“Fucking bitch!” Han spat as he doubled over and tried to catch his breath. It was difficult to avoid vomiting, as the initial adrenaline rush was starting to subside. He stood straight and lifted up on his tiptoes so that he could see over the wooden fence. The bag was floating, black against the turquoise blue of the backyard swimming pool in which it now resided, bobbing in the ripples its impact had caused. The air trapped in the bag was keeping it afloat, but, weighed down by flashlights and ammunition, it was quickly sinking. “Oh no.”
Han had to think more quickly that his muddled brain wanted to. Clearly, his sister was lurking nearby; that was why the ghost had thrown the bag into the water. The trouble was, the contents of that bag were Han and Cipher’s only protection against the Third Plane. He scaled the fence but leapt onto a low hanging gnarled branch of a nearby oak tree, causing it to break with his weight. He tumbled to the ground awkwardly, but the long branch was in his hand now, and if he were quick enough, he just might save the gear. Desperately, Han sprinted across the lawn, the branch held outstretched toward the duffle bag like the appendage of a Halloween nightmare. If it could catch the loop of the handle as he ran, he could scoop it up in one fell swoop. The stick hit its mark, the tip of the branch like the fingers of a rotten skeleton, and the bag began to move, lifting out of the water. “Please, please,” Han repeated, breathless.
Without even a ripple in the water to warn him, his sister shot out from the water, grasping the bag and the stick and dragging Han up into the air with her. She didn’t stop until she was high above the pool, dangling Han below her, three meters above the water’s surface.
14
Katie was still wearing the same blue bathing suit she’d died in, but her face had the ghastly, bloated appearance one would expect to see on a drowned victim. Her long black hair hung like a mop in front of her eyes. The eyes were perfectly black, absent of even a surface reflection.
“It’s so cold, little brother,” said a tiny whisper, a shiver lurking behind the voice.
“Katie? Is that you?”
“It’s so cold, little brother.”
“Katie, don’t do this! I love you!”
“It’s so, so cold.”
Just then, Cipher crashed Han’s car through the fence, causing the wooden fence to explode into slivers of shrapnel and the decibels to rain throughout the previously quiet night. The car came to a halt on the lawn, and Cipher burst out of the driver side and sprang toward the fantastic, macabre spectacle unfolding before him. “Let him go!”
“His soul for mine,” the phantasm uttered, a river of unholy water following every word out of her mouth and cascading down her chin. Then, without warning, the apparition dropped the branch, and Han plummeted into the water below.
“What the hell is going on here?” shouted a stout, middle-aged man, dressed in a Grateful Dead t-shirt and boxer shorts. He grasped a baseball bat as he stumbled down the stairs of his deck and toward Cipher, struggling to open his sleep-clogged eyes.
Cipher’s mind instantly flashed back to one of his many conversations with Father Hurley, in which the old priest explained the uncanny and counterintuitive rules of the game. He had explained that the appearance of a bystander who could not see into the Third Plane would take away the majority of a ghost’s power. While the phantasms would remain visible to those few who could see the plane, an ignorant person’s presence would eliminate the ghost’s ability to physically interact with the First Plane. Katie had not vanished; she simply continued to hover above the pool. However, the duffle bag, branch, and Han, had all plunged to the water when her power was taken away.
“Are you people drunk? How the hell did you go through my fence like that?” demanded the man.
Cipher ignored him and helped Han out of the water.
Han was grasping the duffle bag, now drenched with water, but they hoped at least some of the equipment within might be salvageable.
The flummoxed man bent down to help Cipher as he dragged Han out of the water, one hand on Han’s arm and the other still grasping his Louisville Slugger. “And what the heck is he doing in my pool? There better be a good story!”
The twosome continued to ignore the man as, on the Third Plane, the phantoms who had been blocking the intersection earlier were now arriving, slowly encroaching upon the scene; in moments, Han and Cipher would be surrounded. They hurriedly unzipped the duffle bag, and Cipher liberated the same sawed-off shotgun he’d used against Charlie only minutes earlier.
