by JL Bryan
"Mati Price!" I said, hoping she had a little attention and energy left to spare.
Her pale, opaque face turned toward me. Then she charged, slipping free of her captors, and slithered away through the cabinet door, into the crawlspace.
Then I kicked it shut.
Stacey and I had installed a thin layer of lead on the back side of the cabinet door that morning, painting it to blend so, hopefully, Nicholas and Hayden wouldn't notice it was there.
This wasn't an absolute barrier to the host of angry spirits in search of revenge—it wouldn't hold them forever, because there were any number of ways for a ghost to enter that crawlspace without using the door, and eventually they would figure that out.
For the moment, though, the angry host of partially-visible ghosts hesitated.
"It's all right." I stood up to face them. "She's gone. You're all free to go."
"Uh, Ellie," Stacey whispered, moving closer to my side. "I don't think they want to go just yet..."
Yeah, that was a problem. The ghosts—several children, two adults—closed in around both of us. I'd dangled the most valuable prize in front of them, the chance to revolt against their captor and punish her for all she'd done...and then I'd pulled it right away again.
Which left Stacey and I as the targets for a gang of very angry ghosts.
"Stacey," I said. "Turn off the reverse lullaby—"
Then they attacked us. A little boy-child's face filled my vision, twisted with more hatred than anyone that young should have been able to express.
Their shapes may not have been crystal-clear, but their claws and teeth were sharp. Now it was my turn to learn what it was like to get ripped apart by wolves.
"What now?" Stacey asked, while the child ghosts knocked her to the floor. The ghost of Hannah Gibson pressed against her, smelling again like burning flesh and hair. "Ellie?"
"The lullaby—"
Stacey reached for the remote, but it had been knocked from her fingers. The vengeful ghosts held her in place while they tore into her. Slash marks appeared on her arms, neck, and face, as if Freddy Krueger were attacking her in her sleep.
The ghosts swarmed around us now, angry, pale and contorted faces flickering in and out of shadows. Wailing rang in my ears; teeth gnashed at my skin.
I had not expected these ghosts to turn hostile on us, not at all. I figured they would be on our side after we broke Mati's spell over them. They were free to go now—but they either didn't realize it or they didn't care. Or they were so filled with wrath at Mati that they just had to unleash it on somebody.
I couldn't move, either. They were supercharged by the gear downstairs, very likely, with plenty of energy to fuel their rage and their attacks.
"Ellie..." Stacey moaned. I opened my mouth, and tiny, sticky, cold fingers reached inside, between my lips, pinning my tongue in place.
More of them tore into me. A boy-child ghost bit deep into my leg, just above my knee, his teeth like long, ice-cold needles.
It was a disaster, and our nearest back-up was probably still zonked out downstairs. There was still Hayden—maybe Mati's lullaby hadn't put him out since he would have only heard an electronic reproduction.
If Hayden was still awake, he would have first run inside after losing contact with Nicholas, then spent some time trying to rouse Nicholas, possibly failing or succeeding, then he would likely come upstairs next, hopefully arriving right about—
"What the hey is going on in here?" Hayden shouted to be heard over the reverse lullaby, which was still blasting. He switched on a searing white light, nearly blinding me, but that wasn't such a big deal with all the choking, scratching, and biting already happening.
The room was impossibly bright. He was definitely not using a flashlight—it was more like one of the powerful floods from the array downstairs. Hayden must have been wearing some kind of backpack with a power source to make it portable.
The ghosts flew apart in the searing simulated sunlight. Stacey and I collapsed to our knees, exhausted.
"Did we get the level boss?" Hayden asked.
"Huh?" Stacey asked, still gasping for air. I didn't bother asking. He would talk more, I was sure of it.
"You know, like in a video game," he said, pointing the light back toward the hall. It was still bright as day in the room, but with less of a scorching desert at high noon feeling. "There's a big boss at the end, but first you have to defeat the level bosses along the way."
"Ugh." Stacey shook her head, gazing at the floor while she caught her breath.
