Ghost Electricity

by Sean Cunningham

  Arden made a sound deep in his throat that might have been disapproval. Once he had unlocked the padlock with a key from the ring on his belt, he and Rob pushed back a side of the gate each. Julian coasted the van into the yard.

  “Warehouse door is this way.”

  He moved with a bandy-legged gait that ate up ground faster than Rob would have thought, but that wasn’t a problem because Rob’s legs wanted to run again. He saw an old man when he looked at Arden and he smelled an old man, but his head was full of dark forests.

  Arden unlocked the warehouse door and sent it rattling into the ceiling. He stood aside and Julian backed the van inside as if expecting the top of it to crunch into the doorframe.

  “I’ll wait out here while you conduct your business,” Arden said. “Pull the door down after you when you’re inside.”

  “Thanks,” Rob said. He dragged the door down but didn’t bother trying to work out how to lock it.

  Julian had moved the van a short distance inside. The warehouse was twenty or thirty metres to a side and completely empty, from what they could see in the van’s lights. Rob spotted a light switch. Amber fluorescent lights came on when he flicked it.

  “This is it?” Julian shut off the engine and climbed out of the van. “We appear to be here first.”

  “Yeah,” Rob said. “Maybe we’re on time after all. Did you see the custodian?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Rob said. “People aren’t always what they seem, right?”

  “Particularly in our world. What did you see?”

  “Don’t have a clue,” Rob said. “We could be deep in it here, I’m sorry to say. No idea at all what I’ve dragged you into.”

  But Julian had swung around to look at the far end of the warehouse. He went back to the van, pulled out his bag and slung it over his shoulder.

  “Be on your guard,” Julian said.

  “That’s a hell of a thing to say to a strung-out werewolf on a full moon night, you know that?”

  A point of white light appeared near the far wall. It spun outwards until a disc of light stretched between the floor, the ceiling and two of the steel columns arranged in wide-open ranks throughout the warehouse. It made a sound like cloth drawn across glass.

  Rob’s mouth fell open.

  The light wasn’t too bright to look at and so he saw two humanoid silhouettes emerge from it, one after the other. They walked forward until Rob could make them out. One was short and broad and stared at Rob with bored indifference. The other was tall, wide around the middle and had his face set as though the warehouse stank of old garbage. They had bronze skin and wore green, one-piece outfits a lot like coveralls. Tools swung at their belts.

  Julian glanced at Rob, looking for him to do whatever came next. Normally, even in the face of something this unknown, Rob would have stepped up, chin forward, shaken the men by the hand and sorted things out. But Rob was on edge from the full moon, jittery from the energy drink, wrung out from the race to get to Birmingham and confused by the custodian. The appearance of the two men and their glowing circle of light left him speechless.

  Julian said, “We’re from Odd’s Transport. You have a delivery for us?”

  The bald man deferred to his larger companion. “Open your vehicle. We’ll place it inside. Have you been told how to handle it?”

  “No,” Julian said.

  “The best advice I can give you is don’t handle it,” the larger man said. “Don’t interfere with the seals and don’t even touch the crate if you can avoid it.”

  Four more men emerged from the glowing circle, carrying a wooden crate on their shoulders. It was long and narrow, though too long to be a coffin. The men wore the same green coveralls as the first two, but without the tool belts. Julian opened the van door and they slid the crate inside.

  The short, broad-shouldered man eyed Rob and said something to his companion in a language Rob didn’t recognise. The larger man chortled.

  Julian snapped words back at them and they jerked as if stung.

  The four bearers went back through the glowing circle. The larger man produced what looked to be a stone tablet about the size of a phone and held it out.

  “Rob,” Julian said.

  “Uh?”

  “Press your thumb on the tablet.”

  “What for?”

  “You’re signing for the cargo we just accepted,” Julian said. “This is your operation. You should get the credit for it.”

