by J L Bryan
He sat in the passenger seat, like a hitchhiker I'd picked up. He was a potbellied man in a jacket and a knit hat, slashed all over, blood leaking out as dark and slow as pitch.
He stared at me, his lips parted to reveal crooked gray teeth. His eyes and skin were unnaturally pale. A long slash mark had opened up the left side of his face, revealing dark oozing blood.
The air smelled like cheap booze and stale tobacco, making me cough.
“Davey Bawden,” I said, my training taking over when all I wanted to do was scream and jump out of the van, away from the apparition. Stating the entity's name could give me some influence over it, or at least make it pause any actions it might be considering. Attacking me, for instance. “Davey Bawden. You were killed by the Snake Man.”
Bawden's colorless eyes looked me over. He appeared to have been unkempt in life, his ratty hair balding on top, his face unshaven with a large mustache, his chin and gut flabby.
“My stop's up here.” He gestured with a blood-spattered hand at the road ahead. Maybe he meant Georgina Charrington's old place, where he'd worked and lived at the end of his life. The Tudor mansion was now owned by an unrelated family, and mostly concealed behind the trees ahead.
I slowed, thinking he might vanish once he reached the property line, or drew close to the spot where he'd died. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, overall, but he was related to my current case.
“Did Leydan have you killed?” I asked. “Did he send the Snake Man after you?”
He stared at me for a long time with his pale eyes. I slowed the van until it was barely crawling, my foot not even on the gas.
“No,” he finally said. And he smiled.
“What? Then how did you die?”
“The Missus sent me,” Bawden said. “But Leydan...he had the Snake Man. Killed me right there in the museum. Then left me out on the trail.” His smile turned into a snarl. “Leydan.”
“Wait,” I said. “The Missus? Is that Georgina Charrington?”
“The Missus wanted the weirdo dead,” Bawden said. “She told me to do it.”
“Georgina told you to kill Leydan?”
Bawden smiled again. “Cut 'im up. The weirdo. Supposed to cut 'im, made it look like robbery.”
“You were willing to kill for Georgina?” I asked. “She really was your lover, huh?”
Bawden's smile vanished. “No one's supposed to know. The Missus wouldn't like that.”
“Well, everyone in town's kinda figured it out, so—”
“No one's supposed to know!” He glowered, blood oozing out between his lips, and I realized that he now held a long knife in his hand. It hadn't been there before. I wondered if it was the same weapon with which he'd tried to kill Leydan.
I didn't have much time to think about it, though, because Bawden's ghost was getting angrier and uglier by the second.
“NO ONE'S SUPPOSED TO KNOW!”
He took a swipe at me with the blood-encrusted knife. It wasn't a real knife, of course, more of a psychokinetic projection from the entity—but it didn't matter, because it could hurt me all the same.
I dodged back against my door, but there wasn't far to go. The blade ripped through the sleeve of my jacket, and I felt the point jab through the flesh of my arm.
I hissed in pain, while wondering whether I could get tetanus or other diseases from a ghost's dirty knife. I still preferred it to a ghost armed with a syringe, which I've seen before.
The van reached a curve, and I barely managed to grab the wheel and keep it on the road.
Then I stomped the accelerator.
The edge of Georgina's huge old house became visible through the woods ahead. While Bawden drew back and prepared to strike again, I aimed for Georgina Charrington's old property.
I decided the entrance to the house's driveway was much too far away, though, so I swerved off the road, drove over snow-covered grass, and smashed through a decorative split-rail fence. Chunks of cutesy but flimsy white wood went flying everywhere.
For his second attack, Bawden stabbed at me instead of slashing.
The blade bit deep into my shoulder, making me cry out as I bashed through some low-lying limbs and emerged onto the wide brick driveway that twisted like a creek through the woods.
Now that I was on the old Charrington property, I slammed the brakes, reached for the tactical flashlight at my belt, and turned toward Bawden's ghost. It was a little difficult wrangling the light out while sitting down and buckled into my seat, though.
I finally got it free and pointed it at Bawden, hitting him full blast with piercing white light.
He was already gone.
The passenger seat was empty. I even checked it for smudges of his dark, thick blood, but he had vanished without a trace. That was fortunate, because I didn't want to try and figure out how to remove ghostly blood stains from the van's upholstery. Ghost Scotchgard, maybe.
I looked around through the now-cracked windshield for any trace of the ghost.
There was nothing I could see...but several lights were on at the main house at the top of the driveway, and more of them switched on by the moment. My crash through the fence and trees had clearly woken the family living there.
The proper thing to do would have been to stick around, give them my contact information, and tell them to bill me for the damage.
That could end up taking hours, though, especially if the police got involved. And I didn't have any time, not when Melissa was screaming about Michael being possessed and attacking her.
Plus, our hotel was full of guests, as well as the hotel's night staff. If Clay burned the place down, the death toll could be staggering. Which would not only be a horrible tragedy in its own right, but would make Clay more powerful than ever, with more splinters of souls from everyone he killed.
I drove in reverse along the driveway, since I didn't have time to turn around. The house's front door was opening just as I backed out of sight.
