We were locked in.
“Let’s go find something heavy,” Becky suggested, putting a hand on my shoulder and turning to point toward the far end of the hallway. “We can use it to smash the glass.”
“I don’t know, Becky. That’s reinforced safety glass. Look, it has those strands that wire running through it.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Point.”
The three of us did an about-face and made a bee-line for the chapel. Just as we were passing the closed door that led down to the cellar, there was a series of loud crack-pops from downstairs, echoing like firecrackers were going off down there. All of us knew what the sound was, though, and it wasn’t anything to do with celebration: it was gunfire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I counted five, maybe six shots, before I heard feet pounding on the stairs. The basement door was flung open, and Mom and then LaWanna burst through it.
“What happened, Mrs. Chill?” Becky asked breathlessly.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on here,” Mom said, turning to slam the door behind them. “Those…whatever they are…each of them took a couple of bullets each and didn’t even flinch!”
“Demons is what they are!” LaWanna was borderline hysterical. I guess all the confidence a gun gave you would disappear in a flash when you discovered that your target shrugged the rounds off like raindrops. “We need to get ourselves out of here!”
“Oh Mrs. Chill, do please wait a moment. Your son and I have some unfinished business.” It was Falconer’s voice, faint through the thick wooden door but growing louder as he came up the stairs. The Dark Man had to be right behind him…or in front. Either way, it was going to be ugly. “I am afraid that the die has been cast, and you are forcing me to do this the hard way.”
“Daniel!”
I recognized that voice too. It was coming from somewhere inside the shadows at the far end of the corridor…maybe from the entryway to the chapel.
“Lamiyah?” I hissed in disbelief.
“What’s a Lamiyah?” Mom demanded.
“I’ll explain later, Mom.” Now I wanted to know how Lamiyah had warned Mom that we were in danger, if she hadn’t put in an appearance and talked to her. “Come on. Follow me.”
We were at the chapel entrance in less than thirty seconds, tops. I ushered the four ladies inside, but Mom wouldn’t go without me. Turning, we both watched in horror as the basement door flew open and Malachai Falconer lurched out. He moved like he’d had a stroke, dragging his left leg along the ground. He was still keeping a death-grip on the phylactery, although it looked like the tiny grinning skull was crumbling a little more with every step that he took. The lich was grinning, and even from this distance I could see the light of insanity in his eyes, both of which were jet black. Then I realized that what looked like a third eye was actually a neat, round hole placed just above the bridge of his nose and right between his eyes. Mom was obviously a better shot than I’d given her credit for…for all the good it had done.
“Why, there you are!” Falconer grinned with mock delight. A string of sticky black drool bubbled from his mouth and splashed down the front of his shirt. “Come, come. There really is no need for any further unpleasantness…”
I grabbed Mom by the arm and ducked into the chapel, pulling her along with me. The lights were down low in there, a row of concealed bulbs giving off just enough of a glow to make out the angular lines of the pews and benches. Jessica was jerking her head frantically toward the altar at the far end of the room. I looked and saw the dim outline of two human forms standing there, side by side. They were getting brighter and clearer as I watched, the details being filled in as if by a sketch artist. One I recognized easily — my spirit guide, Lamiyah — but the second figure, taller and bigger-framed, was harder to place. His clothes made him look as though he was on his way to a fancy-dress costume party with a Monty Python and the Holy Grail theme.
Whoever he was, from the look on his face, this guy was even angrier than Mom had been down there in the basement. That was bad news: it could only make Falconer stronger, and speak of the devil, there he was, dragging himself into the doorway with the Dark Man only a step behind him. I looked around desperately for a way out of the chapel. There was none. This was it. There was nowhere left to run.
Alright then. Let’s do this.
