by Gareth Otton
“Never play poker, Stella.”
She scowled and looked back down at her phone that was buzzing again. She was so distracted by it she barely noticed Leon standing up.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to see if they can put our dinners on hold until we get back.”
“I don’t need to go anywhere,” Stella insisted, feeling bad for ruining their night.
“Please. It’s just around the corner. Let’s go put your mind at ease, then we can be back here in no time. I’ll be right back.”
Before Stella could think of a way to change his mind, not that she wanted to, he flagged down the waitress who almost knocked over another customer in her eagerness to respond to Leon’s attention.
Stella shook her head again, half at the waitress and half at herself. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t even sit through one meal without causing a scene? What was wrong with her that even now her mind was more focused on the shelter than worrying about letting Leon down?
Whatever the case, it was a losing battle, and she gave in, switching to work mode. Instantly she felt more comfortable and more decisive. She was already sliding out of the booth even as she made the decision to leave.
There was a thump behind her that made her look back, and she was just quick enough to catch the drinks before they slid off the table and shattered on the floor. It took almost as much effort to make sure the table didn’t flip over as it was jostled so hard.
“Freckles, watch what you’re doing,” Stella complained.
The enormous dog who had disturbed the table by climbing to his feet, looked back with a guilty expression before opening his mouth impossibly wide in a tired, doggy yawn as he stretched and wagged his tail. It turned out that another benefit of this pub was their attitude towards dogs, even those the size of a small lion.
Yawn over, Freckles’ tail wagged a little harder and leaned over to nudge Stella with his nose in what felt like an apology, but was more like impatience. He could sense her excitement and was getting worked up. Soon he was weaving his way through the mostly empty tables to catch up with Leon who had straightened things out with the waitress and was headed outside.
Realising she was being left behind by both of her companions, Stella rushed to catch up.
◆◆◆
The Arcadia was an abandoned hotel on the outskirts of the city. The building was built in the nineteen-twenties with bucket loads of character. However, years of disrepair and an abundance of asbestos meant no developer would take on the cost of breathing new life into it.
In a post Merging world, what wasn’t good for the living was perfect for the dead.
Kimberly, Stella’s psychiatrist friend, had seen what Tony, Amber and Tad had done to get the child ghosts into school, and realised there was a whole subset of people in the Borderlands who needed help. Since the Merging, Cardiff was the hot spot for afterlife activity the world over. Unfortunately, thanks to Joshua King, there weren’t enough Proxies to help them all.
So, Kimberly recruited friends from her community and volunteers from different industries. Whether it was helping a ghost come to terms with their death and move on, hold themselves together without a Proxy, or maybe even facilitate reunions between ghosts and people from their life, their new organisation had quickly grown. It had been so effective that the ghosts they helped became members of their team, and formed the work-squad that changed the Arcadia from a rundown ruin into The Phoenix, a home for ghosts in need of second chances.
It turned out ghosts who didn’t need to sleep nor have to worry about pesky things like dying from asbestos, were the perfect team for turning around a building quickly.
Since opening, Stella had visited twice. The first was a tour of her friend’s new operation, and the second was with an eye for potential recruitment. Compared to the more outlandish occurrences since the Merging, ghosts seemed almost commonplace and had been overlooked as a potential resource.
However, Stella’s previous visits didn’t prepare her for the chaos she found on her arrival. A vast crowd surrounded the building and Stella had to shove people aside just to get close. Strangely, those people didn’t react to being pushed as they fixed their eyes forward on the old hotel. It was like pushing through a horde of standing corpses. There was no fight in them, and they were nothing more than dead weights.
At least until Freckles barked.
He borrowed his brother’s trick of pulling over Dream to augment the noise, and that got the crowd’s attention. Those closest jumped away as though fearing for their lives, while people in the crowd further out blinked like they had just woken from a dream. The downside of the attention was that people recognised Stella, but at least they had a clear path to the hotel.
It didn’t take long to realise why the crowd was behaving so strangely. The closer she got to the hotel, the more Stella felt a growing coldness. It was nothing physical, but something that reached inside and crushed all hope. Whatever that feeling was, it robbed her of vitality, making her want to stop and stare rather than keep moving. She almost forgot why she was here until she and Leon reached the front of the crowd and saw the open entrance to the Phoenix and the dark space within.
“What’s wrong with this place?” Leon asked, sounding worried for the first time. He eyed the building warily and glanced back like he wanted to return to the pub. Stella wouldn’t blame him if he did that. The oppressive feeling grew ever stronger, and it emanated from that building.
“It’s ghosts who have gone too far.”
The answer to Leon’s question came from a familiar voice that pulled their attention from the building. Lizzie stood at the front of the crowd with a camera in her hand that was pointing at the Phoenix.
Of course she’s here, Stella thought bitterly.
“How long have you been here?” Stella asked.
“Since before this started. I was the one who put in the nine-nine-nine call for Trevors’ team.”
The icy feeling intensified as Stella heard that. For all the things that bugged her about Lizzie, she was not prone to overreaction. In fact, she was more likely to keep Stella’s team away so she could get her scoop. Stella shuddered to think what would make the reporter cross that line.
