Jackson froze.
The room remained silent but Ethan could still feel the bitter cold in the room as though his skin had turned to ice, the breath from all of their bodies condensing on the air as though they were in the middle of Central Park on a frosty morning.
‘What is it?’ Donovan uttered.
‘Never mind what it is,’ Glen growled. ‘Where is it?’
Ethan spoke as calmly as he could manage. ‘It’s called a wraith,’ he said, ‘a vengeful spirit.’
‘No shit,’ Jackson uttered, clearly disturbed. ‘We need to leave, right now!’
‘What do you mean, it’s not us it’s after?’ Donovan snapped at Ethan.
Lopez looked across at him. ‘That’s what vengeful spirit means,’ she said. ‘It’s out for revenge.’
Ethan slowly began backing toward the door. ‘There’s nothing we can do here. Call for forensics and an ambulance and we’ll wait for this thing to clear out.’
The team stood immobile, looking desperately up into the darkness of the ceiling like blind men seeking an escape from hell.
‘Stay calm,’ Lopez said. ‘Just back up and get out of the room.’
Ethan nodded. ‘Trust me, there’s nothing to be afraid of.’
The flashlight beams cut up through the darkness and Ethan caught a glimpse of clouds of dust motes swirling upward toward the ceiling as though a terrific updraft had swept through the room. He felt the chill in the air deepen as though energy was being sucked from the hall, and a spiraling vortex of moisture condensing from the air appeared above them, glowing in the pale light.
‘What the hell is that?’ Jackson shouted.
Ethan saw the cloud of moisture coil upon itself and, for a brief instant, he thought he glimpsed a horrific visage haunting the cloud, rage twisting its features. Then the vortex plunged down toward them as though unleashed from invisible manacles.
‘Get down!’ Karina yelled.
Ethan and Lopez hurled themselves aside as a mass of seething, freezing energy rushed across them. Donovan yelled out in alarm as he was hurled backwards out of the room, Jackson spun aside to hit the wall as Glen Ryan was flipped over and crashed onto the ground like a rag doll.
Ethan saw Karina try to get out of the way but, as the vortex blazed past her, she spun sideways and collided with the table in the center of the room, her head hitting the solid wood with a dull thump. She collapsed and hit the ground hard, her pistol falling from her grip.
Jackson let out a cry of terror and sprinted out of the doorway as both Donovan and Glen leaped up and fled the entrance to the room.
‘Christ, it’s after all of us!’ Lopez shouted to Ethan, scrambling to her feet as she dashed across to Karina. ‘Help me get her up!’
Ethan got to his feet and ran to Lopez’s side, and together they hauled Karina’s comatose body up. Ethan hefted her over his shoulder, all the while trying to spot the diaphanous mass he was sure was still hovering nearby.
‘It went for us!’ he said in disbelief.
‘I don’t think it’s too picky about targets!’ Lopez snapped. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
Ethan hurried out of the doorway into the corridor, trying to see in the inky blackness.
‘Let’s get back to the stairwell.’
They were about to head left when a series of cries echoed down the corridor from behind them. Ethan froze as he heard Jackson’s screams for help laced with horror.
‘Dammit,’ Lopez uttered, ‘they took the elevator.’
A shockingly loud banging shuddered through the corridor as Ethan turned and followed Lopez through the darkness toward the elevators. The faint beams of flashlights bounced and jerked crazily in the darkness as they rounded a corner and saw the elevator ahead. The mesh doors were closed, Donovan, Jackson and Glen visible inside and trying to batter their way out, their breath condensing in dense clouds in the white beams.
‘Get us out of here!’ Donovan shouted. ‘The door’s jammed!’
Ethan set Karina’s body down gently onto the carpet and then rushed toward the elevator. As he did so, the air turned even colder as though he had run into an icebox, the hair on his arms standing on end again.
‘It’s here!’ he shouted to Lopez.
Ethan grabbed the mesh doors and tried to pull them apart but, although the doors were not locked, they would not budge, no matter how hard he pulled. Lopez dashed to his side and pulled with him, but the doors remained stubbornly closed.
