by JL Bryan
“Let’s go,” Michael said. “You don’t want twenty infections all over your hands and face.”
“Wait,” I said. “Calvin—”
“Go with him,” Calvin said, finally looking at me. He wore a small, almost sad smile. “You need someone to care for you.”
I nodded. I think he was talking about more than my immediate injuries.
Michael led me upstairs to deal with my gory, bloody face, while the rest of my team got to work breaking down cameras and removing our gear from the scene.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Are we there yet?” Stacey asked as we trudged up the remnants of the steep trail, which I located mostly by memory. Behind us lay a steep, tree-lined cliff overlooking a steep drop to the valley below. We’d awoken before dawn and driven a long, long six hours, from Savannah on the eastern coast of the state to the nearly impassable ridges of the western Appalachians. We’d taken down the fearfeeder two nights earlier, and taken a day to rest before the journey to bury the two dangerous ghosts.
“I thought you’d enjoy a hike in the mountains,” I said. Stacey was the outdoorsy type, but I was more the air-conditiony type.
“I’m just excited to see this graveyard for monsters.” Since Stacey was such an experienced hiker, I was letting her carry the ghost trap full of soil and spirits in her backpack.
I led the way into the dense woods, remote from any settled area. Calvin had picked the site because it was likely to be remote forever, the geography of the ridge and valley region making the construction of roads and bridges difficult and expensive. Few people had ever lived in the area.
Geography wasn’t the only reason, though.
Wielding a small machete, I hacked through thick, thorny brambles, slowly advancing until I reached an overgrown wall. It wasn’t much higher than my hips, but it was solid, built of hard local rocks crudely cut to fit together. Poison oak and thorny vines hid most of it.
“So this is like your own private hell,” Stacey said. “For ghosts who can’t be trusted.”
“Yep.” I hacked a clear space along the top where we could climb over without getting our clothes tangled in thorns.
The other side looked, at first, like just another shady patch of mountain forest, but the trees were thinner here, and the place was littered with overgrown rocks and boulders, thick with moss and poison ivy.
The air was about twenty degrees colder on this side of the wall.
“Okay, this is different,” Stacey whispered. “I’m guessing these overgrown rocks are grave markers?”
“They are,” I said. “They’re just rocks, not carved headstones. If you scrape the plants off any of them, you’ll find names inscribed.”
I led her deeper into the small old graveyard. Though it was around noon, it was so dark under the canopy that I pulled my flashlight and pointed it into the shadows ahead. “See the old church?”
“Oh, yeah.” Stacey stared at the ruins ahead—the uneven rock foundation, the collapsing wooden walls.
“That was the church of Reverend Mordecai Blake about a hundred years ago,” I said. “Raw mountain religion—snake handling, faith healing, speaking in tongues. The church was basically a cult that included several families. Blake took things to extremes. Anyone who questioned his teachings, disobeyed him, angered him, or tried to leave the church was put into the Judgment Box.”
“That sounds pleasant,” Stacey said, warily approaching the ruins.
“Imagine a coffin with air holes in the side and a padlock on top,” I said. “Sinners were put inside with half a dozen venomous rattlesnakes. Supposedly this left it up to God’s judgment whether the person should live or die. Several people didn’t, including children.”
“That’s awful,” Stacey whispered.
“State investigators finally came to arrest him, but he refused to go with them. The preacher locked himself in the church and let his snakes bite him to death rather than go to jail. His ghost is still here, and the ghosts of some of his loyal followers. You do not want to be in this graveyard after sunset.”
“I don’t really want to be here now,” Stacey said. She crossed her arms, shivering a little. I felt the same way. An atmosphere of dread permeated the entire place.
“Well, let’s get digging.” I shrugged off my backpack and removed the short spade hung from a loop, then pulled on a pair of gardening gloves. Stacey did the same. I showed her a row of tiny rock-heaps near one wall of the old graveyard. “This is where we’ve buried the other nasties. We mark them with little cairns so we don’t accidentally dig them up...” I picked a spot, hacked away some weeds and brambles, and plunged the head of the spade into the earth.
“So...what happens when the battery in the trap dies?” she asked.
“The lead glass should keep the ghosts inside. If they do escape, they’ll still be stuck in this graveyard, prisoners of the dead preacher and his followers.”
“So Reverend Blake is like our prison warden,” Stacey said.
“Basically. We’re using him. He doesn’t know he’s helping us—it’s not like he signed up for it or we discussed it with him—but he’s a strong ghost who rules this graveyard. It’s not as pleasant as those places where we release non-violent ghosts, like the one over in Goodwell.” Goodwell, several hours south of us, was a ghost town with a nice, strong brick wall around its cemetery. We use it as a kind of wildlife preserve for nuisance ghosts—they’re able to wander free among the old trees there, instead of being buried inside their traps.
