by E. G. Foley
Pale currents of ectoplasm rotated slowly like a whirlpool or some kind of vortex. He was not sure what it was until ghostly heads started peering through it from above, looking down into the room.
Then he realized it was some sort of doorway. Madam Sylvia had opened up some kind of a portal into the afterlife, and once the spirits saw it, they started coming through.
One by one, ghosts floated down through the hole between their two dimensions. Jake watched in wonder as more of them arrived—male and female, old and young. Ordinary people who just happened to be dead.
Soon, the darkened room was crowded with wispy apparitions eager to chat with the living.
“That’s right. Come in, come in,” Madam Sylvia encouraged them. “You are welcome in this place.”
“Please, I’d like to talk to my daughter!” an old lady ghost said, bustling forward with a whoosh.
“Everyone will get their turn,” Madam Sylvia replied. “Thank you all for joining us. Now if we could proceed in an orderly fashion, please state your name when you step forward and tell me with whom you wish to speak.”
It began.
Within moments, Jake realized he had no desire whatsoever to become a medium like Madam Sylvia.
It was clearly an exasperating job. He watched and listened, marveling at the old woman’s patience as she relayed messages from the dead.
Neither side was ever fully satisfied. The living pestered her with many more than three questions each, the guests taking turns around the table. The dead, meanwhile, were all crowding around and talking at once.
“Please!” Madam Sylvia exclaimed after a bit. “I can’t understand you when you all keep yammering! One spirit person at a time!”
“Right!” A soldier ghost swept forward and took control of the proceedings on his side of the great veil between life and death. “Order now, ladies and gentlemen! Queue up, you lot!” he ordered the other ghosts, waving them back. “Form a line, now! Take your turn and move on! Don’t take advantage of this woman.”
“Thank you very much, whoever you are.”
He tipped his semi-transparent hat. “Welcome, ma’am.”
Jake hid a grin.
Duly chastened for their rudeness, the ghosts obeyed—well, except for the ghost dog, who bounded through the swirling vortex above and ran over to the man sitting next to Jake.
Barking with happy adoration, the ghost dog jumped up on his former master, tail wagging. The man frowned, as though almost sensing something; then Jake saw him smile when his invisible dog licked his cheek.
Touched to witness this reunion of master and pet, Jake made a mental note to tell Dani about it. She’d be happy to hear that people’s pets really did go to heaven to wait for their owners there.
Aye, maybe that cheerful news would help her stop hating him.
Of course, he had not yet managed to find the right moment to apologize to her. He felt stupid about it and did not know what to say. In truth, he’d been more or less avoiding her, half hoping she would just forget about their quarrel.
No such luck.
“Back of the line, sir,” the soldier ghost commanded when another ghost arrived, not through the vortex, but whooshing through a side wall of the shop.
Jake perked up. It was the headmaster ghost, his black scholar’s robes floating out behind him.
Old Sack gave the officer a bow. “Of course, Captain.”
As he glided past, the headmaster ghost peered through the spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose to send Jake a knowing stare full of disapproval.
Jake scowled back at him, instantly wondering what the strict old don was doing here.
He watched him float to the back of the line, where various ghosts had turned themselves into small, shining orbs while they waited, or idled away their time in the form of slowly spinning spirals.
From what Jake had read in one of the books in Aunt Ramona’s library, these forms took less energy for spirits to maintain. The ghosts, however, turned themselves back into full-bodied apparitions when it was their turn to speak to Madam Sylvia.
Most of the messages exchanged were sappy, sentimental things like “I love you” or “Tell him I’m proud of him,” which Jake cynically thought the spirits ought to have said while they were alive.
Since the information he was after was of a more practical nature, he was starting to grow impatient, waiting for his turn. All the while, more ghosts kept coming. It was getting crowded in the little room.
He noticed in suspicion that Old Sack at the back of the line kept letting the new arrivals go before him.