"I don't know what that ghost kid had on his fingers, but they tasted filthy," I said. "Stacey, how bad are you?"
"Lots of cuts," she said. "I feel like I just had a fight with a rabid cat wielding a blender. I think I'll live. You?"
"Yeah, looks like it." I found a couple of deep scratches across my cheek. "I might be a little uglier after this."
"Wear your scars proudly," Stacey said. "Might as well, right?"
"So the bad guys are gone or what?" Hayden asked. "They got to Nicholas. He's out cold."
"Powerful ghosts," I said. "I think we broke the bond holding them here, but they ended up mad at us for some reason. We should probably all just get out of here right away. The ghosts will wander their separate ways if they don't have us to focus on."
Hayden nodded. "So you girls want to go get a drink or what?"
"No, Hayden," I said. "Nicholas is alone down there, in danger. You need to go carry him out to your van where he's safe."
"I didn't know you cared about him so much."
I sighed. "We obviously have to protect the...team. Whether we like the members or not."
"That's a good slogan," Hayden said. "Is that from a movie? Hoosiers? No, wait—"
"Go get Nicholas!" Stacey jabbed him in the arm, and he jumped.
"I'm not sure I can carry him all by myself." He looked meaningfully at Stacey. "Hey, you're a tough, strapping girl—"
"You can just drag him," Stacey said. "It'll be fine."
"I could use the help—"
"You had it until you said 'strapping.' Now go."
He sulked, then started toward the door.
"Leave that floodlight," I added.
Hayden gave an annoyed-teenager sort of grunt as he shrugged off the backpack and left the bright light on the floor. I picked it up so it wouldn't set the house on fire.
We waited until his footsteps had retreated down the stairs, then Stacey turned to me.
"Did it work?" she asked.
"Let's have a look," I replied. We were both pretty battered, but we had to take care of certain things quickly, before Hayden, Nicholas, or anybody else could come back and ask questions.
We grabbed our backpacks from the hall. Hayden was already calling us frantically on the headsets—and I was already missing the pleasant hiss of white noise—but Stacey told him to stay calm.
Back in the nursery, Stacey opened the cabinet door leading to the crawlspace. She got to work prying loose the painted lead panel before anyone could discover it.
I wriggled ahead into the dark crawlspace on my stomach, pointing my flashlight ahead of me. When I reached the end, I jabbed my light forward a couple of times, rapping it against the back wall of the crawlspace until it toppled over.
Okay, it wasn't the real back wall. It was a thin panel of plywood, inserted to create a false back with a hidden compartment just beyond it. The panel wasn't lead-lined, etched with religious symbols, or otherwise ghost-proofed in any way. It was only there in case Nicholas or somebody had decided to look into the crawlspace.
Behind the false panel sat one last ghost trap, and it was sealed tight.
Chapter Twenty-Six
"She got away?" Kara watched me with arms crossed as Stacey and I unloaded gear from the van. The interior of our building was almost unrecognizable now, with the walls of Kara's new office dominating one corner. This left much less space for actual work to be done—even our long worktable had b
een significantly shortened—but at least there was plenty of room for Kara and Nicholas to each sit in their own offices, doing whatever it was they did all day.
The other, minor PSI workers looked busy at their workstations and fashionably corporate in their sharp black suits. It was looking less like a ghost-catching shop, full of odd tools and parts for building ghost traps and custom gear, and more like an accounting firm. At least Jacob might feel more at home with the new look, but then he rarely visited the office. He had his own, normal work life that wasn't remotely supernatural.
Nicholas stood with Kara, watching us work. Hayden used a digital clipboard to check in the inventory as we stored it inside the new cage-front lockers. He even helped us with the heavier items. Well, he helped Stacey, not me so much. I kept my hands off the heavier stuff once I noticed that.
"I'm going to need a key to this, by the way," I said to Hayden, rapping my knuckles on the locking cage door. "So I can work. You know. Do my job."