Back at the main road, I straightened out and drove forward, which was a nice change.
My stab wounds throbbed as I accelerated down the steep road into town.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I have no doubt that I broke a sizable number of traffic laws getting to the hotel, but I was in a hurry, and an unknown number of lives were at stake.
When I finally pulled into the parking lot of El Grande Chalet, my brakes screeching as I parked slantwise across two spots, I allowed myself a sigh of relief. The hotel wasn't going up in flames, at least not yet. Our rooms weren't visible from the parking lot, though, so if there was smoke or fiery light within, I wouldn't see it from where I'd parked.
I raced inside and through the lobby, noticing the complete lack of firefighters, police, or any other emergency types. My last words to Melissa had been instructing her to call the fire department.
The lobby was fairly placid, though. One bored-looking clerk stood at the front counter, twirling his sombrero. A couple of teenagers, maybe siblings, sat in the lobby's stuffed chairs, staring at their phones, thumbs tapping.
Whatever was happening in our room was fairly contained, then. But that meant no help was on the way. Clay might even have used his powers to keep the whole thing silent and unnoticed; I hadn't seen him do that before, but I'd encountered ghosts with strong powers of illusion before.
An elevator car was waiting on the lobby level. I ran inside.
It seemed to take forever for the elevator car to start moving. I frantically jabbed the DOOR CLOSE button. The doors gradually rattled shut.
It took another eternity to climb to the third floor.
I squeezed out through the elevator doors while they were still opening, then bolted down the hall to my room, where Melissa had said she'd barricaded herself.
I didn't have my phone—I'd left it in the van, I realized—so I'd lost touch with Melissa. I had no idea what to expect as I fished the keycard out of my pocket, inserted it into the lock, and opened the door to my room.
In fact, there was no sign anybody had been in my hotel room since I'd left. No furniture shoved against the wall, nothing burned or damaged. At the connecting door, there was no sign that anyone had attempted to force entry.
Melissa was nowhere to be seen.
I unlocked my side of the connecting door, but I couldn't open it. It was still locked on the other side.
I pounded on it. “Melissa! Michael!”
I didn't have a key to their room, so if nobody answered, I would have to kick the door open. I hoped that was a thing I could accomplish.
I pounded again, even harder, like I was the police raiding a drug den, and I shouted both of their names again.
When no answer came, I backed up, then took a running start at the door. I jumped, the sole of my boot aimed at the door's deadbolt, putting all my flying weight into it. My kickboxing lessons were paying off again.
Then Michael opened the door, and my boot landed in his gut, a little to the left of his solar plexus.
He grunted in pain and staggered back into his room. He managed to keep his balance until he reached the nearest bed, then sat down on it, clutching his abdomen.
“Huh?” he said, then added, “What?”
His hair was stuck together in clumps, like he'd just gotten out of bed. He looked around groggily.
“Where's Melissa?” I asked.
“Huh? She's just...” He gestured at the bed where he'd landed, then looked puzzled. “She should be right here.”
“But she's not,” I said, as if it weren't totally obvious. “Did you just wake up?”
“Yeah, I do that when people try to Karate Kid my door open. What's going on?”
“You don't have any idea where Melissa is? Because she just called me in a huge panic on the phone, saying you were attacking her...setting things on fire...does that ring a bell?”
“Setting things on fire?” He rubbed his head.
“She said Clay was back!” I said, his drowsy confusion annoying me in my full-on panic. “She said you were possessed, that he'd burrowed deep inside you and hidden himself and...oh, no. Michael. We have to find her.”
“I don't understand,” he said.
“Maybe she was talking about herself.”
“Huh? So she snuck away?” Michael looked at the bedside table. “My keys are missing.”
“Why would she call me in the middle of the night and lie to me about this? She had to know I would come right here and wake you up. Which means...” My gears were turning fast while Michael's were just sputtering to life. “She wanted me away from the museum.”
“But why—”
“Come on!” I said, shaking the keys to my van. “Let's go get her.”
“I have no idea what's going on right now,” Michael said.
“Just put your pants on and let's go!”
While he took way too long getting dressed, I grabbed his cell phone and called Melissa. No answer.
I pulled Michael out of the hotel room with me. He stumbled along, shoes in one hand, trying to pull up his jeans with the other. “Where are we going?” he muttered.
“The museum,” I said. “She wanted me out of there.”
“Why?” Michael zipped his pants and buckled his belt while we waited for the elevator.
“She was pretty interested in the idea that Leydan could control the Snake Man ghost and send it to attack people,” I said. “And I think she was right about that. So if I had to guess, I'd say she's going to try and take control of Snake Man herself. I just hope she hasn't figured out about the ring.”
“What ring? Why would my sister do any of this?”
“Maybe because she's not really your sister,” I said. “Maybe she's possessed.”
“Possessed?” The elevator door opened, and I hurried inside, still dragging him after me.
“By Clay,” I said. “That's why he's disappeared, and why Melissa's been acting strangely. She talked about him hiding deep inside you, watching and waiting...but she was talking about herself. Sometime after the attack, maybe while you were still in the hospital, he moved from you into her. So Jacob was right that Clay had left you. But Clay hadn't gone as far away as we thought.”
