Paranormal After Dark

by Rebecca Hamilton

  No, the thing that demanded his concentration was nearby, but not in the room. He slid off the bed. His knees buckled, and his balance betrayed him, but he steadied himself before he could fall.

  It was close, in the next room, perhaps.

  The wizard scrambled to put herself between him and the door. Her flashlight dropped to the floor and lit up a blazing trail across the carpet. “Lenny,” she urged. “No. Sweetie, tell me where you think you need to be going right now.”

  He tried to push past her, but she shoved him back. He weighed so little, but at the same time, he had gotten stronger. He caught her wrist and held her.

  “It’s very important,” he told her, voice soft and thready. “I have to g-go help.”

  Kim gritted her teeth and peeled his fingers back from around her wrist. The pressure of his grip didn’t hurt, but the cold did. His skin burned her.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” she told him, keeping her voice as level as she could. “Everybody already left, and I don’t even know exactly where they’re going. Duran is long gone. There’s nothing you can do to help him, and I don’t really believe that all of you wants to, anyway. Coyote and Zeb are long gone. There’s nothing you can do to help them, either. It’s just you and me and my friend Ainslie, and you just had some kind of fit or flashback or something, and I am not letting you out of my sight, and I’m not letting you go anywhere you could get yourself hurt.”

  His eyes, catlike, threw back a dim reflected glow from the flashlight. The words didn’t register with him.

  “You’ve been flipping the hell out for hours,” she tried. “We had to call Itzli for help, and it took him and Bernice both to keep you from going out the window…”

  “Have to help. I have to t-try.”

  “No, baby. Duran doesn’t deserve your help, and the good guys don’t need it. No offense, but you’d just get in the way.”

  As frustratingly trivial as the exchange seemed, Lenny got the impression that they were having two different conversations. He shook his head and reached out somewhere beyond the physical, touching on the Veil and the things that lived inside it. If he couldn’t go to it – to her – he could at least call her to him.

  “Not them,” he said. “I couldn’t help them anyway.”

  “Then who?”

  But a dim phosphorescence had already made the answer obvious. The ghost drifted through the wall, her arms crossed, colorless ponytail floating on nonexistent wind, and she regarded the vampire with mixed awe and anxiety.

  “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she asked. Her voice echoed faintly, and the room grew cold.

  “Because you’re stuck here. T-trapped. You don’t want to be here, but you c-can’t leave.”

  His shoulders lifted, he straightened, and for an instant, he spoke with authority.

  “I don’t know yet how to help myself,” he said slowly, “but I know how to help you.”

  The light in his eyes went out. Kim’s breath billowed in clouds of ice around her head. He held out a hand, and Vickie took it.

  The flashlight flickered and died.

  Only Vickie’s soft, white glow kept the bedroom from being black as pitch. Kim blinked rapidly, trying to convince her eyes to adjust to the dark, and strongly regretted taking Itzli’s advice; the garbage bags taped over the windows and the towel shoved under the door had done their job and blocked out natural light, which seemed to be the only reason Lenny had gone from sobbing and flailing to shaking and muttering, but they also made it very hard to maneuver.

  She took a cautious step back, feeling for the doorknob. Raw power raised the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck, something very different from the magic she knew. There was a sense of pressure to it, like a shoulder applied to a locked door. Something was straining to open.

  Her fingers brushed the knob, and she yelped as the frozen metal bit at her skin. She could hear a voice from the living room, Ainslie, but she sounded distant and distorted. The knob rattled as she tried to get in. Black profanity trickled in around the door, warbling as though it was coming through water.

  Kim kicked the towel out from under the door and a finger of light filtered in, dull and weak. It disappeared into the carpet and revealed nothing.

  Vickie was visible, outlined by a pale blue ghost light. Lenny’s white skin reflected the glow. If she squinted off to one side, Kim could almost make out his features, but they were distorted, almost rippling, as though she was seeing him through old glass.

