Topher Nightshade vs. The Camp of The Undead Apocalypse

by Drew Hayes

  Kay wondered if they would go on with the show when this was done. Even if everything went perfectly and they saved both the world and Auggie, could they keep chasing shadows after tangling with genuine spirits? Topher always hated the hucksters, the people who didn’t believe in what they were documenting, yet faked results to appear they did. They’d certainly all be believers after tonight, but there was no question that such an in-depth look would make it harder to get amped up over half-heard voices and camera anomalies.

  Digging in her pocket, Kay produced the SUV keys and headed back toward her vehicle. How strange it was to count herself among the believers of anything. Kay had always wanted to believe; she wasn’t trying to wall off the impossible with science like Auggie. From the time of sitting on her grandmother’s lap hearing mystical tales of the old country, Kay had dearly wanted to believe in the supernatural. She just never knew where to put all the faith that was pent up inside her. There were so many lies, so many pretenders to the mystic throne, that it had never seemed safe to believe. She feared choosing wrong more than she feared sitting on the fence, so Kay waited for something, anything really, to jump out and prove itself to her.

  Well, ghosts had certainly done that, and now that she knew they were real, it seemed so obvious. She’d been with Topher for two years; why had it taken so much to push her across the skeptical threshold? Kay resolved to be a bit more open-minded next time the opportunity presented itself. For the moment, however, her biggest concern was getting down the hill and across the camp. There was a nice area on the other side of the forest where she could get a decent view. They only had one camera left, so it needed to count.

  The engine roared to life, scattering a few of the orb-like spirits she’d seen floating amidst the trees, and Kay headed back down the cliff.

  * * *

  It was the strange glow that first told Irwin he was on the right track. As he floated down, phasing through the trees and drawing closer to the weird sensation calling him, he noticed a red glow burning in the forest. He might have been tempted to think it was fire, but fire was alive. It flickered and danced among the shadows. This light didn’t dance: it throbbed, like a heart beating. Had he been in his right state of mind, Irwin would have turned and fled like the coward he’d always been. But Irwin was nowhere near his normal mental state. The calling, the light, it had sunk its hooks into him all the way up in the trees. It had invaded him so deeply that he’d barely noticed the shiver of another ceremony beginning. Now that he was this close, he could practically hear it, whispering in his ear that it was all right. He was safe here, safer than he’d ever been before. Nothing could touch him now. After all, his weakness, his body, was gone. Irwin Pistole was a being of will and magic. What did he have to fear?

  He floated into a clearing where the body that had once been called Auggie stood, wiping his dirty hands on his pants next to a freshly uncovered stone circle. As Irwin squinted at him, he realized the man seemed fuzzy around the edges, as though his own shadow had leapt atop him and was trying to smother his whole form. Had Irwin known a bit more, he would have understood that this was the wraith inside poking out, magic and excitement proving too much to contain in a borrowed body. Sadly, as had nearly always been the case, Irwin knew next to nothing.

  “Brother,” the man greeted him, a twisted grin seated beneath a pair of eyes twinkling with madness. “Have you come to bear witness?”

  “I . . . looking for you,” Irwin stammered, his words barely able to escape as his mind was engulfed by overwhelming pleasure from being so close to the source of the light. It skittered across the surface of his brain, a brain that no longer existed in any physical capacity, yet the power was undeterred. It whispered in the nooks and crannies, reassuring and encouraging him.

  “I blame you not. Tonight is a great night you surely have been waiting eons for it. Feel no shame, brother. All are welcome to witness the glory.”

  “No . . . I . . . she’s looking for you.”

  At his words, the face that had once been Auggie’s warped into a snarl. He bounded across the clearing at speeds that seemed impossible to Irwin, grabbing the ghost with a pair of shadowy talons extruding from the tips of his stolen fingers.

  “So, you serve the flesh then. Come to lead the blasphemous beast to my doorstep, to try and halt the inevitable march of our superior souls.” He raised his other hand and another set of talons emerged, these longer and sharper than the ones gripping Irwin’s chest. Irwin wasn’t sure if one spirit could harm another, but this guy seemed to be pretty sure it was possible.

  “No! I told her nothing!”

  “But you will. I can see it in your eyes. You follow whoever scares you the most, feeding off the power of others to wield it as your own. You have no conviction, brother, and that means you have no value.”

  “Are you saying she’s stronger than you?” Irwin spat the words, using courage he’d never have found without the light giving his mind strength.

  The Emissary stared at the impudent spirit, momentarily shocked by the outburst. Irwin capitalized on the silence.

  “You said it yourself: I’ll serve whoever is the strongest, whoever scares me most—whoever offers me the most power. Why would I want her to win? Sure, when I was alive that would have been the smart side, but I’m not alive. I’m dead. I’m dead, and I’m stuck in this place without the power to so much as move a stick. She’s offering to let me leave the camp, move on; you’re offering me power. Power to rule over the living. Power to no longer be stuck like this. Maybe I don’t have conviction, but I do have basic reasoning skills. I want you to win. I want my kind to be the dominant ones in this world.”

