by J L Bryan
Regardless, he was serving Clay, as long as Clay wore that ring. And he'd been the cause of the family's haunting troubles in their apartment. Whether or not I felt sympathy for Amil, he had to be stopped now, like a rabid animal.
“Polly!” I shouted, turning my face away from Clay's searing hand.
The girl stared in wide-eyed shock at the snake monster standing over her brother. She didn't respond.
I turned back to Clay. If I couldn't stop the servant, maybe I could stop the master.
“Okay, Anton,” I said. “I give up. Let everyone go, and you can kill me now.”
“This is a trick.” Amusement twitched across Melissa's lips, and he lowered her hand.
“Not this time. I mean it. I'm tired of running from you. Let them go. Take me.”
“Ellie, don't—” Michael, bleeding and barely conscious, moved toward me.
Amil lashed out and knocked Michael down again, never moving his cold, reptilian gaze from Ronan, who trembled in front of him.
Then Amil opened his jaws and lunged at Ronan again while the boy screamed.
I tried to get away, but Clay's grip on me was like iron, between Melissa's own strength and whatever supernatural element he brought to it. Hot iron, and it hurt.
“AMIL!”
It was Polly this time, the quiet girl at last finding her voice amid all the terror, and using it pretty effectively. It felt like she'd blasted out my eardrums. The word echoed and echoed in the cave.
Amil stopped all at once.
He wasn't the Snake Man anymore, either. The sound of Polly's voice seemed to have shifted him back to the form of a young boy, dressed in a loose tunic trimmed in purple, his face dark and handsome. The apparition was detailed, though still partially transparent.
He looked toward Polly where she knelt in the mud, and his lips moved, but I couldn't understand his foreign words.
Polly seemed to be able to, though.
“Leave my family alone,” she said, pushing herself to stand on unsteady legs. “I don't like you anymore, Amil.”
Yikes. She could have picked a somewhat better time to break up with her evil-monster supernatural boyfriend, if you ask me. But I guess the heart doesn't want what it doesn't want.
The boy's face flickered, turning scaly and toothy for just a moment, before returning to its usual shape. He looked like he was going to cry, his lip trembling.
Ryan crawled toward Polly, trying to get between her and the ghost of Amil. I'd done that myself before, and it could be dangerous.
“Stop him!” Clay snapped. He held out his hand—well, Melissa's hand—with the ancient ring on it.
Amil became the Snake Man again and raised his talons, preparing to plunge them into Ryan's spine as he crawled closer.
“No! Amil!” Polly shouted.
The ghost flicked back to the boy again, looking confused.
“Ignore her!” Clay shouted, waving Melissa's ringed hand back and forth. That meant he'd released my arm.
With the last of my strength, I grabbed Melissa's hand and pulled on the ring.
“What?” Clay hissed as I dragged the ring over her knuckle, down toward her fingertip. “No!”
I suppose Clay had been holding back before, because a gout of raw fire erupted from his hand, scorching my fingers. I yelped in surprise and pain as I drew my hand away. I hated making that sound, showing weakness in front of Anton Clay, almost as much as I hated the actual pain of the burn.
As I jerked my hand back from the fire, I brought the ring with me, pulling it over Melissa's fingertip.
The ring tumbled in midair between us, for just a moment, as if suspended.
Then it began to fall.
I reached for it with my non-burned hand. Clay was still holding that arm, though, limiting my movement.
Amil, looking like a boy again, turned to see the ring dropping slowly toward the flooded, muddy floor, where the water level was knee-deep now.
Amil was, for the moment, free of Clay's command, and he took advantage of it.
He leaped toward Clay/Melissa, shifting into full Snake Man, looking ready to rip apart his erstwhile master.
I understood his desire to turn on Clay, but I had one huge problem with that: Clay was currently inhabiting Melissa's body, and I didn't want to see her hurt.
I managed to pull my non-burned hand free of Clay's grasp and reached for the ring.
Clay reached for it with Melissa's hand, which was surrounded by a halo of fire but was not itself burned at all.
Clay grabbed it before I did, the halo of fire scorching my fingertips while Melissa's fingers closed over the ancient ring.
Amil stopped in midair, as though he'd crashed into an invisible wall right in front of Clay, and collapsed to the floor.
The worried look on Melissa's face returned to a wide, arrogant smile again.
“How dare you!” Clay shouted at Amil. Then Clay pointed to Ryan. “Get him!”
Amil resumed his reptilian shape and whipped around to snarl at Ryan, who'd taken Polly's hand and started to lead her back toward the tunnel. He was trying to collect his kids and get out of there.
Amil lunged at Ryan.
“No!” Polly screamed. “Not my dad!”
Amil vanished, then reappeared on the other side of Ryan. He hadn't hurt Ryan at all, but now he stood dangerously close to Penny and Ronan, near the tunnel through which we'd entered.
Then the reptilian man faded, paler and paler, while Clay and Polly shouted contradictory commands at him.
Finally, Clay turned to me, snarling.
“You are mine to claim,” he said, and suddenly the air around me grew scorching hot.
He smiled.
Then his smile faltered, as if something troubling had occurred to him.
