by Val Crowe
“Yeah, well…” He didn’t finish.
“Rylan!” I screamed.
She didn’t even acknowledge me.
I looked around, and the sun was so hot, and my brain felt like it was being cooked, and I swear I could still smell that dead deer no matter what it was we did, and there was the post office, a little building made of black wood with a faded sign and a door that was hanging off its hinges, like it was smiling at me, like it was inviting me, like—
“Wade!” I rushed after him.
He didn’t stop.
The air was humid. Running through it was like running through soup. I caught up to him and grabbed him by the shoulder. And then I pressed the oil into his hand.
“Sprinkle it down,” I said. “Sprinkle it down to the ground. Make a trail to Rylan.”
He looked at it. “What are you trying to do here?”
“Save her,” I said, and then I took off, heading for the post office.
I ran all the way until I got within five feet of the place, and then suddenly, I couldn’t run anymore. I had to slow down. The air was thicker here, a swamp of rot and death. It was hard to catch a breath.
I fought through it, fought to that dark open door.
I pushed the door all the way open and I stepped over the threshold.
It was cooler in here. It should have felt nice, but it was still humid, so it was clammy and musty, and as I breathed in here, I felt as if something was getting into my lungs, something was getting into my body.
The barnacle unwound from my neck, twisting.
There was a rush, a loud sound like a rushing waterfall, and then the post office came alive. Full of people, moving around. It wasn’t like back in Ridinger Hall, not as though I’d been transported to another time. Instead, these people were superimposed over the rotted skeletal remains of the building. They moved slowly. They had sunken, hollowed out eyes. One of them smiled at me. Its teeth were sharpened into points.
The barnacle was breaking apart, settling into them.
It had worked! It wasn’t attached to me. I couldn’t feel it any more. I felt as if a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I stretched my neck, rubbed one of my shoulders with one hand.
The people-things all sighed with one breath. They seemed to solidify.
They were stronger now.
They had the barnacle’s power—everything from Ridinger Hall. And there was my presence, too, whatever that it was that I did when I was close.
And Rylan…
I tore out of the post office, heading back out into the oppressive sunlight.
Rylan was hanging off the bell tower.
Wade was beneath her, trying to climb after her.
The wood below was groaning.
And there was something behind me.
I turned and there was a man with a shotgun. His eyes were sunken and hollow like the rest of them, but he seemed to be moving with a spring in his step. He had a trim beard and a satisfied smile on his face, and he cocked the gun and shot. David Mosely.
I felt the bullet whizz by me. It exploded into a nearby building, making a huge hole in the siding.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
What the hell?
First Bunny Buster, now this? Ghosts were not supposed to be able to affect the corporeal world like this. I was not cool with this. But from the looks of that bullet hole, if we caught one of those shotgun shells, it could kill us.
I screamed up at Wade. “The oil. Wade, the oil!”
He looked over at me, and then he saw Mosely behind me. Wade’s eyes widened.
A crack.
The wood that he was standing on had broken.
Wade went swinging out overhead, clinging to the bell tower, his legs dangling.
I cried out.
The oil fell out of his hand and hit the ground below.
Mosely leveled the gun at me. He pulled the trigger.
I dove for the ground.
The bullet sailed over my head.
Rylan was at the top of the tower, peering down at all of us. The barnacle on her neck was hissing in satisfaction.
The sun was beating down on all of us, almost as if it had known this would happen, had understood from the beginning that everything would go to hell.
Wade was trying to swing his feet back back to the tower to find some purchase.
As he did it, the whole tower swayed.
I started to get to my feet.
Mosely was next to me in seconds. He hadn’t run, he’d just… moved, like he’d vibrated through the air, too fast for the human eye to track his movement. He put the barrel of the gun against my head.
I froze.
Wade’s feet hit the tower, caught and then slid off.
Mosely looked up at the noise.
I seized the barrel of the shotgun and shoved it sideways.
The gun went off, blowing a hole in the side of the church.
Wade was scrambling back into the tower. He dove into it, now on his feet. “Sorry, I can’t get to her!” he yelled.
I was fighting over the shotgun with Mosely, trying to rip it away from him.
Abruptly, Mosely disappeared, as if he’d never been.
I looked around, confused.
I saw the barnacle attached to Rylan rip away from her. It dove down to the ground and hit like a meteorite. Black smoke raised up off the ground, twisted and changed form. The thing that had been the barnacle now had turned into a small child. A little girl in a dirty pink dress, spattered with rust-colored stains. She had ponytails. One side of her face had caved in from a shotgun blast. It was all raw meat and splintered bone. She reached for me.
I backed away.
“How the hell did I get up here?” came Rylan’s voice.
“Just get the hell down,” I said, eyes on the creepy little girl.
“You,” whispered the girl. “It is you.”