  Rob pressed his thumb to the tablet the taller man held. It was cold at first, then jumped up hotter. He snatched his thumb away and saw his thumb-print fading back into the grey stone.

  “Good journey to you both, gentlemen,” the taller man said. The two men walked back into the circle of light and it spun shut after them.

  “Get the door, Rob,” Julian said.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Julian rolled the van out into the night. Arden was waiting outside. He pulled the door down himself and locked it with one of the shining keys on his belt.

  “Do you know what’s in there?” Rob asked.

  “Of course I do. I’m the custodian.” Behind his glasses his old eyes were not unkind. “Let’s get the main gate.”

  They were idling outside the gate in a few moments and Julian tapped at the satnav, looking for the Dover address programmed in for them back at the Odd’s Transport depot. Once their destination was set Julian asked, “Are you all right, Rob?”

  “What was that thing?”

  “That was a portal,” Julian said. “A gateway to another world.”

  “Another world? There are people – human beings – on other worlds?”

  “There are people on other worlds.” Under his breath, Julian added, “And things that used to be people.”

  “And the language you guys were gabbling away in?”

  “They were speaking Tulias,” Julian said. “I was speaking Naffine. They’re like Italian and Spanish, one can generally make oneself understood to someone who speaks the other. Both languages are quite close to the root High Surain.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “High Surain hasn’t been spoken in these parts for at least ten thousand years.”

  Rob mulled over that one. While he did so, Julian leaned over the back of their seats to look at their cargo. He stretched out a hand and a blue light appeared above it, just as the engine of the van gave a little cough.

  The light as it floated into the back of the van. Rob saw the crate, unmarked and unremarkable.

  Then the light plunged through the top of the crate with a little electrical zip sound. Julian jerked back.

  “What was that?”

  “It ate my magic,” Julian said.

  “Is that bad?”

  Julian stared at the crate with a look of fierce thought. “There aren’t many things that can do that, not the way it just did. I hope it isn’t something alive.”

  The hair on the back of Rob’s neck stood up. “Alive?”

  “Yes,” Julian said. “Some inert material would be better for you and me right now. That would be merely valuable. But alive – alive is dangerous.” He turned that look of intense scrutiny on Rob. “Bainbridge never gave you any details?”

  “Nothing, really,” Rob said. “You said yourself though that he’s looking to use new building materials, right? So maybe it’s something, I don’t know, magnetic.”

  “Magnetic,” Julian said, testing the idea. He relaxed a notch, though not all the way. “Like magnetic. Voidsteel perhaps?” He faced forward and put the van in gear. “What would Bainbridge want with voidsteel?”

  “So, ten thousand years, yeah?” Rob asked as they pulled onto the street and the satnav started up with its directions. “Didn’t think we’d been around that long.”

  “This isn’t the first cycle of human civilisation,” Julian said. “There was one before this one. Sometime during that cycle, its people opened gateways to other worlds and
left Earth behind. That’s who we just met. It isn’t common knowledge, but I told you I studied history for a while.”

  “Wasn’t that part of your plausible lie?” Rob asked.

  “Isn’t the best lie one that’s as close as possible to the truth?”

  “So I’m told.” He tried to get comfortable. “Shit, I can’t even imagine ten thousand years. And portal things and magnets that eat magic. Is this what’s normal for you?”

  “I don’t have a normal,” Julian said. “I was actually hoping to find it in London, or an approximation thereof.”

  “Good idea then, moving in with a werewolf.”

  Jacob was eating in a Chinese restaurant in west London when Catherine called him.

  Miss Koh had picked at her own dish, sneered at the prawn crackers and sat back with her arms folded across her chest. She had remained ill at ease all afternoon after meeting Anthony.

  The restaurant contained only two other people. A short man with rolled-up sleeves busied himself behind the counter and an unshaven man with a Polish accent sat at one of the nearest tables with a beer. Why he had chosen to drink in the Chinese restaurant instead of the pub three doors down was a mystery Jacob felt he could live with.

