The Longest Night Vol. 1

by Various

  “You can’t leave us like this!” Kat cried. “How are we to have any fun?”

  “Never trust a ghost,” Wesley said, turning and heading off down the bridge. “Or someone who’s been burned by one.”

  He only made it a few yards before he heard a frantic rustling of paper. “Dear Wesley, I know it’s been an age since we’ve communicated, but I love you and miss you and wish this business with you and your father didn’t have to come between us….”

  Wesley tensed and patted his pockets quickly.

  “Hah!” P. J. called, shaking out the copy of the Hollywood Reporter he’d been waving about earlier. “It’s funny the things you learn as an actor. Kat had to play a pickpocket once. She was a highly convincing one, I’d say.”

  “And look what else I found, two plane tickets, one to England, the other back to Los Angeles,” Kat said. “Fortunately for you I cast an ectoplasmic aura around your precious letter and these nice little tickets. Wouldn’t want them getting soaked and ruined.”

  Wesley held out his hand. “Give those back.”

  “Let us out,” P. J. spat indignantly.

  “Fine,” Wesley growled. “Keep them. Those tickets can be replaced and I know what the letter says.”

  Kat pouted. Wesley never thought he could be so affected by any woman’s expression and wondered if Kat was using some kind of supernatural influence. Then her lower lip trembled, and she said, “We’re not out to hurt anyone. We just wanted to have some fun!”

  P. J. nodded. “Yeah, and so far as that letter…why are you letting it get you down? Our families disowned us so thoroughly we don’t even see them on the other side.”

  Wesley shook his head. “You don’t understand. I’d love to go home for the holidays. There are old friends I haven’t seen since I was a child, places I only visit in my dreams, my mother, other members of my family, so many people I’d like to spend time with again.” He shuddered. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

  “Because you’re lonely,” Kat said. “Like us.”

  Wesley gripped the rail tightly. “My father…he’s difficult.”

  Swimming around in a lazy circle, Kat said, “The world’s only complicated if you let it be. Talk to him.”

  Wesley looked away, glancing up at the stars. It was a freezing night like this—although this night was only freezing because of the proximity of the ghosts, who created “cold spots” wherever they went—when he told his father that he wanted to be a Watcher. The decision had been a simple one for Wes, one that had felt so “right.” At last, he had found his place in the world.

  He’d honestly believed his father would be proud of him, that the man would commend him for devoting himself to helping others. Instead, his father laughed and said three things that would always stay with him: Dreams are for fools, hope is the enemy, and heroes are nothing but pathetic attention-seekers.

  Wesley turned to the glittering lights of Los Angeles, a town of dreams that so often turned out to be nightmares. But is it really so different here than anywhere else? Or is the phenomenon just easier to see?

  So easy, perhaps, that he saw darkness where there really wasn’t any?

  A rustling came from the pond. P. J. was flipping through the Hollywood Reporter with boyish enthusiasm. Kat was next to him, her jaw dropping.

  “Look here! They’re doing a remake of our most famous film, The Cat’s Pajamas! And just when we thought we’d been forgotten.”

  “Our pictures, our names…this is delightful!”

  “We should have won an Oscar for that film,” P. J. said ruefully. Then he brightened up. “But this is even better!”

  “Indeed,” Wesley said, running his hands through his hair.

  “Oh, Wesley, you just have to let us out,” Kat said. “We can’t miss this!”

  P. J. rallied to the cause. “Come on, old boy. We’re good for you!”

  Wesley thought of the way his father had tried to deny his dream—and found he simply didn’t have the heart to refuse the spirits. “Understand something: If either of you misbehaves, I can just wish you back here, anywhere, anytime. And what I didn’t tell you is that the magick only works for vanquishers of great evil so don’t get any ideas when you get up here.”

  The story he had given about the pond’s magick only being available to vanquishers of great evil was one he had made up, and his threat was a simple bluff. Nevertheless, he sensed the ghosts believed him. He murmured the words to revoke his spell and free the spirits from the pond, feeling the slight tingling in his fingers, and the tremor of power that raced from the top of his skull to the tips of his toes as his connection to the pond was severed.

