I immediately reached out and placed my left hand over the phone. "Hey, look, I'm sorry okay? I don't know what the hell is wrong with me."
He looked up from the cell phone and I noticed the angry look in his eyes was melting away. "It's cool. I know you're freaked out right now, but try to remember that I am too. And remember that I'm on your side, Julie. I've always been on your side."
I could feel my throat tighten, so I clenched my jaw tightly and pushed back the urge to start bawling because I needed to keep it together. Too much was at stake.
"I know, Marcus," I said quietly. "And I apologize."
He grunted as he slipped his cell phone back into his pocket. "Fair enough. Are we going to do the ghost hunter thing now? Because it's getting dark."
"Yeah, let's go," I said. I gripped my backpack tightly over my left shoulder and took a deep breath.
It was time to meet Stephen Richardson.
Chapter 17
The small wooden sign pointed to a series of graves on the crest of a hill with a view of downtown Calgary. The sun was a thin amber streak on the horizon and the sky was painted with a flat row of clouds in purple and pink hues as the heat of the day gave way to a mild breeze coming in from the west. I could hear the ticktick-tick of the cemetery's sprinklers in the distance and I hoped they were on a timer because the last thing I wanted when seeing my father for the first time in more than a decade was to look like a wet dog.
Okay so I was a little freaked out about meeting him.
Marcus hummed quietly as we left the asphalt path and wandered between two rows of headstones that curved around a concrete fountain with a statue of an angel holding a trumpet as its centerpiece. The ghost of a woman wearing a flapper's dress with hair in a tight weave and a glittering headband pointed to the other end of the fountain and I felt a faint tingling of spectral energy brush against my face.
It felt mildly reminiscent of something I'd not felt in many years, and I knew we were close.
"Almost there," I whispered. "I can feel him."
"Is he going to be a poltergeist too?" Marcus asked nervously.
"Nope," a voice answered from behind us.
"Shit!" Marcus blurted. He stumbled over a flat grave marker and landed flat on his face. I spun around and drew on my magic, sending out a wave of compressed force that shot through the midsection of the spectre, blasting a small wrought iron bench and sending it careening ten feet into the air. It landed with a dull thump beside a large poplar tree.
"Nice way to say hello, pumpkin," the spectre said. "Good reflexes."
It was my father, and he looked just as I remembered.
You know, except that he was see-through.
He was stood about five feet away from me, his translucent arms folded calmly across his chest. He had a smooth complexion and a prominent nose that was framed by a pair of chubby cheeks. His hair was neatly cropped in a military style taper, and I could see that it was thinning along the top. He was dressed in a Spider-Man t-shirt along with a pair of Bermuda shorts and he was wearing sandals with what looked to be white gym socks. Apparently my father had no fashion sense, even in the afterlife.
Oh, and he was floating about six inches above the ground.
"Dad?" I said, in barely a whisper.
The ghost smiled faintly and nodded once. "Too many years have passed since I last saw you and by God, haven't you grown up into a beautiful young woman! You have your mother's eyes and you're as graceful as she looked on the night of our very first date – it was a night like tonight. You know, except we weren't in a cemetery – actually I first met your mom in a line at Peter's Drive-In during the summer solstice. Is it still in business? Best milkshakes in the Western Hemisphere, I swear."
"It's still there," I said.
He gave me a mournful look for half a second. "Man, what I wouldn't give for one of those shakes again. Anyway, I've been following you since I detected your magic when you got to the cemetery. You're going to want to work on your peripheral focus, kiddo. It'll save your bacon one day, trust me."
"But the ghost of the soldier pointed our way up here."
"To my grave," he said, as he floated over to Marcus who was slowly getting back to his feet. "Who's the skinny fella?"
"His name is Marcus," I said, hoping like hell that my best friend wouldn't faint in my father's presence.
"Marcus Guffman?" he said in a surprised voice. "Amanda and Wallace's kid?"
"Un-freaking-real!" Marcus said in astonishment. "I can see you plain as day! Man, I wish I had my spectrometer because up to now, Julie's been the one who can see ghosts, not me."
"Just means your mind is open enough to let you see the kinds of things most people turn a blind eye to, kid," he said.
"You know me?" Marcus asked.
"Knew you. Everything is past-tense when you're dead. Anyway, your mother met Julie's mom at daycare. We had your folks over for dinner a few times. They still alive?"
"Dad!" I said, shocked that even a ghost could manage to embarrass me in front of a friend. "That's totally not cool."
"Rats. Sorry, kiddo. That came out the wrong way. Here, sit with me for a moment. We need to have a little heart-to-heart and time is running short."
I walked over and sat down beside him. Marcus kept his distance but eyeballed my father closely. My head was filled with a stew of thoughts and intense feelings that I had no way of processing. Dad had been gone for so long, and now here he was sitting beside me. His vaporous body shifted and stirred with supernatural energy and I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch him out of fear that if his spiritual form were to come in contact with my magical energies, that he might disappear entirely.
