by JL Bryan
I shivered, both from the physical cold alone and the emotional darkness I could feel waiting ahead. I might not have psychic powers of my own, but you don't have to be Edgar Cayce to sense a haunting that strong.
“The horse and rider you're so interested in,” Jacob said quietly. “This is his road. He rides from here, from somewhere up there...” He gestured northward along the road, in the direction where I knew it faded and vanished among swampy land bordering the Savannah River. “He might be along later. But the real action is over here, and you already know that.” Jacob started toward the front gate of the cemetery.
“Could you try keeping it closed?” I asked him. “Just to start with?”
“Okay...” He stopped short, looking at the brick and rusty wrought-iron fence across the weedy ditch. “I'm seeing a lot of dark figures boiling inside there. There's a barely-contained rage. They feel trapped. They're restless and they want to come out.”
“So they are contained?” I asked, feeling a glimmer of hope. Maybe our simple remedy had worked for the family ghosts. We certainly hadn't encountered any of them tonight, even though we had our psychic pal with us. They hadn't been shy the previous two nights, not at all. “Jacob, are you saying they can't leave the cemetery?”
“If they could, they'd be out here by now,” he said. “They're agitated. But, you see, the walls and gates of a cemetery have a certain powerful importance to the dead. Sacred ground in general...it can be used to bind them in place.”
“Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're the ones who taught you all of that,” Stacey said.
“There's a lot of ghosts in there,” Jacob said, stepping closer to the cemetery wall. “They're kind of stalking back and forth like a pack of tigers.”
“An ambush,” Stacey said.
“Where?” I asked. My hand flew automatically to my utility belt, ready to blast some holy sounds or extra light if needed. I swept my flashlight across the foggy cemetery and the dark road, looking for shambling gray figures, or Hiram Neville, the rotten-faced guy with the Thomas Jefferson wig. From what Jacob had said, Hiram and some of his heirs lingered here, watching the land, maybe resenting the living.
“That's what a group of tigers is called,” Stacey said. “An ambush. Not a pack.”
“Oh.” I moved my hand away from my belt, placing it casually on one hip as if I'd just been planning to do that all along.
“An ambush of tigers. That makes sense.” Jacob stepped closer to the rusty gate, as close as he could without crossing the weedy ditch at the edge of the road. “What do you call a group of ghosts, then?”
“Oh, that's a...” Stacey hesitated, then glanced at me. “A fright? Right? A fright of ghosts? I've heard that somewhere.”
“If you heard it somewhere, it must be true,” I said.
“What else could it be? A gaggle of ghosts?” Stacey asked.
“That's geese,” Jacob said. He reached across the ditch and touched the old wrought-iron gate. He inhaled sharply and drew his fingers back. “It's cold. I can tell you this particular posse of poltergeists is not happy about being trapped in there. Is that a recent thing? Were they free to roam around at some point?”
“We just closed and locked the gate earlier tonight. It had been standing open for years,” I said.
“Like, maybe a hundred years,” Stacey said. “We had to dig it out of the ground to close it.”
Jacob flicked the shiny new padlock on the filthy, rusty gate and nodded. “Very recent. That would explain the intensity of their anger. You've just rounded up one furious flock of phantoms.”
“Now that we're up close with them, can you tell us about any individuals?” I asked. “It would really help to know who we're dealing with. And anything about why they're here and what's stopped them from moving on.”
“At the risk of sounding chicken, I really don't want to go in there if I don't have to. Ghosts tend to be drawn to mediums like me, and these are particularly angry right now. If they have telekinetic powers...I'd just rather not be torn apart by a weyr of wraiths.”
“What's a weyr?” Stacey asked.
“That's what you call a group of dragons,” Jacob said.
“I see.” Stacey nodded, then held her fist to her mouth and coughed, “Nerd!”
“You're just embarrassed you don't know more about dragons,” Jacob said. “It's okay.”
“I'm embarrassed for both of us. Hey, what are you doing?” Stacey frowned as Jacob stepped across the ditch and stood on the recently churned earth where we'd dug the gate free.