“What happened?”
“I came to do a story on some rumours about the ghosts displaying strange behaviour. Acting out, creating cold spots, talking to themselves, things like that. I thought it was worth looking into.”
“Of course you did,” Stella muttered, but Lizzie heard her.
“You know what, Stella? I’m fed up of your attitude. I’m a reporter. I’m going to chase stories. In case you’ve forgotten, that has come in handy for you and Tad over the last year.”
Stella flinched, surprised at the angry response. Maybe that anger was from the growing fear of being in the presence of that hotel, but part of Stella recognised the truth in her words. Stella thought back on the past year, on the help Lizzie provided, and was suddenly guilty. The media made her life harder than it needed to be, and she suspected she carried a chip on her shoulder about that.
“I’m sorry,” she said, raising her hands in apology. “I meant nothing by it. Please, just tell me what happened?”
Lizzie frowned as she searched Stella’s words for an insult, and when she failed to find one, she hesitantly started her story again.
“I was interviewing people after I got here, asking them about the challenges of running this place. It didn’t take long to see the problems.”
Stella’s gut twisted as she recognised a lie.
“Really? Those problems just presented themselves to you? Like they were right out in the open for anyone to see.”
Glancing away, Lizzie came clean.
“I might have pressed a few buttons to find out what was really going on. I just didn’t want to hear anymore of the usual puff pieces about this place. I already know they’re doing a good job, but that wasn’t why I was here.”
>
“What did you do?” Stella asked, her voice taking on a dangerous tone. This time Lizzie wasn’t so quick to get angry about it.
“I just asked questions to one of the care workers about the rumours of ghosts losing their temper, or acting strange. She tried to lie and…”
Her words trailed off and Stella had to prompt her to continue.
“And?”
“One ghost overheard me applying some pressure… Only a little, mind you, not enough to cause this. The ghost didn’t take it well. He snapped, started shoving me, telling me I shouldn’t be pestering people for just doing their job. Then… well… he changed.”
“Change how?” Leon asked, caught up in the story.
Lizzie turned to him, frowned, and then glanced between Leon and Stella as though making a connection.
“Who are you?” she asked, and Stella could have facepalmed as she realised her mistake. They had been keeping Lizzie away from Leon, not wanting the reporter to ferret out Leon’s past and stumble upon the history of Stella’s people. The last thing they needed was the woman who had a habit of breaking every supernatural story in the Borderlands finding out about the Eidolon.
“Changed how, Lizzie?” Stella asked, pulling Lizzie’s attention back to her.
“His eyes got dark, like they were filling with smoke, and his face sort of… stretched,” Lizzie answered, tearing her eyes from Leon and shuddering as she remembered what happened. “He started shouting and shoving me harder, only now every time he touched me, it was like being touched by ice.”
Stella recognised the clues but needed to hear Lizzie say it.
“Then what happened?”
Again Lizzie hesitated, and this time her voice shook. “It’s not my fault, I promise. I only asked a few questions.”
“What happened, Lizzie?”
She swallowed and gave the answer Stella didn’t want to hear.
“Oily black smoke started pouring from his eyes and mouth. His hands looked like they belonged to a skeleton, and his skin was almost hanging off it in parts. He was normal one minute and half smoke and skeleton the next.”
“A mad ghost,” Stella whispered, glancing back at the building as this started making more sense. She had only ever seen mad ghosts from her trip into Tad’s mind, and what little she saw had been enough. But Lizzie knew the signs of a mad ghost well enough. She wouldn’t have asked for the tactical team unless it was something more.
“Not just the one,” Lizzie added. “When he changed it kind of stressed out some other ghosts and… well… I think it might have been too much for them.”
“How many?” Stella asked, dreading the answer.
“I stopped counting at twenty. By that point, I just wanted to get out of there.”
“Twenty?” Stella whispered, her fingers reaching for her phone without knowing she was doing it.
“At least. There were a lot more ghosts in there, so there could be a lot more than that… Uh, what are you doing?”
Stella’s attention had shifted to her phone.
“Getting backup,” she answered, even as a picture of Tad filled the screen and the phone started ringing. However, she never got to complete the call because that’s when the screaming started.
There were so many people in the crowd that their fear fed off each other, and when they screamed Stella had flashbacks to the Millennium Stadium and the awful noises those dragons made. Her leg throbbed with phantom pain as she remembered it being crushed, and without thinking she almost dropped her phone and spun to face whatever triggered the noise.
From the darkness of the double doors, a shape emerged. Part shadow, part translucent skin, and part skeleton. It slipped from the darkness like it was born of it. Wide pools of smoking blackness where its eyes should have been were focused forward, staring into the souls of each person. The crowd screamed again, taking a collective step back.
Its enormous mouth opened wider, smoke billowing from that awful blackness along with a hiss that robbed any remaining warmth from Stella. The shape flowed forward, leaving the shelter of the ex-hotel and heading for the crowd, revealing two more ghosts behind it.