  There was a long stretch of silence as The Emissary held Irwin in place, talons still extended and ready to strike. Then, after what seemed like an eternity to Irwin, he was released, left to float freely as The Emissary turned back to the glowing stone circle.

  “You beg well, and perhaps there is wisdom in your cries. Though you doubtlessly lack conviction, there may still be a use for you yet. Are you willing to serve? To do what is necessary so that the world may be reborn and all those imprisoned by flesh set free?”

  “I’ll do whatever you tell me,” Irwin promised. “Anything you name. If it’s in my power, I’ll do it.”

  The Emissary turned back around and formed a questioning expression on his pilfered face. “‘If it’s in your power’? That does not sound like dedication to me, brother.”

  “I just meant that I’m a new ghost, so there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know how to do. I told you before: I can’t even move things yet. So if you wanted me to bash someone’s head in with a rock, I wouldn’t be able to grab it. That’s all I mean.”

  “Ah.” The Emissary walked back around to the stone circle, casting Auggie’s face in red light and shadows. “Then let us test the depths of your commitment, shall we? I am going to give you a task. If you complete it, you will gain a taste of the very power which you seek. If you fail . . . well, I think I can make time in my night to shred one traitor’s miserable soul.”

  “Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it,” Irwin assured him.

  “Very well, then. It is high past time that we moved things along.”

  * * *

  The airborne sprits were helpful, but Velt was starting to wonder if they would be enough. She’d been combing the woods carefully, using them for guidance and directions, trying to sweep as much of the area as possible, but with each passing minute, the chances of The Emissary completing the second ritual increased. Not even she knew what would happen when he finished, and she was really hoping not to find out. Every step that brought the worlds of the living and the dead closer together made her job that much harder.

  She hurried across the brush, coat pulled tightly as she worked to ignore the growing ache in her left leg. Something had probably gotten sprained when she went through the wall, an injury hidden beneath the adrenaline of the situation. Stomping about was almost
certainly making it worse, but she didn’t have the luxury of worrying about such things. There would be time to recover afterward . . . hopefully.

  Velt had just started down a promising path with smashed bushes and other signs of recent use when Irwin floated out from between the trees.

  “Dead end.”

  Velt winced involuntarily at the implied pun. Though she doubted this one was the type to make such jokes, spending any length of time around spirits meant dealing with the occasional ghost who coped with his afterlife through awful wordplay.

  “Are you sure? I’ve been all over the areas nearby, and this looks like someone tore through it recently.” She gestured to the cracked twigs and scattered leaves as evidence to her point.

  “Trust me, unless you want to go see a bunch of foxes eating a rabbit carcass, that’s not a productive path.” Irwin glanced down at the signs she was pointing to. “I guess the little guy went down with a fight. Good for him. All I got to do was choke helplessly.”

  It took great effort for Velt to keep from rolling her eyes. Maudlin mood swings were the sort of thing one had to tolerate with the recently dead, but it rapidly ate up any patience or sympathy she might have had. Usually, the best course of action was to change the subject.

  “Well, do you have any idea of where I should go?”

  “Um . . . maybe,” Irwin said, shuffling slightly. He stuck his hand forward, single finger gesturing toward the west. “I did see something over there earlier, some weird, red light. I thought it was you at the time, but your flashlight doesn’t seem that color, now that I’m close. Is there any chance that might be something?”

  Velt barely resisted punching this idiot in the face. She only held herself back by reasoning that he was so fresh, one blow would probably knock him to the other side, and then she’d be down a helper. “Yes, I think the mysterious red light in the middle of the woods might just be a fucking useful clue! Do you remember where it was?”

  “I’m pretty sure—”

  “Get real sure, real fast.” Velt turned around, shining her light in the direction Irwin was pointing. “We’re going there now, and may the gods help you if we don’t make it in time.”

  Because both her light and eyes were pointed away, Velt didn’t see the self-satisfied smirk that oozed across Irwin’s face. If she had, she may have suspected his betrayal and turned back to the correct path. At the very least, she would have beaten the truth from Irwin’s cowardly lips. But due to an ill-timed turn, she remained unaware of the treachery he was committing, and the two started off down a different trail.

  One leading directly away from the ritual she was trying so hard to stop.

  Chapter 10

  Auggie’s whole form was tingling, itching with a strange sensation that was impossible to scratch. This one was lasting longer than the first, escalating in a slow, maddening build. Topher could only stare helplessly as his friend grew more and more agitated to the point where even basic conversation became impossible.

  The pace began to pick up, and soon Auggie felt the sensation bore deeper in to him. It was no longer as if the feeling were contained to the surface of his incorporeal body; now it was invading his core. Every piece of him could feel it, like a cold fire or a million ants that dragged their pincers across his skin while refusing to bite. At the worst of it, for a very real and terrifying moment, Auggie feared he would lose his mind entirely, that the feeling was so horrid, he would rather run away from all coherent thought just to escape it.