Strange sounds interrupted us while we dug, making us look around. Snapping twigs, as if someone were walking toward us. Rustling leaves, as though a wind were blowing on the calm day. Whenever we looked towards the sounds, they stopped. Once I heard a hiss, only to see a bobcat watching us from the shadows of the thick undergrowth with its big yellow eyes. It scurried out of sight.
Finally, we had dug down a few feet into the dark, rocky earth. I took the cylindrical trap from Stacey’s backpack and dropped it into the hole.
“It feels like we should say something,” Stacey said.
“Like a eulogy?” I asked. She nodded. “Okay. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to imprison the spirits of two awful human beings. Edgar Barrington killed his sister-in-law Rebecca’s children because she asked him to do it. Rebecca murdered her own husband, and terrorized and killed children for a hundred and fifty years after she died, feeding on their fear and transforming into even more of a monster than she was in life. Dear Lord, please keep them trapped here so they can never harm anyone else again.”
“Amen,” Stacey said, and I threw the first heap of dirt onto the trap.
We buried it quickly, then heaped a few handfuls of stones on top to mark the spot. I could feel something watching me from the darkness of the collapsed church, but I saw nothing there.
“Let’s get going,” I said.
“How are your hands?” Stacey asked, watching me remove my gloves. Little beads of blood had welled up from the larger scratches.
“Michael took out the glass pieces from my face and hands with tweezers,” I said. “I still checked with the doctor yesterday. I’ve just been rubbing calendula cream on all the scratches and hoping they don’t scar.”
“Jacob was happy that he finally got out of a case without having his face totally mangled,” Stacey said, while we walked back toward the low rock wall. “I guess it was just your turn.”
“Then it’ll be your turn next time,” I said.
A long, low groan echoed across the cemetery. We looked back and didn’t see anyone. We looked at each other, and then we scrambled over the wall and down the steep trail as fast as we dared.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was a couple of hours after sunset, and I was back in the unnaturally cold furnace room, looking into the dark well under the house.
I wasn’t alone. Michael stood on the other side of the well from me, and in between us stood a friend of Calvin’s, a man wit
h thin gray hair and a Rudolph-red nose, dressed in jeans and a khaki shirt.
Michael had met us on the first floor—though fit and spry, Lachlan was seventy-one years old, and there had been no reason to make him climb all those stairs to Michael’s apartment.
“Michael, this is Dr. James Lachlan,” I’d said. “He’s a Jesuit—”
“—was a Jesuit,” Lachlan interrupted with a smile. “The Vatican had me removed years ago. I had trouble waiting for the long, bureaucratic chain of permission before performing major exorcisms. And a few other restricted rites.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Michael said, shaking his hand. Michael seemed surprised by Lachlan’s thick Australian accent.
“It’s well in the past. I didn’t want you mistaking me for a priest and confessing your sins to me by accident.”
Michael laughed and led us toward the basement door.
“Michael’s a good name, then,” Lachlan said. “We’ll be calling on your namesake for assistance. Let’s hope he doesn’t grow confused and think I’m talking to you instead.”
“My namesake?” Michael started down the steps, looking back at us. Lachlan followed, then me.
“The archangel.” Lachlan sounded a little bemused. “You’re unaware you were named for God’s champion demon-smiter?”
“I didn’t even know they had a championship for that,” Michael said. The former priest gave him a chuckle.
“Let’s see the trouble spot,” Lachlan said. He held a black case in one hand, which looked like the sort of things doctors used to carry back when they made house calls. He’d refused to let Michael or me carry it for him. Michael and I both carried high-powered tactical flashlights instead. Michael had already brought a few things down here while waiting for our arrival.
We’d opened the charred remnants of the door and stepped inside. The room was freezing, and the sound of distant rushing wind echoed up from the well.
I watched Lachlan as he looked deep into the darkness below, and I wondered what he was thinking. In the Church, he’d been a teacher at Jesuit colleges as well as a demonologist and exorcist. Now defrocked, he drifted from one secular university to the next, teaching ancient Middle Eastern history and languages. He was currently at the University of Georgia, only a few hours away.
“Here’s what happens next.” Lachlan placed his doctor’s bag into Michael’s hands and unzipped it, letting Michael hold it like a butler or servant. “I will exorcise this to the best of my ability. It’s important that you stay back, and do not look into the well while I work. The moment I tell you to seal it, do so.” He looked at Michael, who nodded.
Lachlan directed me to light a few white candles he’d brought, as well as a brass censer loaded with frankincense. The smoke flavored the air with a citrusy, woody odor. I placed the candles around the floor, trying not to show my distaste for the presence of open flames.
The ex-priest waved the censor above the well, chanting in Latin.
When he was done, he handed that to me, and I set it aside while he sprinkled salt into the well, chanting louder, his voice echoing back from below. More voices seemed to accompany it.
Lachlan tossed more salt into the well, and I heard churning, hissing voices down inside it.
Suddenly we appeared to stand on a crumbling brick ledge sloping toward a black abyss. Thick, cold darkness stretched as far as I could see. The voices screamed, howled, shouted in languages I didn’t understand.