Seeing the gun, the man immediately backed off, gasping as “Jesus Christ,” tumbled from his lips. The words sent a ripple of energy through all of the ghosts. The man quickly turned and began to run as he realized that the figures in his back yard were mixed up in something that was unlikely to be covered by his insurance.
Cipher’s voice halted the man in his tracks. “Stop!” he called.
The man turned around slowly, dropped his baseball bat, and held his hands out in front of him in surrender, then dropped to his knees at the mercy of his antagonists. “Please…please! I-I’m a good God-fearing man. I don’t want no trouble.”
“We fear God too,” replied Cipher, “and that’s why we need your help.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll do whatever you ask.”
“Get up and come with us,” Cipher commanded, his tone soft but firm.
Next to him, Han had finished mounting ultraviolet lights on two handguns. The lights flicked on, and he smiled with glee, immediately turning them on the ghosts nearest to them. He singed one of them on the face, causing it to wail before it vanished; the others vanished before the same harm could be done to them. “That’s right you fuckers! Run!”
The man watched Han’s wild, inexplicable gestures and looked at the void into which Han shined his light. “You boys must be high on something,” the man observed.
“Heroin,” Han confirmed with a flat reply.
Cipher shook his head, Han’s admission not helping the situation. “Just him, not me.” He forced an awkward smile that he quickly realized would seem creepy in the context and also wouldn’t help the situation. The smile melted and he got on with it. “Walk to the car. Stay close,” Cipher said.
The man did as he was told and slowly began the trek to the vehicle.
Meanwhile, Han looked up at his sister, still hovering above the water, the hatred on her face beyond anything any human could contort. “Katie, I love you,” he whispered as he backed away with Cipher and their new, ignorant hostage. In response, Katie vanished but reappeared instantly only inches from Han’s face, roaring like a lioness and reaching out with her claw-like hands toward Han’s throat. “Oh fuck!” Han cursed. The phantom’s limbs passed through Han harmlessly, and he immediately shined the ultraviolet light into the horrific figure. Her essence crinkled in the artificial light of day, and she vanished as she screamed a shriek that echoed in Han’s ears for several minutes afterward.
The man watched the whole spectacle in utter confusion, and his perplexed features were not relieved by the further spectacle of watching Han and Cipher train their weapons on what, to him, appeared to be the empty night. If he could have seen into the Third Plane, he would have witnessed more than a dozen ghouls, both horribly dilapidated and disturbingly normal in appearance, surrounding the trio, staying at a far enough distance so as to be safe from the worst effects of the ultraviolet flashlights. “What are you boys looking at?” the man asked, despite himself. “I don’t see a thing.”
“You don’t want to know, friend,” Cipher replied.
“Ya know, I think you’re right,” the man replied, then dashed away from Cipher and Han, away from the car and down the dark street, disappearing into the nothingness.
15
“No!” Cipher yelled after him.
The man, despite his age and rotund body, was surprisingly stealthy and fleet of foot, able to spring several meters away before his escape was noticed. He was already too far away to be caught in time.
Han traine
d one of his guns in the direction of the fleeing man, but Cipher knocked his arm down. “What good would it do to kill the guy? We’ve got more than enough ghosts to deal with here! Snap out of it, Han!”
“I have snapped out of it! That fat fucker’s gonna get us killed! The least we could do is return the favor!”
“We’re not dead yet. We’ve still got the UV lights. That seems to be keeping them back. We just need to get into the car and—”
Suddenly, as Cipher spoke, the car engine came to life, courtesy of the dead woman sitting in the front seat. She slammed on the gas pedal and reversed the car away from the two men as they stood there helplessly, their mouths agape.
“What the...? Tell me you didn’t leave the keys in the ignition,” Han said in disbelief.
“I didn’t know they could drive cars,” Cipher whispered as he began stepping toward the car.
