by Sean Michael
“I know. I don’t know how anyone could be so mean.” Payne’s voice was little more than a whisper.
“MacGregor did it. He needs to be punished.” A wave of anger rolled through him, pushing everything else away.
It wasn’t merely a feeling anymore either; he could sense the chant in his bones, and then he could hear it. Dozens of voices, repeating the same thing over and over.
Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.
The rage built inside him, growing every time the chant was repeated. He whipped around. MacGregor was right there. He grabbed the flashlight tight in his hand—it would be the perfect weapon.
“Will?” Payne asked. “What is it?”
Payne.
Kill him.
MacGregor had to die. Will held the flashlight tighter.
Kill him. Kill him.
“What’s wrong, babe?” Payne stepped closer.
Will’s head was about to explode, the anger a living thing inside him. He raised the flashlight, ready to swing it, to bean MacGregor over the head and be done with the evil man.
No! No, this was Payne. His Payne. Will wasn’t a killer, and he certainly wasn’t going to kill Payne. He growled, and the rage flew off him as if a dozen hands had ripped away from him. They made for Payne.
Will shook his head. Oh no, he didn’t think so.
“Run!” he shouted it as loud as he could, swinging the flashlight in front of him. He swore he could see it move through a half-dozen different forms at least, and they were all going for Payne. “Get out!”
Payne’s eyes went wide at the sight. He turned tail and ran even as the hands reached him, grabbing at him. As if the ghosts had decided to divide their efforts, some of them assaulted Will again. He roared, the effort of keeping the ghosts and their anger out of him actually dropping him to his knees.
Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. The voices continued, and Will shook with it, with the fury that was building once again inside him. He wouldn’t fucking let them have him, though. He knew Payne wasn’t Angus, and he wasn’t going to let these assholes have Payne, let alone use him to get it done.
He knelt there, trying to breathe, trying to see past the mist of rage in front of his eyes, his entire body shaking. The voices got louder, the anger all-consuming. It felt like his head was going to explode, the pain echoing the emotions roiling inside him and around him.
The agony grew, and he couldn’t see past it, couldn’t hear anything beyond the ringing sound of the mob. Still, he wouldn’t let them move him. He was not their puppet or their ride or in any way their route to Payne. Louder, higher, everything built until all of a sudden it stopped and he slid into oblivion.
Chapter Eleven
PAYNE ran toward the stairs, stumbling along. He felt the air move as the ghosts reached for him, the hair on the back of his head moving, things grabbing at his ankles, his legs, trying to trip him up. He knew if he stopped moving, they’d get him.
Okay.
Okay.
Gram was right. He was going to die down here in the basement.
Kill him!
Payne could hear them, the words echoed in a dozen voices, more. They all wanted him dead. It made him want to scream and cry, but he didn’t have that luxury.
Darnell and Jason were at the base of the stairs, shovels in hand, swinging at the air. He swore he could see sparkles as ghosts dissipated when the shovels went through them, then coalesced back together again.
Fuck, the stairs were lousy with them. He ducked into the shadows and headed toward the back. He heard footsteps coming in his direction. Mumbles. Were they real? Was it possible for ghosts to have footsteps? He didn’t know what to do.
“Please. I’m not him. I’m not a bad guy.”
A hard hand grabbed him as he slid deeper into the basement. Not the ghosts. It was Blaine who had wrapped his fingers around Payne’s arm. “Gotta get out,” Blaine whispered.
Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.
“You’ve got to get out,” Blaine said again, eyes anguished. “They’ll kill you.”
Something pulled Blaine away from him and sent him stumbling backward. Luckily Flynn was right there to catch him, but they both went down, and the refrain got louder.
Kill him. Kill him.
Payne slipped into a tiny room and slammed the door shut behind him. He pressed his back against it, keeping it closed. “Please, God. Please let me get out of this.”
I told you not to come down here. I told you it was dangerous.
He could almost see his grandmother in front of him, the air seeming to shimmer. There was definitely a tiny bit of light there—the only light in the room.
“I know. What do I do? I have to fix this.” Aside from the danger to himself, he couldn’t leave all these ghosts here like this. It was awful.
Always researching. Always looking for things.
Now wasn’t exactly the time to be doing research when he had God knew how many angry ghosts trying to kill him “Not helpful, Gram.”
Always looking for answers.
“Goddammit.”
All of a sudden there was banging on the door, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Come on. Come on. She’s trying to help.
“What answers, Gram? What am I trying to find?”
The history of a place is important. You always say.
The shimmering moved to the back of the room, then disappeared altogether. Now even his gram had abandoned him. Bur she reappeared in the same area, again just the glimmer of air where it should have been pitch black.
Okay. Okay. Back there. Was she trying to show him something? He felt around and found a barrel, which he rolled toward the door to block it, trapping himself inside and the ghosts out there. Payne wasn’t sure it would keep them out indefinitely, but maybe it would take them a little while to gather their energies at least. He wished he knew more about how ghosts worked, but for now he’d have to trust Gram’s knowledge. After all, she was a ghost too.