I felt off-balance, and my feet slid down a few inches toward the bottomless dark. Michael grabbed my arm to steady me.
Lachlan continued the rite, and the voices grew into a deafening wall of howls and tortured cries. I couldn’t understand the words, but I sensed curses and elaborate blasphemies in the voices. My mind filled with visions of rotten faces, their eyes dark and hollow, their jaws stretched wide with screams, their hands cold and grasping. I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach, and I wanted to collapse.
Then it was over, and we were in the basement again, Michael still steadying me. Lachlan nodded to him, and I told him to go ahead.
Michael picked up the things he’d already stashed here—a drill, a steel plate big enough to completely cover the well, and a handful of long steel screws. Lead coated the underside of the square.
He laid it on top of the dark opening, then he went to work. It took quite a while for him to drill through steel and brick to anchor the sheet of metal in place. He was absorbed into the task, saying nothing, his hands moving with strength and intelligence. Plastic goggles shielded his eyes, and Lachlan and I remained several feet away to avoid sparks and flying bits of brick.
“Is that it?” I asked Lachlan.
“We’ve completed the full rite,” he said. “What were you expecting? Seven-headed dragons rising from the depths to bring on the apocalypse?”
“Something like that, yeah.” I felt skeptical about whether this had really been effective, and how long it would hold. Jacob had mentioned holy men and seers from centuries and millennia past who had tried in their own ways to seal the well, and whose remnant ghosts worked, with limited success, to keep the darkness in the well contained and away from the living. Later generations had always found their way back to this place, when enough time had passed and the legend of its evil had been forgotten.
Perhaps a hundred years from now, my ghost would be here among those ancient ones, trying to do the same work. I wasn’t a medicine woman or a psychic, but at least I was stubborn.
As we left, I took a final look at the square of steel and lead bolted to the floor. The room already felt warmer, and my Mel Meter showed lower readings than the basement ever had before. The black hole—call it a dark psychic vortex, a ghost portal, or a minor doorway to hell—seemed closed for now. My job was as done as it could be, but I was still unsettled about it.
Outside, Lachlan climbed into the passenger seat of the van, waving off my attempt to help him. Before I climbed inside, I turned back to Michael.
“So that takes care of it?” he asked, reaching for me.
“Let me know if it doesn’t.” I let him draw me closer.
He didn’t reply, but gave me another long, fantastic kiss on the lips. I felt myself grow very warm against him.
“Careful, there’s a priest watching,” I whispered when we were done.
“An ex-priest. And he’s not watching.”
“He’s an ex-priest who probably wants to get to his hotel right away,” I said. I traced my fingers along Michael’s upper arm. “Thanks for all your help.”
“It was my house, too. So I should thank you.”
I glanced at the van. “I’d better go.”
“Running away again?”
“As usual.” I eased back from him, starting for the van.
“Listen,” he said. “Saturday. This friend of mine from high school is in this really bad Cheap Trick cover band—”
“I love Cheap Trick.”
“No, no, the music will be terrible. I was wondering if you’d endure the show with me anyway.”
“How could I say no to a terrible cover band?” I smiled.
Michael stood on the sidewalk and watched as I drove away.
“He seems like a nice young man,” Lachlan said from the passenger seat.
“He does.”
“Appearances can be deceiving, of course. But not always.” He looked out the window as we drove past crumbling old mansions, some of which had been terrorized over the years by the ghost of Rebecca Barrington.
We drove on through moonlit streets under the moss-hung canopy of oak limbs. Savannah’s ghosts hid in every corner, behind every wrought-iron gate and marble column, stalking the gardens and dark streets, most of them invisible unless you knew how to look for them.
I wondered whether they had their own kind of community, and what they thought of us, the ghost trappers who removed spirits from their haunts. I doubted their opinion would be favorable.
I wondered about the future.
Was Calvin serious about retiring and leaving things in my hands? I couldn’t possibly be ready for that. Stacey was still much too green. So was I.
We’d faced our fears and come through alive. The illusion of Anton Clay had been almost too real, too intelligent compared to the other forms taken by the boogeyman. Maybe my parents’ murderer really was inside me somehow, connected to me, following the course of my life from where his spirit remained anchored, on the overgrown empty lot where my childhood home had once stood. Calvin had declared Anton too dangerous to attempt trapping.
I knew I would need to confront him one day, somehow remove him from that patch of ground and make sure he never harmed anyone again. But not tonight.
I dropped Lachlan at a bed and breakfast on State Street a few minutes later. Then I blasted the stereo, summoning music to chase the ghosts from my mind.
From the author
Thanks so much for taking the time to read The Crawling Darkness. If you enjoyed it, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review at the retailer of your choice. Good reviews and word of mouth are important in helping other readers discover a book.
Terminal, the fourth book in the Ellie Jordan series is already in the works. I hope you’ll continue the adventure when that book releases in May 2015!
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More by J.L. Bryan:
The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series
