"This place is pretty amazing," he said.
She smiled briefly. "Thank you. It's a labor of love, really. I've been fascinated by paranormal phenomena since I was very young." The inventor seemed to lapse into reminiscence before flashing back to the present. "Fortunately, with the help of Garrote's estate and the Hedgewood Foundation, I've been able to achieve what no one in history has before. Someday, I hope to be able to use this technology to further our understanding of what lies beyond the veil, as they say. For now, I'm pleased with what we've been able to accomplish here."
Allison said, "It's very impressive, I have to admit."
The inventor thanked her.
"We came to see Garrote House," Ben said. He was wary of showing his hand but he wanted to know more about Garrote's involvement in the park. He wanted to know if this Garrote code was volatile or benign. Mostly, he wanted to know if the holograms of Rex Garrote that popped up around the park were the same sort of "free roamers" she had mentioned in reference to the mental patient Morton Welles. Could he show up anywhere? Could he be multiple places at one time?
"Oh?" the inventor said.
Ben nodded. "When the house came through town four years ago, I saw Mr. Garrote in one of the windows. I knew it was him because I'm one of his biggest fans. I've read all of his books and I even have the 25th anniversary Blu-ray of the series—"
"And you say you saw him in that house?" the inventor asked, scowling.
"Yep. Uh-huh."
"Without AR glasses." Her tone was dubious.
"Yeah. Should that not have happened?"
"To say the least," Sara Jane said. "No one has seen Rex Garrote in that house since he passed on. Ever. Not with the glasses, not without them. Not before we brought it here or after. As far as my team has been able to ascertain, Rex Garrote's dead energy is not present in that house. It never was. His image—his source coding—has all been replicated from old video footage, digitally enhanced."
"Then how could I see him?" Ben asked, wondering if Stan had been right, if Garrote really had faked his own death after all. It would explain why they hadn't found the writer's dead energy in Garrote House. It would also explain why he'd seen the man in the window that day when no one else had before or after.
Because he really is alive, Ben thought. And he's here now, somewhere, watching us like ants in a terrarium.
"You didn't see him," Sara Jane replied.
"I know what I saw."
"It was a hallucination."
"Bullshit," Lilian said.
The inventor looked at her as if she'd been slapped. "Excuse me?"
"I said bullshit. Ben saw him in that house. I know this for a fact. He had a heart attack because of it. I was on headset with him when it happened. He said 'I think I saw Rex Garrote,' and then his heart stopped beating. That doesn't happen when you hallucinate a friggin' ghost. If Ben says he saw him in that house, that's what happened. How else would he have known it was his house?"
Ben smiled and thanked her.
"Regardless," Sara Jane said dismissively, "whatever you saw or think you saw, it doesn't matter. The Rex Garrote you've seen at Ghostland isn't an apparition. It isn't a poltergeist or a multiplier or an elemental or any of the other types of entities. It's a computer algorithm and that's all it is. Ones and zeroes in the shape of a man."
"But it doesn't make a difference, does it?" Ben asked. "You just said you use the same algorithms for all the dead energies in your exhibits. Even if you just made Garrote out of old footage or clothes stuffed with newspaper, if he's a part of that program he's still just as real as any of the ghosts are."
Harrison stopped typing briefly and turned back from the computer. "The kid makes a good point. Actually, he's possibly more real than the others since he's partly artificial intelligence, like the free-roamers."
"But there is no dead energy!" Sara Jane cried, throwing up her hands in exasperation.
"Well, you see, there is," Harrison said, "because now he's taken over actual ghosts using your invention and my coding." He cleared his throat and pushed up his glasses before adding apologetically, "Ma'am."
Sara Jane narrowed her eyes a moment, then jabbed a finger at his computer screen. "Just shut that thing down."
"It's taking longer than expected. I had to close some external software," Harrison explained. The screen went black. "There we go."
The computer rebooted with a musical chime.
