Checkmate

by Michael D. Britton

  #

  The next evening, Lynche was in a decidedly better mood than the previous evening meal time, feeling like he was actually accomplishing something.

  Fighting back, instead of merely surviving.

  “So,” he said, speaking through a mouthful of instant mashed potatoes, a few days’ growth on his gaunt face, “I think I’ve got it. If I connect the ectoblaster’s dissolution core to a high-yield dispersal modulator – I can basically broadcast the weapon’s energy world-wide.”

  “In English?” said Karla, taking a drink of water.

  “A bomb, Karla. A freaking ecto-nuke that’ll take them all out at once! I just need a sufficient power source – something bigger than our little generator here.”

  Karla shook her head slowly. “I dunno, Ty. I know we need to do something, but I just wonder – isn’t there some other way? We don’t know what happens when a ghost is destroyed.”

  “Yeah we do,” said Lynche, walking into the kitchen with his empty dish. He called over his shoulder as he washed the plate at the sink. “We know that they’re gone – no longer able to kill the Living and run amok in the world.”

  Karla didn’t respond.

  A minute later, he returned to the dining room – but she was gone.

  “Karla?”

  He picked up his gun and rushed to the entry hall, where Karla stood by the double front doors, facing him, stiff as a board, pale, and sweating.

  A ghost stepped out from behind her, his silvery shimmering hand grasping Karla’s neck from the back.

  Lynche automatically raised his gun in a two-handed stance, pointing it at the ghost’s head – despite the fact that a bullet would do nothing to a spirit.

  “I’m sorry,” Karla whispered. “I thought I heard something, so I came in here to check it, and –”

  “Shhh,” said the ghost.

  “How did you get in here?” Lynche demanded.

  The ghost, a male in his late forties, was white like water vapor, but with clearly defined features. His whole body, very slightly translucent and glowing gently, seemed to hover mere millimeters above the worn hardwood floor. Lynche noticed the air in the room had turned noticeably colder.

  The ghost’s hair was poofy in the front and sticking out on the sides.

  Except for his brief encounter with the attacking ghosts last night in the street, this was the closest Lynche had been to a real live apparition in all his years studying the subject.

  “My name is Paul Morphy,” said the ghost calmly. “I was once a master chess player - one of the best ever, they said. Of course, that was over a century ago. I died in 1884, and was entombed not far from where your friend, Victor Delphine, got himself killed by the very spirits he’d unleashed.”

  “Delphine was not my friend,” Lynche hissed. “Now how did you get past my shield?”

  “I found a weakness in your defenses – which is my expertise – but don’t worry,” he said, still gripping Karla by the neck, “I won’t tell any of the others. The dead, or the Living.”

  Karla shivered.

  “Let her go!” Lynche demanded.

  “I will,” said Morphy. “If I wanted to hurt either of you, don’t you think you’d be dead by now?”

  Lynche did not lower his weapon. It somehow made him feel more secure and powerful, despite its futility as a weapon against a ghost. He wished he had his ectoblaster handy, but the thing was too heavy to lug around everywhere, and was currently charging in the kitchen anyway.

  Morphy continued. “I’ve been watching you, Mr. Lynche. For several weeks now. I’ve been observing your development of a powerful weapon, and saw you test it successfully last night.”

  “That’s right,” said Lynche. “I’m going to finally get rid of you ghosts, and free the few remaining Living from the prisons they’ve been forced to live in. That we’ve been forced to live in.”

  Morphy said nothing, but he did slowly release Karla’s neck. She slumped a little, then glanced toward Morphy and leapt away toward Lynche, clinging to his chest, panting and wiping away the tears and cold sweat from her face.

  “Don’t you wish to understand why I am not harming you? Why I am no threat to you?” asked Morphy, cocking his head slightly.

  “All right,” spat Lynche, lowering his useless gun. “Explain.”

  Morphy floated slowly to an armchair near the door and settled into it. The cushion seemed to be untouched as he lowered his non-corporeal body into it and crossed one leg over the other. “Mr. Delphine not only raised the spirits of the dead that night he placed his hex, but he placed a controlling spell upon them, robbing them of their normal will and intellect, turning us into vicious, crazed savages bent on destruction and murder. Mere pawns.”

  Lynche and Karla remained standing, listening intently to this creepy visitor with his eerily calm voice that sounded like Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Karla trembled slightly as she continued to hold tight to Lynche.

  “So, I used the one thing you can take with you. As a master chess player, my mind is trained to have incredible powers of concentration, control, and strategic thinking. My mind is so disciplined, it was only a matter of time before I was able to use my intellect to overcome the hex. As the foggy forefront of my consciousness was engaged in the rampages that nearly wiped the Living from the face of the earth, the back of my mind was clear, working on the problem – solving the riddle of the hex – and eventually, I undid it.”

  The ghost scratched at his head. “I came to myself, fully aware once more, as if waking from a strange trance, in the middle of Baton Rouge, surrounded by several hundred other spirits. They were still, unfortunately, lost in the madness of the hex. I slipped away and returned here to my home.”

  “Here? Your home?”

  “Why, yes. This empty restaurant was once a mansion that belonged to my family. You can imagine my surprise when I found myself locked out, so to speak.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “I died here, you know. In the bath, upstairs.” He gazed upward, as if looking right through the ceiling. “The one checkmate I had not anticipated.”