"We'll see what corporate thinks," Hayden replied. He held my gaze for a weird extra moment, considering Stacey was the one who interested him the most. I hoped he was in cahoots with Nicholas as far as covering up our secret Anton Clay investigation. We still had a lot of gear out at the old theater and gas station, taking readings, so an accurate inventory count would reveal thousands of dollars' worth of stuff missing.
Kara looked suspicious, anyway, like she already knew something fishy was going on. Of course, she'd never come close to liking me, so maybe I was reading too much into it.
"You said she got away, Eleanor?" Kara asked.
"It's Ellie. And yes, I said she got away. Or you might say she was clawed away to the other side by the angry ghosts of her murder victims. Our plan went too well. We empowered and freed her victims, and they pretty much went after her hammer and tongs. Do you have that expression in Russia? Hammer and tongs?"
"Oh, yes." The cold, angry look on her face seemed to indicate she was thinking about coming after me with those particular hand tools herself.
"So that's what happened. They dragged her off to the other side, or down to Hades, or whatever's out there beyond this life."
"And you simply allowed this to happen?" Kara asked. Wow, I could really feel the icicles dripping from her words. I could almost see them—long, thin, sharp like fangs.
"When we evict a murderous ghost from our client's home and other spiritual forces drag it away out of our plane of existence, we usually count that as a win," I said. "The client's happy and safe, the world's a better place—"
"Spare me the sunbeams," Kara said. "Our policy is to capture and retain entities for research, not to send them flying away forever out of our reach. Nicholas?"
"I reviewed the policy with them," Nicholas said. "To be fair, Kara, the ghost was surprisingly powerful—"
"So powerful that you decided to take a nap during the extraction," Kara said, looking no more happy with him than with me. "Why have I been cursed with such incompetents?"
"Oh, I don't think you're incompetent!" Stacey piped up.
"I said incompetents, not incompetence," Kara snapped.
"Huh?"
"She's not saying 'incompetence' like the condition of being stupid," I explained. "She's saying 'incompetents' as a plural noun. As in, I'm an incompetent, you're an incompetent, and Nicholas is an incompetent, too."
"Ohh!" Stacey beamed for a moment as the lightbulb clicked on in her head. Then the other lightbulb clicked on, too, and she frowned. "Hey, that's not a very nice thing to say, Kara."
Kara glared at her, then shook her head, stalked away to her new corner office, and slammed the door, as though she just couldn't tolerate our presence anymore.
Fine by me.
After she'd gone, while Stacey was rummaging in the van, Nicholas leaned uncomfortably close to my ear, taking my arm in his hand, like he was escorting me to a formal ball or something.
"You forgot our deal," he whispered.
"No, I tried. You saw how many traps we set up. I was sure she would fall for at least one of them."
"That's too bad. She was a remarkably powerful ghost, able to put other ghosts to sleep, as well as the living."
"I'm sure she would have made an interesting subject for your research buddies. I'm sorry. Next time, okay, Nicholas? There are plenty more, um, ghost fish in the ghost sea."
"I suggest you take care not to let any more of the ghost fish slip free of the ghost hook."
"Or the ghost net," I said. "If they're ghost shrimp."
"I fear we are straying from the subject. I will need to instruct you in more effective trapping techniques."
"Okay. Let's schedule that for a different day."
Stacey and I finished unloading the van, and then we were free to go. Stacey headed home to sleep, but I stayed behind.
I stepped into the little cage elevator at the side of the diminished workshop area. It rattled as I rose above the room. Nicholas and the other PSI folks gave me curious looks as I traveled up and out of sight into the ceiling.
Nobody attempted to stop me from visiting the top floor of the building. They couldn't, really, because PSI did not control the third floor. Not quite yet, anyway.
Calvin's saggy-faced bloodhound Hunter ran up to greet me as the elevator arrived in Calvin's living room. Well, Hunter doesn't really run; his fastest move is a kind of jiggling waddle-jog.
I petted him while I took in the cardboard U-Haul boxes and plastic storage bins. Calvin had already packed up most of his living room. It looked more like a storage unit now, without a single picture left on the wall. He wasn't wasting any time getting ready to abandon the spooky old mansions of Savannah for sunny Florida, to live near his daughter and her new baby.