Mom raised her semi-automatic and put two more rounds into Falconer. Each flash of light lit up the chapel for an instant. I saw LaWanna’s face, frozen in a slack-jawed expression of terror that told me she had basically checked out of reality for the time being. The first shot hit Falconer high up in the chest, and the second just above it in the shoulder. The lich didn’t miss a step; he just kept step-dragging his way towards us, coming level with the first row of pews already. The Dark Man floated out to his side. Between them, they had the center aisle blocked off. The only way past them would be to climb over the back of each pew.
We were so hosed.
“Have no fear, Daniel. Everything is going to be all right. I promise.” Lamiyah draped her arm around my waist comfortingly. I risked a quick look around. Jess and Becky could definitely see her, based on the way they would shoot furtive glances her way every few seconds, but Mom wasn’t reacting to her presence at all. Huh. Well, I could worry about that later…if there was a later. Mom put in another double-tap. Her arms were shaking just a little now, which was probably part-tiredness and part sheer terror, and frankly I didn’t blame her one little bit; her aim stayed true, though, and that would have made Dad proud. Round one took off the top-left of Falconer’s skull, sending chunks of dry tissue and strands of lank, greasy hair high up into the air. Round two went over his shoulder and punched a neat hole in the tulpa’s throat, passing all the way through and burying itself in the wall outside.
Both of them just grinned even wider and kept on coming for us.
“Stop right there, you miserable, pathetic little runt!”
The roar from just behind my shoulder was so loud, it practically made my ears ring. Suddenly I felt myself being shoved aside, having to grab the back of the pew in front of me to stop myself from falling flat on my face.
“YOU!” Falconer hissed, stopping dead in his tracks. There was a lot of venom injected into that one, single word.
“Yes, boy…me.” Lamiyah’s companion strode forward, putting himself in between the lich and the five of us who were still living and breathing. “After all these years, we’re long overdue for a reckoning.”
“What’s happening?” Mom asked, confused. “What’s going on? Who is he talking to?”
“I don’t know how you escaped from your pew, father, but rest assured that you are going directly back there.” I’d spent enough time listening to Falconer Junior’s hot air today to detect more than a hint of wavering in his voice. Was he actually afraid?
“Oh, I don’t think so, my son,” the man spat. “It’s one thing to take an old man by surprise when he’s sleeping off the night’s drunk; it’s a different thing by far when he has spent the past few hundreds years watching your every move from the prison that you put him in. My new friend over there took pity on me and let me out, and believe you me, I am never going back.”
As quick as a flash, the lich brought his hands up and out, hurling a bolt of blazing purple lightning straight at his father. A wave of ionized air crackled across my face, forcing me to throw up a hand to protect my eyes. I don’t know how Falconer Senior did it, but he not only managed to block the attacking energy, he somehow turned it right back against his son. Malachai clearly wasn’t expecting it, because it took him straight in the belly. He flew backward ten feet through the air, slamming hard into the hallway wall right beneath the hole made by Mom’s bullet.
When the blast hit, flinging the lich back, he lost his grip on his phylactery. The skull was sent spinning up into the air, turning end over end as it went.
The Dark Man launched himself forward, thin lips dra
wn back in a snarl. Now it was Old Man Falconer’s turn to be taken by surprise, but help came in the form of Lamiyah, who had spent the past thirty seconds with her eyes closed, seemingly deep in thought. Now her eyelids flew open, and she unleashed a torrent of blue light from the fingertips of one hand. The beam shot across Falconer Senior’s right shoulder and punched into the tulpa’s chest and neck, the light scattering in a backwash across his entire torso.
“No!” screamed the lich, from where he lay in a crumpled heap of tangled arms and legs out in the hallway. The Dark Man screamed wordlessly, his face and then his entire head now bathed in a fierce blue flame. The tulpa’s eyes melted from within its skull, leaving empty sockets that blazed with an ice-cold fire. As one, Mom, Becky, Jessica, and I all looked up, following the phylactery with our eyes. A scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey suddenly popped into my head, the scene where one of the apes tosses a long bone up into the air, and it changes into a spaceship. Well, believe it or not, the child’s skull didn’t turn into a spaceship: instead, it just hit the ceiling with a thud, then dropped to hit the floor in a shower of dust, dirt, and bone chips…
…where it shattered into a thousand pieces.