"Hey!" the pink-haired woman shouted—Nia, Sara Jane had called her—as she turned in her chair. "My computer just shut off." A heavyset guy in a Deadpool hoodie said, "Mine's out, too." A moment later, the whole wall of monitors suddenly went black all at once.
"What the hell is happening?" Sara Jane demanded.
"I don't know, ma'am." Harrison pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a middle finger. "The reboot should have only affected terminals running the Ghostland program…"
The security monitors all came back on at once, mass pandemonium displayed on each one.
They watched with increasing horror as crowds ran screaming in silence. As guests were slashed, flung and burned, limbs and heads torn from bodies. The ghosts had escaped their exhibits and these "sightless fish," as the inventor had called them, were taking their uncaged fury out on the crowd. The circus tent toppled, blotting out two of the cameras. A man was tossed at a camera and left the lens shattered, the image flashing to blue before switching to another shot of carnage, and another, and another.
Deadpool Hoodie wailed in terror.
"What's happening?" the inventor shouted over the man's scream.
"The ESPs are down!" Nia called back.
Sara Jane shot the programmer a startled look. "Are we safe?"
"The walls are protected," Harrison said, a nervous waver in his voice. "Those cinderblocks are loaded up with salt. But without the ESPs, anything could come right through the front door."
"Are we safe?" Sara Jane repeated, the chaos on the screens reflected on her glasses.
Harrison's hand began to tremble on the mouse. He shook his head, a defeated look in his downcast eyes. His glasses slipped down the sweaty bridge of his nose and he didn't bother to push them back up.
An angry buzz came from the door. Everyone startled, turning to look. Terrified. Awaiting the inevitable. Lilian grabbed Ben's hand and squeezed it.
The buzz came twice more in rapid succession, followed by pounding on the metal door. It was the intercom. Someone was locked out there.
"Oh, dear God…" Sara Jane breathed.
"Jesus—let me in!" a man screamed over the intercom, trapped outside with the ghosts.
"Danny?" Harrison said, leaping to his feet.
Sara Jane put a hand on his chest to stop him from moving toward the door. "We can't let him in."
"But… it's Danny."
"Harrison, Danny is dead." The programmer shook his head at this. "Yes," she said, taking him by the shoulders. "And if someone doesn't get those ESPs back up and running soon, we're all dead too."
Harrison nodded solemnly. She let him go and he returned to his terminal.
"Is there anything we can do?" Allison asked.
Outside the door, the Ghostland employee began to scream.
"There is," Sara Jane said. "You can pray."
PART 2
GHOST VIRUS
The last living ghost looked upon the burning ruins of the world he'd conquered and thought, This land belongs to us now—a world of the dead, a world full of ghosts.
— Rex Garrote, Shōki
Most apparitions have very limited abilities to affect their surroundings. Others, like Revenants or Tricksters, can be very dangerous when encountered. It is advisable that Ghost Hunters avoid contact with them at all times, except under the safe conditions at Ghostland.
— Know Your Ghosts: A Guide to Ghostland
DEAD RECKONING
LILIAN HAD NO intention of praying, but as she looked over the countless scenes of mur
der and destruction on the security monitors, she thought she might soon reconsider.
It looked like the end of the world out there. People running, screaming, trampling each other, blood everywhere she looked. A man's head exploded—actually exploded—and splashed the camera with his brains. A young woman ran with a little boy in her arms and a black, ghostly shape dropped out of the sky, tore her child from her arms and left her weeping. A Vietnam veteran in ragged green camouflage stalked through the chaotic crowd, mowing people down with a machine-gun. A hangman slipped his noose around a man's head and pulled, the muscles in his back rippling. The man's head popped off like a champagne cork, spraying the walls with blood.
Outside the control room door, the screams stopped abruptly.
"Danny?" the programmer said meekly.
How long until one of them gets in here? Lilian wondered. Minutes? Seconds? How much longer do we have to live?
Ben reached into his pocket and took out his bottle of pills. He let go of her hand to twist off the cap, shook two into his palm and popped them into his mouth. He chewed them and swallowed hard.