I tripped over my feet and ran. I was leaving Rylan and Wade behind, but I was losing it now. I ran past the post office, down the road, only to realize that I was running away from the direction we’d come. The road to the truck was behind me.
I stopped and turned.
The little girl was there, but she’d been joined by the people from inside the post office. They all looked at me with their sunken eyes and they reached for me.
“It’s him,” they sighed. “He’s come to us.”
I turned and ran again.
But now they were in front of me.
I skidded to a stop. They advanced, the little girl leading the pack. I tried to back up, and I got tangled in my feet. I fell backwards and landed on my backside.
They were going to be on top of me at any second.
Wade was hauling me to my feet. “Come on,” he yelled.
Rylan was right behind him.
“It’s gone,” I said to her. “Your barnacle, it’s gone.”
“So, let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.
The way to the truck clear now, we all took off together, running as fast as we could.
Behind us, the sound of shotgun shots.
I looked over my shoulder to see Mosely charging up the road after us, shooting. “Down,” I managed.
But it was too late.
Wade was on the ground, letting out a howl. His calf had exploded in red gore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Wade grunted. “That fucking hurts.”
I hauled him up, putting his arm around my shoulder. “Come on. We have to go.” We couldn’t keep running down the middle of the street. We needed to find somewhere there was cover, somewhere like—
Another shot.
Wade’s back arced in pain. He threw his head back, mouth open in a silent scream.
“What?” I was panicked. “Where is it?”
Wade didn’t answer. He sagged against me, grunting.
I dragged him. We went behind a building. I kept dragging him. I wanted there to be time to assess his wounds, to do someth
ing for him, but there wasn’t. He looked at me, and I could see so much of the whites of his eyes that it unsettled me. And the way he was breathing—big harsh gusts of air wheezing through his mouth… And there was blood. So much blood. Everywhere.
I just dragged him, and we kept going.
Until we were in the woods, away from the buildings, but I didn’t know if this was the way to the car and Rylan—
Where was Rylan?
I looked for her. I didn’t see her.
No, no, no, what was happening?
I looked around for Mosely.
I couldn’t see him either.
Wade was spasming.
I turned to him, looking him over. “Where did he shoot you?”
“Fuck,” Wade said, and his voice cracked.
“We’re going to get you out of here, buddy.” Where the hell was Rylan? Where was she? “Come on, it’s just a little further.” Except this didn’t look anything like the road where we’d come in, and I had no idea where we were, and I couldn’t even tell where he was shot, but it was bad. It was bad, and—
I stumbled.
Wade and I both lost our balance and pitched forward into something that was furry and wet and smelled horrible.
I scrambled to my feet, realizing that we’d tripped over the deer we’d moved into the woods. Oh. Oh, disgusting.
I yanked Wade up out of it, and he moaned.
Wiping my hands on my pants—not that it made any difference—I bolstered Wade against my shoulder.
We started moving again.
We moved through the woods as best as we could. Wade’s breath was noisy and sounded painful. I didn’t know what the hell to do. Panic was creeping in at the edge of my vision, crowding out everything.
The barrel of a shotgun against the base of my skull.
“Deacon,” said a low, rasping voice.
I swallowed.
The barrel of the gun moved. It went around my neck, and now I was staring down the barrel at Mosely. Except it wasn’t Mosely. It had stringy black hair and its nails had been painted bright blue, the color my mother always painted her nails.
“No,” I said in a thick voice. “Don’t be her.”
It laughed. “Can’t help it, Deacon. It just comes off you in waves. This is the easiest incarnation to take. You’re like a wide open wound. All that power… No wonder he wanted you.”
“Who?” I said. “No wonder who wanted me?”
“Negus,” it hissed. “Still looking for you from what I hear. Boy, he’d be happy if I brought you to him, I’d bet. Very, very happy.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I clenched my hands into fists, and then I looked down at Wade. I had to get Wade out of here.
Wade was twitching on the forest floor. His lips were pale. There was blood dribbling out of the side of his mouth.
The specter in front of me tossed the shotgun over its shoulder. “Yeah, won’t be needing this. Why would I shoot you? You’re worth more alive.”
Okay, it didn’t have a weapon. Good. I could use this, right? What could I do? Maybe if I rushed it?
Don’t think, Deacon. Act. For Wade.
So, I did it. I got into a crouch and led with my shoulder and I barreled into it like a linebacker.
It laughed as it went up in black smoke as I made contact.
I was doused in icy air and I smacked into a tree trunk. Dazed, I backed up, trying to get my bearings.
The specter chuckled, flickering in the air a few feet away. “Come here, you little shit.”
I stood up, sucking in a deep breath. What was my next move?
The specter beckoned with its blue-tipped fingers, and when it spoke again, it had her voice. “I’m not going to hurt you, Deacon. Mommy’s sorry that she scared you.” Then she threw back her head and laughed maniacally.
* * *
I was ten years old when I saw my mother’s true colors. Up until that point in my life, she’d hid what she was well. But that day, all hell broke loose.