  “All right…you’re free.”

  The spirits burst from the waters, renewed and shimmering with a beautiful blue-white light. Wesley half expected the ghosts to settle beside him on the bridge and shake themselves off like hounds who’d run into a river, but they came up James Bond dry.

  P. J. threw his arm around Wesley as they walked back. “So far as that dodgy dad of yours is concerned, to heck with him, that’s my advice! The man’s in another country. And even if he wasn’t—why let him make up your mind for you?”

  Soon they were passing through the restaurant once more. Kat leaned into him. “You took command of that situation very well. Do you see the way people are looking at you? They’re saying to themselves, there’s a man with a purpose, with some spine. A determined kind of guy who can lick any problem!”

  They are rather, now, aren’t they? Wesley thought, taking in the looks he was attracting. Then he chided himself, realizing the ghosts were, more likely than not, simply sharing a bit of their seductive spotlight to keep on his good side.

  The magazine listed where location shooting would begin, and so Wesley drove the ghosts to the Hollywood Athletic Club, another of their old haunts. The picture was a big-budget affair and security was tight, but Wesley knew enough names to drop from his days with Virginia—and had enough cash and spare enchantments on hand—to gain access. Soon he was inside with the spirits, staring out at a wide expanse that had been transformed into the great banquet hall of a bygone era. He still felt chilly, despite the hot lights, yet no one else the ghosts got close to reacted in the slightest to the cold they projected. Was he the only one to feel the chill in the presence of the spirits? If so, it would be as if they had singled him out, or he had some unique connection to them—but why?

  Dozens, perhaps as many as a hundred extras were on hand, all dressed in vintage clothing from the thirties, all holding drinks or little trays with food. The hall was noisy, filled with the echoes of extras chitchatting, production people shouting orders, and crew members moving heavy equipment into position. An elegantly styled marble balcony looked down on the set from three stories up, and a spiderweb of lights and electrical rigging had been spun across the ceiling, along with a crystal chandelier that appeared to be bigger than Wesley’s entire apartment. The lights bathed the hall in soft amber, with warm streaks of crimson and delicate icy blues adding highlights to the hair, hats, and chiseled cheekbones of the assembled actors.

  The effect was dazzling. It was like stepping back into another time. In fact, this place was so warm, so cheerful, that he was now hardly even feeling the coolness that followed him when the ghosts were near.

  A copy of the Hollywood Reporter was draped over a tall folding chair with some actor’s name stenciled on the back. Wesley picked it up and quickly scanned the piece about this production and winced in surprise.

  The article from the Hollywood Reporter was nothing like the way P. J. and Kat had represented it. Yes, a new version of their film was being done, but their names weren’t mentioned, the title was being changed, and the frothy comedy was being turned into a blood and guts horror film!

  He spun to face the deceitful spirits—but they were nowhere to be found. That’s why he had stopped feeling the cold: P. J. and Kat had slipped away!

  “Never trust
a ghost,” Wesley said angrily.

  He scanned the set, noting the technicians racing around to prepare a shot, several key actors being eased into various positions by scruffy-looking men and women in jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps, and mega-phones rising into the air like trumpets sounding the call for the Last Days.

  He couldn’t spot P. J. or Kat. Even their bright shimmers weren’t giving them away.

  “What are you up to?” Wesley said aloud. According to the trade paper, their simple tale of playful ghosts giving some well-deserving people their comeuppance had been transformed into a kind of Die Hard of the Dead. Wesley remembered their rough treatment of the poor actress at Mann’s who had only mildly wounded the vanity of the spirits, and soon found himself picturing a dozen different deadly outcomes to the night’s shooting: Fake knives replaced with real ones, making murderers of unsuspecting actors; a falling chandelier crushing a group of Hollywood’s elite who had “developed” this mothballed property; a special-effects explosion setting off a blaze that would take the lives of everyone in the place when every door refused to open…

  He glanced about. How could he stop the shooting without looking like a madman? If he made a fuss, he’d be escorted off by Teamsters and perhaps spend the night in jail. In the meantime, the ghosts might still have plenty of time to do their ghastly business.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw a flare of light from the balcony. A couple of figures looked down with something in their hands.