"Dad," I said, as my throat tightened. "I want to stay with you here more than you can possibly imagine, but I need your help like I need air to breathe. Mom is in the hospital. Something attacked my school and–"
"And you're hot on the trail of the culprit, sweetheart, I know. The spirit world's a big place and word travels fast among those of us who still hang out with the living. You going after whoever did this is pretty brave, kiddo. It's a helluva thing to duke it out with someone who can overpower a witch with your mother's experience and I'm proud of you for fighting back. I just wish I could be the guy fighting back; you're still so damned young."
"Thanks," I said. "How did you know I'd go after who did it?"
He appeared to take a deep breath and then he exhaled slowly. "Because that's what I would be doing, even if I were out-gunned. Then again, a Shadowcull is pretty much out-gunned every time he or she does the dirty work for the covens. Hell, I'd tag along with you, sweetheart, but I'm bound to this place until your mom joins me in the afterlife."
Marcus edged closer and appeared to be a bit more relaxed. "I should probably be bouncing off the walls right now because ghosts aren't supposed to be real and here we are in a creepy cemetery talking to one, but what the hell. Mr Richardson, what's a Shadowcull?"
He shrugged. "If the average, run-of-the-mill witch is responsible for protecting the world of mortals from the things that go bump in the night, then a Shadowcull is the one who prevents that bump in the night from happening in the first place. This city has been without a resident Shadowcull for more than ten years – until now."
I arched my eyebrows. "What do you mean by until now?"
He turned his wispy face toward me and gave me a worried look. "It's your birthright, sweetheart. My blood runs through your veins and that sets you apart from all the witches in your order. I'm going to throw caution to the wind here and ask you, why do you think your mom has disavowed her own coven?"
"Because she hates all that political stuff," I said. "At least that's what she's told me all my life."
He grunted. "Yeah, that's part of it. The other part is that they'd have seconded you to become a Shadowcull's initiate and you'd be trained up to mete out coven justice to anyone who posed a threat to the mortal world."
"Coven justice?
But I thought that's what tribunals were for!"
"You're not entirely wrong, sweetheart. But a Shadowcull works outside the boundaries of what the average person would say is ethical. He or she is dispatched by a coven to use any and all means necessary to eliminate a threat up to and including the use of black magic."
I nearly fell off the concrete bench at my father's revelation. Black magic? It was black magic that was responsible for putting Mom in the hospital and I didn't want any part of it. "What if I have no interest in being a Shadowcull?" I said indignantly. "Don't I get to have a say?"
My father's look of concern wasn't going away. "It's your pedigree, Julie, and your magical signature makes you stand out like bonfire at midnight. You have to learn how to defend yourself against the Left Hand Path because they'll be coming after you, and sweetheart, those guys will stop at nothing."
Marcus adjusted his backpack and let out an exasperated sigh. "Here's what I'm not getting: if Julie is supposed to have some kind of special skill because her father was a so-called Shadowcull, well how can she be expected to do what you did in life when nobody has ever taught her? I mean, how can she protect herself?"
Dad let out an amused chuckle proving that ghosts, apparently, still have a sense of humour. His wispy form disappeared, reappearing less than a second later on his headstone about twenty feet away.
He pointed to a shovel at the foot of his grave and said, "How does she protect herself? She starts digging."
Chapter 18
Marcus was knee-deep in soil as I kept a watchful eye for anyone who might see us. It was pitch black now thankfully, the quarter-moon concealed by clouds. The only sound that could be heard besides the sound of shovel-fulls of moist earth being dumped into a pile next to my father's headstone was the sound of Marcus cursing under his breath.
"Aside from being highly illegal, Julie," Marcus griped, "I'm not sure if digging up your Dad's grave while he looks on from the spirit world is either unbelievably creepy or points to the most dysfunctional family in human history. I'm not opening the casket!"
My father's form dissolved from the top of his headstone and reappeared beside Marcus. "There's no casket, kid," my father whispered. "If my body hadn't been cremated, one of my enemies would have dug me up and they'd have probably sold my corpse to a necromancer, and jeez, who wants that? Some of my ashes are mixed in with the soil and there's nothing of any value in my grave unless you know what you're looking for. Just keep your eyes peeled for a copper box because all the answers are in there. Trust me on this."
I hunched over as Marcus carefully pushed the blade of the shovel down into the dirt. The edges of a copper box became visible. He prised it out of the ground with the shovel and dumped it at his feet. He exhaled heavily and reached out to brush off chunky clumps of moist clay.
"Wait a minute, kid," my father warned. "You touch that thing and you're going to be in a world of hurt."
Marcus glanced at my father through the corner of his eye. "Protective spells again?"
"Yep," Dad's ghost made a grunting sound. "That box is laced with sigils that I etched right into the metal. Kiddo, I'm a member of the dearly departed, so I can't disarm the spell. Looks like it falls to you."