Malachai shrieked, and this one was in a league all of its own. Every light in the chapel shattered at the same time, plunging the room into even deeper darkness. The main source of light was coming from the Dark Man, who was clutching his head in both hands and thrashing as if he was having a seizure. His torso was growing brighter and pulsing, like a star about to go supernova. We all staggered backwards, groping blindly with one hand to keep clear of obstacles, while the other was held up over our eyes to shut out the painfully intense light.
“Close your eyes!” Becky called out. “Don’t look!”
When the tulpa finally disintegrated, I could see the light through the palm of my hand and the inside of my eyelids. It was like looking directly toward the Sun with my eyes shut. Weirdly, there was no noise; just a sudden whump of overpressure, and then everything went black.
CHAPTER THIRTY
It took a couple of minutes and a lot of blinking for the afterimages burned into our retinas to clear. When they did, Malachai and the lich were gone, it looked as if a bomb had gone off all around us in the chapel. The pews were all broken and split, along with the fake stained-glass windows that had hung along one wall. The plywood altar was smashed, and I was amazed that we hadn’t all been peppered with flying splinters and shrapnel; then a knowing look from Lamiyah convinced me that she had had something to with that little miracle.
“…the hell?” mumbled LaWanna, looking dumbfounded as she surveyed the carnage surrounding us. She was still holding the gun, but thankfully Mom had the presence of mind to take it gently out of her unresisting hand, make it safe, and slip it into the thigh pocket of her cargo pants.
“Don’t ask me,” Mom said, letting out a long breath. “I’m just glad you were here to back me up. Thank you, LaWanna.”
The desk clerk offered up a weak smile, slowly starting to regain her footing. “I ain’t gonna lie, Mrs. Chill, we’re all about customer service at the hotel…but this went above and beyond.”
“Rachel, LaWanna. My name is Rachel. You don’t go through something like that and not be on first-name terms.”
“Rachel.” LaWanna clapped her on the shoulder, and Mom responded by wrapping her up in a great big hug. Soon they were both laughing like lunatics, letting off some of the nervous tension that had built up over the past few minutes. Becky and Jess were doing the same thing.
“Can they not see or hear us?” The question came from Old Man Falconer, who was standing in next to Lamiyah and watching the two pairs embrace.
“Daniel and his two companions can,” my guide told him. “They are a little more psychically attuned than the adults are…which usually tends to be the case.”
“So it does,” the spirit agreed. He fell silent for a moment, and then quietly asked Lamiyah what would become of his son.
“When Malachai’s phylactery was destroyed,” she began, indicating the rubble all around our feet, “his soul no longer had a vessel to contain it. The body of a lich gives up its life energy during the unholy ritual of transformation.”
“So that is it. My son is lost forever.” It was said mournfully, which surprised me in light of the five hundred years worth of misery and imprisonment that Malachai had inflicted on his father. All I could think was good riddance.
“Not quite.” Lamiyah’s tone was comforting. “No soul is completely beyond redemption, no matter how far into darkness and depravity it may have fallen. As the years past, your son grew increasingly twisted and evil…but there is hope for him yet.”
The older man frowned. “Then where will he go? To the same place as I am going, perhaps?”
“No.” Lamiyah shook her head kindly. “He has farther to climb up the ladder than you do, because he must begin his journey much closer to the very bottom. But know this: he will climb it, even if it takes a thousand human lifetimes for him to even wish to start.”
Although he lacked a physical body, tears nonetheless welled up in the older Falconer’s eyes. He nodded forcefully, seemingly at a loss for words. A golden light suddenly fell upon his face. It was a light that I knew well, because I had seen it before, and so had Becky. She looked up from her hug with Jessica and smiled, knowing what was coming next. A spirit portal began to open up in the air just in front of the doorway, quickly irising outward until it was a circle roughly six feet in diameter. Mom and Lawanna were totally oblivious to its presence, but the rest of us watched silently as Falconer walked toward it, hesitantly at first, but as he drew closer, the love, light, and warmth emanating from within the portal started to draw him in, until there was a spring in his step when he finally reached it.