  Jacob’s phone rested on the table beside his drink. He swept it up the instant the screen lit up with Catherine’s name. “Where are we?”

  “They’re on the road,” Catherine replied. “There was no mistaking when that cargo came through. I’ll bet every sensitive in Britain felt someone walking over their grave.”

  “What about the route?” Jacob asked.

  “As expected. They’ll be on the M1 in twenty minutes or so.”

  “You sound pleased with yourself,” Jacob said.

  “I like being right.”

  Jacob couldn’t help a hard grin. Had he liked his cousin Richard, he would have sent him a thank you note for putting him in touch with Catherine. “Tell me about the service station stop.”

  “Your boy from America has made it a certainty,” Catherine said. “They’ll stop exactly where he’s waiting for them. It won’t be long.”

  Jacob shook his head. “How did he do it?”

  He heard a sound over the phone, like a tense breath drawn in and let out. “Some things I don’t want to know, Jacob. That includes everything about your American boy I can get away with not knowing.”

  He frowned. “You don’t know what he’s going to do when they get there?”

  “No one can,” she said. “Given what your boy is – no, it just can’t be done. I think it would crush my sanity just to try.”

  That sounded promising to Jacob. “But you’re sure they’ll stop there.”

  “Oh yeah, don’t worry about that. Your boy’s got them.”

  Chapter 15 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  The energy drink Rob had propped himself up with wore off as they left Birmingham. He slumped down in his seat with his chin against his chest and dozed.

  He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t sleep, not on a night with a full moon. It called to him from the dark sky above and his limbs twitched as he tried to rest. He drifted to a place between sleep and waking.

  Strangest of all for Rob, he almost dreamed. He hadn’t dreamed since being bitten, as if that part of him was gone forever, devoured by the monster. The werewolves in Australia, Grant and the others who had taken him in, they dreamed. Only he was different.

  It was a sensation, not even an image. A whirlpool, a sucking vortex that reached out and pulled in everything. Like the waters of a dark sea beneath strange angry stars. He almost dreamed that. Almost.

  A sharp movement snapped him awake. “Whuzzt?” he said as he pulled himself up into a sitting position.

  It was raining and it was coming down in buckets. The windshield of the van had turned into a waterfall despite the best efforts of the flapping windscreen wipers. Two bright red lights shone just ahead, alarmingly close, and Rob saw in the van’s headlights that they were nose-to-tail with a four wheel drive.

  “Traffic’s jamming up,” Julian said. “Everyone’s freaking out at the rain.”

  “When did this start?” Rob asked.

  “Maybe a minute ago.”

  He checked the time on his phone and peered at the satnav. They were on the M1, not far from Northampton.

  “Something’s wrong,” Julian said.

  He smelled tense, frustrated. “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Julian said. “That damned thing we’re carrying is messing with my head. But something is wrong.” He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. “How are we for time?”

  “Doing well. We’ve got some fat built into this leg of the trip. It was making the Birmingham meet that was tight. You want to stop?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a coffee,” Julian said. “Plus a chance to get away from the van and clear my head. I might get a better feel for what’s happening. I saw a sign for one of those big motorway service stations a minute ago.”

  “Yeah, I could do with a wake-up myself. Proper caffeine this time too, not that crap in a can you drink. I feel like I’ve been sweating radioactive ooze.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but you are glowing more than usual.”

  “It’s all good,” Rob said. “Chicks dig radioactive werewolves.”

  Julian got them off the motorway when the exit came up. He took the speed bumps carefully but the cargo in the back of the van didn’t shift, as though it was welded to the floor. They cruised up and down the parking lot, looking for a spot close to the station entrance. They parked between a beetle-like hatchback and an ancient Volvo.

  “I don’t know about you,” Rob said, looking at the rain, “but I can run damned fast.”

  The corner of Julian’s mouth curled upwards. “We’ll see who gets the wettest.”