Oh, I see. He remembered very well how concerned the headmaster ghost had been about protecting the school’s reputation above all.
Old Sack wanted to go last so that the other ghosts wouldn’t hear whatever it was he wanted to say to the medium. Jake couldn’t help smirking at the irony, though.
Surely Madam Sylvia was the very embodiment of all the superstitious, hocus-pocus, unexplainable stuff the headmaster would have disdained during his rigidly logical life as an academic.
Just then, a noisy party of four more ghosts arrived, tools clanking from the belts around their waists, lanterns shining on their hats. They were arguing constantly and bantering among themselves, but Jake sat up straight as he realized who they were.
The four dead coalminers!
His heart started pounding. He forgot all about Dr. Sackville as his turn finally came around.
Madam Silvia glanced at him. “What is your question for the spirits, young man?”
“I want to know what happened to the four men who died in the Harris Coalmine recently,” Jake said boldly.
In the blink of an eye, the miner ghosts swept over and surrounded him, all talking at once.
“Oh, I’ll tell you what happened—”
“It was ’orrible!”
“It was all those two’s fault. I told ’em to stay away from that door!”
“Don’t blame us, Barney, you’re the one who started all this.”
“Was not!” a chubby, hapless-looking fellow in coveralls cried.
“Were, too!” said another with a mustache. “You’re the one who said it sounded hollow.”
“Well, you’re the ones who wanted to get the dead bloke’s gold.”
“Shut it!” bellowed the older fellow, silencing his men. “So help me, if I have to hear this bickering for the rest of all eternity…”
Madam Sylvia touched her temples with a wince. “The spirits are angry—”
“You’re bloody right I’m angry!” The big, brawny one with a cigar turned to her. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“Please, speak only one at a time. I can hardly hear you across the void.”
The four ghosts scowled.
“Right,” said the leader. “Martin here. I’ve got the others with me: Smith, Collins, Barney. We’re the ones the kid was askin’ about. May we speak now, ma’am?”
“Thank you, Mr. Martin, yes, please do. Do you have any messages for the living?”
“Aye. You need to warn the Company there’s something creeping around down there in the mine.”
“What’s down there?” Jake blurted out. “I mean—was it an explosion or an animal attack, like some of the rumors claim?”
“No explosion.”
“Wild dogs—” the mustache fellow started.
“That was no dog!” Barney interrupted.
Once again, the miners all started talking at once, unable to agree on what sort of creature had attacked them.
“I tell you, it was gargoyles, ma’am!”
“Gargoyles?” Madam Sylvia echoed, puzzling all of her guests.
“Gargoyles?” the living echoed.
“They can deny it all they like. They refuse to believe their own eyes. But I’m not so stubborn. Enchanted gargoyle statues came to life, ma’am, and ate us. I swear it on my grave,” Barney said with the utmost sincerity.
Jake gulped, wide-eyed.
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br /> “You mustn’t listen to him, ma’am,” Martin grumbled. “He’s gonna start a panic with his daft talk. The truth is, we can’t be too sure what sort of animal attacked us. It all happened so fast and then, poof! We was dead and sucked up into heaven.”
“Much to my surprise,” the brawny one drawled.
“It’s just that we did find something down there, you see,” said Martin. “Some sort of room.”
Jake was dying to ask questions, but he only had one question left—plus, he had to go through Madam Sylvia in order to hide his skills. “What was that about the gargoyles?”
The brawny miner ghost was staring at Jake with his eyes narrowed. “Mr. Martin, I think this boy can hear us.”
“Really?” Madam Sylvia looked at Jake in surprise, but he made his face an innocent blank, just like he used to do in his thieving days.
Barney intended to make the most of anyone who could hear him. He leaned closer, right near Jake’s ear, babbling at top speed while the others argued. “There was a ring, too, it glowed, and there was bones, a skeleton, and this big, daft door carved in the shape of a—”
“Silence!” the soldier ghost thundered. “I demand order!”