  “Lenny,” she tried. “Baby, what are you doing?” It was him, had to be him. Freaky extras. She remembered how he had watched the ghost, how he touched her without going through. She might have thought him a sensitive, then, but this, the darkness and the cold, this was something much more. He was tearing open the wall between worlds.

  But Vickie pulled her hand back and jerked away. Her glow receded, and Lenny disappeared into the blackness.

  “I’m not going,” the ghost snapped. “I’m still here because I wanted to stay, and you are so not kicking me out of my own place!”

  The door opened with a bang, and light tried to spill in, but it shimmered and wobbled as though traveling through dark water. Ainslie dropped the towel she had used to handle the knob.

  “What in the hell?!”

  There was a tiny pop that Kim felt in her bones more than heard. Vickie vanished. The darkness deepened, then dissipated.

  Lenny stood by the end of the bed, apparently confused by the interruption. He turned in a slow circle, hands outstretched like a blind man. “Come back,” he whispered. “Come back. I understand. I do.” His eyes caught the light and reflected it back for a moment; the whites were darkening, pink to red.

  Kim grabbed his arm and jerked away from the cold. She snatched up Ainslie’s towel and tried again. He tried to pull back, whimpering, but she squeezed with all of her strength.

  “No,” she told him. “I let you get away with your trauma excuse, but this time, you are going to explain.”

  “She left. She… She l-left.”

  “Vickie? Damn straight she left. I tried to leave, too. What the hell were you doing to her?”

  “T-trying to help. She’s stuck.”

  Kim tugged him toward the door, further into the light. He flinched and shut his eyes. She could feel the storm inside him – confusion, frustration, and that ever-present fear. She tried to block it out. She also noticed that Ainslie was toting a kitchen knife, and she gestured silently for it to disappear. Ainslie hid it behind her back.

  “She’s not stuck.” Kim hauled him into the living room and shoved him onto the couch. He curled up immediately and covered his face. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans and folded her arms tightly to keep herself from lashing out.

  “Start talking, Leonard Hugo. Tell me what just happened. Tell me exactly what just happened and why I shouldn’t let Tony and Edith know all about it.”

  Nothing.

  “Lenny. Leonard. You did something. Do you understand? You did something I don’t know how to explain. You scared me, okay? You scared a ghost, and that’s hard to do.”

  He muttered something into his hands, too quiet for Kim to make out. She wanted to comfort him, but her palms were red where his freezing skin had burned her. From where she stood, she could still feel it, the cold spreading from where he sat, sucking the heat out of the air like a block of dry ice.

  “Bernice will be showing up soon,” Ainslie said. “So if there are secrets to be told, we’d better get that out of the way quick.”

  The vampire lowered his hands by a fraction and looked up at the older woman. Ainslie looked back with raised eyebrows, arms crossed, extremely unimpressed. Lenny looked away first.

  “It’s what I do,” he whispered.

  Kim had to lean in closer to hear. “What is?”

  “What I have to do. Help them c-cross.”

  “Vickie said she wants to stay.”

  His shoulders quaked. Kim mo
ved forward as though to put a hand on his back, but she stopped. Then she realized he was laughing. His skin was deathly cold, and he was tearing open the Veil between worlds, and he was laughing. The hair on Kim’s arms stood on end.

  It was over again as soon as it had begun, and he gulped for breath.

  “No one wants to stay.” There was a bitter edge to his voice. “Stick around long enough to d-d-do something, maybe, but nuh-not just stay here. It’s cold in there, in between. She doesn’t want to stay. She’s just sc-cared to g-g-go.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “She told me. I wasn’t going to hurt her. Or you. C-can’t.”

  “Told you when? She doesn’t even like going near you.”

  “No.” He put one finger on his forehead. “Not out loud. I d-don’t know. The way I always hear them. It’s all the t-time.”

  “Okay, then, what’s she scared of? If you’re trying to tell me Vickie has some deep, dark secret…”

  “That’s not your b-business.”

  A disbelieving snort escaped before Kim could stop it. It was almost as though he was being difficult on purpose. “Okay. Okay, maybe not. Then tell me how a dead man punches holes in reality.”