  Then, without any slowing or warning, the sensation vanished all at once. Had he been inside his body, Auggie would have let out a long breath and wiped away the tears that had formed in his eyes. Instead he jerked forward, nearly tumbling to the ground until he remembered gravity no longer held sway over his actions, and made a sound that was halfway between a sob and a sigh of relief.

  “Is it over?” Topher asked. He looked aghast, worse than Auggie had ever seen him. As terrible as it had been to experience that, Auggie imagined it probably wasn’t a picnic to watch either. Especially not for a friend.

  “I don’t really know. Feels like it is, but there’s no way to be sure. Maybe he finished the ceremony, or maybe Velt interrupted him and it will start up again sometime soon. I’ll just have to wait it out.”

  “Do you feel any different, though? Last time he did one of these things, it made you visible. If it’s over, shouldn’t you have new abilities?”

  “That does make sense,” Auggie agreed. “Perhaps I gained the capacity to interact with physical objects. It would be a logical progression.”

  Topher carefully raised his right hand and spread his fingers. “High five?”

  “May as well.”

  The two took a careful swing at one another, aiming to connect palms in mid-air. They got it just right, and Auggie’s hand sailed through Topher’s perfectly as they tried to collide.

  “No to the touching thing,” Auggie sighed. “Pity, it would have been useful.”

  “I’m actually glad it didn’t work out that way,” Topher said. “Velt and Kay are both out there in the forest with all kinds of ghosts, not to mention that mass of jerks on the island.”

  “That’s a good point. Velt seems capable of handling herself, but if ghosts suddenly gained the power of touch, it might put Kay in very serious trouble. I mean, more trouble than the fact that she’s currently behind the wheel of an SUV with no license and at least some alcohol in her veins.”

  “When you put it like that, it seems like it was a bad idea to let her be the wheel-woman.”

  “I thought that was obvious,” Auggie said.

  “Then why didn’t you stop us?”

  “Because, to be frank, that Velt woman somewhat terrifies me,” Auggie admitted. “And besides, it would have come down to you stopping her, anyway. In case you’ve forgotten, I have no effect on the physical realm. If I’d tried to grab the keys, we both know what would have happened.” Auggie illustrated this point by reaching out and grabbing at a camera battery from the nearby table. He fully expected his hand to go straight through it, which made it all the more shocking when he felt the weight of it in his hand as he lifted it up.

  Auggie stared at it in shock while Topher nearly leapt out of his shoes.

  “What the hell?”

  “I don’t know! I can touch it, for some reason.” Auggie dropped the battery and tried to grab one of Topher’s protein bars. It felt firm and solid in his spectral hand. He turned back to Topher and tried to grab his friend’s forearm, but his hand went right through, just like it had with the high five.

  “It’s only non-living things,” Auggie surmised, putting the pieces together. “I still can’t interact with the living, but objects appear to be fair game.”

  Topher stood still for only a moment then leapt into action, darting over to the monitor hub and rapidly flipping switches.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think I’m doing? The game just changed, and I’m betting Kay and Velt don’t have any idea. We’ve got to warn them over their earpieces.”

  Auggie nodded, thankful they’d taken the time to outfit Velt with a rudimentary bit of communications equipment before she left. It would only go one way, since they didn’t have any spare microphones, but at least it would allow them to give her a warning. Not that she needed it as much as Kay.

  Both men hoped with everything they had that their third crew member was almost done with her work and heading back to the main hall.

  * * *

  Kay had just finished placing the last camera when a surge of light came through the forest from across the lake. She felt a cold shiver run down her spine. Given the context of the situation, it didn’t take her much of a leap to figure that something had gone wrong. She hopped into the SUV, threw it in to drive, and began speeding away from the patch of forest she’d been working in. As she drove, she noticed more of the translucent orbs emerging from the trees. She’d spotted a few of them on
the way up, but they seemed to be growing more numerous by the second.

  She was halfway back to the main hall when her earpiece crackled to life.

  “Kay, can you hear me?”

  “I hear you, Topher.” The mic clipped to the top of her shirt was thankfully still working, transmitting her words across the distance to the monitor Topher was observing.

  “Thank God. Kay, you need to get back here quickly. The second ritual was completed, and it lets the ghosts touch inanimate objects. Get clear of the woods before you run into something bad.”

  “Relax, I’m almost out,” she told him. “What about Velt?”

  “We relayed the message, but she doesn’t have a microphone to respond. She should be fine; she’s already able to fight ghosts.”

  Kay accelerated, jumping the SUV over a small rut in the road and then eased to a stop. There were two paths in front on her: one would get her back to the main hall, while the other would swing around through the camp and get her back to where she’d dropped Velt off. She hesitated for only a moment, then jerked the wheel and slammed on the gas.

  “Fuck that. Tell her to meet me where I dropped her off.”

  “Kay, you don’t need to—”

  “If the second ritual is complete, then that means she’s probably in the wrong spot now. Auggie’s body will go to the next site. Assuming we spot him on camera, we’ll need to move Velt as fast as possible. I’m picking her up because having her walk back to camp is wasting time we don’t have.”

  There was silence from the radio for a long moment. “Are you sure about this?”