I blinked a couple of times and held out my right hand to feel through the layers of magic surrounding the box. "It's a very complex protective ward," I said, concentrating. "But it feels familiar somehow, like I've seen this magic before."
My father's ghost nodded. "That's because I designed it to be recognizable to only one person – you."
Marcus grabbed my wrist. "Be careful, Julie."
I let out a nervous sigh as I closed my eyes tightly. Within seconds, my focus was immersed in multiple layers of interlocking magical energies that had been knitted together like a thick wool sweater. Strand after strand of emerald energy glowed in the darkness like individual lengths of neon, humming and throbbing as I carefully searched for a loose thread. After a moment, I'd found what I was looking for and I reached out with a whisper of magic, giving it the tiniest of tugs. The complicated protective ward surrounding the metal box slowly dissolved at my command and I gave another whisper of my magic for good measure.
"I-it's disarmed," I said quietly, as a bead of sweat rolled down between my shoulder blades. "I don't know how I did it, but it's disengaged."
"You drew on a deeper level of magic, kiddo," said my father with a twinge of pride in his voice.
I smiled at him for a short moment and then gazed down at the box. I slid a brass bolt on the front of the box. I took a deep breath to compose myself and then carefully lifted up the lid. The interior was remarkably dry; in fact it looked like the contents had been hermetically sealed from the elements. I shrugged and decided that my father's magical ward must have been stitched together so tightly that not even moisture from the ground would be able to penetrate the box. Inside were two items: a thick book with a drab olive cotton duck cover and a smaller wooden box with complex runes and sigils engraved in its smooth, rich surface. I reached for the book and pulled it out of the metal box.
"Your grimoire," I said with a bit of an edge in my voice. "Don't tell me, it's a Shadowcull's diary."
"Sort of," my father said. "My grimoire was always intended to be yours one day. It contains notes on the arcane, strategies and techniques to defeat dark agents; a who's-who of the magical world. All the main players are listed in that book, not to mention whether they are an ally or someone to be watched closely."
I unzipped my backpack and slipped both the box and the book inside. I reached for the wooden box and tried to open it but the tiny locking mechanism wouldn't budge.
"It won't open," I said, holding the box up for my father's ghost to see.
He nodded. "I know. Do you have your amulet? That's the only thing that will open it, and you'll understand why in a moment."
I reached into the hip pocket of my jeans and pulled out the amulet. I gave it a small rub with my thumb and then held it like a poker chip over the tiny locking mechanism. There was a quick snap as the metal bolt disengaged. I opened the box.
Inside was a two-inch wide copper band.
"It's a bracelet," I said, sounding slightly deflated. "It looks too big to fit me, Dad, and I already have my amulet to use as a focus for my magic."
"Uh-huh," he said in a knowing voice. "Put it on."
I took out the bracelet and examined it for a moment. It was highly polished and resembled the colour of a freshly minted penny. There were no sigils or engravings on its smooth surface but there was an oval recess about two or three millimetres deep in the center. It slid easily over my left hand and dangled loosely from my thin wrist.
"There's a hole in it," I said. "What's supposed to go in there?"
My father pointed to my amulet that was dangling from my fist. "It's a Shadowcull's weapon," he said. "The bracelet is a focus, just like your amulet, but when the two separate pieces are combined, it acts as an amplification device for magical energies. Slip your amulet into the recess and you'll see what I'm talking about."
I glanced at my amulet and then back to the oval recess in the bracelet. I shrugged my shoulders and unhooked the latch on the chain, then pulled the chain through the metal loop on the tiny charm. It popped into the recess with a click, and the band instantly tightened around my wrist. It was three sizes too big half a second ago and now it fitted snugly against my skin as if it had been custom-designed for me by a master craftsman. But that wasn't all. Not even close.
I felt an intense surge blast through my body as the bracelet's power intermingled with my magical signature. It was as if the bracelet had injected adrenaline into the naturally occurring magical forces from within and my spirit literally vibrated with magical energy. I took a hesitant breath as I glanced up at Marcus. He stood there with a blank expression but that wasn't what grabbed my attention: his entire face was encased in a blanket of colors ranging from Indian Ocean blue to deep sea Mediterranean green. His aura s
tood out like a beacon, swirling and crackling with living energy and I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch it, the colours were too vivid to be real.
I gazed out at my father and became speechless. Instead of the vaporous entity I'd spent the last hour with; his body had taken solid form as if he'd been coated with a shimmering film of light. I climbed out of the hole and gazed out in wonder at the cemetery. All around me were the spirits of the dead, all radiating different intensities of spectral waves as far as the eye could see.
And I could hear things.
The sound of a moth's wings beating with percussive rhythm like a helicopter blade slicing through the air. I shut out the sound of flying insects to hear dew forming on the grass beneath my feet. I looked down to see one tiny distinct droplet of moisture rolling down an individual blade of grass. I spun around as Marcus climbed out of the hole. I could hear his heart beating and the sound of his blood pulsing through his veins and I could even feel slightest variations in his body temperature.
Poltergeeks Page 13
