Ghouls are every bit as ugly as the stories say. Their bodies are twisted and emaciated, like dried-up corpses that won’t stay dead. Long-fingered hands with nails broken back to the quick. Lantern jaws filled with sharp, blackened teeth. Naked, sexless bodies and oversized feet with claws where toes should be.
And they’re fast.
One minute, the parking lot was empty. The next, a dozen ghouls were coming at us, teeth bared and hands outstretched to tear us apart.
People think ghouls only eat the dead. They prefer an easy meal, but if they can get fresh meat, they’re just as happy.
Ghouls are fast, but vampires are faster. Sorren moved in a blur, setting about himself with his sword. He hacked down two or three of the monsters before they realized what was happening. More ghouls emerged from the shadows, and the closest ones went after Teag and me.
I had my knife in one hand, and the walking stick in the other, held out like a sword. I gave the dog collar on my left wrist a shake, and the ghostly form of a solidly built Golden Retriever materialized beside me. Goldens have a reputation for being mellow, but when one of their family is in danger, they can turn into ninety pounds of snarly fury.
Two of the ghouls launched themselves at me, while three more went after Teag. Sorren had his hands busy with at least four of the things, and more of them were emerging from the shadows every minute.
My ghost dog Bo lunged, and his spectral canine teeth worked just fine on the ghoul he knocked to the ground. Bo snapped and snarled, seizing onto the ghoul’s forearm and worrying it back and forth, tearing the arm from the shoulder.
I sliced at the other ghoul with the knife, getting in a hit that slashed across its face. The ghoul hissed, trying to reach me with its sharp claws, but I brought up the walking stick and focused my magic.
A streak of fire burst from the tip of the walking stick, hitting the ghoul square in the chest. The monster screeched as the flames caught its straggly hair and parchment-dry skin, flapping and shrieking as it went up like a torch.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Teag bash in the skull of one of the ghouls with his staff, then slam the end of the staff into the belly of the other ghoul, knocking it off balance and right into his waiting blade. On the other side, Sorren was spattered with black blood, setting to with his sword with single-minded focus. Three of the ghouls were out of the fight, dismembered on the ground in a pool of ichor. The fourth ghoul lunged at Sorren with crazed frenzy until Sorren thrust his sword through the ghoul’s chest where the heart should have been.
Before I could celebrate, two more ghouls came at me, and half a dozen more followed, intent on Teag and Sorren. I forced the two closest ghouls back with a fiery blast from my walking stick. Bo’s ghost sailed through the air, tackling a ghoul that tried to circle around behind me, pinning the squealing, thrashing creature to the ground as Teag swung his staff and smashed the ghoul’s head.
The body parts strewn around the blood-spattered lot didn’t deter the ghouls; in fact, it put them into a frenzy. Some stopped to eat the carcasses of their fallen comrades, while others were focused on fresh meat—us.
“Any time now, Liz!” I shouted.
Liz had raised an iridescent cylinder of power along the chalk circle of her warding. Five or six ghouls hunched along the outside, taking care to stay well clear of the scintillating curtain of energy, stalking the woman inside. Meanwhile, we were getting our butts whipped.
Liz shouted a command, and flung the wall of energy outward. The stalker-ghouls were the first to fry, going up like dry tinder. Sorren hurled his attacker into the consuming power, and got out of the way. Teag and I followed his lead, but we were too far into the center of the lot to get out of the way of the roiling wave of light.
Wondering what kind of ally sends out a blast to cook the rest of the team, I braced myself for flames—and felt the power sweep right over me like a warm wind, leaving me untouched. Teag looked up at me in astonishment a few seconds later, even as the power incinerated most of the ghouls.
We were still alive—for now. There were more ghouls headed our way.
“Where the hell did these things come from?” I muttered, sending a few more to oblivion with a stream of fire as I concentrated my will on the walking stick-athame. No one answered me, but I figured ‘hell’ was as good a reply as I was going to get.