Ethan let them go and stood back, staring at Donovan, Jackson and Glen.
‘It’s not letting you out,’ he said finally.
A moment of silence filled the corridor, and then the ceiling of the elevator crashed inward as though hit by a giant hammer. The terrific noise smashed through Ethan’s awareness and made him flinch. Another impact crushed the elevator’s sidewall in like a paper bag and sent Donovan flying sideways into Jackson.
‘Do something!’ Jackson hollered.
Ethan looked desperately at Lopez, who was staring wide-eyed and in disbelief as the elevator began folding in upon itself, as though a giant, invisible hand were inexorably crushing it into oblivion.
Ethan grabbed the doors again and pulled frantically on them but he already knew that there was nothing he could do. He shouted into the elevator.
‘What about the service hatch in the ceiling?’
Donovan looked up and shook his head. ‘Too small! It’s for emergency ventilation, not access!’
Ethan saw Donovan’s normally stoic features crumble into genuine terror as the elevator crumpled and collapsed. The three men inside were forced together, shoulders packed against chests, faces grimacing with fear.
‘Do something!’ Lopez shouted at him.
Ethan stared at the dying men and grabbed his hair in helpless desperation as a razor-sharp shard of metal touched the surface of Jackson’s face.
A deafening crash like a gunshot thundered out from the elevator and then suddenly all noise ceased. Ethan’s ears rang as he stared at the elevator, the three men pinned inside it. Then, quietly, the lights flickered back on. Ethan blinked as he felt warmth caress his arms and face as though the bitter embrace of death had been snatched away at the last moment.
He turned and looked at Lopez, and then they both turned and saw Karina lying on the floor at the end of the corridor, a cellphone to her ear. Karina, her head smeared with a thick trickle of blood, dropped the cellphone and shut it off.
Ethan turned back to the elevator.
‘What happened?’ Glen Ryan asked.
‘You got lucky,’ Ethan said quickly. ‘That thing obviously gets its juice from somewhere and it ran out of gas somehow.’
Donovan, his face pinched between the elevator wall and Jackson’s shoulder, nodded as much as he could.
‘You want to get us the hell out of here? It might come back.’
Ethan pulled his cellphone out of his pocket as he turned and walked back toward Karina. She slowly dragged herself to her feet, one hand holding her head.
‘You want to tell me what that was?’ he asked her. ‘What did you do?’
Karina refused to look at him. ‘Called for back-up,’ she replied flatly.
41
The mirrored-glass exterior of the law school flashed with the reflections of dozens of strobe lights in a flickering kaleidoscope of blues, oranges and reds as Ethan stood with Lopez beside an ambulance.
The body of Muir, the lawyer, was wheeled into the vehicle by a pair of paramedics, his battered remains covered with a black body-bag.
From the entrance of the building walked Donovan, Jackson and Glen. All three of them were carrying water bottles and Jackson had a blanket draped across his shoulders. It had taken the fire service almost two hours to cut them free from the mangled wreckage of the elevator car. Donovan reached them first.
‘Karina did tell you to take the stairwell,’ Lopez pointed out.
‘Noted,’ Donovan snapped, clearly having
been divested of every last shred of his sense of humor. ‘Tell me, everything.’
‘It’s not of this world,’ Ethan replied. ‘We don’t know how to deal with it yet.’
Donovan’s features were creased with an anxiety that Ethan had not seen before. The solid rock that was the police chief was crumbling after what he had witnessed.
‘You two know damned well more than you’re telling me. I want to know everything,’ Donovan insisted.
‘So will the manufacturers of those elevators,’ Ethan reminded him. ‘That’s two of them crushed by unknown forces in as many days.’
‘Coroner’s going to have a hard time explaining how the lawyer died, too,’ Lopez said.
Donovan looked at the body thoughtfully. ‘Suicide,’ he suggested. ‘Long fall.’
‘Not long enough,’ Ethan said. ‘That ceiling was maybe twenty feet up. No way he could have got into that mess.’
‘Then it stays with us,’ Donovan insisted. ‘We can’t afford to create a city-wide panic right now.’