“That’s the same bitch who stole the duffle bag. We’re fucked without a car, Cipher.”
“It’s not gone yet,” Cipher replied, and he was right.
The phantom thief had pulled away from them, backing down the street, but she seemed dissatisfied with the cleanliness of her escape. The car was stopped, the headlights shining on Han and Cipher as they stood like deer in the middle of the road.
Han split his attention between the car and the pod of poltergeists that circled the duo, waiting for their chance to strike.
Cipher kept his eyes trained on the darkness behind the wheels of the car.
“I think she’s going to try to ram us.”
“How do you know?”
“Just a hunch. Get ready.”
“Get ready? Ready for what?”
“To get the car back.”
“What are you going to do? Are you going to jump on the car and try ride it like Indiana Jones?” scoffed Han.
Cipher didn’t reply.
“Oh no. You are going to jump on the car like Indiana Jones! Great plan! Nice knowing you!”
“Aren’t you coming with me?” Cipher asked.
The phantom thief revved the engine, daring them to do something about it.
“No. I’m not.”
“You’ll be killed if you stay here.”
“Maybe, but not as quickly as you will.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Han. Just hold them off until I get back with the car.”
“How?”
“You’ve got the lights, you’ve got the guns, and you’ve got the kung fu.”
“Kung fu? How did you know that I know martial arts?”
“You’re Chinese, aren’t you?”
“Fucking racist.”
Their goodbye was cut short when the phantom thief slammed on the gas and released the brake. The rear wheels of the car spun for a moment, burning against the dry pavement and sending the fumes of fetid rubber into the night air. Finally, she threw it into gear and the car jumped forward with a violent thrust, like a lion bursting forth toward a lame zebra.
“Good luck, you stereotyping bastard!” Han shouted over the squealing of the tires and the sound of the engine.
Cipher braced himself for the impact of the car as it picked up speed. He gambled that the car wouldn’t be able to pick up enough speed in the short distance between it and himself to kill him on impact as long as he rolled onto the hood and against the windshield. As the car careened toward him, however, his gamble seemed less like a winner. “Oh shit,” he whispered as he leapt into the air, lifting his hip above the lethal front grill of the car and rolling against the windshield, smashing it before rolling up onto the roof of the car and back down onto the trunk. Amazingly, he managed to grab hold of the one-inch space between the trunk and the back window while still holding his shotgun with the other hand.
“Holy shit,” Han exclaimed. “I can’t believe he fuckin’ did it.”
The car plowed into the space that had been occupied by several spirits only a moment earlier, forcing them to dematerialize as the car picked up speed and roared into the blackness, leaving only the fading red points of tail lights in the distance and the dissipating noise of the engine behind. Even the ghosts watched the spectacle in awe before they slowly turned to regard Han, alone in the middle of the street.
“Okay. A couple guns, a couple flashlights, some kung fu, and twelve ghosts surrounding me. I’m so fucked.”
16
Cipher gulped in a breath of warm summer air as his lungs finally started to function again after having the wind knocked out of them by the windshield of the careening vehicle. He maneuvered himself onto one knee and used his one and only handgrip on the back of the car to pull himself up onto the roof. He plunged his left arm into the smashed back window of the car to get a relatively solid hold on the speeding and swerving monolith. His better grip came just in time, as the ghost thief violently spun the wheel of the car, taking a sharp left down a larger, longer, empty avenue, causing Cipher’s body to slide heavily to the right side of the roof and nearly knocking him off. He was now directly facing the left side of the car, and he used the opportunity to reach toward the driver seat and blindly grab hold of the ghost. He managed to clutch her hair for a moment, then lost his grip and felt sharp teeth gouging painfully into his flesh as the car violently swerved to the right and across the width of the road. This motion tossed Cipher right off the roof and left him dangling on the side of the car, one arm held by the teeth of the ghost, the other still holding his weapon as his legs dragged dangerously on the pavement.