  “So what do you want from us? Why are you here?” asked Lynche.

  “Why, my good man, isn’t it obvious? I want you to refrain from destroying us.”

  Lynche stared at the ghost. “Are you serious? No way – next chance I get, I’m gonna activate my ecto-nuke and blow away every last one of you murderous freaks.”

  “Are you sure you should do that?” asked Karla.

  “You bet I am,” said Lynche. “The ecto-nuke will send an energy wave in all directions – pass right through the earth like cosmic rays – and take out every ghost on the planet. And I’m almost ready to deploy.”

  “No!” barked Morphy, rising to his feet and balling his fists. “You cannot do that. It would be wrong to destroy one hundred billion souls – can’t you understand?”

  “They’re an invading force that’s murdered almost everyone on the planet!” yelled Lynche. “What’s to understand?”

  “I’ll tell you,” said Morphy, his voice quieter as he sat back down. “This artificial resurrection – caused by the Voodoo hex – is unnatural. I want to return to the world I’ve known since my death – a place much like this, only – different. All of my family members were there. We were happy. Do you really want to destroy entire families? Erase our souls – make us all extinct? It’s simply not fair.”

  “Fair? I’ll give you fair. Try the near-complete decimation of the human species! Genocide!” said Lynche.

  “Ty,” said Karla tentatively. “He has a point – wouldn’t what you plan to do be no better? Wouldn’t it be genocide?”

  Lynche turned as white as Morphy. “I can’t believe you’re actually siding with him! Karla, they killed almost everybody!”

  “They’re sick, Ty! They’ve been hexed – it’s not their fault. Look at him – he’s perfectly normal – for a ghost,
I mean. All those other ghosts just need to do what he did and shake the curse!” She turned to Morphy. “Can’t you teach them to overcome the hex like you did?”

  Morphy steepled his fingers. “My dear, you overestimate my considerable talents. It took me years of training to discipline my mind – and I was already a natural genius, having become a chess prodigy before I was ten years old. Do you really expect me to reason with – and mentally train – one hundred billion crazed, hexed ghosts?”

  “Exactly,” said Lynche. “That’s why they must be destroyed. Survival of the Living is at stake.”

  “I beg you to reconsider, sir.”

  Lynche pondered this highly intelligent specter who sat conversing with him in his home. A ghost who had been under the wicked Voodoo hex, but now was not.

  He seemed reasonable. Normal.

  What if there were others like him, who had somehow shaken the hex and become “normal” ghosts once again? What if Karla was right? What if the ecto-nuke would mean the complete obliteration of a hundred billion souls whose only crime was to be caught dead with a hex on them? The ecto-nuke would cause them to cease to exist, with no way to undo it. What if all those other ghosts were simply afflicted, and could be healed, like Morphy?

  Lynche glared at the ghost and thought of the billions of people who’d been murdered a few months ago, and the handful of surviving Living condemned to hiding in churches.

  No – he couldn’t take the risk.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lynche, “It has to be done.”

  In an instant, Morphy shot across the room like a blur, grabbed Karla, and retreated.

  He clutched her neck tightly – she wheezed, clutching at her throat, trying to breathe as Morphy’s hand seemed to pass through her flesh.

  Her eyes wide, she croaked “Ty, help me,” then collapsed to the floor before Lynche could act.

  He ran to her aid, then recoiled in horror, backing across the room.

  From her lifeless body, a spirit rose – Karla’s ghost.

  “I’m so very sorry, Mr. Lynche. You’ve forced me to capture your queen.”

  Shocked, Lynche dropped his gun and fell to his knees. “Karla?”

  Karla’s ghost stood there as surprised as Lynche. “He killed me, Ty. I’m – dead.”

  “I had no choice,” said Morphy, sounding genuinely remorseful as he spoke to Karla. “I’m sorry. I hope,” he looked back at Lynche, “that her sacrifice will not be in vain.”

  Lynche stood and shifted from foot to foot, like a cornered king. His breathing heavy, his eyes wet, he looked at Karla’s shimmering ghost. “How come she’s not – you know – freaking out and trying to kill me?”

  “She’s a perfectly healthy ghost,” said Morphy. “No hex. Nobody who’s died since that initial night of terror has been affected – they just went to the other world in peace. Karla is here because she has unfinished business.”

  Karla floated close to Lynche and held up a hand, her face sorrowful. Lynche tried to touch it with his own, but it passed through her with a chilly sensation. He jerked his hand away and backed up from her.

  He suddenly turned, ran to the kitchen, and returned with his ectoblaster. He flipped a switch and a whining sound grew from the weapon as it warmed up.

  “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t destroy you right here and now!” he yelled, aiming the weapon at Morphy’s head. “You’re a murderer!”

  Morphy looked genuinely remorseful, and not the slightest bit threatened. “Perhaps that would be best, Mr. Lynche. I know changing Karla’s state against her will was wrong. But surely you see why you must not use your ecto-nuke – you’ll be extinguishing the normal as well as the afflicted – including Karla.”

  Lynche considered his words and lowered the ectoblaster, then buried his head in his hands. “You have an alternative strategy, I take it?”

  Morphy smiled ruefully. “I think I have just the right move.”