"How did it turn out?" Calvin rolled into the room, and his loyal bloodhound waddled over to stand by one side of his wheelchair. Calvin was sitting a little straighter in his chair than usual, looking a little fuller and healthier. I think the idea of retirement was starting to cheer him out of a long melancholy.
"Stacey and I freed a bunch of ghosts, and they almost eviscerated us. It seemed ungrateful of them."
"They were angry you denied their chance for revenge."
"You bet they were. Anyway, Hayden came in and sort of saved us."
"Who is Hayden?"
"The one that looks like David Hasselhoff."
"Oh, yeah." Calvin nodded.
"He chased them away with a portable floodlight," I said.
"And the big tamale? Mati Price?"
"We chased her into the crawlspace and into the trap baited with her old earring. She's in my closet at home."
"That doesn't sound like the most secure place," Calvin said.
"Well, I'm not bringing her here, so unless the Ghostbusters are renting out space in their ecto-containment unit..."
"Do you think it will work?" Calvin asked. "Now that you've seen the extent of her ability?"
"I think it's worth a try," I said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
"So, we'll come by for a follow-up next week, or sooner if you want," I told Mackenzie as we stepped into the nursery. She carried sleeping baby Dylan on her arm. "You may even have a few of the child ghosts come and go over the next few nights, as they figure out that they really are free now. But the dangerous ghost is definitely gone."
"I can sense the difference in this room." Mackenzie smiled slightly and nodded in approval. I could feel it, too. The room was much warmer than it had ever been, matching the air in the rest of the house. The jungle theme no longer seemed to carry an undercurrent of menace. The tigers and lions looked plump and cuddly, without a trace of the predatory feeling they'd once radiated. Our EMF readings indicated that we'd cleared the haunting, too.
"Yeah, I guess it's pretty obvious," I said. "I bet your colds and stomachaches will go away. The ghost won't be here to make your family sick."
"It's all been such an odd experience," she said. "I never believed in the su
pernatural. But I suppose we must adapt our thinking to the data rather than ignore or distort the data."
"You said it. Just call me if you have any problems, night or day."
"I cannot wait to have my house back. It's never truly been ours until now." Mackenzie carried the baby over to the crib and gently laid him down. "Just the same, I think we'll be staying in the same room the next few nights."
With the client happy and ready to pay her invoice, I stepped outside, climbed into my dad's old Camaro, and drove home.
My cat Bandit hissed and dashed away when I opened the closet door, like he knew something awful was in there, next to the jar of earth I'd collected from from my old home.
The clear, cylindrical ghost trap was stashed behind some shoeboxes and a dusty suitcase. The gold earring lay inside it.
In the dimness of the closet, I could just discern a trace of mist hovering within. It shifted over time, forming a face, then the figure of a woman, then a shapeless thread of dark cloud.
Mati Price could capture other ghosts with her song, even put them to sleep, rendering them temporarily dormant and powerless.
We had a special challenge with Anton Clay, and that meant finding the right weapons to use against him. He was a frighteningly intelligent, self-aware ghost with destructive powers. Calvin and I had discussed some radical possibilities for capturing him.
Mati's power presented an opportunity. I didn't want to turn her over to Nicholas and Kara for research, because I needed her for my own plans.
"Just wait," I whispered. "Wait, and practice your song, Mati." I was sure she couldn't hear me, inside the leaded glass and electromagnetic field of the trap.
I hid the trap behind the boxes and suitcase again, closed the closet door, and went to the refrigerator. There wasn't much to eat. I found an old apple, cut off the brown part, and went to my couch and slowly ate the rest, pretending not to notice if it was a little mushy and sour. Bandit jumped into my lap, sniffed the apple once, then hopped away.
My thoughts went to Michael. I intended to go see him as soon as I had a quick nap, because I try not to drive when I'm likely to fall asleep behind the wheel from a long, exhausting night. Just a general rule of thumb.