My mother usually didn’t pay a lot of attention to me. She was the opposite of a helicopter parent. She let me run off and play on my own, and she did her work—conning people with her fake ghosts. The fact that I’d started seeing actual ghosts lately, that had put some stress on both of us.
I came home, and it was late. It was getting dark, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t have a set time to come home. I could go out and play until whenever I wanted, and whenever I got back home, that was when my mom seemed to remember that she had a kid and would get some dinner together for me. Sometimes, she couldn’t be bothered and would have me make myself some microwave meal of some kind or other.
I stayed out mostly because I could, but I didn’t have much fun. We never stayed anywhere for long, so I was always the new kid, and it wasn’t easy to make friends. It was also pointless and painful, because I knew I’d be leaving sooner rather than later. Why bother meeting people?
Add the new wrinkle of seeing ghosts, and I was not exactly a social butterfly.
But I’d stayed out until after dark, anyway, mostly off exploring on my own. I’d wandered down the railroad track and found a nifty old shack out in the woods—well, it had been nifty until I saw some guy inside swinging from a rope. Until he’d opened his dead, pale eyes and whispered to me, come after me. He wanted something from me. They all did.
I didn’t know to ignore them back then.
I ran from the ghost, and he stopped following, probably because he was connected to the shack, but I didn’t know that back then.
The door to the motorhome slammed behind me as I climbed inside.
My mother was sitting at the table in the kitchen area, which was across from the sink and stove in our old motorhome. She had a whole bunch of old bottles and weird-smelling herbs set out on the table in front of her. A piece of paper with strange writing and odd, twisting symbols.
She was sitting there, and her hair was in her face, and she was scratching at the table with her nails, just digging them into the finish.
One of her fingers was bleeding.
“Mom?” I said.
She looked up at me, through her stringy, black hair, and she looked…
“Are you feeling okay?”
“You.” Her voice was like loose dirt.
I took a step back.
“Here you are.” She pushed herself up from the table in one fluid movement, and then she towered over me, making odd movements with her lips, peeling them back from her teeth. “Come here, you little shit.”
She called me that a lot.
Never when she was mad, at least not before this. Always in a bemused sort of way when I had done something that was against the rules, but that she thought was funny, I guess. Like, once, when I was a toddler, she’d dropped me off at a daycare center, and when she came back, I had taken off all my clothes and was running around in my diaper and no one could catch me. I obviously don’t remember this.
She used to tell me that story, though. She’d shake her head and chuckle. “You were such a little shit,” she’d say, smiling. It was more like a term of endearment than anything else, at least that was what I had thought.
But everything I knew about my mother was wrong.
She wasn’t the woman who patted my head or kissed my cheek or sang me to sleep when my stomach hurt. She was… this.
I took a step backwards.
She grabbed at me, lunging across the table.
I was so startled that I fell backwards, went down on my backside. I scrambled backwards, looking at her.
And she stalked out from behind the table, hair hanging in her face, grinning a wide-toothed grin, and came for me.
I turned over, onto my hands and knees, and I pushed to my feet. I was going to run.
But she got me by the hair, and she dragged me toward her.
I screamed. Because it hurt, and because I was scared, but mostly because I was so stunned that my mother would do such a thing.
“Shut up.” She slapped me.
And then she was on me. She leaped up on the table, sprang like an animal, and her face was next to mine, and everything was blurring and moving, and I was getting tired, so tired—
* * *
“Like Bunny Buster,” I said. “That’s what he did to me. He sucked something out of me. He was in my face. My mother did that same thing!” I hadn’t thought of it before. I had blocked out so much of what had happened back then and I didn’t like to think about the rest of it.
The specter was advancing on me. “You’re an idiot, aren’t you? You still think that was your mother.”
My knees felt weak. “What?” I whispered.
The specter caught me by the throat and propelled me back against the tree I’d run into before.
I choked. I couldn’t breathe. I scrabbled at her hand—its hand—raking my nails over its skin, but where they broke through, they only made furrows of black smoke.
“That wasn’t your mother, you dumbass,” said the specter. “That was Negus. Inside your mother.”
I wanted to say, “Who’s Negus?” But I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. All of my struggling was pointless, and Wade was lying over there twitching and Rylan was… I didn’t even know where Rylan was, and everything was basically screwed.
“Possession,” said the specter. “You know about it. You’ve experienced it yourself, haven’t you?” It lifted its other hand and grazed blue fingernails against my forehead. “I can feel that it was in you. It’s in me now. Thanks for that. All this juice…” A low chuckle. The specter cocked its head. “You know, I don’t think I will tell Negus about you. Maybe I’ll drain you myself.”
And then the specter’s face was against mine, and the blurring feeling again, something being forced out of my mouth and nose and eyes and even ears. Everything going through me, thundering like a freight train leaving the station as it left my body.