  Oh, no…the ghosts were going to drop something on the actors from above!

  “What the…wait!” Wesley hollered, his words drowned out by the noise of the production. He spotted a darkened stairway and made a dash for it.

  Racing up the steps, Wesley reached for his mystically charged dagger and was reassured by its presence. Then he was on the long, dark corridor that wrapped around the great hall, hushed voices coming to him as the crowd below settled in preparation for a shot.

  “I don’t like this,” a woman said, “Lloyd’s of London won’t like this….”

  “Hurry up and hook me,” a low, strong male voice said. “I always do my own stunts, and this way, we’ll get honest reactions, we’ll have a true element of surprise.”

  Wesley swerved around the corner and stared at the figures he had seen earlier looking up at him in surprise. The man and woman were definitely not P. J. and Kat, though the man, a strapping movie star, had been made up to look like a spirit—albeit a malevolent, blood-splattered one.

  “Can we help you?” the woman asked. She was blond, built like a gymnast, and her T-shirt read SAMANTHA’S STUNTS.

  “If you’re a reporter…” the man said in a patented gravely threatening tone that Wesley and Gunn had emulated from countless adventure flicks and shoot-’em-ups. He looked at the hook peeking out from the back of the actor’s dinner jacket and realized they were about to do some elaborate wire stunt.

  Wesley whipped out his ID and explained, as best he could, that a pair of mad fans of the original picture were loose on the set, that sabotage was likely, that whatever he had planned wasn’t safe.

  The actor didn’t blink. He stared at Wesley, shaking his head. “You people will do anything for an exclusive, won’t you. And that ID. Like that’s even a real—”

  Wesley decked him. The actor crumpled, flopping onto his back.

  “I’m sorry,” Wesley said. “But that was for your own good.”

  The stuntwoman threw her hands in the air. “I’m getting Security!”

  “Good! Do that!”

  She stormed off and Wesley heard voices from below.

  “Someone took our costumes and wigs,” a male extra complained.

  A woman chimed in. “And our makeup.”

  “It’s fine,” the director said. “We have enough people for the shot. Quiet on the set people. And—”

  Wesley couldn’t allow action to be called. He leaned over the railing to call out to the production people, and gasped as a hand closed on his ankle.

  “No interviews!” the actor growled.

  Tipping forward, Wesley lost his balance and went over the edge, his arms flailing. The entire set opened up like the sky on judgment day, gasps of horror and surprise ripped from the crowd as lights spun his way, and cameras were aimed right at him as he plunged. His right hand suddenly caught the cable that was supposed to have been attached to the actor’s harness. But the line didn’t hold; instead it gave only mild resistance and took him flying down in a wide arc over the crowd.

  With a growl of surprise, Wesley felt the line slide from his fingers, and he was turning, twisting, and plummeting toward a table where a dozen steel candelabra stuck up at him like stakes.

  “Here, now, old boy, can’t leave you alone for a minute!” a familiar voice said in Wesley’s ear, and suddenly he was cold again, but alight with a fiery white shimmering glow, and a force was dragging on his coat, steering him toward a pair of open double doors. The crowd blurred beneath him as he sailed over and away from the set. The floor rushed up at him, and he tumbled, rolled, and smashed into a pair of chairs.

  Chilly phantom hands were on him, hauling him to his feet. “What…what’s…”

  “No time,” Kat said, taking one arm while P. J. took the other. Together, they spirited Wesley away.