“No...not like this,” he said. “After all this time, I wish to savor your death like a seven-course meal, accompanied with fine wines. Where is the satisfaction in devouring you like a raccoon dragging off a mouthful of garbage in the night? I would rather burn you slowly, one precious morsel at a time.”
“Let Melissa go,” I said. “If you have to possess someone, take me.”
“An amusing idea. I will go and prepare. By the time you find me...the moment will be right.” He smiled. “Amil! Do not allow anyone to follow me. Surely you can handle such a minor command as that, you stupid beast.”
The reptilian ghost snarled.
Clay, smirking with Melissa's lips, ducked under the thick mudfall, back into the hidden tunnel from which he'd emerged.
“Clay!” I shouted, charging after him, not wanting him to escape with Melissa's body.
As I tried to duck under the mudfall, though, I was smacked back, sent staggering back across the flooded floor.
Ryan caught me and let me down easy.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Let's go.”
“I can't leave yet,” I said. “Take your kids and go. Watch out for the ghosts of your uncle and those two people he killed.”
“I'll just stomp what's-her-name's skeleton to dust if I have to,” Ryan said. He directed his son and daughters into the low tunnel from which we'd entered. He paused, touching my arm. “You should join us.”
I looked from him, to the frightened faces of his children, and then over to Michael, who was heading for the mudfall, chasing after his sister.
“I have to help them,” I said.
Ryan nodded, then turned all his attention to getting his kids out of there as fast as possible.
I turned back to Michael just in time to see him getting knocked back from the mudfall by the invisible Amil. Michael landed hard on his back in the shallow water, and I ran to his side.
Chapter Forty
Amil's ghost continued blocking the way to the tunnel, flinging Michael and me back each time we approached. He wouldn't budge from his standing orders from Clay.
He did not advance on us or act aggressive otherwise, though, and when he appeared, he presented as a s
ad-looking boy, not a snarling Snake Man.
“Let us by!” Michael shouted in frustration, after being knocked back from the mudfall yet another time.
“Amil,” I finally said. “Can you just tell us where she's gone?”
The boy apparition became visible again, though thin and pale.
He pointed up.
“Up? Above ground?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Where?” I moved closer, holding out my hand.
“Ellie, don't!” Michael said.
“It's okay,” I assured him. I hoped it was. Amil wasn't speaking to me directly, but we'd had a moment of psychic contact before. He had showed me his past. Maybe he could show me Melissa and Clay's present, through his connection to the ring.
Amil reached out, with a barely visible hand, and touched the open, burned hand I was offering him.
His fingers were slender, and cold as a corpse's. His skin felt soft and human, though, not scaly.
An instant later, I was hurrying up a cracked stone stairway, finally emerging into a room dominated by a large, dark pool brimming with water, surrounded by the cracked remnants of elaborately carved columns. Trickles of moonlight from the cracked roof provided the only light.
The ruins.
Then I was back in the muddy, wet cavern, drawing back from Amil's ghost. His apparition vanished back into the mudfall, but I understood he had no choice but to guard the tunnel and keep us out. Perhaps Polly could have won an exhausting battle of wills with Clay long enough to let us by, but it wasn't up to the girl to protect the adults, and she and her family had suffered far too much already.
“What's the fastest way to the ruins? Amil?” I asked the waterfall, hoping the boy would emerge again with information about an alternate route, another tunnel that could get us there quickly.
He didn't, though.
Michael tried approaching again and was pushed back—Amil was still blocking our path.
“We have to go up,” I told Michael. “We can drive most of the way to the old resort. That's where she's gone.”
Michael glared at the mudfall and the invisible entity blocking our way.
Then, having no other choice, we returned to the small tunnel and crawled back.
We found the remnants of Georgina's body smashed to pieces. Whispers filled the cold cavern as we approached, then fell silent as Michael and I passed through.
“We'll have to get Georgina's remains a proper burial,” I said. “That should help clear up some of this haunting. I think they're causing the small, nuisance hauntings down in the museum.”
Michael said nothing. His sister was gone, kidnapped by a murderous ghost who might burn her alive.
I was terrified for Melissa. Clay could easily grow bored and kill her...but I didn't think he would. Not right away.
He might have been plotting to capture me, but he was somehow free of the place he'd haunted for close to two centuries, the site of his old house. He was back in a living body. And he seemed to be enjoying it.
Hopefully, he wouldn't want it to end, and that would keep Melissa alive until we could get an exorcist to draw Clay out of her. We would need a highly skilled one, too, to make sure Clay didn't burn her to death on his way out. Highly skilled exorcists aren't exactly common, either.
We finally reached the history exhibit, where Ryan had left the barred door open for us. A chaotic splatter of muddy footprints confirmed that he and his kids had come this way already.
The museum was silent. Presumably the family had gone upstairs to wash and tend their wounds.
There would be no such reprieve for Michael and me.
We grabbed some fresh gear from my van and ran to his truck, which was actually faster than the van, owing to the fact that it wasn't loaded down with ghost hunting gear.
We took the roads as far as we could. Every moment of the silent, tense drive felt like an hour. Every minute, it felt like Melissa and Clay had slipped a few more miles away.