“Just trying to get a closer look at this badelynge of bad-tempered spirits.” Jacob reached over the rusty spikes topping the low, crumbling brick walls.
“Great,” Stacey said. “What's badel...thing? A group of trolls holding hands with a group of elves?”
“It means a group of ducks,” Jacob said. “From my SAT vocabulary workbook. I think it was called Fun with Memorizing Massive Lists of Useless Words That You'll Never Possibly Need Again.”
“Be careful,” Stacey said. “Those spikes are sharp, and they look pretty filthy and disease-ridden.”
I pointed my light at the ground and squinted into the darkness of the cemetery, searching for any sign of the apparitions. The darkness seemed thicker beyond the wall, and the fog had piled up thick on the ground, obscuring some of the smaller and toppled-over headstones.
“It's freezing in there,” Jacob said, waving his hand back and forth over the wall. “Okay. These are definitely the guys who've been going out and visiting the house, stalking around the farm at night. They're extremely territorial. And they're burning up with rage about the intruders and outsiders around here. I mean, they're not screaming 'outlander!' like in the previously mentioned Children of the Corn, but—”
“Careful!” Stacey stepped over the ditch and stood close to him. Hopefully this wouldn't distract too much from his reading. She managed to get in the way sometimes, letting her concern for Jacob's well-being interfere with his need to concentrate on getting in touch with the dead.
“They want to get a message out,” Jacob said. “A very strong, shouting, screaming sort of message about how much they resent the living.”
“So they aren't overjoyed about having their resting place turned into a haunted wilderness for extra cash at Halloween?” I asked. I could understand that. It also reminded me of what Virgil had said, about Jeremy and Amber disrespecting Jeremy's family and heritage.
“They're territorial, like I said,” Jacob repeated. “They won't be happy while the living are still here.”
“I don't get it,” Stacey said. “Jeremy and his kids are still their family, right? Why all the beef with their own family members? It's not like outsiders came and bought the farm after Jeremy's great uncle, you know, 'bought the farm' himself. Jeremy was the closest available blood relative, that's why he inherited it.”
“Good question,” Jacob said. Then his voice dropped low, as if he didn't want to be overheard. I was only a few feet away and could barely make out his words. “One of them is coming forward to address me, I think. He looks like the corpse of some guy who signed the Declaration of Independence...oh, yeah. He's in charge here.” Jacob fell silent, his jaw slightly open and his eyes falling to half-mast as he stared out into the cemetery.
Stacey reached out a hand, as if to poke him in the shoulder. I grabbed her wrist and shook my head. This did not seem to please her.
Jacob's eyes closed and he bared his teeth.
“Get...out...” Jacob's lips didn't move as the voice hissed from somewhere inside him.
“Jacob?” Stacey glanced at me, eyes widened, hands balled into fists at her sides. She obviously wanted to try and help him, but had just enough discipline to keep her hands to herself.
“They all say that,” I told Stacey.
“You...die...” said the voice from Jacob's lips.
“Do they all say that?” Stacey whispered.
“Are we speaking to Hiram Nev
ille?” I asked.
Jacob's head turned toward me, following my voice with his eyes closed, like a blind man trying to zero in on the source of an unpleasant sound.
“Be gone from here,” said Jacob, or the thing speaking through him. Stacey was clearly beside herself with concern over Jacob, casting me a scowl for chatting with the ghost instead of trying to exorcise it from her boyfriend's body. It wasn't normal for a spirit to speak through Jacob on a simple walk-through like this.
“We will leave if you keep yourselves inside the cemetery, and you do not come out wandering at night, terrifying the living,” I said. “Do we have a deal?”
Jacob stood in an awkward position that no living entity would have chosen. One arm reached way too far over the fence, fingers splayed like some kind of satellite antenna slurping up signals from within the burial ground. This left his belly dangerously close to the sharp, rusty points topping the fence posts, practically an invitation for angry ghosts to gut him like a fish. Stacey hovered close, ready to grab him.