  “I…” He faltered. His forehead wrinkled in a deep frown. “I d-didn’t mean to. It just happened. C-couldn’t… Couldn’t control it. I’m sorry.”

  “Still doesn’t explain how.” Kim huffed a sigh and dropped into the chair across from him. Something was beginning to come together in her mind, something that defied a few of her preconceptions. The facts did not fit her theory, so the theory had to change. She pushed her hair out of her eyes.

  “I’m getting the feeling you’re not going to just give me a straight answer,” she said, “so I’m going to take a wild guess and trust you to tell me if I’m right.”

  He looked at her warily. A vein burst in his eye.

  “It sounds like you’re saying you’re a medium.”

  He only stared. His gaze twitched across the room to Ainslie, then back to Kim. The silence began to grow. The elevator pinged down the hall.

  “Bernice,” Ainslie observed.

  He looked Kim in the eye and nodded almost imperceptibly.

  No one moved. Heavy footsteps travelled down the hall and continued on past. Kim sucked in a short breath and crept to the door, nearly silent in her stocking feet. She drew the bolt, twisted the knob, and peered outside.

  “Not yet,” she puffed, releasing the breath she had been holding. The door clicked shut behind her. The lock snicked. She moved back and Ainslie slipped in to take her place, eye to the peephole.

  “Okay,” Kim started, hushed. She stopped again, shoved her hands through her hair, and thought. “Okay. You’re a medium. Vampire medium. Which apparently isn’t impossible.”

  He nodded.

  “And you’ve got… abilities.”

  He nodded again.

  Ainslie cut in. “Just to clarify,” she shot over her shoulder, “these abilities are just the standard complement for a medium, yes? That is, they don’t affect, ah, living persons?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, they don’t affect the living, or no, that’s not correct?”

  “The… the first one.”

  “But you have some… some influence over the dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “Undead, too?”

  He gritted his teeth, shoulders tightening, and tried to merge with the couch upholstery. “It’s not like that,” he insisted. “It’s not like that at all.” A tear rolled down his nose and dripped onto his knee.

  Ainslie glanced at Kim, set her knife on top of the television, and jammed her thumbs into her belt.

  “But it’s enough like that so that you’d have a damn hard time convincing Tony and Edith that it’s not like that. Which, I’m betting, is why you didn’t bring it up before, despite it being noteworthy, and why you’re scared crapless of Bernice.”

  Lenny nodded miserably.

  “We won’t rat on you,” Kim told him. “Don’t worry about that. If you really can’t do us any harm with it, this doesn’t change anything. We’re still on the same side.”

  Ainslie sank into a chair and crossed her ankle over her knee. The chair creaked. Something in one of her many pockets buzzed, but she ignored it. “Still don’t see why you trust him,” she said to Kim, talking over Lenny.

  “Innocent until proven guilty? Besides, I haven’t read everything in your index, but I do remember something about media not being able to take life, not even if they wanted to.”

  “That’s only the outrageously strong ones.” Ainslie sniffed. Her mouth twisted. “I don’t see much outrageously strong about this guy. Sorry,” she added, in Lenny’s general direction. “Also, that’s for media. There’s no way to say what the Rules would be for one that’s a vampire. They’re sort of polar opposites, in some ways. Even if that’s God’s own truth, and he is both, things don’t always mix well. Bleach and ammonia come to mind.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know, not for sure. And if I keep trusting him after he tries to kill me or something, then it’ll be stupid, but for right now, I’d rather not be a paranoid freak. I sort of like being able to go outside without assuming everyone is out to get me, just because they haven’t proven that they aren’t.”

  Kim shut up abruptly, teeth clicking together as someone tapped at the door. She slid closer and put her eye to the peephole, then opened it.

  Bernice stood just outside, pulling Coyote’s wheeled cooler. She had resumed her eye patch, the classic black pirate accessory, which contrasted strangely with her neatly-pressed khakis and white button-down.

  “You revoked my invitation while I was out,” she commented blandly.