Payne didn’t know what he was going to do next, but for now, this wasn’t the worst thing. He hoped the guys were able to get safely upstairs, that the ghosts were concentrating on trying to get to him.
Look, child. Research. Discover.
Okay. Obviously there was more. He was loath to shuffle away from the relative safety of the barrel, but he did. He went back to the corner where she had disappeared and reappeared.
He looked around, but he couldn’t see anything. It was too dark, and what little light his gram’s ghost had provided had disappeared with her. He searched instead with his hands, trying to find something, anything.
In the hard packed dirt, he found the corner of something hard, something buried, and he started digging with his fingertips, trying to unearth it. He got enough of it uncovered to discover it was a covering of some sort, and when he got his finger beneath it, he could feel cool air against them.
There was another way out.
Fuck yes.
He pulled the cover away. From the greasy texture, he decided it was a piece of oilcloth, so old it crackled and shattered at his touch, the back of it fuzzy with mold and crawling with insects. Beetles, he imagined, as many tiny legs skittered across his hand. Oh God.
Oh God, he couldn’t go down there…. The door across the room from him began to groan, the barrel sliding audibly across the floor.
Okay, maybe he could go down there after all.
He took his sweater off and wrapped it around his head so the bugs couldn’t get into his hair. Then he wrapped the arms around his mouth and nose and tied it in the back of his head. Hopefully that would hold it in place.
Then he eased himself down carefully. It wasn’t a long drop, thankfully, and as he’d hoped, he found himself in a dirt tunnel beneath the basement floor, tall enough to stand in, but barely. He wondered briefly who had dug this tunnel and for what purpose. But the curious researcher in him was overwhelmed by his need to escape at the moment. Answers would have to wait.
Spid
erwebs filled the tight burrow, but Payne refused to panic. He pushed forward into the darkness. There was air. That meant there had to be a way out.
He made slow progress, tripping over things. Since he couldn’t see them, he had no idea what they were. He decided they were clumps of dirt. That was safest.
The tunnel appeared to be gradually slanting upward. The breeze got stronger, and he could see a little bit of light up ahead. He hurried toward it, things snapping beneath his feet. Either the dirt ceiling above him was lowering or the floor below was rising to meet it because he soon had to crouch down to keep moving. Then his progress was halted by a grate made of thick steel. The bushes above the grating let in enough light for him to see that he was indeed trapped.
It also showed him what he’d been tripping over. Bones. Human bones.
“Oh God. Oh God. Okay. Oh God.” He grabbed the grate and started shaking it hard, praying for rusted bolts, crumbled soil, something. “I’ll get you all out of here. If you help me with the grate, I’ll get you out of this basement. I promise.”
No wonder there were ghosts here. He’d assumed most of them had died in the fire, and some must have, surely, but the rest of them were here, only steps away from a freedom they could never reach. How long had they been here before they’d finally died?
“I’m not him. I’m not him. Please help me get us out of here.” He wrapped his hands around the grating and put all his weight into it. Pushing up, then pulling down, using his bent legs for leverage. It could have been his imagination, but he thought he felt it give, just a little.
And he swore he could hear them coming for him behind him in the tunnel.
“Please. My name is Payne. I’m going to get you out of here. I’m Annette’s grandson.” He rattled harder at the bars. They was definitely some movement, but he couldn’t imagine it was going to be enough. Not to get him through. And then there were the bushes to get through too. They had to be incredibly thick, given he’d never even known this tunnel was here.
So many bones. They shouldn’t be here.
He knew that. He understood that the servants had been trapped in here. Had probably starved to death. It had no doubt been awful.
“It’s terrible. I’ll get you out. Tell your stories. There’s got to be records. I’ll make it right. We have to get this damn thing loose first.” He yanked hard and while it might have shifted a fraction, he didn’t think he was strong enough to pull it right out like he needed to. He also thought he was running out of time. It felt like the ghosts were getting closer, screaming after him.
Maybe he could use one of the bones as a lever? It was a gruesome thought, but he was running out of time, and he was definitely out of ideas.
Get them out. Get the bones out. Out. Out. Out.
He supposed it was as good an idea as he was going to get. “Okay, Gram. I’ll do it.”
He grabbed handfuls of… ugh… former people and started shoving them out of the tunnel as best he could, pushing them between the bars of the grating and as far as the bushes would let him. Legs and arms and jaws and….
“The skulls won’t fit!”
Out. Out. Out.
She was no help. He already knew he had to get them out. He really didn’t want to have to break the bones to get them through the grating.
“Goddamnit! Motherfucker!” He grabbed one of the bars of the grate and pulled as hard as he could, and it popped free. That was enough. That was enough to wedge the skulls through.
Somehow he did it, tossed them all out into the bushes, praying that was what was needed to get the ghosts to give him a break. He tripped over another bone when he took a step back, so he went to his hands and knees, feeling around the disgusting floor of the tunnel, searching as best he could. He came across one more skull—such a small head, it had to belong to a child—and several more undetermined bones, all of which he pushed through the grating, getting them out.
Freeing them.
He hoped to God that’s what he was doing anyway.
If doing this let them take over the world or become zombies or something, he was burning the house down and moving to the Bahamas.