  They plunged out of their doors at the same time and shut them with rattling slams. The monster in Rob surged upwards but he clenched his bared teeth and wrestled it back.

  Then he was off at a run. He sprinted across the parking lot and heard the chirp of the van’s auto-lock behind him as he dodged between two more parked cars. A two-foot-high hedge lurked behind the cars and he hurdled it easily. He corrected his course in mid-air with a shoe on the side of a pickup truck. Mercifully the vehicle’s alarm didn’t go off. He dashed across the last stretch to the brightly-lit glass doors of the restaurant area.

  He pulled up in the foyer, grinning and shaking the water off his jacket. He combed his barely damp hair back with his fingers and struck a casual pose as Julian came jogging in.

  Rob’s mouth fell open. “What? There’s hardly a drop on you.”

  Julian brushed his sleeves. “A little trick I picked up in – well, a little trick with the wind I picked up. It’s only too happy to dance if you give it a little jolt.”

  “Sounds like cheating to me,” Rob said.

  “I saw that six foot leap of yours.”

  “It was more like three,” Rob said. “I was restraining myself, in case anyone was watching.”

  “So discreet.” But then his gaze went past Rob and he frowned.

  Rob turned around, looked into the restaurant area and tested the scents in the air. He smelled people, food, coffee, mud, water and different kinds of car fuel, but under that was another smell that made him wrinkle his nose and draw back.

  He heard rain, Julian’s breathing and his pulse. He heard piped music bleached of everything that made music interesting. Nothing else.

  He passed through the automatic doors and into the restaurant area proper. A coffee shop and a news agent flanked the area to the right. Several eateries offered to feed the hungry traveller fast food or hotbox versions of meals with actual nutritional value. The food shops were all arranged along two walls and between them they enclosed a high-ceilinged area of tables and chairs.

  There were no people.

  “I don’t think this place should be empty, even at this time of the evening,
” Rob said.

  “There’d be people working the stores. Everything is still open.” His gaze was on something high up. “There’s a clock there, can you see it?”

  A circular analogue clock was set on the wall above the news agent. Rob compared it with the time on his phone. “It’s about half an hour slow.”

  “Yes, but look more closely.”

  “This isn’t school,” Rob said. “Can’t you just tell me whatever it is that’s got your knickers in a knot?”

  Julian didn’t react to the barb. He had that look about him that Rob had glimpsed for the first time in the alley when the vampires jumped them, and a few times since when trouble was on them. Instead of awkward and aloof he looked alert, focused.

  “The second hand is moving,” Julian said, “but it’s moving back and forth over a few seconds.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Julian shrugged. “It’s never a good sign.” He returned to the front door. When it didn’t open automatically for him he pressed against it. It didn’t budge.

  Rob followed him and gave the door a test push. It felt like a wall, like it wasn’t a door at all. “Want me to try and break it?”

  Julian pressed his hand flat against the glass and closed his eyes. “No. I don’t think either of us can get through this.”

  “Not even if I, y’know, become unpleasant?”

  “Can you see the cars in the car park anymore?”

  Rob squinted at the view outside. Visibility was poor. The light inside the service station was bright fluorescent white and outside it was not just dark but raining. But there were lights in the car park so you could get around it and there should have been more cars arriving, if not leaving.

  All he could see was rain.

  “We’re in trouble, right?” Rob asked.

  “Someone is.”

  Rob grinned. “Now you’re talking.” He strode back into the restaurant area, taking the iron chain off his wrist and stuffed it into his trouser pocket as he went.

  The place exploded with different scents. Before it had been a general mash of what a normal human would smell, though stronger. Now it was a riot of information. He could separate the scents of different people who had walked through the door, whether or not it had been raining when they arrived and in some cases what kind of fuel their car used. He could smell different flavours of coffee and tea in the coffee shop, the slight scent of food clinging to wrappers, beef and gravy bubbling in the hotboxes, burgers and fries in the takeaway.