His head twisted around, looking up and back at me at an almost neck-snapping angle. Behind his glasses, his eye sockets turned dark, as if someone had injected them full of black ink, just in case we weren't sure whether he was really possessed.
“I'm not hearing a clear answer from you,” I said. “The dead should stay away from the living. The dead should move on. You can all be free of this place, you can all move on to a much better existence. We can help.”
“Silence, wench,” he hissed.
“Did you really just call me a—” I began, but then he lunged forward over the rusty iron fence, putting most of Jacob's vital organs in immediate danger, exactly as I'd feared.
Stacey wrapped her arms around Jacob, and she grunted and pulled to keep him away from the rusty spikes. It didn't look as though she was overpowering him, though. I was already moving, leaping forward and grabbing him around the waist to lend my own strength to the effort. I wasn't going to let some long-dead guy in a wig and a silly hat kill my friends.
“Let him go!” Stacey screamed.
Then Jacob came free with a sudden ease, shoving backwards from the wall. Stacey cried out and fell into the dirt road.
He shoved me, too. I managed to keep some of my balance, but I was still pinwheeling my arms when he punched me in the face.
I went down on my back, landing in the weedy ditch alongside the road, my face just inches from the bulging, uneven brick of the low wall that supported the spiky iron fence. I'd barely had time to register what had happened—I'd gone from pulling hard to protect Jacob's life to crashing into the dirt in three seconds.
Jacob approached me, his glasses missing now, his eyes gone unnaturally dark. There was a stiffness to how he moved, almost an exaggerated formality, and for a moment it wasn't hard to see him as an eighteenth-century man in a powdered wig, marching briskly toward me in what looked like clockwork, military-drilled steps.
Jacob himself usually walked with more of a relaxed shuffle, and kept himself stooped a bit rather than square-shouldered and rigid. The spirit wasn't just speaking through Jacob anymore; he'd hopped right inside and made himself at home with a full-blown possession. If he had complete control of Jacob's body, then he could do anything he wanted to Stacey and me, and to anyone else he might encounter.
He stopped and looked down at me, while I waited for the ringing in my head to subside. I pointed my tactical beam at his face, but that didn't seem to deter him. He trailed his fingers over the rusty spikes topping the fence, carelessly cutting and slicing Jacob's fingers as he approached me. He was not smiling. His face was taut, he lips pressed into a thin line.
“Leave my friend's body now,” I said, doing my best to sound like the authority in this situation. “You've crossed a line. Go back where you belong.”
“I belong,” he said. “You do not.”
I crawled backward through the ditch while he pursued me. Standing up would have been nice, but at the moment I couldn't stop long enough without him grabbing me, so I just continued my desperate backward scramble. He leaned over me, walking at a fast gait, eerily quiet.
Something sharp gouged into my fingertips. Several something sharps, in fact, like I'd placed my hand onto a porcupine's back. It was wild blackberry, an invasive vine with long, narrow thorns that bite deep.
The vine blocked my desperate backward crawl and gave the entity possessing Jacob his chance to grab me. Jacob's hand reached for my throat as he bent closer. I noticed his other hand remained on the fence, his fingers smearing blood across one rusty iron post.
I kicked his inner thigh, meaning to knock him away from the fence and the cemetery. Hopefully, that would break Jacob from the ghost's control.
He staggered sideways, but caught himself, tightening his grip on the fence rail. I winced to see Jacob's sliced fingers clutching the flaky, rusting iron.
His face remained stoic, as if it were also made of cold iron. He stomped one shoe down onto my leg, and then dropped closer and coiled his fingers around my throat. He pressed down, shoving my head back into the weeds.
This was not going well.
Stacey finally showed up behind him, raising her tactical flashlight, which she'd turned off for sneaking-up purposes. The military-grade anodized aluminum shell of the flashlight was just the thing for bashing an attacker in the head, but she looked understandably reluctant to slam the metal into Jacob's skull.
“My land,” Jacob whispered, squeezing tight around my throat. “My blood.”