“Are you sure about this?” he asked, as the doors opened and I dashed into the lobby. Michael, to his credit, was finally hurrying alongside me.
“Not sure at all, but it fits,” I said. “I could be totally wrong. But if I am, I'm not sure why she's done this stuff tonight. If she'd just wanted to run away, she could have done that without faking a panicked call to me. We wouldn't even know she was gone until morning. Why call me except to get me out of the museum?”
“So what do you think she wants?” he asked as we reached the van outside.
“I don't know. I hope she—I mean, Clay—hasn't figured out about the ring.”
“What ring?”
“Exactly. I only just figured it out, but maybe Clay could sense the supernatural energy or whatever in the old ring. The gold and emerald one that's supposedly ancient.”
“Seriously? Something in that ancient history exhibit was actually real? Hey, great parking job,” he added as we reached the slantwise van.
“I don't know about ancient, but it's more than costume jewelry.” I climbed inside and started up the engine. “And we'd better get to it before she does.”
We peeled out of there, tires scraping on the salted pavement. I drove as fast as I dared through town. It was dark, the glowing Christmas decorations snuffed out, nearly all the businesses closed for the night. The only places that looked open were a pizza delivery spot and a sports bar with a half-dozen bored-looking dads watching TV screens so big I could see them from the street.
Outside of town, I picked up speed, bracing myself as I took the twisting roads higher up the mountain, into colder and thinner air.
“Careful,” Michael said, as I passed within inches of the guardrail on a tight turn. The snow was coming down again, making visibility poor.
“I know this road pretty well by now,” I said. “Fair warning—there might be a bloody, slashed-up guy staggering out into the road ahead. And I probably won't slow down or take any risks swerving around him. And if I have to drive through him, there's a chance he might end up in your seat. For a minute. Or so. With a knife.”
“What?” Michael said.
“Just blast him with this flashlight if he does. And try to find my phone, would you? I think it's under your seat somewhere.”
“Okay. Should I do that before or after some ghost guy lands in my lap?”
“Either way. I've only seen him in the past when I was coming down the mountain, not going up it, but he might be looking to rekindle our earlier fight.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Nah, he just winged me.” I gestured at my shoulder, and Michael leaned in for a close look at the small cut in my leather jacket. He probably would have noticed it sooner, if he hadn't just gone from sound asleep to running after his lost sister.
“Looks like he broke the skin,” Michael said. “Let me patch you up.”
“Later,” I said. “We're almost there. Watch out for ghosts hopping on.”
I took the steep curve, keeping an eye out for Bawden's bloody ghost, but it didn't come jumping out at us, happily.
Then we screeched our way across the museum parking lot, which hadn't been salted like the public roads had been.
Michael's truck sat outside the loading dock, parked at a sharp angle, the driver-side door wide open, keys in the ignition.
“And you said my parking was bad,” I said.
“It's not supposed to be a competition,” Michael said, climbing out. “You're both equally bad at parking.” He crossed to his truck to collect his keys and close the door. “No blood in here, no sign of injury...” he murmured.
I dropped to the snow and walked over to the loading dock. The small, human-sized door at the side was wide open. I hadn't locked it on the way ou
t; I'd been in a panicked rush.
“And now you're going to lecture me about trying to heat the whole neighborhood,” I said, climbing up onto the loading dock.
“No, I was saving that for her.”
I hesitated, looking into the darkness ahead. I couldn't hear anything.
“Okay,” I said after a moment. “Let's go.”
Michael insisted on leading the way inside.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The lights in the museum's storage area wouldn't turn on. I opened the iris of my flashlight to cast a wide, diffuse flood of illumination.
“Is the fuse box nearby?” Michael asked, pointing his beam around.
“I have no idea. No time. Come on.”
I led the way into the lobby, swooping my light around. “Melissa?”
Maybe she really was possessed by Clay, but I wasn't ready to start calling her by that name yet. I still held out hope that something less serious was going on here, though I wasn't sure what it could be.
We headed to the Tomb of History first, since that was where the Snake Man had led Polly. I had to check on the ring first, and also make sure Clay hadn't made Melissa go down into the caves below, perhaps preparing to kill her in some extravagant and awful way. The ring and the caves seemed like the biggest dangers.
We walked through the tomb door and ran through the exhibit. My light didn't pick out anyone ahead.
At the end of the exhibit, I took a sharp breath.
“It's gone,” I said.
“What?”
“The ring.” I pointed my light into the display case. On the little black pillow where the supposedly ancient, and almost certainly cursed, piece of jewelry was supposed to be sitting, there was nothing but a thin, ring-shaped gap in the dust.
Someone had come along after me, picked up the keys, opened the box, and taken the Snake Man ring. The key ring was missing.
“Oh, no,” I groaned.
“What's going on?” Michael said. “I feel like I'm a couple of steps behind here.”
“I'm not exactly on top of things, either, but clearly your sister's involved. I'm going to call Ryan, make sure he's up—”