  “Sorry,” Kim said. “Just a precaution.”

  “No, it’s okay. Probably smart. But are you going to let me back in, or not?”

  Kim shifted and glanced up and down the hall. It was empty.

  “Actually, I’m invoking a conditional invitation.”

  “What’s the condition?” For a moment, Bernice looked distinctly irked. Her broad lips thinned.

  “That you have had no contact of any kind with Sebastian Duran since the last time I saw you. If you fulfill the condition, you can come in.”

  Bernice frowned, then grinned. “Yeah, okay,” she admitted with grudging respect, “you’re pretty sharp.” She stepped over the threshold. “Does that mean you think he’s back in the area?”

  “Better safe than S.O.L.”

  Bernice chuckled. “Truer words,” she agreed. She leaned around Kim to nod at Lenny. “Glad to see you’re moving again.” She popped the cooler and dug down into it with the sound of grating ice, tossed a bag of plasma at the man on the couch, and dropped a ring of shiny new keys into Kim’s hand. “Need anything else before I go catch up with Itzli?”

  “I think we’ve got everything pretty well covered,” Kim replied. “Anything we need would probably be best served by you guys bringing Duran down. I mean, I get the impression he doesn’t exactly like me.” She bared her teeth in a broad grin.

  Bernice grabbed a plastic baggie of plasma for herself. “You sure? Absolutely sure? Once I head out, you might not be able to contact me.”

  “We can get a hold of Coyote or Zeb just fine, and there shouldn’t be a problem with Duran not in the picture. Just, you know, make sure someone lets us know if you lose him.”

  Bernice fixed Lenny with her good eye. “What about you? Do you need anything?”

  Kim glanced back to see him sucking morosely at the plastic bag, sclera beginning to clear again. He studied the carpet intently and shook his head, not looking up. She remembered something about a plan to interrogate him, but supposed Bernice must have gotten whatever it was she wanted when she was there with Itzli earlier. And if she had not, Kim was not about to remind her. There were things that should not come to light.

  Bernice shrugged, hovered for a moment, and then left. Or rather, s
he was there one moment and had vanished the next.

  Kim shut the door hurriedly and locked it, muttering under her breath, something about withdrawn invitations, and the threshold sealed itself. She pressed her ear to the wood, then pressed her eye to the peephole and sighed. Her hair flopped down into her face, and she shoved it back again.

  “Okay,” she said sharply. “Okay. You.” Her quivering finger invaded Lenny’s personal space, and he recoiled as she plopped down beside him. “I need to know everything you can tell me. Everything. What kind of stuff is it that you do, exactly, and how badly do you think Tony and Edith would take it if they knew? They don’t know, right? You were living in Abilene, and that’s well inside their domain, so if they don’t know, it’s because you were hiding.”

  He turned away, trying to be discreet about wiping a few drops of red from his mouth.

  Kim shifted impatiently and kept herself from snapping.

  “Not hiding,” he whispered. “Just not b-being conspicuous. They knew I was there, just not… just not… not… the other things.”

  “I need more than that, honey. You want to go home, and I want to get you as far away from these creeps as I can, but I have to know that you aren’t going to lose it and start eating people. What were you living on before? I mean, Abilene isn’t big enough for an anemia plague to go unnoticed.”

  He was silent for another moment, and Kim nearly screamed. She reminded herself that pushing would likely only make him worse.

  “C-cows, mostly. There are a lot of cattle ranches. Hard to k-k-kill a cow. They’re too big.”

  Kim let out a breath that was almost a laugh and rested her elbows on her knees. She wanted to believe him, wanted to trust him. She wanted the victim of her enemy to be her friend.

  “Cows,” she repeated. “Okay. And what’s the deal with you and the undead?”

  She felt him shift to look at her and could sense his mistrust. She could also feel how deeply he wanted to trust her, too. If there was going to be someone in her head, she had to admit that it could have been much worse.

  “It’s an attraction,” he said, then shook his head rapidly at her raised eyebrows. “Not like that.”