I glanced back at Liz, to see if she had another fiery curtain coming our way. No such luck. She was still inside her protective circle, but now she had her hands raised and spread wide, palms open and outward, and her eyes were fixed on the torn up parking lot behind us. Liz’s lips were moving, but her eyes looked glazed, as if her attention was fixed on something I couldn’t see.
Another ghoul came at me, and I brought my knife down across his forearms, cutting bone deep. Then I gave a martial arts kick that sent him flying. Bo’s ghost tackled a second ghoul. A third monster almost got me from the other side, raking my shoulder with its claws, but before I could bring up my walking stick, Sorren had the ghoul by the neck, which he snapped with a flick of his wrist.
The torn up parking lot was covered with ghoul corpses, and still they came. Sorren might have immortal strength, and Liz was protected in her circle for as long as her power held out, but I knew that Teag and I had mortal limits, and we were tiring quickly.
“Cassidy—the ghosts!” Teag shouted from where he still battled two of the ghouls.
I glanced over to the area of the old graveyard, and saw dozens of ghosts hovering over the dug-up parking lot. They were fully-formed, wearing clothing that spanned a century or more, hollow-eyed and gaunt. They were dead—and angry.
A cold wind swept toward the ghouls from the old cemetery. Once again, it passed over Teag and me without damage, and this time, Sorren did not stop fighting to get out of its way. We didn’t need to be afraid. The ghosts weren’t after us.
Behind us, I could hear the ghosts in the old hospital going berserk, rattling the glass and pounding on the doors. The graveyard ghosts were focused with lethal intensity on the ghouls, and whatever magic Liz had worked to power up the ghosts, they were making the most of it.
Some of the ghosts hurled fist-sized rocks and clumps of asphalt, energized into murderous poltergeists. Others slipped their icy forms through the ghouls—and stayed inside the ghouls until the monsters began to spasm and shudder, freezing from the inside out. The strongest spirits tore at the ghouls ferociously, ripping away strips of skin, clawing at hair and eyes, a foe that was everywhere and nowhere, impossible to fight.
Sorren, Teag, and I waded into the fray, although the ghosts left few ghouls for us to handle. Between the fire and the ghosts and some good old-fashioned smiting, we seemed to have run out of ghouls. Good thing. I was covered in ghoul-guts, dripping with sweat, heaving for breath, and aching everywhere. Teag looked just as tired, and even Sorren was moving more slowly. Bo’s ghost gave me a wag and disappeared.
Liz hadn’t dropped her circle of light yet. She brought her hands in close to her body and clasped them in front of her chest with a slight bow of thanks to the ghosts. Then she spoke words I couldn’t quite catch, and one by one, the ghosts dissipated, some wafting away on the night breeze and others slipping back beneath the sandy ground to their resting places. That’s when I realized that the racket from the ghosts inside the museum had quieted, and when I turned, the faces in the windows were gone.
“What a mess.” Teag looked out over the spread of ghoul-parts and black blood. “How the hell are we going to clean this up before the cops see it?”
Liz lowered the iridescent curtain of light and smudged her circle open. “Allow me,” she said as she approached us. We stepped back, and she sent a wave of blue, cold energy in a horizontal sheet across the asphalt, turning the ghoul corpses to ash. A gust of perfectly-timed wind scattered the cinders into the next parking lot.
“What about the totem in the building?” Teag asked.
“I drew on its power, there at th
e end,” Liz said.
I turned to look up at the hulking form of the old military hospital. “Was it the construction that triggered everything? Or removing the totem?”
“Probably a mixture of both,” Liz said with a sigh. Her twinset and hair were still perfectly in place, but I could see exhaustion around her eyes and in the set of her mouth. “Disturbing the building would have riled the ghosts inside, and digging up the parking lot would have troubled the ghosts from the cemetery. And I suspect that when the totem was moved and the ghouls showed up, that upset both groups of ghosts further.”
“So what now?” I asked. “Won’t the ghouls just come back?”
Liz chuckled. “Not for a while. They prefer food that doesn’t fight back.” She looked up at the old hospital. “I would suggest finding a place in the new construction where the totem can be sealed away where no one will bother it for another hundred years.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Sorren said, and he and Teag headed off toward the building. Less than an hour later, they were back.