  In no time at all, they were back in the convertible, Wesley nursing a nasty bruise on his end—and a wretched sense of embarrassment. Kat and P. J. had indeed changed clothes, slipping on outfits that would be seen over their ectoplasmically charged forms. Wigs and makeup had done the rest, rendering them visible to anyone else. Now cracks were showing in their disguises, and their shimmering light was almost blinding. They didn’t have much longer before they’d be called back to the other side. The hour was nearly up.

  “You just wanted to be in the movie!” Wesley realized. “I thought—”

  “You thought the worst,” Kat said. “But that’s all right. We forgive you.”

  “Oh, I know I said never trust a ghost, dear boy, but I didn’t mean us,” P. J. said merrily.

  Kat laughed. “We’re not the typical. Never have been.”

  P. J. drove them back to the hotel. “We only fibbed to you because we were worried you’d leap to all sorts of conclusions if we told you what that story really said.”

  “I punched out one of the biggest stars in Hollywood,” Wesley groaned.

  “One of the biggest somethings,” Kat replied. “What an unpleasant little man. Did you notice how short he was in real life? Nothing like on the billboards.”

  “And they have my face on camera!”

  “I think we may have done a little something to their cameras,” P. J. said. “Ghostly energies can be unpredictable, and all that. And if that actor fellow is anything like the types we used to rub shoulders with, he won’t want the bad publicity. No sir, this incident won’t cause any problems for you, I guarantee it.”

  Wesley rubbed his tired eyes. “You two saved me…and I cost you a chance to be seen on film again.”

  Kat snuggled him. “There’s always the future, dear boy.”

  Shaking his head, Wesley said, “I have to do something for you. What year was it your film came out?”

  They told him—and all the pieces came together for Wesley. “You didn’t win an Oscar that year, did you?”

  “Weren’t even nominated,” Kat said regretfully.

  Wesley thought of the award he’d seen in the pawn shop. There was a corporeal anchor holding the spirits to the material world—and that meant they could be set free!

  “I understand now,” Wesley said quickly. “I see how to help you. It’s that award, the one you were denied. That’s what’s keeping you here, and I know where it is, that must be why—”

  “Don’t be daft, old fella,” P. J. said. “What do either of us need with trinkets and prizes when we’ve got the swellest gift anyone could ask for?”

  “He means each other,” Kat said. “Forever and always,
always and forever.”

  P. J. grinned. “Say it like you mean it, sister.”

  “But—only I can see you, only I feel the cold when you’re about. There must be a reason. Helping people is what I do.”

  “What about when you need help?” Kat asked.

  Wesley wasn’t sure what to say.

  Kat nodded toward the envelope in Wesley’s pocket.

  “There’s joy and pain in life,” Kat said warmly. “We have to choose which one we remember.”

  “And what we remember shapes what we do,” P. J. added.

  Wesley was going to ask exactly what they meant when a siren pierced the night. Red-and-blue flashing lights lit up the night.

  “Coppers,” P. J. said, accelerating a bit. “I was wondering if we’d get a visit from them.”

  “Let me drive,” Wesley said. “The sight of this car speeding along with no one driving…no, wait. The wigs, the clothes, they can see you, and you weren’t speeding, so why—”

  “It may have something to do with a dispute over ownership of the car,” P. J. said sheepishly.

  Wesley’s hand went to his aching skull. “The car’s stolen?”

  “Well, you must have noticed that everyone can see it and only you can see us,” Kat said. “We’re certainly not about to use our ectoplasm frivolously. That bit with the bottle in the alley was one thing; do you know how much we’d have to put out to make everyone see the car?”

  P. J. shrugged. “Yes, and you would know something about putting out.”

  “P. J.!”

  “I just mean you’re so generous, dear.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s what you meant.” Kat turned in her seat, glancing back at the police car. “We’ll handle this, Wesley. You just get home and do the right thing.”

  “The thing that’s right for you,” P. J. said firmly.

  “What—what are you going to do?” Wesley asked, not sure he really wanted to know.

  “We’ll provide a distraction, that’s all,” P. J. said. “Keep those fellas from following you so you can leave the car somewhere and get back home. I’d suggest a quick wipe down for fingerprints.”