring much needed income to Alexandra’s fledgling practice and word of mouth of her success couldn’t hurt matters any either.
The building that housed the OAGI was as nondescript as they come.
Housed on the second floor of a four story walk up not too far from her apartment in Soho, The Office of Angel Guides was one of those places a person could pass daily without noticing, but one that stood out like a beacon when someone required their services.
Alexandra Holzer had spent a good deal of time visiting the OAGI over the years, first with her father and later on her own or with Joshua. Although Joshua wasn’t a fan of the place, Alexandra loved her visits. The OAGI was magical.