“We found a place inside the basement walls,” Teag said as he and Sorren dusted themselves off. “Doesn’t look like anyone will have a reason to renovate there, so with luck, it can just go on doing its job for a long, long time.”
“Let’s get out of there,” Sorren said, listening to the night sounds. “We’ve overstayed our welcome.”
* * *
THE NEXT EVENING, I got a phone call from Kell. “Hey Cassidy—guess what? We figured out whose picture was in the old watch. Name was Sarah Cooper. Kendra found her listed among the flu casualties.” He sounded surprised. “Maybe she was even buried in the lot behind the hospital where her boyfriend died.”
Two ghosts, trapped within sight of each other, held apart for over a century by what anchored their spirits to this world. And if we were right about the ghouls, then James’s worry over the monsters desecrating his beloved’s body fueled the poltergeist’s rage.
“Oh, and I thought you’d want to know,” Kell went on. “The Lowcountry Museum is going to work with the city to relocate the graves underneath the parking lot. Turns out the paperwork on those graves had been lost for a long time, which is why they weren’t moved before this. So maybe those folks will finally get to rest in peace.”
“Kell, can you do me a favor?” I asked, reaching down to scratch Baxter on the head as I sat on my porch and sipped a tall glass of sweet tea.
“Sure,” he agreed. “Whatever you did, the ghosts have stopped acting up and the museum can go on with its renovation, so the exhibit will open on time. I’ll put a check in the mail for your consulting fee. What did you need?”
“That pocket watch—can you ask the museum to bury it with Sarah Cooper’s remains? After all this time, Sarah and James deserve to be together, and it might keep their spirits quiet.”
“I think I’ve got enough pull to make that happen,” he said, and I could hear him smiling. “You’re a hopeless romantic, you know that?”
I chuckled. “Not usually, but I’ll make an exception in this case. Thanks.”
Kell paused. “Something else we documented, but I didn’t tell the people at the museum. This morning, when we went out there, we found something strange. One fresh red poppy, lying in the middle of the dug-out parking lot. Weird, huh?”
A chill went down my spine, and I hugged Baxter a little tighter. I had the feeling that when the graves were exhumed, Sarah Cooper would be right under where that poppy lay.
“Yeah,” I said, hoping my tone sounded convincing. “Weird.”
Shadow Garden
“WHY IS YOUR garden gnome in a cage?” I frowned as a plump middle-aged woman deposited a stone statue locked in what looked like a large ‘live trap’ steel mesh box.
“Because this thing ate my cat,” the woman declared. “And I want rid of it before it goes after the dog, too.”
We see all kinds of things at Trifles and Folly, but even for us, this was a first.
“Are you sure about the cat?” I asked, warily eyeing the gnome. It looked much older than the brightly-painted resin figures on sale at the big national-chain garden supply stores. The statue was weathered, with some bits of lichen stuck to its body, and I wondered if it had been custom-made. Now that she mentioned it, the gnome did look a little creepy. The features looked sly instead of welcoming, and the set of the mouth seemed to hide sharp teeth behind the carved stone lips.
“I’m sure,” the woman said, slapping her palm against the wooden counter. “Fuddles never did like the statue. Always hissed at it when he walked by it. I should have taken that as a sign.”
“Where did it come from?” I asked, looking away from the creepy gnome and returning my attention to the lady who had brought in the caged decoration.
“My mother said she bought it from one of those architectural salvage places,” the woman replied.
“Have you had other problems with it, before the… um… cat incident?” I’m sure she was embarrassed and believed I was secretly laughing at her, but I had seen much stranger things.
I’m Cassidy Kincaide, and I own Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio shop in historic, haunted Charleston, SC that is a lot more than it seems. The store has been in my family for over three hundred years, and we’ve got a secret. While we’re a great place to find beautiful old heirlooms and estate jewelry, our real job is getting dangerous magical and supernatural items off the market and keeping them out of the wrong hands. That means we see more than our share of cursed, unlucky, or possessed objects, so I was taking my hapless customer’s tale seriously. Her murderous gnome sounded exactly like the kind of problem we deal with every day.