Finally, we followed a narrow, weed-infested old road up to the front gate of the old resort, where we could drive no farther.
We got out and walked, clicking on our flashlights.
A stone archway over the gate read: CURING SPRINGS.
Both halves of the old iron gate were rooted to the ground, literally, because trees had grown up through the bars over the past hundred years or so.
Fortunately, one of the gates had been left partially open before this had happened, just wide enough for a teenager to squeeze through, or an adult with a sucked-in gut.
We went inside, finding ourselves among the overgrown remnants of a lawn with gardens and fountains.
The buildings of the resort resembled an ancient temple complex. I'd been prepared to see this, of course, but the psychological effort was powerful at night, like we'd walked into the lair of evil gods, making me think of those statues and masks I'd glimpsed in Amil's death memory.
“Wow, Ellie,” Michael murmured. “We've been to some haunted-looking places together, but this one...” He shook his head. “Where do you think she went?”
I looked between the two main buildings—the four-story hotel, with balconies and chimneys, and the bathhouse itself, as big as the hotel, which contained a number of pools and quack-treatment centers inside its crumbling walls.
The entrance to the bathhouse, at the top of chipped marble stairs, was an empty, pitch-black archway, overgrown with vines, which made it look like the mouth of a cave.
The windows, placed well above the ground for the privacy of bathers in the spring pools, were equally dark, most of them edged with broken glass like sharp teeth.
Michael and I looked at each other. Clearly, neither of us was eager to head inside.
“Clay!” I shouted. “Anton Clay!”
“Melissa!” Michael yelled, giving that a shot.
We didn't get a response to either name.
“Okay,” Michael said. “Maybe you should wait out here—”
“Shut up.” I hurried ahead, leading the way, stabbing my light into the darkness ahead.
The interior of the bath house was a wreck, which wasn't a surprise. We passed a large, dark pool, full of runoff from the cracked ceiling overhead.
Not much snow had fallen inside, but the floor, a mix of marble and stone, was covered in ice and quite slippery. I hugged the wall as best I could, not wanting to slide into the deep pool. The pool was frozen over on top, but there were several feet of dark, cold, near-freezing water lurking below the icy crust. The water in the pool was probably filthy, too, on top of its fatally low temperature.
We made our way to the next chamber, my heart thumping wildly. There was no telling where Clay might be hiding, or what kind of trap he'd set while waiting for us to catch up to him.
The next bathing room was full of places to hide, because the columns were carved to look like mermaids. Curvy, blush-inducing mermaids. The remnants of crumbling murals on the wall depicted water nymphs.
“Wow,” Michael said. “You wouldn't think they'd allow these decorations in the nineteenth century.”
“It's mythology,” I said. “So, you know. Educational.”
“Right.” He checked the dark spaces behind a pair of intertwined stone mermaids.
I looked at the floor around the ice-covered pool, trying to find footprints, but the floor ice was frozen pretty solid. Melissa could have passed through in any direction without leaving any trace at all.
We moved on into the next room, where I elbowed Michael and pointed to the nearest statue. “Look. More art.”
In this room, the statues and frescoes arrayed around the pool depicted mythological heroes, I assume, wielding swords and hammers—muscular mythological heroes, dressed in the skimpiest bits of cloth, leaving nearly everything on display.
“I'm guessing this was the ladies' department,” I said, while continuing to search for footprints or any sign that someone living had been through in the past hour.
�
��Because women love the stories of Hercules and Achilles so much,” Michael said, checking the dark space behind Hercules's massive glutes with somewhat less interest than he'd shown the intertwined mermaids.
“Yeah, because if you add up all of Hercules's Twelve Labors, you get something almost as painful as giving birth. Notice that wasn't one of the labors he had to endure.”
“How would you know?”
“I've heard. A lot. Too much. Not for me, probably.”
“Seriously?” He paused, looking at me.
“Why do you even care—never mind,” I said. “Clay! Anton Clay! Let's skip past the quiet stalking and ambushing phase and get right to the part where you leave with us. Calmly and peacefully. Come out, come out!”
Michael carried a roll of duct tape, ready to bind Melissa up and take her with us. It was crude, but it was the best we could pull off at the moment.
No answer came, so we continued onward, through a few smaller chambers, with smaller pools, and we even found the staircase I'd glimpsed when Amil touched me.
No sign of Melissa, though.
We moved on from the labyrinthine bathhouse into the hotel, through a crumbling connecting structure that had once been a sunroom-like corridor. Now the windows were all broken, and thick vines blocked out any sign of the night outside.
The thick old carpet in the lobby was rotten to rags, and scattered once-opulent furniture was upholstered in moss and mold.
We called for Clay and Melissa as loud as we could, while looking through the wreckage of one room after another, including the hotel's dining room and kitchen.
It was pretty gross in there, but no sign of Clay or Melissa.
Michael pushed open a door to the service stairs at the back of the hotel.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“There's three more floors,” he said.
“It's too dangerous, Michael. There's no sign she ever came into this building.”
“It won't take long.”
“Come on, you know how dangerous that would be. This building was abandoned a hundred and twenty years ago, Michael. And us getting injured won't help your sister.”