"What's the ETA on our ESPs, Nia?" Sara Jane said anxiously, looking back over her shoulder from where she stood in front of the monitor wall, surveying the carnage, almost in silhouette.
"My computer just restarted. Two minutes, maybe three?"
"Get it done! Harrison, have you isolated the virus?"
Sweat flicked off Harrison's forehead as he tore his gaze away from the control room door and blinked hard at his computer screen. "Nothing yet!"
"Find it and get it quarantined!" The inventor turned back to the bloodbath on the screens towering over her and shook her head. "We have to get on top of this or the press is going to slaughter us."
"The press?" Allison stepped into the aisle with her fists clenched, looking like she wanted to beat the inventor to a pulp. "This is negligent homicide on a grand scale and you're worried about your image?"
"This is my life's work, Miss Whatever-Your-Name-Is," the inventor said, approaching Allison down the aisle. "If we can contain this—"
"Look at that!" Allison stabbed a finger at the monitors. Lilian had never seen her so upset, so full of unbridled rage. She liked it. "That's not just a problem to be contained. Those people are dying. Hundreds of..." Her voice broke. "…fucking hundreds of innocent people are dying out there. Children. And you—"
"Don't you think I know that? We're doing everything we can—"
"I'm in!" Nia shouted.
"How long, Nia?"
"Hang on, hang on…"
Allison shook her head dolefully. "It doesn't matter how long. Even if you do get it under control, this park, your life's work, it's all over. This is what happens when you mess around with things you can't possibly comprehend. This," she stressed, pointing again at the monitors. "You took what might have been the most important scientific discovery of the twenty-first century and turned it into a thrill ride. You people should be fucking ashamed of yourselves."
The inventor opened her mouth to reply, then closed it and simply stared at her. There was nothing to say. No excuses left. It was an epic disaster and she knew it.
The light clattering of Harrison's fingers on the keyboard stopped suddenly. His head wrenched back, the cords in his neck standing and his arms flung out to his sides as if he was having a seizure. Then he launched out of his chair, spun in mid-air and slammed against the control room door so hard Lilian heard his glasses break.
In the stunned silence that followed, Ben slipped on his headset. "Oh, crap!" he whispered. He grabbed her shoulder and jerked her down to the floor with him. "They're inside."
As he said this, the lights went out, plunging them into the dark.
Red emergency lights flashed over the darkened control room, on and off, clashing with the blue glow of the computers and monitors. Ben's pale white face took on their hues. Blue, red. Blue, red. Beneath the desk, Lilian's heart beat so fast she could almost sympathize with his condition.
She dared a peek over the back of the desks. Harrison lay on the floor breathing steadily, the broken frames of his glasses haphazard on his bleeding face. Shadows moved on the floor and the walls, in time with the emergency lights. On the monitors the chaos continued, soundless screams, exhibits collapsing, fires smoldering. But the control room itself had gone deathly silent, nothing but the drumming of her heart in her ears.
Where was Allison? Where was Sara Jane? The woman with the pink hair—Nia? She supposed they must all be hiding under the desks, like she and Ben were.
"Put your glasses on," Ben whispered harshly.
"They're broken."
"They still work, don't they?"
They worked, but she'd already seen enough carnage on the security monitors to last a lifetime. The tears, the screaming, the pleas for mercy. There was no escape, not for any of them, and if they were about to die, she didn't want to have to look her killers in the face. Better to not know. Just a quick shock—a stab, a slash or a snapped neck—and lights out.
Ben gripped her hand tightly. He was sweating. She felt his pulse pounding through his palm, hummingbird fast. He flinched, watching as something she couldn't see moved down the aisle. Reluctantly, she grabbed the glasses from her jacket and slipped them on.
Immediately she wished she hadn't. A luminescent black cloud hovered over the programmer on the floor, a being with seemingly no permanent shape or size: its ethereal, vaporous form contracted and expanded as what looked like a swarm of tormented faces churned within, hurtling themselves outward as if attempting to escape the others before being pulled back into its dark heart. A choir of whispers arose from within, all speaking over one another so that no one voice could be distinguished from the next, no words deciphered.