At the edge of the portal, he turned and spoke to us one last time.
“Lamiyah, thank you for freeing me from that place of torment,” Falconer said, looking distastefully at the remains of the wooden bench that had been his jail cell for the past five centuries. “It is a debt that I can never repay.”
“You shall have plenty of opportunities to, as the people of today like to say, ‘pay it forward’ when you reach the Summerland,” Lamiyah said gravely. “Please be sure to avail yourself of every one.”
He nodded, and then bowed stiffly in her direction. Then he turned toward me.
“The love of a parent is a wholly sacred and special thing, young man. It has been so long since I have felt anything other than hatred and anger toward another living soul…” Falconer raised a hand and smacked himself on the forehead. “Ah, but I should not have to tell you, of all people, about that, should I? You have experienced my rage at first hand.”
I had to assume that he was referring to the first time I had sat on the chapel bench, not knowing that his spirit was bound to it by dark bonds.
“I can tell you this, in all truth: beneath all of the pain, the torment, and the fury that resulted…I never for one moment stopped loving my son. Never underestimate the power of your mother’s love, young man, nor that of your friends — for it is that, above all else, which has saved you today; has saved us all.”
With that, he turned and walked into the spirit portal, then on out of this plane of existence. The portal irised shut behind him.
“Wow,” Jessica whispered, sounding seriously impressed. “Somebody just saw their last Halloween.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Getting out of the Snare proved to be child’s play. We simply wandered the corridors until we found a fire exit, popped the doors, and headed out into the cold grey light of the brand new dawn.
As we walked past the town graveyard, I could see scores of golden spirit portals winking out of existence, like fireflies hovering above the marble tombstones. All of the spirits that the lich had enslaved and turned into his own private workforce had been released when his soul was separated from its phylactery, and were moving on to the Summerland
to begin the next stage of their existence. I felt as if I was watching the world’s biggest jailbreak.
By the time we reached the hotel parking lot, every last one of them was at peace.
“Farewell for now, Daniel. We shall speak more of tonight’s events the next time we meet.” Planting a kiss on my cheek, Lamiyah faded away into nothingness.
The lobby was deserted (what guest in their right mind would have been awake at this hour?) so LaWanna hustled up some coffee, and we all gathered around the gas fireplace to talk.
By the time the sun came up, I had a pretty clear picture of the previous night’s events.
Mom had enjoyed her hot bath and a little wine, then turned in for an early night, just as she’d planned. At first she had slept deeply, but before too long her dreams had been troubled, becoming more nightmarish with each passing moment. A young girl with dark skin and a brightly-colored dress had been trying to tell her something, but Mom couldn’t make her words out, no matter how hard she tried to communicate. One thing seemed to stand out above all else, though: she knew that her boy was in trouble, somewhere deep inside the old hospital.
Finally throwing on some clothes, Mom had taken the elevator down to the lobby. It was there that she was stopped by LaWanna, who (she said) had noticed one of the hotel’s only guests leaving at high speed and in what looked like a real panic. Convincing her to calm down, LaWanna had asked what on Earth was going on. When Mom told her about the nightmares and her total conviction that my life was in danger, LaWanna hadn’t hesitated for a second: ever since she and her friends had broken in there, she had known deep down in her bones that something evil and malevolent haunted that place. What’s more, she knew exactly where it liked to hide: down in the basement. The clerk closed up the front desk with a wildly-optimistic “back in 15 minutes” notice, and the two gutsy ladies headed out into the night. Talking excitedly to one another on the short walk, they found that they each had something else in common: a concealed carry permit, and a fully-loaded semi-automatic to back it up.
Last Halloween (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 2) Page 21