The spell of immobility vanished, and hundreds of people were running in any direction that was away from that hotel, screaming all the while. The movement excited the ghosts, and all three picked up their pace and rushed from the hotel like bullets from a gun.
One went left, chasing those spectators who were closest. Another went right after those spectators. The final ghost, the one who came out of the building first, headed straight for the only immobile targets who weren’t smart enough to run. It headed for Stella, Leon and Lizzie, all of whom realised they were facing an enemy they weren’t equipped to deal with.
The fear that had been building since they arrived reached a new level and all Stella could do was look at her phone and hope the call connected. Whatever the case, it was too late.
The ghost was already upon them.
5
Wednesday, 16th November 2016
18:20
Leon was closest, so it came for him first.
Skeletal hands curled into claws, the points of the fingers elongating and sharpening until they could tear Leon apart. He threw up his arms to knock the ghost aside, but his hands passed through the spectral figure like it was a shadow. The creature’s arms burst into wispy, black clouds only to reform seconds later, which was long enough to save Leon.
The creature was moving so fast that even a brief distraction carried it past the optimum point of attack, so it moved onto its next target; Stella.
She threw up her hands to defend herself, but the ghost looked furious to have missed its first target, and the curled points of those fingers turned black and sharper than ever. Stella doubted she’d be as lucky as Leon.
Suddenly Freckles was there, snarling as he jumped at the ghost, teeth sinking into a skeletal arm. Unlike Leon, who encountered nothing but smoke, Freckles bit into that arm like it was flesh and bone, and the ghost squealed in agony.
Using his considerable bulk, Freckles wrestled the squealing horror to the ground and climbed atop it, pinning it to the pavement. With a shake of his massive head, he tore the arm free, making the ghost squeal even louder, a noise filled with supernatural agony. Stella covered her ears and even some of the panicked crowd stopped running to look back at what caused that noise.
Freckles paid it no mind, continuing to tear at the creature, ripping it to shreds of inky black smoke that dissipated into nothingness and failed to reform. For all that she knew her dog was special, Stella had forgotten that if Freckles was a dreamwalker, he must also be a Proxy. Though, she had never heard of a Proxy ripping a ghost to shreds before.
As she watched Freckles tear into the struggling ghost, she saw ice crystals forming where his paws pinned the ghost to the ground. It might have been her imagination, but it looked like Freckles was slowing down, almost like he was losing energy.
“Freckles, enough,” she shouted, but he was too involved in his battle. As the ghost tried to claw at him with its remaining arm, Freckles bit this arm as well, but not before getting scratched on the side of the face, opening a nasty cut that iced over instantly.
Seeing the blood of her dog stain his beautiful fur snapped Stella into action. She rushed forward, grabbed Freckles’ collar, and pulled him from the fight. He might be winning, but she didn’t want to risk him getting hurt more than he already was. Another person might struggle to pull the giant dog from his kill, but Stella tapped into supernatural wells of strength that she was more comfortable with every day.
The ghost wasted no time in trying to flee, but it didn’t get far.
It backed away from Freckles, never taking its eyes off the dog, its biggest threat, so did not see the man standing behind it. A hand grabbed it by the neck and there was a blinding light, followed by a second brighter light that forced Stella to look away and cover her eyes. When she looked back, the ghost was gone, replaced by a
grim faced Harry Phillips, Trevors’ second in command and one of the few people on earth Stella hated with a passion.
He was not the man that she hoped to see when she opened her eyes, and it took a moment to make sense of it.
The first light had been one of his dreamcatchers flaring up, one Mitena customized to deal with mad ghosts. His enormous body was covered with the intricate designs. Trevors’ people had worked with Mitena to design what they felt was the perfect array of tools to let them do their job, However, for all their training, today would be the first time they could test this dreamcatcher on a mad ghost. It had been designed with nightmares in mind, allowing one of the Dream Team to overload the power that animated the nightmares and destroy them. The theory was that it would also work on ghosts.
“Harry, what are you doing here? I thought Trevors’ team was on this?” Stella asked.
“No, don’t mention it. It was no problem to save your life. You’re extremely welcome.”
Stella bit back an angry response and said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. Thank you for dealing with that thing. But what are you doing here? Did something go wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Harry said, only half paying attention. “Trevors called for backup.”
He stepped away like he was done with her and Stella had to fight to keep her temper. Harry had been a non-stop hindrance since the day she and Trevors hired him. It was all she could do not to choke the life from him there and then. However, as Trevors made clear months ago, it wasn’t her place to insert herself into things she wasn’t trained for. So rather than demand that he stay and answer her questions, she followed his gaze to see what interested him.
He stared at another ghost that was hovering over a woman, curled up on the ground. She no longer moved and her lips were blue. However, it never got to finish whatever it was doing to her as one of Harry’s men grabbed the creature and light flared again.
Stella turned away to protect her eyes, and in doing so she caught sight of the last ghost that was trapped between two of Harry’s men, seeking a way out. It failed to find one, and again there were two flashes of intense light and one less ghost.