The creature left Harrison's body and floated past their row until its glow was no longer visible.
Allison's scream pierced the silence. "No no no—!"
Another woman's scream rose above hers. The inventor's, from the sound. And it seemed like she was running away, the scream traveling. Then it ascended, as if the woman were being lifted into the air. With a crunch of plastic, it stopped abruptly.
For a moment the only sounds came from outside the building: the distant alarm and muffled screams. A head poked around the corner of the desk, and in the dip to darkness between red and blue flashes, Lilian saw only highlights of the pale face and long black hair among the shadow. For a moment, she was sure it was a ghost.
The emergency lights came back on and she saw that it was Allison, her eyes wide and brimming with tears. Lilian let out a relieved sigh as the therapist nodded toward the door.
Ben tugged on Lilian's hand, trying to pull her to her feet. But her legs wouldn't move. She was completely immobile. Scared stiff. As she opened her mouth to tell them a muted gasp escaped her lips, like in childhood nightmares where she'd tried to call out to her mother and found she couldn't make a sound.
The inventor's scream wormed its way into Lilian's brain. She could only imagine the pain the woman was enduring. It sounded absolute. Endless. She thought that—if they ever made it out of here alive—she would dream of that scream for the rest of her life, and those dreams would frighten her awake, her heart pounding the way it was now.
Ben jerked her forward. Her legs buckled and she stumbled into an embrace. He hugged her fiercely against his scrawny chest. And just like that she felt her knees unlock. Like a magic spell. One moment stone and the next, flesh again. She pushed away from his embrace, both angry and relieved that he'd forced her into action. He gave her a brief look of embarrassment, then signaled for her to follow.
In a crouch, he followed Allison up the aisle. Lilian hurried behind them. At the door, she finally dared a look back.
Sara Jane Amblin was pinned to the monitor wall ten feet above the floor. The force of impact had cracked the screens behind her, blacking them out in the shape of a crucifix, the surrounding screens displaying images of the carn
age her invention had unleashed on hundreds of innocent people. Her body thrashed against them as the anguished faces of the creature Lilian came to think of as "the Swarm" hurled itself at her, holding her in place. The look in the inventor's eyes was of pure, unimaginable terror.
And very suddenly, she stopped thrashing altogether. Her chin dropped to her chest. She was dead.
The Swarm let her fall.
The programmer groaned at Lilian's side. His nose had been mashed against his face, the eyes already blackened. She'd thought he was dead. She wished he was. When she looked back down the aisle, she saw the faces churning in the luminescent cloud look in their direction.
The door clicked open behind her.
"Run, run!" Allison cried, holding it open, ushering them through. Ben got to his feet and ran. Lilian stood shakily and followed.
"Don't leave me!" Harrison yelped, reaching feebly for them.
The Swarm spun toward the sound, hurtling toward them.
She couldn't save him. No one could.
Lilian hurried into the hall, illuminated by red emergency lighting. She slipped in the spilled coffee and inadvertently kicked Danny's severed head, nearly tripping over it as it rolled ahead of her. Allison shoved the heavy door closed behind them, muffling the programmer's terrified scream as the Swarm descended upon him.
Ben already stood halfway down the hall, urging them to hurry. She ran alongside Allison, their footfalls resounding off the cinderblock walls. Her heart hammered in her throat as they took the first corner. She was desperate to look back, but didn’t dare. The Swarm was right behind them, whispering, faces churning in the cloud. Even though she couldn’t hear it, she knew this. Best to just keep running, despite the burning pain in her lungs, ignoring the abomination at their heels.
As they rounded the next corner, Allison overtook her and Ben fell behind. She grabbed his hand and helped him along. He was panting, getting sluggish. His eyes looked glazed. The pills. She'd seen it before. His heart pills made him groggy. Before she'd stopped hanging out with him altogether, she used to joke they made him look like a burnout.
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