She pushed a lock of bottle-blonde hair off of her perspiring forehead. “When it started moving around, I should have known. I wish I’d have gotten rid of it sooner.”
I raised an eyebrow. “The garden gnome moved by itself?”
The woman hesitated, then nodded. “I thought someone was funnin’ with me, at first,” she said. Her bright pink lipstick made the rush of blood to her cheeks all the more noticeable. “And it’s not as if it moves across the yard. Just a bit, but it doesn’t stay put, and the man who does the yard says he hasn’t touched it.” She glared at the statue. “In fact, I don’t think he even likes to go near it. It doesn’t look like he weeds or trims close to the statue, now that I think about it.”
“Do you know if your mother ever witnessed anything unusual about the statue?” I asked, taking a closer look, though I kept well back from the cage itself. I was glad it came with a handle on the top. There was no way I would stick my fingers through that wire mesh.
The blonde belle shook her head. “No. Mama never said a word about it, and she used to spend a lot of time out in the garden. Always loved to watch the birds and the squirrels, but now that I think about it, I haven’t seen any of them in the yard since I came back to settle up her house.”
“Your mother passed away?” I asked gently.
She swallowed hard, blinked back tears, and nodded. “Yes. A month ago. So I came back from Richmond to see that everything was closed up properly, and start taking care of her estate.” She extended her hand. “I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Beverly Callahan, but my friends call me Binky.”
I recognized the last name. Binky’s parents had been movers and shakers in Charleston society until their deaths. I was pretty sure their names were on every museum and historical association’s donor lists, plus the patron listings for the hospitals, the Junior League, and the university. That made it doubly odd that someone like Binky would risk ridicule with a story like this if the gnome hadn’t seriously weirded her out. And to my eye, Binky looked scared right out of her Lilly Pulitzer pink pants.
“Mrs. Callahan—”
“Please, Binky.”
I nodded. “Binky. Of course we’re happy to buy the statue from you. But out of curiosity, is there anything else you can tell me about the gnome’s… behavior? Wa
s there anything that seemed to trigger it becoming dangerous?”
Binky looked at me as if she was trying to decide whether or not I was mocking her, then finally realized I was taking her seriously. She reached out and grabbed my hand. “Oh, thank heavens. You believe me, don’t you? I have been scared out of my ever-lovin’ wits since Fuddles disappeared. I mean, if it can eat a cat, who knows whether or not it could get into the house when I’m sleeping?”
Across the store, Teag Logan, my assistant store manager, was keeping his head down, studiously polishing the estate silverware for the front case. I knew he would take Binky’s dilemma seriously, but I also knew her delivery, which was dead-on Paula Deen-esque, was making it hard for him to keep a straight face. “I can completely understand your concern,” I replied.
Binky smoothed her hair. “Thank you,” she said, lifting her chin as she regained her composure. “As for what mama saw, I’m not sure. She said some strange things near the end, but I chalked it all up to the Alzheimer’s. Now, I wonder.”
“So the gnome was a relatively recent addition to the garden?” I probed. I kept an eye on the caged statue. It gave me the willies. And since my gift is psychometry—the ability to read the history or emotional memories or magic—of an object by touch, I decided someone else could take the cage into the back room. That’s where we keep the potentially dangerous acquisitions until my business partner, Sorren, figures out how to dispose of them.
Binky shook her head. “That’s just it. He’d been there for a little while, I’m sure of it. Mama was always picking up odds and ends from one of those restoration places, or antique stores, or yard sales—you get the idea.” I did. Many older people filled their time shopping for cast-off treasures, and when they passed on, their harried children often brought those impulse purchases by the truckload to shops like ours.
“And there wasn’t anything that might have happened—anything at all—that might have ‘activated’ the gnome?” I pressed. There was just no way to ask Binky if her mother had suddenly taken up practicing black magic or had someone put a root on her.
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