Strict Old Sack had also had enough. “Stop pestering that boy, you fool-headed peasants. You heard Madam Sylvia. Only one ghost at a time.”
“Who you callin’ a ghost?” the brawny miner retorted, taking his cigar out of his mouth.
“Easy, Collins, just ignore that old crow,” his mustachioed friend said.
Old Sack glanced around and visibly abandoned his decision to keep his secrets. “I do not know what these buffoons thought they saw, but whatever killed them, it isn’t half as alarming as what’s been lurking in the basement of the Harris Mine School!”
This got all the other ghosts’ attention, as well as Jake’s and Madam Sylvia’s.
“What are you talking about?” the cigar ghost asked.
“The black fog.” The headmaster floated into the center of the table, his spectral body superimposed over the candelabra. He glanced around in distress. “I’m afraid there’s not much time. It may have followed me here.”
Murmurs of fear ran among the ghosts.
Old Sack glanced around imploringly. “It’s been feeding on the children. The poor things are having nightmares in droves. It’s as if somebody’s filling their heads with their worst fears at night, so in the daytime, they can’t concentrate on their studies. They’ve got no appetite. They no longer even want to play outside. The children cannot see this thing, this wraith, that’s attacking them. But I’ve seen it. Feeding on their souls.”
Jake gave up trying to hide his abilities. “What does it look like? When does it come? Only at night?”
“Any time,” Old Sack answered. “I’ve even seen it drawing out their energy in the middle of class, while they’re sitting, yawning, at their desks! They have no idea anything’s happening to them. I’ve tried to warn the staff, but no one can hear me.”
“What do you mean, feeding on them?” Madam Sylvia demanded.
“It hovers over them like a dark cloud, I don’t know, sucking out their life-force. One sees a stream of energy being pulled out of them. Oh, I don’t know how else to describe it! I didn’t even believe in any of this sort of mumbo-jumbo when I was alive. It’s all come as rather a shock, I don’t mind saying.”
“Have you tried communicating with it?” Jake asked urgently.
“Heavens, no! I keep my distance. But…I’ve been hearing rumors from some of the other ghosts in the cemetery across the road from the school.”
“What’s the gossip?” Madam Sylvia pursued.
Old Sack hesitated. “Ghosts are disappearing. I fear this dark spirit may be responsible.”
“It even attacks the dead?” the medium asked in surprise.
“I can’t be certain. All I know is that he’s evil and he grows stronger every day.”
Jake’s heart thudded in his chest. “Is it Garnock?”
“Ask him yourself—he’s here!” Old Sack fled with a shriek as all the ghosts started screaming.
Jake stared in horror at the sinister, skull-headed spirit that had just arrived, laughing, through the wall.
It was the black fog.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Visions of Darkness
“What’s happening?” Madam Sylvia cried, hearing the chaos of ghosts shrieking in panic, though she could not see them running for their afterlives.
Having exploded into their midst, the black fog began chasing after the ghosts with diabolical laughter.
Madam Sylvia paled at the sound, clutched her heart in dread and thereby broke the séance circle. The living guests, oblivious to the attack in progress, were demanding to know what was happening.
All the while, Jake stared at the dark spirit, riveted with fear. The black fog had a ghostly skull for a head and arm-like streams of ectoplasm, with a wispy, tail-like structure trailing out behind it like a loose black robe.
“Who’s there? What’s happening?” Madam Sylvia demanded, pressing her fingers to her temples.
“Madam Sylvia, what do you hear?” one of the lady guests asked nervously.
She shook her head, waving off the woman’s questions impatiently. “Something’s wrong. Another presence has arrived.”
Some of the guests smirked like they thought this was just part of the act.
The black fog was streaming after several of the ghosts, who whooshed away shrieking with terror. But the soldier ghost and the brawny coalminer and the big ghost dog, as well, were not about to put up with it.