My brain spun as I tried to figure out how to turn things around fast.
“Hiram,” I croaked, because that's the sound I make when somebody's index finger is jabbing me in the voice box. “What side were you on in the war? Did you take up arms against your king or arms against your neighbor? Did you...uh...fight for your right to bear arms?” I was really hoping Stacey would take the hint here.
Stacey looked from the back of Jacob's head to the arm he'd extended over the cemetery fence, then looked down at her flashlight. Good girl. Before your possessed boyfriend chokes me to death, please.
“I have no king,” Jacob said. “I am sovereign.”
She raised the flashlight as if to crack it down on Jacob's arm, then hesitated. Then she dipped it under his arm instead. He glanced back and opened his mouth just as she yanked the flashlight backward, hooking his arm away from the iron fence, as if prying him loose from electrified chain-link.
Jacob roared, his mouth stretched unnaturally wide, as if the live human body just couldn't contain the old ghost's fury.
Not taking any chances, Stacey whacked him hard in the shoulders with the flashlight. He collapsed toward me, but I managed to catch his weight with my arms and knees, just enough to roll him to the side, so he landed in the road rather than on top of me. Stacey gave him an extra kick in the ribs, and I jumped on him and pinned his face to the dirt.
“Why?” Jacob shouted. “Why is everyone kicking me?”
His voice didn't sound like a demon from beyond the edges of the world anymore—in fact, he sounded very much like an accountant who has just awoken in the middle of the road being kicked by a couple of girls—so I backed off. Stacey did, too, and also threw an arm across me as if to stop me. I gave her an annoyed Hey, I already stopped sort of look.
Jacob's voice returning to normal could have been a trick, but I doubted it. The ghost hadn't had long to sink in, not long enough to start wearing Jacob's personality as a disguise. Only the really sharp spirits figure that one out, usually malevolent things with demonic tendencies.
“Trust me, you needed it,” I told Jacob, while Stacey dropped down beside him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
“The ghost got inside you,” Stacey said. “Are you okay?”
Jacob rubbed his head with both hands. “Ever had an ice cream headache? Where it feels like your brain is freezing?”
“Poor baby,” Stacey said, rubbing his head.
“Did y
ou get a glimpse of who possessed you?” I asked. I hated to be all back-to-business right away, but somebody had to do it while Jacob's memory was fresh. “Did you learn anything about him?”
“Sure,” Jacob said, while Stacey tossed me a scowl for going right back into work mode. “He's a colonial, Revolution-era guy. He thought of himself as very important. Owned a lot of land, was a person of influence, relatively speaking, not that there were many people around for him to influence in those days. Ruled his little farm with an iron fist, expected to be obeyed....He had a few slaves, too, but their spirits aren't here. They've moved on...” Jacob swayed and reached for his head with his bloody fingers.
“We have to get him to the hospital,” Stacey said.
“Do you have any idea what an emergency room costs?” he asked. “I'll wait until morning and see a regular doctor.”
“On a Saturday?” Stacey asked. “You need stitches, you need a tetanus shot—”
“I'm current on my shots, thanks,” Jacob said. “As many times as I've ended up scratched, bitten, beaten, and bloody from hanging out with you, I couldn't really avoid that. You two are extremely hazardous to my health, is what I'm saying.”
“It's not intentional,” I said.
“The things in that cemetery.” He shook his head and pointed with one bleeding finger, just in case there was any doubt about which cemetery he meant. “They need to stay in there. If they don't, they will take over. They'll run off the living. This place will end up an abandoned ghost farm.”
“Like...a farm where they grow crops of ghosts?” Stacey asked.
He stared at her. “No. I just hurt my head, don't try to confuse me.”
“What else did you see?” I asked.
“They're like a pack of...I don't want to say wolves. What eats bones and dead things? Hyenas. A pack of hyenas.”
“A clan,” Stacey said, almost under her breath.
“Yeah, a clan of dead men. The restless from each generation, the worst of them. They aren't willing to tolerate anyone but their own family on this land.”