‘We told you what it is that’s doing this,’ Lopez said, ‘a vengeful spirit. It’s called a wraith.’
‘I don’t give a damn what it’s called,’ the chief shot back. ‘I want to know how it’s stopped.’
‘It isn’t stopped,’ Ethan assured him, ‘until justice is done.’
‘Justice?’ Glen asked as he joined them. ‘Justice for what, and how?’
‘Whatever happened to that spirit,’ Lopez said, ‘when it was alive, needs to be corrected. It was wronged and it’s seeking revenge.’
‘For what?’ Donovan asked, confused. ‘Even if you’re right, how can we know whose spirit it is or how it was wronged?’
Ethan turned to face Donovan directly, his face barely inches from the chief’s.
‘That’s what’s been bothering me ever since we got out of that building,’ he said. ‘This wraith, supposedly, only attacks the people who wronged it during life. So why would it be going after you three?’
Donovan looked at Jackson and Glen, and shrugged. ‘How the hell would we know? Maybe a disgruntled criminal? Maybe somebody got put away for a crime they didn’t commit and got iced while inside?’
‘Doesn’t match the hits on the clerk, the lawyer or the thieves,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘Fact is, the only thing that ties them all together is the Pay-Go robbery.’
Donovan’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘That could mean it’s the wraith of somebody killed on the bridge in the accident, maybe.’
Ethan nodded. ‘Like Tom Ross’s wife or daughter.’
‘You think that’s who’s doing this?’ Jackson uttered, his eyes wide like an animal caught in headlamp beams. ‘Why the hell would they be coming down on us? That accident wasn’t our fault.’
‘They may not see it that way,’ Lopez replied. ‘You ever heard of a poltergeist that could be reasoned with?’
‘This isn’t a goddamned poltergeist,’ Glen snapped. ‘This is the mother of all weird demon shit!’ He looked about for a moment. ‘Where’s Karina?’
‘She’s taking a break,’ Lopez replied.
Donovan looked at each of them in turn. ‘You’ve got jurisdiction of this case but not my officer. Take me to her immediately.’
‘Your officer?’ Lopez echoed. ‘The same officer that we had to carry out of that hall after you took off with your tail between your legs?’
Donovan ground his teeth in his skull. ‘I didn’t see her go down.’
‘Then you weren’t paying enough attention,’ Ethan snapped. ‘You’ll see her when she’s good and ready, not before.’
Donovan fumed on the spot for a moment before he turned away and stormed across the lot between the fire truck and the ambulance. Glen Ryan looked at Lopez.
‘I could do with seeing her,’ he said.
‘She could have done with you not high-tailing it out of there, too,’ Lopez uttered, barely looking at him. ‘She wants you, she’ll find you.’
‘Karina and I are none of your business!’ Glen snapped as he pointed at her. ‘You stop sticking your nose into it or I’ll—’
Ethan’s knuckles pushed against the base of Glen’s throat as with the other hand he grabbed the younger man’s wrist and spun him around. Glen hit the side of the ambulance and found himself pinned there, his face squashed against the cold metal. Ethan peered at him with interest. ‘You’ll what?’
Glen coughed as he tried to swallow, but couldn’t.
‘Let him go,’ Lopez murmured. ‘He’s just a little boy.’
Ethan considered sending Glen sprawling onto the asphalt, but instead just shoved him sideways. Glen stumbled, rubbing his throat as he glared at Ethan.
‘What goes around, Warner.’
Ethan smiled coldly. ‘Ain’t that right.’
Glen stalked off and Jackson looked at each of them in turn, before turning and hurrying away. Ethan looked at Lopez.
‘We’re not going to get much help from them now,’ he said. ‘This whole thing just got a lot more complicated.’
‘We could still be wrong,’ Lopez pointed out as they started walking toward Karina’s car. ‘Maybe this isn’t about revenge.’
‘You saw what happened to Eric Muir,’ Ethan replied. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence. What bothers me more is that the wraith went for Donovan.’
‘You think that he had something to do with this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ethan replied, ‘but there’s definitely something more going on than we know about, and I don’t like surprises.’