He stayed where he was, breathing in the fresh air that came through the grating, and waited. He had no clue how he’d know if the ghosts had let the guys go once he’d thrown their bones out of the tunnel. What if he was stuck in here and died just like they had? Maybe he’d become the new ghost that haunted this place.
At that point, he was scared and tired, and he wanted a bath and to go to bed for a week. Only he wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep in this house. And that was a depressing thought.
He went to work on pulling out another bar. His hands were destroyed, he was filthy, and he had bugs everywhere. He had to admit, though, it didn’t feel like there was an army breathing down his neck, coming for him. Nothing was grabbing at him, and the chaotic call to kill him had faded away.
“Payne? Where are you?”
“Professor? Please tell me you’re alive.”
“Call out, Payne!”
It was the guys. They were okay. The ghosts hadn’t eaten them. Or had they? How did he know it was really the Supernatural Explorers?
“Professor! Oh fuck, please tell me you’re alive.” Will sounded honestly worried.
“Payne?” The call came to him along the tunnel. They’d found his bolt hole.
He grabbed the bar that he’d worked out. He wanted to be prepared for anything. For if it wasn’t Will and the others. What if the ghosts had gotten them and they were ghosts now too. “Yeah. Go on out. I’ll come up.”
“Oh thank God we found you. I thought they’d gotten you. There were so many of them.” He could see Will now, a dark hulking shadow.
“Still alive. If you guys will go upstairs and out, you’ll see that I’ve thrown a bunch of bones into the bushes that we need to deal with.”
Will wasn’t listening, climbing right toward him, and he brandished his pipe.
“Hey, hey, Professor, it’s okay. It’s me. I swear.”
“Yeah. Cool.” He tried to let go of the pipe, but his fingers wouldn’t open. “I really want to get out of here, man.”
“Of course.” Will wrapped a hand around his arm and tugged him in for a hug. He stiffened, trying to remember how to breathe. All he had to do was get out of here. Get upstairs. Get them outside and out of here.
Will grabbed his hand and slowly uncurled his fingers from the pipe, then he did the same thing with the other. Finally, Will led him out of the tunnel toward light and voices. The way back seemed so much shorter than it had when he’d made his way through in the first place.
He didn’t speak to anyone until he was up the stairs and in the library. Then he pulled the sweater off his head and threw it right in the trash can. “The bones are outside. All of them.” He hoped. He felt shell-shocked. So many of them, and they’d wanted him dead.
“We should salt and burn the bones, and bury them,” Jason suggested, looking grim.
“Whatever we need to do. Come on.” He grabbed a bucket from next to the fireplace and headed out to the backyard, looking for the bushes where he thought the grating had been. He got scratched up as he searched the thick bushes, experiencing two false starts before he found them.
“Right here. They’re here.” He began scooping up bones, working as fast as he could, filling the bucket.
“Are you okay?” Will asked as he helped.
“Nope. But what are you going to do?” No one had ever tried to kill him before. No ghost had ever tried to kill him before. Now he knew what it felt like to have dozens of… of things want you dead.
“We need to talk about what happened.” Will looked concerned.
“Yeah. Not now. Now I need a bath.” A bath and a few shots of whiskey and possibly a three- or four-day nap.
“Back at the hotel,” Will suggested, adding more bones to a pit Darnell and Jason had dug at the side of the house. When all the bones were in the mass grav
e, Jason poured a box of salt from their supplies in the van onto the bones, added accelerant, and dropped a match into the pit. The flames started up, and Payne watched them silently.
Okay. Be free. Be free from that damned cellar. Leave my house and never come back.
They all waited as the fire burned down, heaving a collective sigh when the job was done. With all of them helping, it didn’t take long to cover the grave.
“Thank God,” murmured Darnell. “I don’t ever want to go through something like that again.”
“We need to debrief,” Jason noted.
“Later. Later, it’s been a long….” He looked at the sky. “Afternoon. For everyone. Jason might need a doctor.”
“I might. Are you two going back to the hotel?” Jason looked from him to Will and back to him.
“I’m going to take a bath. I’m filthy.” He was beginning to shake, his hands crusty with mud and blood. And they hurt. And dozens of people had died, and they thought he was responsible, and they’d tried to kill him.
Will put a hand on his back, running it up and down his spine. “Let me take you back to the hotel. That shower had never-ending water—you can stand in it for days.”
“I’m… they tried to kill me. All of them. So many of them.” Oh God, he was going to start crying.
“You know that wasn’t aimed at you. They wanted Angus,” Will said. “You know that.”
“Still,” Blaine said quietly. “The ghosts tried to kill him. He can’t unsee that. For my part, I’m really sorry we made you go down there, Payne. It must have been awful.”
“Yeah. I’m going inside. I don’t feel well….” He turned and went back into the house—his huge, quiet, still house—and closed the door behind him. He didn’t want to let the ghosts back in.
He made it to his master bathroom before he collapsed in a heap, totally overwhelmed.
Chapter Twelve
WILL started to follow Payne as he fled, but Jason grabbed his arm, stopping him.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“He’s in there all by himself!” Will was not leaving him alone.