Somehow, he managed to pull himself up onto the side of the car, then stuck his head through the window. The ghost’s face was on the back of its head, and she was still biting down hard on his left hand like a pit bull, thrashing her neck hard and preternaturally in an attempt to take his hand off at the wrist. He tried desperately to shine his light on her, but the car’s violent movements and the confined space of the back seat prevented him from angling the shotgun so the light could do its magic. Instead, he settled on using the butt end of the gun to smash her hard, forcing her to free up his hand; she momentarily dematerialized before rematerializing again, her face back where it belonged, and she resumed swerving the car violently back and forth. Cipher’s head and upper body were thrown back out of the car, but he held on tight—literally for dear life—to the inside door handle. The ghost laughed in rapid fire, and it became clear to Cipher that getting inside the vehicle was going to be much harder than getting on top of it had been. The ghost had nothing to lose; it couldn’t die, and that meant it could literally do anything it wanted to make sure that Cipher was killed in as grisly a manner as possible. The only reason he was still alive was because this spirit was a thrill-seeker. It knew it had the upper hand and, like a lion keeps a wounded animal alive for the sake of play, it was enjoying the sport of watching its victim cling to the side of a death machine that was entirely under its control.
Unbelievably, things went from bad to worse for Cipher. Oncoming headlights began to shine painfully in Cipher’s eyes. He looked up, squinting through the warm wind and the bright lights as tears streamed out of his eyes and toward his ears and he saw a bus heading toward him. It honked its horn in what appeared to be blasts of panic, and then the phantom thief positioned the car for a head-on collision.
“Oh fuck,” Cipher whispered to himself as he saw his oncoming fate. To leap from the car at that speed was almost sure to be fatal, yet with only seconds left before the ghost collided with a bus, staying with the vehicle appeared to be as terminal an option.
As the car steadied itself in the path of the oncoming behemoth, Cipher pulled himself up and attempted, once again, to gain entry to the vehicle. The phantom yanked hard on the wheel and Cipher was nearly thrown free of the car, his precarious grasp becoming more so by the second. He pulled the arm that was holding his shotgun out of the car and tried to aim for the ghost’s head, but it became clear as he twisted the gun in his hand that he’d run out of time. The light singed the ghost’s skin and hair, but the back o
f the driver seat shielded most of her frame, so she didn’t even dematerialize. Even if he could have caused her to evaporate, it would prove too late. The car’s momentum was going to cause him to collide with the bus, ghost driver or no ghost driver.
17
Han knew he wasn’t supposed to panic; Cipher and Father Hurley had trained him to deal with phantoms, but no one had ever said a damn thing about what to do when surrounded by a dozen of the things. Therefore, panic seemed to be his only option. “I should have jumped onto the speeding car with that lunatic.”
He sprinted away, off the street and into a back alley behind a row of small shops and restaurants. It was impossible to evade ghosts on foot; they could always travel faster or teleport to wherever they chose. For the most part, he was running just to give himself something to do. At least then, if he died, he could say he didn’t stand there and just let it happen.
Within seconds, a phantom, in what appeared to be turn-of-the-nineteenth-century garb, materialized before him. His face had been caved in by something, and Han could only speculate on what it had been that could have caused that amount of damage. The remnants of a tongue flicked pathetically against teeth that pointed inward and jailed the fleshy pink tongue that squirmed like a worm behind it; it occurred to Han that the phantom might have been trying, hopelessly, to speak to him. At any rate, it revolted him, and he jerked his body awkwardly to get away, veering sharply to his right and entering an extraordinarily narrow passage between two stores. “Oh shit,” he said to himself, realizing immediately that he was trapped. The end of the passageway was still open, and the street gleamed in the streetlights as if to taunt him with freedom; still, he knew that no matter how hard he sprinted, a poltergeist would soon appear to block his escape. He craned his neck to peer up at the starry sky. The dry brick walls of the alley were about three stories high, and there was no fire escape, nor any doors to put his shoulder into to facilitate another temporary reprieve.
The God Killers Page 5