They turned a corner alongside bright yellow police-cordon tapes and saw a television crew already setting up. Ethan caught sight of a photographer standing nearby, camera at the ready, looking toward the law school.
Ethan and Lopez had rounded the police tapes alongside a fire truck, and had been concealed from the view of the television crew and a handful of bystanders. The photographer, hood up and concealing their features, was side-on to them and had not seen them emerge.
‘Get the car and follow me.’
Ethan launched himself into a full sprint, aiming directly at the photographer as he lifted his camera and took a shot of the ambulance leaving the site with the dead lawyer aboard.
Ethan’s headlong dash alerted him. The photographer’s head snapped round at the sound of approaching footfalls and instantly he whirled and took off down the street. Ethan sprinted past the television crew at full speed and barely ten yards behind the photographer.
He saw him slip his camera into a pocket of his thick winter coat, struggling to seal the pocket up as he ran out across 44th Drive and dodged past a slow-moving vehicle. Ethan hurled himself across the vehicle’s hood as it screeched to a halt, sliding off and hitting the ground at a run again as he closed in on the wildly fleeing reporter.
The runner turned south, heading toward the Metro on Court Square as he cut across a tree-lined plaza and headed for Jackson Avenue. Ethan pushed hard, just a few yards behind now and closing fast. He reached out as they cleared the plaza, gambling that the runner wouldn’t head right out across the lanes of traffic.
The runner suddenly slammed to a halt and ducked down, then jerked backwards into Ethan’s path. Ethan stumbled as he tried to avoid him but the reporter’s body crashed backwards into his legs and sent him flying over them.
Ethan hit the tiles of the plaza hard, rolling into his shoulder and coming up onto his feet in time to see the reporter dash between cars flowing south-west on Jackson. Ethan struggled on in pursuit, his joints aching from the impact as he fought to regain lost ground. Cars honked their horns as he ran across Jackson and into Court Square Park, a circular affair with a small clump of trees on the east side and cars parked along the sidewalk beyond them.
Not this time.
Ethan plunged between the trees in pursuit but this time he kept running, dashing through the copse until he burst out onto the sidewalk on the opposite side. He turned back, scanning the trees for his quarry to emerge.
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A car’s tires squealed as it turned onto Court Square, the beams flashing across Ethan as he stood on the sidewalk. He saw Lopez driving Karina’s car and then pointed into the trees in front of him.
Lopez did not hesitate. She swerved the car up onto the sidewalk and switched on the high beams to illuminate the copse in bright white light. Ethan saw the trees glowing in the beams and then the figure that dashed from behind one of them, back through the treeline.
Ethan sprinted back into the treeline, hearing Lopez’s car reverse off the sidewalk behind him as he ran, and he burst out onto Thompson Avenue only a few paces behind the reporter. They sprinted across the street and the reporter vaulted a chain-link fence into a courtyard filled with old vehicles.
Ethan flew lithely over the fence into the courtyard, just in time to see the reporter whirl and flick one foot out toward him. Ethan careered sideways, sweeping his right arm down and across to block the blow as he staggered off balance.
The reporter spun with surprising agility, one fist trying to catch Ethan with a back-handed punch. Ethan threw his left forearm up and smashed the wrist aside, regaining his balance as he drove his bunched right fist straight into the man’s chest, just below his throat.
He heard a gasp of shock as the reporter was hurled backward by the force of the blow. He tumbled into the chain-link fence, one hand flying to his chest as he struggled to breathe. Ethan surged forward, driven by anger. He grabbed the reporter by the throat and pinned him against the fence, then reached up and yanked the hood aside.
The streetlights cast a pale glow down on the face that stared back at him, and, all at once, Ethan felt the air sucked from his lungs as the strength drained from his limbs. He staggered backwards as though struck, his jaw hanging limp and his eyes wide in disbelief.
The reporter was a blonde, her hair tumbling out from her hood, and her green eyes seemed dark in the shadows cast across her face by the streetlights above. But there was no mistaking her features, no doubt who she was.
Joanna Defoe stared back at Ethan, but she did not speak.
The Eternity Project Page 24