With the dog between them, barking its head off in an effort to scare the black fog thing away, the two brave, manly ghosts rushed up to protect the others from the wraith.
It paused.
“Well, well,” it mocked, pausing at the barrier they presented.
“Hoy!” The coalminer spat out his cigar. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“In the name of Her Majesty, you’d better stop right there, friend,” the soldier warned the thing.
It laughed.
Infuriated by such insolence, the ghost dog grew itself in size, all teeth, every bark a thunderclap.
Madam Sylvia held her ears; Jake could not believe the others couldn’t hear it.
Seeing their braver friend make a stand, the other three coalminers floated up nervously behind the big fellow to back him up.
“You’re the one who’s been feeding on the children at the school, like the old man said,” their boss, Mr. Martin, accused him.
The skeleton head of the thing almost seemed to smile. “Guilty as charged. And now, guess what, my good fellow? Now I’m here to feed on you.”
“Get ’im!” yelled the soldier.
But as all the angry ghosts working together rushed at the wraith, it ground out an evil incantation in some strange tongue, then opened its jaws impossibly wide.
In the blink of an eye, it chomped its teeth down on the cigar ghost and swallowed him whole.
“Collins!” his three companions screamed in horror.
Having already been eaten once, they did not intend to let it happen again. The miner ghosts scattered and fled in all directions, abandoning the soldier to make his stand alone.
The wraith ate him in a similar fashion. It even bit the dog, who tried to intervene, but escaped and zoomed away with a yelp.
“All of you, run!” Madam Sylvia cried to warn away whatever ghosts still lingered.
While the living guests looked at each other in confusion, Jake gasped to see the black fog take notice of the headmaster, who was peeking out from behind a photograph on the wall.
The wraith sneered at him. “You…annoying little man.”
“Stay away from my students!” he yelled bravely.
But when the skeleton-head unhinged its jaws in response, Old Sack rocketed straight upward through the ceiling, his robe and tassel flying. He just narrowly missed being chomped by
the horrible floating skull.
“Madam Sylvia, please, what are the ghosts saying?” a gentleman attendee asked the psychic in a nervous voice.
“They’ve all fled. Something’s scared them off. A dark presence. Who are you?” she demanded of the wraith.
“Wouldn’t you like to know, old witch!” it taunted her in a low, garbled voice. “I’ve heard about you from my ravens. Clairaudient, no?”
She did not engage the dark spirit. Jake could hear the terror in her voice as she commanded the thing: “Leave this place! You are not welcome here!”
“Of course, as you wish, my dear,” it simpered.
But since she could not see the wraith, she did not know it was obviously lying.
Jake saw the black fog purposely keeping quiet as it turned its attention to the living, now that the ghosts had fled. Its eyes widened as it began to feed off the lady sitting across the table from him.
Dr. Sackville had described the awful process perfectly. The wraith opened its mouth and inhaled a stream of life-force energy from its victim’s very soul.
Jake watched in dread as a smoky stream of pale life energy flowed out of the lady into the mouth of the evil skull-head. She seemed to have no idea that she was under attack.
He wanted to warn her, but he was terrified of what that sinister thing might do to him if he let on that he could see. After watching it destroy the two manly ghosts who had tried to stand against it, he dared not draw attention to himself.
Having fed off the woman, the wraith began going around the table from guest to guest, preying for several seconds on them all. Each time it fed, its shadowy outline got brighter, stronger. It seemed to grow in size.
As for its victims, nobody dropped dead like the tree goblins had, but they all started looking very tired.
Jake saw that in a few seconds, the wraith would come around to him. What am I going to do? It was horrible to see the attack coming and do nothing. He felt paralyzed.
He couldn’t bring himself to flee the table, mumble some excuse, and run away. Leaving these people to their fate was hardly conduct worthy of a future Lightrider.
His heart beating like a drum, he was not sure if he could make himself sit there passively for those few seconds while it fed on him and pretend not to notice, though that was probably his safest bet.
